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The Slovak alphabet uses a modification of the Latin alphabet. The modifications include the four diacriticals (ˇ, ´, ¨, ^) placed above certain letters. Therefore Slovak alphabet has 46 graphemes
The lexicographic ordering of the Slovak alphabet is very similar to that of English: A B C D DZ E F G H CH I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. The complete alphabet, however, allows for characters with diacritics (the character with diacritics always comes after the same character without diacritics) and is as follows: a á ä b c č d ď dz dž e é f g h ch i í j k l ľ ĺ m n ň o ó ô p q r ŕ s š t ť u ú v w x y ý z ž. Note that dz, dž and ch are considered single letters and that ch follows the h (not the c). The letters "q", "w", "x" are only used in loanwords, never in native Slovak words.
The names of the letters (like in English ey, bee, cee, dee …) are: a (á), á (dlhé á), ä (prehlasované á; á s dvoma bodkami, široké e), bé, cé, čé, dé, ďé, dzé, džé, e (é), é (dlhé é), ef, gé, há, chá, i (í), í (dlhé í), jé, ká, el, eľ, dlhé el, em, en, eň, o (ó), ó (dlhé ó), ô (ó s vokáňom), pé, kvé, er, dlhé er, es, eš, té, ťé, u (ú), ú (dlhé ú), vé, dvojité vé, iks, ypsilon (ý), dlhé ý, zet, žet (for pronunciation see below)
The characters are divided as follows:
- Vowels are: a á ä e é i í o ó y ý u ú (+ r ŕ l ĺ).
- Diphthongs are: ia, ie, iu, ô.
- Consonants are: b c č d ď dz dž f g h ch j k l ľ ĺ m n ň p q r ŕ s š t ť v w x z ž. The consonants r, l, ŕ, ĺ are considered vowels in certain cases (see Pronunciation).
The Slovak alphabet is available within the ISO/IEC 8859-2 “Latin-2” encoding, which generally supports Eastern European languages. All vowels, but none of the specific consonants (that is, no č, ď, ľ, ĺ, ň, ŕ, š, ť, ž) are available within the “Latin-1” encoding, which generally supports only Western European languages.