Stress, gender and number

Stress

As in English, stress in Slovenian can fall on any syllable of a word : máti – mother;
govorìti – to speak; zakaj – why. In the vocabularies the stress is always marked. In diferent forms of the same word, the stress occurs quite on different syllables:
nosìti – nósim, móž – možá, člôvek – človèka. A few words have no stress whatsoever.

The stress marks are: ‘ (which signifies at the same time that the vowel is long, with o and e a narrow pronounciation), ^ (which signifies simultaneously long and broad o and e) and ‘ (which means also a short vowel).

Gender

In opposition to English, which has only remnants of gender (e.g. he-she-it) Slovenian distinguishes three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter:

Masculine		Feminine		Neutral
on	he	ona	she	ono	it
brat	brother	sestra	sister	dete	child
oče	father	mati	mother	telo	body
Prešeren		Slovenija		Visoko
stol	chair	miza	table	mesto	city

Male persons and most male animals are masculine gender, female persons and animals feminine gender. The young of animals (in –e) are usually neuter gender. For other things and objects we just have to memorize the gender. The ending in the nominative singular form offers us some help:

words in –a are almost all of feminine gender (lipa)
words in –o and –e are almost all neuter gender (mesto, srce)
words in –i and –u are usually masculine (taksi, emu)
words ending in a consonant are either masculine or feminine
Jaz in ti are of indefinite gender.

Adjectives, participles and most pronouns also have different forms for the different genders:

Masc.	Fem.	Neut.		Masc.	Fem.	Neut.
lep	lepa	lepo	nice	sedeč	sedeča	sedeče	sitting
slovenski	slovenska	slovensko	Slovenian	náš	naša	naše	our’s
božji	božja	božje	Divine	ves	vsa	vse	all
delal	delala	delalo	worked	on	ona	ono	he,she,it
zaželen	zaželena	zaželeno	desired	mi	me	me	we

Number

Slovenian has, besides the singular and plural, also the dual: miza "table" – mize "tables’ –mizi "(two) tables". The singular and plural are used as in English, but in those cases where two objects are concerned, the dual is used instead of the plural:

Singular Plural Dual
ena miza	tri mize	dve mizi
one table	three tables	two tables
en stol	trije stoli	dva stola
one chair	three chairs	two chairs
eno mesto	tri mesta	dve mesti
one town	three towns	two towns
Paired body parts are in Slovenian in the Plural: noge, roke, oči, obrvi, nosnice, etc.,as well čevlji, očala etc. These parts of speech distinguish number:
nouns:
miza	mize	mizi
table	tables	two tables
perut	peruti	peruti
wing	wings	two wings
stol	stoli	stola
chair	chairs	two chairs
mesto	mesta	mesti
town	towns	two towns
adjectives:
lep	lepi	lepa
lepa	lepe	lepi
lepo	lepa	lepi
pronouns:
on	oni	onadva
he	they	they two
tak	taki	taka
such	such	such two
verbs:
delam	delamo	delava
I work	we work	we two work