Slovenski jezik
Slovene Linguistic 
Studies
13
2021
Znanstvenoraziskovalni center
Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti
Inštitut za slovenski jezik Frana Ramovša
Ljubljana, Slovenija
in/and
Brigham Young University 
College of Humanities
Provo, Utah, USA



Slovenski jezik – Slovene Linguistic Studies 13 (2021): 107–122
Tina Lengar Verovnik
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Slovenia
ZRC SAZU, Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language, Slovenia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/sjsls.13.1.06
Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian 
Carinthia and the Speech Practices of Young 
Members of the Minority
This article presents an overview of findings on the varieties of spoken Slovenian in 
Austrian Carinthia, focusing in particular on the changes perceived by researchers 
in the last two decades and on contemporary speech practices. Findings by other 
researchers are built upon with the results of biographical interviews conducted with 
seven students of Slovenian at the University of Klagenfurt. Three topics are at the 
forefront: the attitude toward the local dialect, the use of standard Slovenian variety, 
and speech accommodation in groups.
Keywords: Austrian Carinthia, Slovenian, standard language variety, dialect, speech 
accommodation 
Prispevek prinaša pregled dognanj o različicah govorjene slovenščine na avstrijskem 
Koroškem, zlasti se osredotoča na spremembe, ki jih raziskovalci zaznavajo v 
zadnjih dveh desetletjih, in na sodobne govorne prakse. Ugotovitve drugih avtorjev 
so nadgrajene z izsledki iz biografskih intervjujev, opravljenih s sedmimi študenti 
slovenščine na Univerzi v Celovcu. V ospredju so tri tematike: razmerje do lokalnega 
narečja, raba knjižnega jezika, govorno prilagajanje v skupinah.
Ključne besede: avstrijska Koroška, slovenščina, knjižni jezik, narečje, govorno 
prilagajanje
1 Introduction
Visible changes have taken place in bilingual Austrian Carinthia in 
recent decades. Official statistics show a steady increase in applications 
for bilingual programs in primary schools (e.g., Doleschal 2009: 97), 
and the Slovenian ethnic community once again includes people in 
areas where it previously barely had any declared members (e.g., in 
Klagenfurt and Villach). This is partly due to the migration of members 

108 Slovenski jezik – Slovene Linguistic Studies 13 (2021)
of the minority within the province of Carinthia (Steinicke 2001: 255) 
and partly due to a more open affiliation with the Slovenian ethnic 
community. The changes are certainly also related to improvement 
of the minority’s educational structure, which exceeds the national 
average (an important role is played by the Slovenian high school and 
other educational institutions at the secondary and tertiary levels), and 
to the strengthening of its cultural and economic capital (Zupančič 
2007: 143, 146).
However, researchers also point out that the number of native speakers 
of Slovenian, especially speakers of Slovenian dialects, is nevertheless 
declining (for numerical data and estimates, see Zupančič 2007; 
Steinicke 2001). At most, there is an increase in the number of individuals 
that become acquainted with Slovenian for various reasons later (in 
primary school or in language courses), but often this is limited and 
only involves the standard variety. Interest in Slovenian increased when 
Slovenian became a national language with Slovenia’s independence 
in 1991 (and with the simultaneous collapse of communism), and even 
more so after Slovenia joined the European Union (Busch 2010: 179). 
Many people in Austrian Carinthia learn Slovenian not because it is 
the language of a minority there, but because it is economically or 
culturally interesting to them, and they view it as the language of a 
neighbouring country (Doleschal 2009: 98). Still others are aware of 
the language’s presence in Carinthia and learn it as a second language 
of the province; some socialize their children in it to revive a family 
tradition (Busch 2008: 58). Among the reasons for increased interest 
in learning Slovenian and enrolling children in bilingual programs are 
also more recent motivations associated with a strong appreciation 
of the ethnic dimension of regional identity (Steinicke 2001: 255) and 
multilingualism (Kern 2009: 79).
In addition to the general research findings, insight into (linguistic) 
life and experiencing changes at the individual level is also important. 
Many recent works are based on the personal accounts of members 
of the minority as well as other Slovenian speakers in this area (e.g., 
Vavti 2012; Busch 2008). Their testimonies reveal the great complexity 
of today’s sociolinguistic situation, which is often conditioned by the 
traumas of previous generations (Vavti 2012: 98; Piko - Rustia 2019: 
122); at the same time, some shared features of especially younger 

