Section One - Grammar and Spelling
1. Gender: Slovak has three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter.
2. Case: There are 7 different cases in Slovak which are represented by suffixes
added to nouns, pronouns and adjectives.
3. Plurals: There is no easy way of recognising the plural in Slovak as there
are so many different endings. The plural
form and the different cases can be determined
by using so-called "template nouns", of
which there are 4 for each gender.
4. One-letter words: There
are several one-letter words, which might
look like typographical mistakes to a non-speaker. Some examples
of these are the prepositions 'v' (in, at),
'o' (about), 'z' (from), 'k' (to), 's' (with),
'u' (near to) and conjunctions like 'a'
or 'i' (both meaning 'and').
5. Capitalisation: Capitalisation
is used in the following instances: at the
beginning of a sentence, for proper names, for polite forms of address
- 'Ty' (informal) and 'Vy' (polite). Only
the first letter of the first word in titles
and headings is capitalised. Languages,
days of the week and months are not capitalised.
Section Two - Punctuation
1. Speech marks: These
are the main difference in punctuation between
English and Slovak, as „ ... ” are used instead of "
... "
2. Full stops: Full stops are not used in titles and headings.
3. Bullet points: If
bullet points are complete sentences, then
each point must end in a full stop, otherwise a comma or a semi-colon is inserted
at the end of each point and the last one
must be followed by a full stop.
Section Three - Measurements and Abbreviations
1. Measurements: Only
metric measurements are used.
The time is written as follows: 10:00 or 10.00, 15:00 or 15.00 (sometimes
hod. is added afterwards for "o'clock").
Dates are written as follows: 25.8.99 or 25/8/99.
Decimal commas are used e.g. 3,7 %.
A space is always left between the figure and the measurement.
Figures above 9999 are separated either by a space or a dot: 16
000, 16.000.
Currency: 3,50 libier or 3,50 GBP (Pound Sterling) and 3,50 Sk (Slovak
Koruna).
2.
Abbreviations:
MB = Megabytes
kB = kilobytes
Thousands are abbreviated as tis., i.e.
"5 tis." = 5 000
Millions are abbreviated as mil., billions
as mld.
N/a = either - or Nepoužíva
sa
No. = Č. or Čís.
e.g. = Napr./napr.
Q&A = [no abbreviation]
WxLxHxD = ŠxDxVxH
Year = r. (i.e., r. 1999)
o'clock = hod.
AD = n.l. (i.e., 1250 n.l.)
BC = pr.n.l. (i.e., 536 pr.n.l.)
Mr = p. (i.e., p. Novák)
etc. = atď.
Section
Four – Hyphenation
Hyphenation
is very common as there are many long words
in Slovak. It is often used to combine two
languages (slovensko-ruský for Slovak-Russian)
and at the end of lines. Monosyllabic words
are never hyphenated. Hyphenation is also
rare before or after a single letter, but
it often occurs between two consonants.
Section
Five – Miscellaneous Peculiarities
There
are no tone marks in Slovak.
Surnames
usually follow the first name, but sometimes
a different order may be used.
