The development of spoken Standard Slovene began to take form in the 2 nd
half of the 19 th century, with a debate on »parliamentary« speech (public, formal situation). Before this period, Slovene spoken in public depended strongly on the pronunciation features of speakers from different dialect areas. In the process of formation of a Standard Slovene Language which would be representative of the majority of the Slovene population, the literary works of Slovene Protestant
writers Primož Trubar and Jurij Dalmatin (16 th century) were taken as the basic source, along with introduction of »new forms« into the traditional »Carniolan core« of the literary language. All these elements, shaped also by various influences from the written language, resulted in pronunciation problems (for example concerning the phonemes /v/ and /l/ in different environments). The paper addresses some open issues of spoken standard and media speech (influence of dialects, reduction of
vowels, influence of written language) on the basis of contemporary texts (spoken on the radio) and other samples of spoken language, taking into account different approaches to the existing norm relating to Standard Slovene Pronunciation.
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