interviewees, who often engage in bilingualism with less of a burden, 
are presented (Prilasnig 2013: 88). An effective method is “linguistic 
biography” which covers different life stages of respondents (e.g., 
childhood, professional activity, and creating a family) and is a form 
of report on an individual’s life in a certain social environment with 
a thematic emphasis on linguistic aspects (Wildgen 2003: 203). This 
article presents some findings from biographical interviews with 
seven respondents conducted in February 2020.
1 
These are students 
(four female and three male) in the University of Klagenfurt’s teacher 
education program for Slovenian, all members of the Slovenian minority 
(hereinafter referred to as R1 to R7, regardless of sex). This group 
was addressed for two reasons. First, they had chosen an academic 
program in which they can develop their Slovenian language skills to 
the highest level possible in their regional environment. Second, in the 
interviews I was mainly interested in the varieties of Slovenian that they 
spoke (or still speak),
2
 and for this group I could reasonably assume 
that they possessed the necessary metalinguistic knowledge for such 
a conversation. Below, I present three topics that were at the forefront 
in all the interviews: the attitude toward the local dialect, the use of 
standard Slovenian at the individual and community levels, and speech 
accommodation in groups.
1 
The interviews were completed as part of my three-month study stay at the Uni-
versity of Klagenfurt’s Slavic Studies Institute. They are between 35 and 60 minutes 
long, and the recordings are kept in my personal archive.
2 
When the students agreed to speak to me, I sent them the following text in advance 
(which turned out to be good because they were able to think things through in 
advance, and some even discussed them with their parents at home): “All individuals 
are involved in constantly changing daily or long-term situations to which they also 
accommodate verbally. Our language behavior is always determined by our earliest 
familiarization with a language (or languages) as well as all later socialization. I am 
interested in your language path: through a conversation I would like to find out how 
your spoken Slovenian has changed and been accommodated from the earliest years 
onwards. I am especially interested in what happened at different turning points in 
your lives: when you entered preschool and/or primary school and all subsequent 
new environments (including outside school: perhaps in a social club, music school, 
sports, etc.). I am also interested in how you accommodate your speech today; for 
example, when you talk to your family, when you hang out with friends or peers, 
when you talk to professors, when you speak (or if you speak) in public, and so on.”
T. Lengar Verovnik, Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian Carinthia ... 109

110 Slovenski jezik – Slovene Linguistic Studies 13 (2021)
2 Dialect as a native language – or not
Lundberg (2015) found that speakers of Carinthian Slovenian dialects
3
 in 
Austria have a very positive attitude toward these dialects and perceive 
them as an important element of their own identity,
4
 but more than 
half of his respondents were convinced that younger generations no 
longer speak predominantly in Slovenian. Priestly (2003: 110) argues 
that the language attitude toward Slovenian is developing more 
positively than in previous times, especially among younger members 
of the ethnic community; however, a process of levelling specifically 
dialect features toward a regional or even standard variety,
5
 common 
across Europe, is apparently also taking place in Austrian Carinthia 
(Lundberg 2010: 45). The linguistic character of the region is changing 
under the influence of various processes, including migration within 
the region (in recent decades, especially from rural to urban and 
suburban areas), socioeconomic and educational changes within the 
minority, immigration, and commuting by Slovenians from Slovenia, 
as well as the emergence of “Slovenian with an accent” (Busch 2008), 
which is spoken by immigrants from other former Yugoslav republics.
Researchers have found that especially highly educated parents in 
younger families or in a more urban environment no longer speak 
with their children in dialect, but in a form of Slovenian that is close 
to the standard language (Reiterer et al. 2000: 15; Busch 2008: 62). 
Vavti (2012: 99, 106) writes that such young people understand the 
lack of dialect as a loss and a deficit, or even a barrier to contact with 
others or affiliate with a community. Among my respondents, two were 
initially linguistically socialized in such a variety of Slovenian for various 
reasons. R6 says that his parents were afraid that he would not learn 
“real” Slovenian, and so they only spoke to him in standard Slovenian 
3 
These are three dialects corresponding to three Carinthian valleys: Jaun, Ros, and 
Gail (in Slovenian: Podjuna, Rož and Zilja). The dialect diversity is in fact even greater 
because all three of these dialects are further divided into many local varieties.
4 
The fact that dialect is really at the centre of Carinthian Slovenian identity is shown 
by a statement by an employee of Radio Agora, who said that some members of the 
minority do not like producing material only in standard Slovenian because for them 
“the dialect is the native and true language” (Lengar Verovnik 2020: 47). Similarly, 
Busch (2008: 60) reports that the motif of the dialect as “real” Slovenian, which dis -
tinguishes “real” Slovenians from others, also comes up repeatedly in her interviews.
5 
For more on the categorization of varieties of Slovenian speech see Lundberg (2010: 
43–45).

