Basic Slovak (Textbook of Slovak for English-Speaking Students)

Basic Slovak by Jozef Mistrik is a textbook of Slovak for English-speaking students. It is a modern textbook and was elaborated on the basis of a statistical research of the word stock of the standard Slovak language. From text containing 1 000 000 words the author choose only the 800 most frequent words, which represents about 80 per cent of any Slovak text. Besides, only those grammatical phenomena are employed which are the most importatnt in communication and their methodical ordering follows their frequency.

In 15 lessons the students can master the Slovak language to such an extent that he can quite easily himself understood in common situations and fairlywell comminicate on various topics. The textbook contains study passages, a rich series of exercises and revisions, synoptic grammatical words, which are employed in the book.

The author was a linguist and university professor. He spent several years working in the universities of Oxford, Sheffield, Cologne and Moscow. He also lectured in the universities or international congresses in Russia, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Italy, U.S.A., Egypt etc. He published hundreds of scientific papers in Slovakia and abroad and more than 30 monographs.

Preview from the book

1. Letters and Sounds

Slovak Alphabet

a, a, ä, b, c, c, d, d, dz, dz, e, e, f, g, h, ch, i, i, j, k, l, l, l, m, n, n, o, o, ô, p, r, ŕ, s, s, t, t, u, u, v, y, z, z

The letter ô represents the diphthong [uo].

In adopted or foreign loan words q, w, x are used.

The diagraphs dz, dz, ch are considered as single characters.

Slovak diacritical marks:

ˇ (mäkcen) - the softening mark; this mark over consonant indicates its palatalization and soft pronunciation.

′(dlzen) - the prolongation mark; long vowels and long consonants have the value of two vowels or consonants.

.. (dve bodky) - two dots over the letter a - ä, which may be pronounced as a in the word bad, but in modern Slovak is pronounced usually as e in the word set.

^ (vokan) - the mark above the letter o - ô; the letter ô is pronounced as [uo].

The names of the letters: a, a, ä, be, ce, ce, de, de, dze, dze, e, e, ef, ge, ha, cha, i, i, je, ka, el, eI, el, em, en, en, o, o, uo, pe, er, eŕ, es, es, te, te, u, u, ve, ypsilon, zet, zet, kve, we, iks.

Methodical notes. (1) Do not learn the declension and conjugation paradigms mechanically from the tables. That is to say, the tables are included merely for the purpose to help the reader grasp how a particular phenomenon is linked to the grammatical system. The meaning and form of a word should only be learned in context. (2) The Slovak text is recommended to be always read aloud and also be copied out frequently. (3) It is not sufficient only to understand a rule or the meaning of a word - it must be practised, and therefore it is necessary to repeat some exercises several times.

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