The Republic of Slovenia, with a population of just under 2 million, is a small, topographically diverse country that borders Italy in the west, Austria in the north. To the south, southeast, and east, Slovenia shares a long border with Croatia, and in the far northeast it touches on Hungary. For most of its history, Slovenia was divided among the Holy Roman Empire, Venice, Austria, and Hungary; in fact for more than 9 centuries the majority of Slovenes were under German rule. During most of the 20th century it was part of Yugoslavia, and in 1991 it became an internationally recognized state.

Language has always been a vital part of our identity and culture. Slovenes were for centuries under different cultural dominations and the only thing that separated us from neighbouring nations was our language. Slovene, a South Slavic language written in the Roman (Latin) alphabet, is spoken in the Republic of Slovenia and in adjacent parts of Austria and Italy. It is related to Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian, but it also has affinities with West Slavic Czech and Slovak. Although Eastern Slovene dialects are similar to some forms of Croatian, literary Slovene is remote from its Serbo-Croatian counterparts. It is not just a dialect of Serbo-Croatian called into being for political reasons (like Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin), in fact, Slovene and Croatian are more different than, say, Spanish and Italian. In addition, there are marked differences among the 46 dialects and standard Slovene, which is derived from two Carniolan speech variants, and is used in speeches and written form.

It is not an easy language to learn, like other Slavonic languages it has inflections, complex rules concerning the placing of commas, etc. Grammatically, Slovene retains some features not found in any other south Slavic language, like for example forms expressing the dual number (two persons or things) in nouns and verbs, in addition to singular and plural.

Slovene is not a new language, in fact the earliest written record is found in the Freising manuscripts, a collection of confessions and sermons dating from about AD 1000. But in spite of this early record, the language was not generally written until the Reformation, when Protestants translated the Bible (1584), wrote tracts in Slovene, and published the first Slovene grammar and dictionary. The next revival of Slovene happened at the end of the 18th century when a Roman Catholic translation of the Bible in Slovene appeared. At the beginning of the 19th century though, when a large part of the Slovene lands was included in the Illyrian Provinces of Napoleon's French Empire, the French encouraged local initiative and favoured the use of Slovene as an official language. Although many of the changes did not survive the return to Habsburg rule, the period contributed greatly to the national self-awareness. Soon after, grammars of the language were published (1808), in 1843 Ljubljana saw the publication of the first Slovene-language newspaper, and the end of the century the formation of the first Slovene political parties.

The grammars standardized and codified the Slovene language; thus by the middle of the 19th century, a standard written language was in use. When Austria-Hungary collapsed in 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was formed, which later on changed its name to Yugoslavia, where Slovene.s autonomy was restricted mainly to cultural affairs . Slovenes did, however, continue using the Slovene language officially. After the Second World War Slovene became one of the three official languages of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, together with Serbo-Croat and Macedonian, and now it is the official language in the Republic of Slovenia (Italian and Hungarian can also be used in territories with autochthonous Italian and Hungarian minorities).