T. Lengar Verovnik, Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian Carinthia ... 111
at home (in an urban environment). However, other relatives (in the 
countryside) spoke to him in dialect, and so over time he learned their 
dialect himself and no longer replied to them in standard Slovenian. 
This early experience obviously also served him well later because 
he learned another dialect, spoken by his best friend and those he 
hung out with the most in primary school. R1 also relates that she 
had classmates that came from Klagenfurt and did not speak a dialect 
at home,
6
 but apparently accommodated to dialect speakers and 
learned some of it themselves. The story of R5 is different because 
she learned Slovenian in early childhood from her grandmother, who 
came from Upper Carniola in Slovenia and married a Carinthian. She 
spoke to her in “beautiful”
7
 Slovenian, not in dialect. Her grandmother 
babysat her until she entered preschool, and it was only there that she 
encountered the local dialect and started learning it (although at home 
they apparently did not like hearing her speak even a word in dialect). 
The fact that she still visits friends in the local environment and tries to 
speak in their dialect shows how important it was for her to also learn 
this variety. She is still learning it, and her friends are in favour of this. 
Sometimes they correct her and tell her how to say something in their 
dialect.
Another dialect is difficult to learn later in life, according to R3; he 
knows someone that speaks two dialects and switches between them 
like switching between two languages, but this is because his mother 
is from the Jaun (Podjuna) Valley and his father is from the Ros (Rož) 
Valley. A similar albeit slightly less pronounced “dialect bilingualism” 
is reported by R1 and R4; both have parents from different parts of 
Carinthia, and one also moved during childhood. For R1, this experience 
probably provided early insight into the diversity of varieties of spoken 
Slovenian, as illustrated by the following anecdote. Her mother told 
her that once she came back from preschool where she had been 
speaking standard Slovenian with the teachers, and she also started 
speaking to her mother in standard Slovenian. Suddenly, however, she 
stopped and said, “Wait, you don’t understand me,” and continued in 
6 
In addition to the fact that her classmates’ parents probably spoke standard Slovenian 
with them, R1 also points out that in Klagenfurt it is not possible to hear indigenous 
Slovenian dialects because the city lies beyond the borders of the Slovenian dialects. 
Nevertheless, it is an important cultural, media, educational, economic, and political 
center for the Slovenian minority.
7 
“Beautiful” in this context really means “proper”, “standard”.

