This dictionary was written for users at all levels of acquisition of the Slovene language. Its intention is to enable users to generate the correct forms and stresses for the approximately 5000 lexical items included in it, either directly in paradigms included within the entry, or indirectly through a system of references to model paradigms at the beginning of the dictionary. It contains many of the most commonly used words in the language, but emphasis has been placed on words which display irregularities or unexpected forms. Preceding the main body of the dictionary are sample entries and complete paradigms, particularly for nouns, adjectives and verbs. They represent the most commonly found declensions and conjugations, and accents are indicated on every word in the sample words. Following each entry are explanations on how to interpret the information supplied in that entry. Since the vast majority of words in Slovene do not contain irregularities, it is not necessary to list complete declensions and conjugations for each entry in the dictionary. Rather, the user will find cross-references to the above-mentioned paradigms.

The idea for a work such as this one grew out of my experience in writing A Basic Reference Grammar of Slovene (Slavica Publishers, Inc., Columbus, Ohio, 1993). As I compiled that work, I found that reference works such as the Slovenski pravopis (Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, 1982) and the five-volume Slovar slovenskega knjižnega jezika (Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, 1970Ð1991), henceforth referred to as SSKJ, fail in numerous instances to provide complete information on stress and form in their entries. At the same time, particularly in Slovenski pravopis, multiple forms are listed without an indication of stylistic level or degree of acceptability in the contemporary language. In many instances this required me to turn to educated speakers of Slovene, who often disagreed among themselves on questions of form, accent and stress. For the non-native speaker of Slovene there is no handy comprehensive source to which to refer for complete grammatical (including accentual and inflectional) information. As a result, I thought that a lexicon containing many frequently used words in Slovene in their inflected and accented forms or references to words whose stress or inflected pattern they most closely resemble would provide an important tool for students-non-native but perhaps also native-of the language.

In the absence of a definitive source for the core vocabulary of the Slovene language, I relied on several sources as a guide for selecting items to be included in this work. Particularly useful were an anonymous list of commonly used words compiled in Ljubljana in the 1970s, the vocabularies of elementary grammars of Slovene, as well as the words included in my reference grammar of 1993. As noted above, particular emphasis has been given to items which display irregularities or unpredictable forms. No doubt some users will wish that one or another vocabulary item had been included, but the user is assured that those words chosen for inclusion in this dictionary represent the broad range of accentual and inflectional possibilities existing in Modern Contemporary Slovene. They provide a solid basis for generating and better understanding patterns of words not found in this lexicon.

Accent marks used over vowels throughout this work indicate the syllable on which the word is stressed and whether the vowel is long or short or opened or closed, i.e. the marks do not indicate rising or falling tones. The mark ` indicates a stressed short vowel, while the mark ' over the vowel indicates a long vowel. In the case of e and o, ' indicates that the vowel is long and closed, and the mark ^ indicates that they are long and open. Further, there are a number of instances in Slovene when a short stressed e represents the schwa vowel (see the final note under "Abbreviations and Symbols"). These are noted in individual entries (see pès). Unaccented e, typically the final syllable of numerous adjectives and nouns is also pronounced as / /, e.g. véter /vŽt r/ or tájen /táj n/. These will not be noted. Finally, there is a general rule in Slovene that before other consonants and at the end of a word, the consonants l and v are normally pronounced as /w/. These will not be indicated by special notes. There are, however, some notable exceptions to this rule, and they will be noted in individual entries. See, for example, the entry for glágol. Slovene contains numerous allowable variant forms. I hope that I have identified the vast majority of them, selecting for inclusion in this dictionary those currently preferred. I note further that this dictionary is descriptive, not prescriptive in nature. It is meant to provide non-native users of the Slovene language some guidance when confronted with existing variants and in generating forms which follow standard Slovene inflectional patterns. In those instances when my various references did not agree on the correctness of a grammatical or lexical item, stress or accent, I used as my final arbiter S S K J , the most recent and comprehensive dictionary published in Slovenia. Non-native speakers of Slovene are likewise advised to verify forms with a native speaker and to consult the same work should doubts arise when they encounter words whose stress or forms are unknown to them.

The author wishes to express his deepest gratitude to the U.S. Department of Education which provided significant funding enabling me to complete my reference grammar and which again demonstrated its confidence in me by funding this project. Completion of this work would not have been possible without the advice and help of Marta Pirnat- Greenberg to whom I am deeply indebted and to whom go my most sincere thanks. She offered invaluable comments, clarified many questions of contemporary usage and provided numerous grammatical forms. I am likewise grateful to the anonymous reader of the manuscript of this dictionary for the valuable suggestions, many of which were incorporated into the final draft. Also showing a deep interest in my work was Henry R. Cooper, Jr., to whom I offer my hearty thanks. Finally I wish to thank Bengt Erikson who provided careful proof readings during the various stages of preparation of the manuscript and to whom this work is dedicated. The inevitable errors are the sole responsibility of the author who begs the user's indulgence!

William W. Derbyshire
Seattle, WA, 2002