Slovak voice overs: what you need to know

The Slovak language — sometimes called Slovakian — belongs to the West Slavic language group. It’s spoken by around 5 million people — primarily in Slovakia where it’s the sole official language. However, Slovak is spoken outside the mainland, too.

Slovak holds a minority language status in Hungary, The Czech Republic, Ukraine, and Serbia (more specifically — Vojvodina province).

Additionally, while not extensive, there are Slovak-speaking communities in Russia, Poland, Canada, and The United States. Slovak is also one of the 24 official languages of the European Union.

Language History

Linguists believe that Slovak developed from the Proto-Slavic language in the Middle Danube region (today’s capital city Bratislava). Despite its deep Slavic roots, Slovak is a rather young language. The first evidence of written Slovak date back to the 14-16th centuries.

However, the language wasn’t widespread. Slovak was popularized and emerged as a literary language only in the early 19th century. Because of that, Slovak didn’t have a standardized language variant for many centuries. The first attempts at standardizing the language were made only in the 19th century.

The birth of modern Slovak, as spoken today, is thought to be in the year 1852 — when a language was codified and the literary standard was established. The official status of Slovak changed during the 20th century — Slovak, alongside Czech, was the official language of Czechoslovakia.

After Slovakia gained independence in 1993, Slovak has been the sole official language of the country.

Close Relations

Slovak has some similarities to other Slavic languages, however, it’s most closely related to Czech. Both languages are in the same Czech-Slovak language group and share many similarities in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence structure.

In fact, Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible. Both Czechs and Slovaks have no problems understanding each other. Due to the shared history of both countries, linguists agree that Slovak and Czech form a dialect continuum.

Slovak also has considerable similarities with Polish. While Slovak and Polish aren’t mutually intelligible, they do share a part of the vocabulary as well as some similar pronunciation patterns.

The core of the Slovak vocabulary is historically inherited from its Slavic ancestors. However, Slovak has quite a few loanwords from other languages. Borrowings from Latin, German, Hungarian, Polish, and Greek are quite common.

Accents and Voice Over Tips

Slovak dialects have been categorized into three major groups: Western, Eastern, and Central. All dialectal groups have several language varieties that are more region-specific. In terms of intelligibility, all Slovak dialects are thought to be mutually comprehensible.

The standard Slovak variant is used as the official language — in education, media, literature, and official state matters. The standard dialect is based on the Central Slovak dialects.

When recording a Slovak voiceover, make sure you’re aware of the language’s complex consonant structure. Slovak has many consonant clusters that make the pronunciation slower and require more effort. Many everyday Slovak words might sound like tongue twisters to the foreign ear — so make sure everything is clear and not too fast!

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