South Slavic language written in the Roman (Latin) alphabet and spoken in Slovenia and in adjacent parts of Austria and Italy. Grammatically, Slovene retains forms expressing the dual number (two persons or things) in nouns and verbs, in addition to singular and plural. Slovene has great dialectal variation; some scholars distinguish as many as 46 individual dialects.

Although the earliest written record in the Slovene language is found in the Freising manuscripts dating from about AD 1000, the language was not generally written until the Reformation, when Protestants translated the Bible and wrote tracts in Slovene. A Roman Catholic translation of the Bible in Slovene appeared at the end of the 18th century and was followed by grammars of the language during the first few years of the 19th century; by the middle of the 19th century, a standard written language was in use. Slovene is closely related to its eastern neighbour, Serbo-Croatian (Serbo-Croatian language), from which it separated between the 7th and 9th century AD; the transition from the eastern Slovene dialects to the Kajkavian Croatian is a gradual one.