Teach Slovenian with Custom Graded Stories

Key Facts About the Slovenian Language

Speakers

About 2.5 million people speak Slovene (2010 figure), mainly in Slovenia.¹

Did you know?

Slovene keeps a dual number alongside singular and plural: "we two" is midva (or medve for two women), "you two" is vidva, and the verb has its own dual ending, as in greva (we two go).²

The main challenge

Six noun cases combined with three numbers (singular, dual and plural), so each noun has many forms to learn.¹

CEFR exams

• Slovene language exams (Centre for Slovene as a Second and Foreign Language, University of Ljubljana): Breakthrough (A1), Basic (A2–B1), Intermediate (B2), Advanced (C1–C2)

Where students struggle

• Using the dual: with exactly two people or things, such as dva prijatelja (two friends), the verb and adjectives take dual forms, not plural ones.²

Teaching notes

• Introduce the dual early through dialogues between two people, using midva, vidva and verb forms such as greva, so learners use it whenever exactly two people are involved instead of defaulting to the plural.²
• Beginners need not produce tones: standard Slovene has both a tonemic (pitch-accent) and a non-tonemic variety, so a stress-only pronunciation is still standard.³

Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_grammar
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_phonology

About the Slovenian language

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_grammar
3. https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/languages_en

Slovenian reading proficiency benchmarks (CEFR & Center za slovenščino)

The Slovene exam names are the four levels of the University of Ljubljana’s Slovene language exams, matched by the CEFR range each one states (the basic level covers A2–B1, the level of excellence C1–C2). Treat the column as approximate, not an official equivalence of reading levels.

Reference corpora

The main frequency source for written Slovene is the Gigafida reference corpus.¹

• Gigafida 2.2: A corpus of written standard Slovene from the University of Ljubljana’s Centre for Language Resources and Technologies (CJVT): about 1.16 billion words in some 798,000 texts.¹
• Standard language: Slovene is known for unusual dialect diversity, with counts ranging from seven dialect groups to as many as 50 dialects. Stichos writes Slovene readers in the standard literary language (zborna slovenščina) at every level and avoids dialect words, slang and colloquialisms.²
• Forms of address: Friends, children and peers are addressed with ti; unfamiliar adults and professional contacts with the formal vikanje.

1. https://viri.cjvt.si/gigafida/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_dialects

Readability design principles

Readability formulas were built for English, and their use on Slovene has been tested directly.¹

• Škvorc et al. (2019): Tadej Škvorc, Simon Krek, Senja Pollak, Špela Arhar Holdt and Marko Robnik-Šikonja adapted ten established readability formulas and eight further criteria to Slovene. They tested them on children’s magazines, general magazines, newspapers, technical magazines and parliamentary transcripts, and proposed a Slovene word list for the word-list-based measures.¹
• Stichos: Stichos sets difficulty with level-by-level grammar rules and sentence-length limits rather than a single readability score.

1. https://ojs.inz.si/pnz/article/view/323

Script & grammar scaffolding

• Tenses and moods: A0 uses only the present tense (sedanjik) in singular forms. A1 adds the future (prihodnjik, bom plus the l-participle) while the past tense (preteklik) waits until A2. The present conditional (pogojnik, bi plus the l-participle) opens at B1 and the past conditional at B2.
• The dual: The dual (dvojina), as in midva bova videla (“the two of us will see”), is left out at A0 and A1. Basic dual nominative forms arrive at A2 and the full dual paradigm across the cases at B1.
• Imperatives: At A0 commands appear only inside fixed formulas such as Izvoli and Izvolite. A1 allows five informal ones: poglej, pridi, vzemi, počakaj and sedi.
• Clitics: Unstressed words such as the auxiliary forms of biti, the reflexive se and short pronouns cluster in second position, right after the first stressed word or phrase of the clause.

Related academic & framework resources

• Slovene Language Exams (Center za slovenščino kot drugi in tuji jezik): The four exam levels of the University of Ljubljana’s Centre for Slovene as a Second and Foreign Language, with sample tests and their CEFR ranges.
• Gigafida 2.2: Search interface for the corpus of written standard Slovene, run by CJVT at the University of Ljubljana.
• Fran (ZRC SAZU): Dictionary portal of the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language, including SSKJ and Slovenski pravopis.
• Napovedovanje kompleksnosti slovenskih besedil z uporabo mer berljivosti: Škvorc, Krek, Pollak, Arhar Holdt and Robnik-Šikonja, Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 59(1), 2019, on readability measures for Slovene.
• Slovene dialects (Wikipedia): An overview of Slovene dialect groups and the differing counts of them.

Frequently Asked Questions for Slovenian Tutors

What is available to test on this page today?

You can try a free A0 or A1 story generated live in the interactive reader right now, complete with tap-to-translate words and line-by-line translations. You can also get 3 sample stories as a PDF by joining the Reading List without creating an account.

Which language levels will be available when Educator Studio launches?

At launch, Educator Studio will cover every level from A0 through B2. You will be able to select any topic and turn specific tenses on or off to match the grammar your class has covered so far.

How do I share reading passages with my students?

At launch, you can create a link for any story you generate and send it to your class with no limit on how many share links you make. Alternatively, Educator Studio will print reading sheets as PDFs complete with line-by-line translations and a vocabulary glossary.

Do my students need to register to read a shared passage?

No, your students open shared links directly in their web browser without making an account. They are invited to register for a free account if they wish to save their stories and saved vocabulary, but it is never required.

Can students listen to the text being read aloud?

At launch, students reading a shared text can tap individual words to hear them spoken in a standard computer voice. If you add the Premium Audio add-on, you get natural-sounding voices for word pronunciation, full story narration with different voices for dialogue characters, and MP3 exports.

Are the AI-generated stories completely free of errors?

Stories are written by AI and checked automatically against the grammatical and vocabulary rules of the selected level. Because the check is automated rather than a human editor, an occasional mistake can slip through, so you should review any passage before sharing it with learners.

Can I use specific vocabulary lists or introduce dual verbs early?

At launch, you can paste your own word list, such as dual pronouns like midva or vidva and verbs like greva, and the system will write a text incorporating those terms. You can also adjust any sentence or translation before sending it to your students.