Slovenian or Slovene

Is the name of the language Slovenian or Slovene?

We usually get this question from our clients: Is the name of the language Slovenian or Slovene? What’s the difference between the two terms?

Slovene:

Noun – Slovenec (person), Slovenka (person), slovenščina (language)

Adjective – slovenski (language)

Slovenian:

Noun – slovenščina (language)

Adjective – slovenski (language)

It seems that there is long history regarding the two terms. Slovene and Slovenian as both nouns and adjectives referring to Slovenia and its people.

Apparently the terms are equally as old; they originate from the 19th century (Slovenian first appeared in an English dictionary in 1844, and Slovene in 1883). In modern English both terms coexist, some people prefer to use Slovenian while others prefer to use Slovene. There has been a lot of debate over this matter, but the bottom line is that both terms can be used as they are equally “correct” and acceptable as long as you use the term consistently. Maybe there is a trend towards Slovenian (the official EU web site for example has a ratio of 1:6 in favor of Slovenian), but you can also find people who disagree (the British National Corpus or the New York Times seem to like Slovene, BBC has a subdivision called BBC Slovene etc.). Also a Goggle search of “Slovenian language” versus “Slovene language” resulted 3 to 1 in favor of “Slovenian.”

So…Which term shall we use?

ISO lists the language as “Slovenian”. As we are an ISO-certified company, as many of our clients are, we suggest using the same terminology as ISO.