Order of Word in Slovene

While learning Slovene, a very intriguing concept to discover and understand  is the syntax or the structure of a sentence. It might seems confusing at first, but one thing that is reassuring is that it follows some rules.

Somehow, I find that sentence structure in Slovene offers a bit more flexibility than in English.

Order of Word

In Slovene syntax, there is a specific rule, known as besedni red – order of word, that concerns some short words in a sentence. Those short words have the 2^nd position in a sentence.

The short words that are “targeted” with this rule are: naj, sem (present, past tense – except for singular third person), bi (conditional) | pronouns in Second (Z₂), Third (Z₃)and Fourth (Z₄) Sklon, se / si (reflective verbs)| je (present, past tense for singular third person), bom (future tense).

Subject (osebek), predicate (povedek), object (predmet) and adverb clause (prislovno določilo). Learn more about Elements of a Sentence in Slovene. — Personal Pronouns – All Skloni (Zx)

For example, “Yesterday, I was doing my homework.” → Včeraj sem delala nalogo⁴. In English, there would only one version, but in Slovene, we could also say:

1st POSITION	2nd POSITION	3rd POSITION	4th POSITION
Delala	SEM	nalogo	včeraj.
Nalogo	SEM	delala	včeraj.

As you can see, “sem“, which is one of the targeted short words, is in the 2^nd position in all version of the sentence.

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More than one targeted short words

If the sentence only has one targeted short word, it automatically takes the 2^nd position, but what if the sentence has more than one targeted short words?

DON’T PANIC, there is a chart!

So, here is the besedni red priority chart for the 2^nd position in a sentence:

1st PRIORITY	2nd PRIORITY	3rd PRIORITY
sem, bi	se / si > Z3 > Z4/2	je, bom

Here’s a few example:

1st POSITION	2nd POSITION	3rd POSITION	4th POSITION
Učila	SEM	SE	slovenščino4.
Učila	SE	BOM	slovenščino4.

If we replace “slovenščino⁴“ for its pronoun in Fourth Sklon (Z₄₎, it becomes “jo“, then the order of word changes in the sentence.

1st POSITION	2nd POSITION	3rd POSITION	4th POSITION
Učila	SEM	SE	JO.
Učila	SE	JO	BOM.

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I hope I was able to clarify and demystify a bit the concept of sentence structure in Slovene. Just remember that if you happen to use any of the “targeted” short words in the sentence, simply apply the chart of besedni red.

If you have any questions, comments or other helpful tricks, don’t hesitate: contact me and let me know! We are all here to learn and share our knowledge 🙂

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Discover more Slovene “lessons” that might interest you: Slovene Numbers & Numerals, Slovene Nouns & Pronouns, Slovene Verbs, Slovene Adjectives, Slovene Syntax, Slovenian Idioms, Slovene Adverbs.

Let’s learn,
Anna.