Slovenian

Slovenian belongs to the South Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages, a group which also includes Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian. These languages form a continuum of mutually intelligible dialects, but the two end points, Slovenian and Bulgarian, are not mutally intelligible. Slovenian is the official language of the Republic of Slovenia, formerly a constituent republic of Yugoslavia. It has about 2 million speakers there, and another 200,000 in Italy, the United States and elsewhere.There is extensive dialectal variation with some problems of mutual comprehension among speakers of some variants, but a literary dialect, based on the central dialects, is common to all, and a spoken standard based on the literary dialect is becoming more widespread. Slovenian is closely related to Serbo-Croatian, and has been heavily influenced by it, but the Slovenians, who look upon their own language as a cultural icon and national treasure, have been and are concerned about the impact of Serbo-Croatian on their language. Debates about linguistic purity are still common and are often aired in the public press. There is a Language Arbitration Tribunal which advises the public mainly through articles in newspapers and periodicals on the appropriate use of language.
Like Other Slavic languages, Slovenian is heavily inflected with 3 numbers, 6 cases and 3 genders. It has an adapted Latin-based alphabet that uses diacritics to mark consonantal and vocalic distinctions.

Sources:

UCLA Language Materials Project

Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:

• Conversational Slovenian, LIDS 19
  Joze Toporisic, Slovene By Direct Method (Tape)      

Other Local Resources:

UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art