112 Slovenski jezik – Slovene Linguistic Studies 13 (2021)
dialect – she realized that this was a different linguistic code that she 
had never heard from her mother, and that she did not know from her 
environment or from the media (the media are mostly German; there 
is only one weekly television show in Slovenian, and the all-day radio 
program in Slovenian was only launched in 2011).
In the accounts of all the respondents, dialect as the language of their 
primary or at least very early socialization is seen to be a strong identifying 
and emotional factor. The story of R2 confirms the conclusion that 
dialect has a limited scope of use and that “the existence of a standard 
variety and a more or less uniform standard speech is crucial for the 
preservation of the minority language” (Bogataj 2008: 209). R2 comes 
from a family in which they spoke their Slovenian dialect a lot and sang 
in it, and she mainly learned German from children that vacationed in 
the village. However, in primary school she was the only child taking 
extra Slovenian lessons, and she remembers that she and her teacher 
only read sports news most of the time. Her Slovenian did not progress 
as well as her German; she had lexical deficiencies because she did 
not have certain words in her dialect. Consequently, at age fifteen 
she found herself in a difficult situation and, after some deliberation, 
decided on her own to think about “hard things” in German. This is 
still her main language today. It is only while studying Slovenian that 
she gradually manages to think again about more complex topics in 
Slovenian, especially during creative writing.
At this point, it should be mentioned what seems crucial to her story. 
Namely, R2 also relates negative experiences in her youth, which were 
not directly connected with her dialect, but with the presence of the 
Slovenian language as such. Personal experiences repeatedly let her 
know that Slovenian was not desired; this included insults, such as 
being called Tschuschenkind ‘southern brat’,
8
 and hatred for Slovenian 
people that she felt at the primary school in a nearby larger town. 
R6 and R7 also report similar negative experiences. R6 experienced 
them at sports matches, when the fans shouted insults at the Slovenian 
team; they were also hassled by a referee that wanted to ban the use 
of Slovenian during the match. R7 recalls opposition from villagers and 
problems that his parents encountered when they demanded bilingual 
8 
According to Wikipedia, Tschusch [tʃu: ʃ] is a derogatory term for a member of any 
of the peoples of southeast Europe or the Middle East. A Tschuschenkind is therefore 
the child of such a person.

T. Lengar Verovnik, Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian Carinthia ... 113
classes for him at a school that had not had bilingual students for 
thirty years. However, these experiences did not impact these two 
respondents as strongly as R2. The monolingualism or bilingualism 
of one’s parents does not seem to be decisive either because R5, for 
example, speaks a German dialect all the time with her mother, who 
is not a member of the Slovenian minority, but she says that she finds 
German more difficult, and that even when she considers how to say 
something in (standard) German she thinks about it first in Slovenian. 
It is thus confirmed that (un)confident use of Slovenian in this area is 
influenced by a mix of “causes and effects of psychological, sociological, 
and linguistic factors at the individual and social levels” (Zorčič 2019: 
527), which I could not gain insight into through interviews alone.
3 The standard language of the environment
The respondents encountered standard Slovenian or a variety very 
close to it either at home (R5 and R6) or at least from preschool or 
primary school onward. Regarding preschool, some also report that the 
teachers spoke more in dialect, but from primary school onward they 
consistently say that the teachers spoke to them mainly in standard 
Slovenian. Only R5, who speaks standard Slovenian herself, noticed 
in high school that the teachers occasionally switched into the Jaun 
(Podjuna) dialect, which was also spoken by most of her Carinthian 
classmates. This bothered her because she did not understand this 
dialect as well and she thought to herself that the teachers should 
make a better effort. Regarding themselves, the respondents say that 
before going to college they mainly used standard Slovenian in school 
communication with teachers and in public performances they might 
have had (and also in social clubs; e.g., in theatre groups). R6 says that 
they also relied on this language variety when talking to classmates 
that came from Slovenia (there are many of these, especially at the 
secondary level). I did not check with the respondents what exactly 
they understand by the term standard language, nor did I ask them 
about how well they felt they knew this variety before starting college. 
Very informative is the testimony by R4, who lived in Ljubljana for 
some time after high school and, when he arrived there, he found that 
it was very difficult for others to understand him, even though he was 
convinced that he spoke in standard Slovenian. It was only there that 
he noticed how much vocabulary he was lacking. When he could not 

