Slovenian is a Slavic language, spoken by millions of people primarily in Slovenia. According to the eLinguistics.net analysis using specific software modules to assess linguistic relationships, the five languages most similar to Slovenian are Serbian, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and Croatian.
- Serbian (93.9)
Serbian belongs to the South Slavic language group. The historical and cultural ties between the regions where these languages are spoken have led to a number of linguistic similarities. They share a similar grammar structure, with cases for nouns, and a rich system of tenses and aspects for verbs. Vocabulary overlap is also significant, especially in everyday language and traditional expressions. - Ukrainian (93.3)
Ukrainian is an East Slavic language. The two languages share grammatical structure, including the case system, and a good portion of the basic Slavic vocabulary. Ukrainian’s phonology is somewhat closer to Slovenian than Russian’s, especially in terms of vowel sounds, making it slightly easier for Slovenian speakers to understand Ukrainian. - Russian (92.7)
Russian is similar to Ukrainian. Slovenian still shares several similarities due to its Slavic roots. The case system, verb aspects, and some shared vocabulary make Russian and Slovenian comparable. However, Russian’s phonetics, with its palatalized consonants and vowel reductions, differ significantly from Slovenian. - Polish (91.9)
Polish, though a West Slavic language, shares notable similarities with Slovenian, especially in terms of grammar. Both languages use cases for nouns and have a similar structure in verb conjugation, although Polish has a more complex system of consonant clusters and different vowel sounds. Despite these phonological differences, Slovenian and Polish share a significant amount of vocabulary, especially words of Slavic origin. - Croatian (91.1)
Croatian is another language that is extremely similar to Slovenian. Both are South Slavic languages and have a high degree of mutual intelligibility. The two languages share a similar lexicon, grammar, and pronunciation patterns. The differences between them are mostly in pronunciation, vocabulary choices, and some syntactical structures. Croatian is often considered the most mutually intelligible with Slovenian due to these factors.
(to be considered for the list, the language must be spoken by at least one million people)