Slovak Letters & Accents

The Slovak alphabet is usually counted as 46 letters: the 26 of English, seventeen letters with marks (á ä č ď é í ĺ ľ ň ó ô ŕ š ť ú ý ž) and three digraphs, dz, dž and ch, which Slovak treats as single letters. Q, W and X appear almost only in foreign words and names, such as watt or xylofón.

The digraphs are written with two ordinary letters: medza (boundary), džem (jam), chlieb (bread). Unicode also has one-character compatibility digraphs dz and dž, but they exist for converting Serbo-Croatian text and are not used for Slovak; type d + z and d + ž. In dictionary order ch comes after h, so chlieb follows hrad (castle), and č, š and ž follow c, s and z.

Slovak is written as it is spoken, with a few rules worth knowing. Stress always falls on the first syllable, so the accent marks never show stress. And the rhythmic rule (rytmické krátenie) forbids two long syllables in a row: the second one is shortened, which is why Slovak writes pekný (nice) but krásny (beautiful), where Czech writes krásný.

Slovak accent marks: dĺžeň, mäkčeň, dve bodky and vokáň

The dĺžeň (the acute accent, ´) makes a sound long. On vowels it gives á é í ó ú ý, and length changes the word: sud is a barrel and súd a court. Slovak also lengthens the syllable-forming consonants l and r: ĺ and ŕ are a held l and r, as in stĺp (pillar), vŕba (willow) and tŕň (thorn). Words like vlk (wolf), krk (neck) and štvrť (quarter) have no vowel at all, because l and r carry the syllable.

The mäkčeň (the caron, ˇ; the name means softener) turns c, s and z into č (ch in church), š (sh) and ž (the s in measure), and makes d, t, n and l soft, said with the tongue against the palate: ď ť ň ľ, as in ďakujem (thank you), ťava (camel), deň (day) and ľad (ice). Before e and i these consonants are usually soft without a mark: deti (children) is said ďeťi. On small ď, ť and ľ, and on capital Ľ, the mark is printed as a short stroke that looks like an apostrophe; it is still the mäkčeň, and typing l' with an apostrophe is a mistake. Capital Ď and Ť show the full hook.

ä (with dve bodky, two dots; also called široké e, wide e) appears only after b, m, p and v: mäso (meat), päť (five), deväť (nine). Careful speech says it as the a of English cat; most speakers simply say e, and the standard allows both. ô (with the vokáň, the circumflex) is the diphthong uo: kôň (horse), stôl (table), môj (my).

Slovak quotation marks and punctuation: „ “ ‚ ‘ » «

Slovak opens a quotation low and closes it high, like Czech and German: „Dobrý deň,“ povedala. The opening mark „ sits on the line, and the closing mark “ is the one English uses to open a quote, so English “ ” or straight " " quotes look wrong in a Slovak text. A quotation inside a quotation uses the single pair ‚ ‘: „Povedal ‚ahoj‘ a odišiel.“ Books sometimes use chevrons pointing inward instead: »Dobrý deň«.

A dash between words is the spaced en dash –: Bratislava – Košice. Numbers follow European custom: a decimal comma (3,14), a space between thousands (1 000 000) and a full stop after ordinals, so 21 October 2026 is 21. októbra 2026 or 21. 10. 2026.

Slovakia has paid in euros € since 1 January 2009 and writes the sign after the number with a space: 12,50 €. Before that the currency was the Slovak koruna, abbreviated Sk, which never had a symbol of its own.

How to type Slovak letters on a keyboard

Slovak keyboard layout: the Slovak layout is QWERTZ (Y and Z swap places), and its number row gives the commonest marked letters without Shift: + ľ š č ť ž ý á í é on the keys from 1 to 0, with the digits on Shift. ú and ä are on the two keys right of P, ô is right of L, and ň is next to Enter. The key left of Backspace is a dead key: press it and then a letter for the dĺžeň (ó ĺ ŕ), or Shift + it (ˇ) and then a letter for the mäkčeň (ď, or any capital: Ď Ť Ľ). With Caps Lock on, the letter keys give capitals Ľ Š Č Ť Ž. On Windows, add it under Settings → Time & language → Language & region.

Windows without the Slovak layout: hold Alt and type on the number pad: á 0225, ä 0228, é 0233, í 0237, ó 0243, ô 0244, ú 0250, ý 0253, š 0154, ž 0158; Á 0193, Ä 0196, É 0201, Í 0205, Ó 0211, Ô 0212, Ú 0218, Ý 0221, Š 0138, Ž 0142. The other letters have no Alt+0 code on Western Windows; in Word type the hex code and press Alt+X: č 010D, ď 010F, ľ 013E, ĺ 013A, ň 0148, ŕ 0155, ť 0165 (capitals: Č 010C, Ď 010E, Ľ 013D, Ĺ 0139, Ň 0147, Ŕ 0154, Ť 0164).

Mac: add the Slovak input source in System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources, or hold a letter key and pick its accented form from the menu. Phones: add the Slovak keyboard in Gboard or the iPhone keyboard settings; long-press a letter to choose its accented forms. HTML: ľ š č ť ž ď ň ĺ ŕ ä ô á ý, or numeric codes such as ľ for ľ.

Where Slovak is spoken, and the languages close to it

CLDR estimates about 6.8 million Slovak speakers: around 5 million in Slovakia 🇸🇰, around 1.7 million in Czechia 🇨🇿, some 57,000 in Serbia 🇷🇸, where Slovak is one of the official languages of Vojvodina, and about 12,000 in Hungary 🇭🇺. Slovak has been an official language of the European Union since Slovakia joined in 2004. Slovakia, Czechia, Serbia and Hungary each have their own collections of flags, emoji and symbols.

Slovak is a West Slavic language, and its closest relative is Czech: Slovaks and Czechs talk to each other each in their own language. The two spellings share č š ž ď ť ň and the long vowels, but Czech has ě, ř and ů, which Slovak does not use, and Slovak has ä, ô, ľ, ĺ and ŕ, which Czech does not (see the Czech collection). Polish, the other large West Slavic language, writes the same sounds with cz, sz and ż (see the Polish collection), and Hungarian, the southern neighbour, uses the acute accent too but writes its long ö and ü as ő and ű (see the Hungarian collection).

Today's written Slovak goes back to 1843, when Ľudovít Štúr and his circle chose the central Slovak dialects as the basis of a common standard; an earlier standard by Anton Bernolák, from 1787, had been based on western dialects. Štúr's spelling was soon revised, and the letters on this page have been the written form of the language since the second half of the 19th century.