This article uses Logar transcription. The Inner Carniolan dialect ( , ) is a Slovene dialect very close to the

Lower Carniolan dialect This article uses Logar transcription. The Lower Carniolan dialect ( , ) is a major Slovene dialect in the Lower Carniolan dialect group. It is one of the two central Slovene dialects and was the original foundation for standard Slovene alo ...

, but with more recent accent shifts. It is spoken in a relatively large area, extending from western

Inner Carniola Inner Carniola ( sl, Notranjska; german: Innerkrain) is a traditional region of Slovenia, the southwestern part of the larger Carniola region. It comprises the Hrušica karst plateau up to Postojna Gate, bordering the Slovenian Littoral (th ...

up to

Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into pr ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, also covering the upper

Vipava Valley The Vipava Valley (; sl, Vipavska dolina, german: Wippachtal, it, Valle del Vipacco) is a valley in the Slovenian Littoral, roughly between the village of Podnanos to the east and the border with Italy to the west. The main towns are Ajdovš ...

and the southern part of the Karst Plateau. The dialect borders the

to the east, the Črni Vrh and Horjul dialects to the north, the Karst dialect to the northwest, the Istrian dialect to the southwest, and Central Chakavian and Northern Chakavian to the south. The dialect belongs to the Littoral dialect group, and it evolved from the Lower Carniolan dialect base.

Geographic distribution

The dialect is spoken in most of the municipalities of

Postojna Postojna (; german: Adelsberg, it, Postumia) is a town in the traditional region of Inner Carniola, from Trieste, in southwestern Slovenia. It is the seat of the Municipality of Postojna.

Pivka Pivka (, german: St. Peter in Krain, it, San Pietro del Carso) is a small town in Slovenia in the Pivka Basin in the Karst region. It is the seat of the Municipality of Pivka. It belongs to the traditional region of Inner Carniola. Name Pivka ...

Ilirska Bistrica Ilirska Bistrica (; german: Illyrisch Feistritz; it, Villa del Nevoso, before 1927: ''Bisterza,'' Hungarian: ''Illírbeszterce'') is a town in the Inner Carniola region of southwestern Slovenia. It is the administrative seat of the Municipalit ...

Divača Divača (; it, Divaccia) is a large nucleated village in the Littoral region of Slovenia, near the Italian border. It is the seat of the Municipality of Divača and a railway hub. Geography Divača lies along the A1 motorway and the old main r ...

Hrpelje-Kozina The Municipality of Hrpelje-Kozina (; sl, Občina Hrpelje - Kozina) is a municipality in the Littoral region of Slovenia.Vipava, in most areas of the municipalities of

Sežana Sežana (; it, Sesana) is a town in the Slovenian Littoral region of Slovenia, near the border with Italy. It is the seat of the Municipality of Sežana. Sežana is located on the Karst Plateau, from Trieste, Italy, and from Ljubljana, the c ...

and

Ajdovščina Ajdovščina (; it, Aidussina,trilingual name "Haidenschaft, Aidussina, Ajdovščina" inGemeindelexikon, der im Reichsrate Vertretenen Königreiche und Länder. Bearbeit auf Grund der Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31. Dezember 1900. Herausgege ...

, as well as the municipalities of Monrupino and Sgonico in Italy, and in many Slovene-inhabited villages in the Municipality of

(most notably in

Opicina Opicina (formerly Poggioreale del Carso in Italian), ( sl, Opčine, Triestine: ''Opcina''), is a town in northeastern Italy, close to the Slovenian border at Fernetti ( sl, Fernetiči). Opicina is a ''frazione'' of the ''comune'' of Trieste, the ...

, sl, Opčine). Geographically, the dialect is bounded by the

Javornik Hills :''There is also a ''Javorníky'' mountain range in the Carpathian mountains'' The Javornik Hills ( sl, Javorniki) are a limestone plateau in Slovenia and part of the Dinaric Alps The Dinaric Alps (), also Dinarides, are a mountain range in S ...

to the east and the national border to the southeast; it extends to the southwest to Gradišče pri Materiji, to the west to

Slavnik At high, Slavnik is one of the highest peaks of the Slovenian Istria. It is part of the Čičarija landscape. Tuma Hut on Slavnik, named after the mountaineer , stands about below its peak. At its peak stands a broadcast transmitter A broadc ...

and Kozina, in

to the coast, and to north to Predmeja.Toporišič, Jože. 1992. ''Enciklopedija slovenskega jezika''. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, pp. 148–149.

