Slovak

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'.