Slovenian or Slovene (slovenski jezik or shortly slovenšcina) belongs to the family of South Slavic languages. It is spoken by approximately 2 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. Slovenian is one of the few languages to have preserved the dual grammatical number from Proto-Indo-European. Also, Slovenian and Slovak are the two modern Slavic languages whose names for themselves literally mean "Slavic" (slovenskii in old Slavonic).

Geographic distribution

The language is spoken by about 2.2 million people - there is a table of distribution of Slovenians in the world in the article Slovenians.

Slovenes live mainly in Slovenia in Central Europe (2,002,354 (May 06)). In addition, the Slovene language has speakers in Venetian Slovenia (Beneška Slovenija) and other parts of Friuli-Venezia Giulia (Furlanija-Julijska krajina)) in Italy (100,000), in Carinthia (Avstrijska Koroška) and other parts of Austria (50,000), in the northern part of Istria (Hrvaška Istra) in Croatia (11,800-13,100), in southwestern Hungary (6,000) as well as dispersed throughout Europe and the rest of the world (particularly in the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia and South Africa) (300,000).

Slovenian dialects

Spoken Slovenian has at least 32 main dialects (narecje) (dI) and speeches (govor) (sP). This is a reasonably large number for any language; when considering the amount of speakers, however, this makes Slovenian one of the most diverse languages in the world.

The main regional groups are:

There are also local groups and subgroups (sG), such as the following, listed by region:

Region	Groups and Subgroups
Brkini	- banjško (sP) - baško (sP) - borjansko - bovško - briško - brkinsko
Bržanija (near Trieste)	- bržansko
Celje	- celjsko
Cerkljansko	- Cerkljansko
Haloze	- cinžaško - ciško - crnovrško - goricansko - gradišcansko - haloško
Horjul	- horjulsko
Idrija	- idrijsko
Slovenian Istria	- istrsko
Notranjska	- južno belokranjsko (sG) - južno notranjsko
Kranjska Gora	- južno pohorsko (sG) - kapleško - kobariško - kostelsko - kozjansko - bizeljsko - kozjaško (sP) - kranjskogorsko (sP)
Kras (the Karst)	- kraško
Laško	- laško (sP)
Ljubljana	- logaško - lovrenško - ljubljansko
Maribor	- mariborsko
Mežica	- medijsko - mežiško - mešano kocevsko (sP)
Notranjska	- nadiško - notranjsko
along the Soca River	- obirsko - obsoško
Podjuna	- podjunsko
Pohorje	- pohorsko
Prlekija	- poljansko - posavsko - prekmursko (sG) - prleško
Resia	- pušcavsko - remšniško - rezijansko
Rižana	- ribniško - rižansko (sP)
Savinja Valley	- rožansko - savinjsko
Solcava	- sevniško - krško (sP) - solcavsko (sP)
Škofja Loka	- selško - severno belokranjsko (sG) - severno pohorsko - remšniško - srednje beloknjanjsko (sG) - srednje savinjsko (sG) - srednje štajersko (sG) - šavrinsko (sP) - škofjeloško
Tolmin	- šokarsko - tersko - trbonsko - tolminsko
Trbovlje	- trboveljsko
Vrtojba	- vrtojbensko - vzhodno dolenjsko (sG) - vzhodno gorenjsko (sG) - vzhodno prleško (sG) - zagorsko - trboveljsko (sP) - zasavsko - ziljsko - zgornje savinjsko (sG)

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