Accentual changes

The Inner Carniolan dialect has undergone more accent shifts than the Lower Carniolan dialect because of the influence of other

Littoral The littoral zone or nearshore is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely inundated), to coastal areas ...

dialects. It has undergone four accent shifts: → , → , → , and → . Some southeastern microdialects have also partially undergone the / → / accent shift (e.g., → in the Jelšane microdialect), although most of these changes are morphologically correlated. It has also lost

pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...

and is in the process of losing the distinction between long and short vowels because the short ones are lengthening.

Phonology

In terms of phonology, the Inner Carniolan dialect is very similar to the Lower Carniolan dialect. Diphthongs mostly retained their form or have monophthongized in some parts, particularly near the Karst and Črni Vrh dialects, which come from different dialect bases and their diphthongs are therefore often different, which led to monphthongization on bordering microdialects on both sides. Alpine Slovene and non-final show this phenomenon the most. In most dialects, this is still pronounced as the diphthong , but in microdialects, such as

, Dutovlje,

Vrabče Vrabče (; it, Monte Urabice) is a village in the Municipality of Sežana in the traditional Inner Carniola region of Slovenia. It is now generally regarded as part of the Slovenian Littoral The Slovene Littoral ( sl, Primorska, ; it, Lit ...

, Štjak, and northwest from there, as well as in microdialects around Predmeja and

Otlica Otlica () is a dispersed settlement in the hills north of Ajdovščina in the Littoral region of Slovenia. It is made up of smaller clusters of the hamlets of Sibirija, Kitajska, Kurja Vas ( sl, Kurja vas), and Cerkovna, as well as a number of outl ...

, it has monophthongized into . Similar assimilation also occurred in the Brkini Hills and northern Pivka Basin. In the southern part of the Pivka Basin, however, the diphthong dissimilated into , , or going south. In contrast to , Alpine Slavic , non-final , , and non-final are pronounced quite similarly throughout the dialect, remaining the diphthong or slightly reduced to . Similarly, , , and non-final remained or reduced to . Non-final turned into , but remained a diphthong before , , , or . and mostly remained unchanged, but turned into , except in words introduced to the dialect later, where it is still . Proto-Slavic turned into . Palatal and remained palatal, changed into , and in the ''l''-participle simplified into , and turned into .

Morphology

Dual forms are different from the plural in the nominative and accusative cases only, and verbs have generally lost their dual forms. There is a tendency to fix the accent when declining (i.e., for nouns to have fixed accent). Neuter gender is neither masculinized nor feminized, and the infinitive stem sometimes became the same as present stem. Verbs with two possible accents in the infinitive have all ''l''-participle forms accented like the masculine singular form. The long infinitive was replaced by the short one, and the verb endings and always have the infix (, ). The imperative does not undergo the → change. Southern microdialects no longer have ''s''-stem nouns; they have turned into ''o''-stems. In doing so, if the accent was on the infix, it shifted one syllable to the left, a feature that also extended into the nominative case, where it originally did not have the infix: for standard Slovene 'bicycle' in the nominative and genitive singular.

Vocabulary

Lexically, the dialect shows extensive influence from

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...

Sociolinguistic aspects

About 90,000 Slovene speakers live in the areas where the dialect is traditionally spoken. Although there are no precise statistics, it is likely that a large majority of them have some degree of knowledge of the dialect. This makes it the most widely spoken dialect in the

Slovenian Littoral The Slovene Littoral ( sl, Primorska, ; it, Litorale; german: Küstenland) is one of the five traditional regions of Slovenia. Its name recalls the former Austrian Littoral (''Avstrijsko Primorje''), the Habsburg possessions on the upper Ad ...

and among the 10 most spoken Slovene dialects. In most rural areas, especially in the

and on the Karst Plateau, the dialect predominates over standard Slovene (or its regional variety). Differently from many other Slovene dialects, the Inner Carniolan dialect is commonly used in many urban areas, especially in the towns of

, Vipava, and

(Italy). In the towns, where commuting to the capital,

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During ant