114 Slovenski jezik – Slovene Linguistic Studies 13 (2021)
find a word, he would simply say it in German, but did not realize this 
at all until others pointed it out to him. Code-switching into German 
is an automatic strategy in a bilingual environment; the respondents 
themselves say they usually do not think about it at all, and that they 
mainly use it due to the pragmatic circumstances of communication.
After examining written texts related to minority education in Slovenian, 
Pirih Svetina (2013) concluded that writers use a variety of standard 
Slovenian in them that is established in this environment and that 
differs in many respects from what is used in central Slovenia. Her thesis 
is that users are not and cannot be relaxed or confident when faced 
with the central Slovenian standard, and so there are other standard 
language varieties on the margins of Slovenian ethnic territory that 
should be investigated and recognized as equally valid. The specific 
features of standard Slovenian in Carinthia were already discussed by 
Anton Schellander (1988: 265), who pointed out that the issue of formal 
speech in particular should not be resolved “by arbitrarily moving the 
formal norm toward the dialect of the central region, which only part of 
the Slovenian speakers adhere to.” For the Carinthian area, he describes 
a special Carinthian standard spoken variety that was developed or 
preserved among the “alternative public” within minority societies, 
churches, and institutions. It is said to differ mainly in terms of its 
vowels and accentuation, and lexically and morphologically it is based 
on standard elements that are considered obsolete in central Slovenia 
today. Tanja Schellander (2018: 43) explains the use of obsolete words 
in modern Carinthian print media by “remoteness from the modern 
Slovenian language in Slovenia, which often adds new words to its 
vocabulary that do not make their way into the language of Slovenian 
media in Carinthia and thus not into the everyday language of the 
Carinthian Slovenians.”
Busch (2008: 62) reports that the existence of a Carinthian variety of 
standard Slovenian was confirmed to her by a long-term Slovenian 
instructor at the University of Klagenfurt. In a conversation she had with 
her, the instructor “listed a number of special Carinthian features that 
she does not correct in language courses to conform to the norm of 
the central Slovenian area. These include deviations in pronunciation, 
prosody, vocabulary, and syntax”. Among the respondents, only R4 
mentioned an example of such a special feature; namely, the verb 
čuti ‘to hear’, which has the unmarked synonym slišati in the modern 

T. Lengar Verovnik, Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian Carinthia ... 115
central standard. Otherwise, everyone answered the explicit question 
about a possible difference in the Carinthian standard language in a 
similar way. On the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) radio 
program, which is created by members of the minority, they notice 
that not exactly the same standard language is spoken as can be heard 
on the radio in Slovenia. They perceive differences mainly at the level 
of pronunciation, stress, and intonation; it is similar to how Austrian 
German sounds different from German German, R3 explains. According 
to R5, the speakers simply cannot hide they are from Carinthia, but, 
according to R6, the differences are not extreme. In this, he draws on 
his own early experience and says that the differences are certainly 
smaller than those between the standard variety and dialects, as he 
felt them as a child when he was initially linguistically socialized into a 
standard language variety. There is still no qualitative research to show 
the alleged special features of written and spoken material or to even 
confirm the existence of a Carinthian standard language variety.
4 Is there also a regional colloquial variety?
Ever since the 1980s, there have been occasional suggestions in the 
literature about a regional colloquial variety of Slovenian in Austrian 
Carinthia. Domej (1980: 102) wrote about its absence, which he saw 
as a shortcoming because “for many centuries German encroached 
upon communication spaces reserved for non-dialect varieties, thus 
disturbing the balanced development of Slovenian language varieties.” 
In contrast, Anton Schellander (1984: 261) argued that the mode of 
communication that moves between standard and dialect is becoming 
“increasingly current and used by increasingly more speakers, even 
though everyone in a concrete conversation somehow realizes it in his 
own way based on his own idiolect. It could be concluded that this is a 
process of the organic formation of the Carinthian colloquial language.” 
The author defined indigenous Carinthian Slovenian elements, the 
influence of the standard language, and the phenomenon of inter-
dialectal equalization as the factors that shape this regional variety. 
Busch (2008: 61) writes that the slow emergence of this colloquial variety 
became more dynamic only in the new millennium; her interviewees 
reported that it replaces local dialects in some colloquial situations, 
and she herself perceived it in Radio Agora’s contact broadcasts in its 
first years of broadcasting (before the media decided on a different 

