Slovene Alphabet - Foreign Words

Foreign Words

There are 5 letters for vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and 20 for consonants. The Western Q, W, X, Y are excluded from the standard language, as are some South Slavic graphemes, Ć, Đ, however they are used as independent letters in encyclopedias and dictionary listings (not always all of them), for foreign Western proper nouns or toponyms are often not transcribed as they are in some other Slavic languages, such as partly in Russian or entirely in Serbian. In addition, the graphemes Ö and Ü are used in certain non-standard dialect spellings - for example, dödöli (Prekmurje potato dumplings) and Danilo Türk (Slovenia's current president). Encyclopedic listings (such as in the 2001 Slovenski pravopis and the 2006 Leksikon SOVA) make use of this alphabet:

a, b, c, č, ć, d, đ, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, š, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, ž.

Therefore, Newton or New York remain the same and are not transliterated to Njuton or Njujork, transliterated forms would seem very odd to a Slovene. However, the unit of force is written as njuton as well as newton. Some geographic names are transliterated (e.g. Philadelphia – Filadelfija; Hawaii – Havaji). Other names from non-Latin languages are transliterated in a fashion similar to that used by other European languages, albeit with some adaptations. Japanese, Indian and Arabic names such as Kajibumi, Djacarta (Djakarta) and Jabar are transcribed as Kadžibumi, Džakarta and Džabar, where j is replaced with dž. Except for Ć and Đ, diacritical marks from other foreign alphabets (e.g., Ä, Å, Æ, Ç, Ë, Ï, Ń, Ö, ß, Ş, Ü) are not used as independent letters.