Slovak is the offical
language of Slovakia, spoken by about 90 percent of the country's
5 million inhabitants. It is similar to that of Czech to be
considered by some as merely a dialect, but the existence of
slightly different alphabets, as well as distinct literatures,
makes it more convenient to look upon them as separate languages.
The Slovak
alphabet is similar to that of Czech, though it lacks three Czech
letters (c; r; and u) and contains three of its own. Two are
vowels—the â , as in mâso (meat), and the ô , as in nôz
(knife), while the l' indicates a soft 1 sound (e.g., ucitel'—
teacher). The Slovak word for Slovak is slovensky', not to be
confused with the word for Slovenian, slovinsky'.
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