Slovak Technical Translation

About the Slovak Language

Slovak is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages. Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by approximately 5.51 million people (2014).

Slovak should not be confused with Slovene, or Slovenian, the main language of Slovenia.

The main features of Slovak syntax are as follows: The verb (predicate) agrees in person and number with its subject. Adjectives, pronouns and numerals agree in person, gender and case with the noun to which they refer. Adjectives precede their noun. Botanic or zoological terms are exceptions (e.g. mačka divá, literally "cat wild", Felis silvestris) as is the naming of Holy Spirit (Duch Svätý) in a majority of churches. Word order in Slovak is relatively free, since strong inflection enables the identification of grammatical roles (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of word placement. This relatively free word order allows the use of word order to convey topic and emphasis.

The numerals 0–10 have unique forms, with numerals 1–4 requiring specific gendered representations. Numerals 11–19 are formed by adding násť to the end of each numeral. The suffix dsať is used to create numerals 20, 30 and 40; for numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90, desiat is used. Compound numerals (21, 1054) are combinations of these words formed in the same order as their mathematical symbol is written (e.g. 21 = dvadsaťjeden, literally "twenty-one").