116 Slovenski jezik – Slovene Linguistic Studies 13 (2021)
language policy; namely, consistent standard language). The author 
connects the appearance of a regional colloquial variety with the 
gradual abandonment of the sharp polarization between dialects 
and the standard language, which has its roots in political factors: 
Slovenians loyal to their homeland (Austria) identified only with the 
dialect, whereas “nationally oriented” Slovenians also identified with 
the standard language. This is said to be the cause of 
great uncertainty as to which variety of Slovenian each conversational partner 
will consider appropriate in a given situation, so that speakers often switched to 
German. […] There was a fairly widespread rule that you did not speak Slovenian 
at all with people you did not know because of a certain fear of revealing how well 
or how poorly you knew Slovenian (Busch 2008: 60).
The respondents only indirectly confirm the existence of a common 
colloquial variety of Slovenian. R7 says that regional Slovenian is at 
most a matter of smaller groups of individuals that mutually form 
such a code. The stories of others also show that this is true, and 
that this kind of practice is not uncommon, but it is conditioned by 
language skills that go beyond the local dialect, as well as a willingness 
for speech accommodation and additional language learning. All the 
respondents came into more pronounced contact with other dialects 
in middle school. Their primary schools mostly had classmates that 
spoke the same dialect; if they had classmates that spoke other 
dialects or were just learning Slovenian, German usually predominated 
among all of them. The same was true in middle school, but R1, for 
example, says that the longer they were together, the more they spoke 
Slovenian. This happened when they got used to other dialects and 
had at least somewhat learned them themselves – or, as she says, they 
simplified their language a little or accommodated their own dialect to 
others. In the college-preparatory high school or business high school 
(respondents had attended one or the other) they were also joined by 
classmates from Slovenia; they accommodated to them by speaking 
more standard Slovenian because the newcomers did not yet know 
German well enough. German is often a common code even at the 
high school level, but its use is not the rule. Perenič (2006: 53) writes 
that without exception her Slovenian high school respondents spoke 
German to each other during breaks when they were not talking to 
classmates from the same dialect group. According to her, German 
fills a gap that a regional colloquial language otherwise would (she 
denies its existence). However, among my respondents, only R5 and 

T. Lengar Verovnik, Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian Carinthia ... 117
partly R2 confirmed such a practice, and I present the practices of 
others below.
The most common hypothesis for why Carinthian Slovenians from 
different dialect groups choose German in conversation is that 
the differences between these dialects are too great to be able to 
communicate in them without difficulty. However, this is clearly not the 
only reason or necessarily a valid one. R4, for example, says that he had 
some friends in high school with whom he exclusively spoke Slovenian 
and others with whom he exclusively spoke German – even though they 
all knew Slovenian, and he already knew the two most common dialects 
from his home (the Jaun (Podjuna) and Ros (Rož) dialects). He says that 
this was a matter of habit, and decisions about languages were always 
spontaneous and automatic. Most respondents also report that the 
longer they were at the college-preparatory high school or business 
high school, the more they used Slovenian; Kern (2009) reached the 
same conclusions. In part, the impact of the school’s development 
of general language skills in Slovenian can be felt, and in part it also 
takes time for students to get to know each other linguistically and 
accommodate. R7 reports that this was a process: from the start, they 
were unfamiliar with the forms of Slovenian brought by classmates from 
other parts of Carinthia. Suddenly, however, they developed a kind of 
colloquial language of their own (he even reports the characteristics of 
slang and their own expressions), which they realized only by looking 
back when they found that they were suddenly speaking differently 
than they had at the beginning.
Today, all the respondents are open to dialect varieties of Slovenian 
– not only Carinthian, but also those from Slovenia. They get to know 
them either in the Slovenian student club or in local associations that 
also include immigrants from Slovenia. R1 and R4 say that they always 
accommodate to those that join the conversation – they either speak 
closer to their dialect (if they are Carinthians) or use the standard 
variety (if they are from Slovenia). R2 feels that she would now be able 
to learn any Carinthian dialect if she moved to another environment, 
and when R6 switched to a different sports club he actually learned the 
new dialect enough to now communicate easily with his teammates. 
R3 also overcame her initial uncertainty and in conversations with 
speakers of other dialects she tries to stay in her dialect, or to switch 
to the standard variety only for individual words. She says that it is 

118 Slovenski jezik – Slovene Linguistic Studies 13 (2021)
always possible to somehow communicate and that there is no need 
to switch to German if a person just listens carefully. The fact that the 
decisive factor in this is age or language skills is confirmed by R7, who 
says that over time a person gets used to the speech, rhythm, and 
vocabulary of other Carinthian dialects and understands them. The 
hypothesis is thus confirmed that the regional colloquial variety, as far 
as one can talk about it, is closer to an idiolect than a community code, 
which Anton Schellander (1984) only attributed to an earlier stage of 
the development of this variety.
5 Conclusion
In the interviews, the young respondents offered at least brief insight 
into the development of their communication skills in Slovenian and 
their past and current speech repertoires, and especially in their ability 
to accommodate their speech to interlocutors with different Slovenian 
varieties. It was confirmed that a person’s dialect is still a very strong 
identifying and emotional factor, even among young members of the 
minority. Two respondents that knew only the standard language variety 
from home learned the dialects later, especially from their peers. This 
enabled them to avoid a barrier between themselves and others, which 
is reported elsewhere in the literature by some speakers that were not 
primarily linguistically socialized into a dialect. The talks confirmed 
the hypothesis about the special features of the Carinthian standard 
variety, as it is known to the respondents especially from the minority 
media. They observe differences at the phonetic level and to some 
extent in the lexicon, but they do not consider them large. Empirical 
verification of the hypothesis on a sufficient corpus of written and 
spoken texts would certainly be necessary to determine which specific 
features at which levels are characteristic of a possible Carinthian 
variety of standard Slovenian, and which errors should be eliminated 
by schooling at all levels of education. The respondents did not directly 
confirm the existence of a common regional colloquial variety, which 
some authors write about. However, at the secondary education 
level at the latest everyone developed the ability to accommodate 
to speakers of other Carinthian dialects, which was conditioned by 
their otherwise increasingly developed language ability in Slovenian. 
Today, when talking to speakers of a different dialect, they generally 
do not switch to German. This at least partially calls into question the 

T. Lengar Verovnik, Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian Carinthia ... 119
otherwise widely accepted idea about enormous differences between 
the Carinthian dialects as the reason for switching to German when 
speakers come from different dialect groups. I am aware that the sample 
is too small for any generalizations, but the purpose of the biographical 
interviews conducted was primarily to illustrate the linguistic practices 
of young speakers in this sociolinguistically complex area. As students 
of Slovenian, all the respondents are highly linguistically competent, 
and so it would be interesting to conduct similar interviews among 
different populations of young Carinthian Slovenians.
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Received February 2021, accepted April 2021.
Prispelo februarja 2021, sprejeto aprila 2021.
Summary
Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian Carinthia and the Speech 
Practices of Young Members of the Minority
In bilingual Austrian Carinthia, visible changes have taken place in recent decades; for 
example, applications for bilingual programs have increased, and the Slovenian ethnic 
community includes residents in areas where it previously did not have any declared 
members. On the other hand, the number of individuals primarily linguistically socialized 
in the dialect is decreasing, and new varieties of spoken Slovenian are appearing (e.g., 
the Slovenian of immigrants from other former Yugoslav republics and the Slovenian 
of immigrants from Slovenia, as well as the Slovenian of German speakers learning 

T. Lengar Verovnik, Varieties of Spoken Slovenian in Austrian Carinthia ... 121
Slovenian at school and in language courses). In addition to general research findings, 
insight into (linguistic) life and experiencing changes at the individual level is also 
important. This article presents the results of biographical interviews conducted with 
seven students of Slovenian at the University of Klagenfurt. Three topics are at the 
forefront: the attitude toward the local dialect, the use of standard Slovenian variety, 
and speech accommodation in groups. At the dialect level, the linguistic character of 
Carinthia is changing under the influence of various processes, including migration 
within the region, socioeconomic and educational changes within the minority, and 
immigration from Slovenia. There are increasingly more families in which parents 
with children consciously use the standard language variety. Research and interviews 
confirm that a person’s dialect also appears to be a strong identifying and emotional 
factor among young members of the minority. Two respondents, who knew only 
the standard language variety from home, learned the dialects later, especially from 
their peers. This enabled them to overcome a possible barrier between themselves 
and others, which is reported by some speakers that were not primarily linguistically 
socialized into a dialect. Other respondents encountered standard Slovenian in 
preschool or school, and today they personally rely on it, especially in conversations 
with speakers of more distant Carinthian or Slovenian dialects. In the interviews, they 
confirmed the hypothesis about the special features of the Carinthian standard variety, 
as they know it especially from the minority media. They observe differences at the 
phonetic level and to some extent in the lexicon, but they do not consider them large. 
The respondents did not directly confirm the existence of a common regional colloquial 
variety. However, during secondary education at the latest, they developed the ability 
to accommodate to speakers of other Carinthian dialects, which is conditioned by their 
more developed language ability in Slovenian. Today, when talking to speakers of a 
different dialect, they generally do not switch to German.
Različice govorjene slovenščine na avstrijskem Koroškem in govo -
rne prakse mladih pripadnikov manjšine
V prostoru dvojezične avstrijske Koroške se zadnja desetletja odvijajo pomembne 
in vidne spremembe, npr. rast prijav k dvojezičnemu pouku, k slovenski narodni 
skupnosti se prištevajo prebivalci na območjih, kjer jih prej ni bilo. Po drugi strani 
pa se manjša število posameznikov, primarno jezikovno socializiranih v narečje, 
pojavljajo se nove različice govorjene slovenščine (npr. slovenščina priseljencev iz 
nekdanjih jugoslovanskih republik in slovenščina priseljencev iz Slovenije; slovenščina 
nemško govorečih posameznikov, ki se slovenščine učijo v šoli in na tečajih). Ob 
splošnih ugotovitvah raziskav je pomemben tudi vpogled v (jezikovno) življenje in 
doživljanje sprememb na ravni posameznikov. V prispevku so predstavljeni izsledki 
iz biografskih intervjujev, opravljenih s sedmimi študenti slovenščine na Univerzi v 
Celovcu. V ospredju so tri tematike: razmerje do lokalnega narečja, raba knjižnega 
jezika na individualni in skupnostni ravni, govorno prilagajanje v skupinah. Na ravni 
narečja se jezikovna podoba Koroške spreminja pod vplivom različnih procesov, 
med drugim zaradi migracij znotraj regije, družbeno-ekonomskih in izobrazbenih 
sprememb znotraj manjšine, priseljevanja iz Slovenije. Vedno več je družin, v katerih 
starši z otroki zavestno uporabljajo knjižno različico. Raziskave in intervjuji potrjujejo, 

122 Slovenski jezik – Slovene Linguistic Studies 13 (2021)
da se narečje tudi pri mladih pripadnikih manjšine kaže kot močan identifikacijski in 
čustveni dejavnik. Respondenta, ki sta od doma znala zgolj knjižno različico, sta se 
narečja priučila kasneje, zlasti od vrstnikov. To jima je omogočilo, da med njimi ni 
bilo bariere, o kateri sicer poročajo nekateri govorci, ki niso bili primarno jezikovno 
socializirani v narečje. Drugi respondenti so se s knjižno različico srečali v vrtcu ali šoli, 
danes se nanjo zasebno opirajo zlasti v pogovorih z govorci bolj oddaljenih koroških 
ali slovenskih narečij. V intervjujih so potrdili tezo o posebnostih koroške standardne 
različice, kot jo poznajo zlasti iz manjšinskih medijev. Razlike opažajo na fonetični in 
delno besedni ravni, a se jim ne zdijo velike. Obstoja skupne regionalne pogovorne 
različice respondenti niso potrdili. Vendar pa so najkasneje na stopnji sekundarnega 
izobraževanja razvili sposobnost prilagajanja govorcem drugih koroških narečij, ki je 
pogojena z njihovo tudi sicer bolj razvito jezikovno zmožnostjo v slovenščini. Danes 
ob pogovarjanju z govorci, ki govorijo drugo narečje, praviloma ne preklapljajo v 
nemščino.