Officially, there are 37 dialects in Slovenia, but the way that people speak often differs from one village to another. This diversity is well captured in the proverb "Vsaka vas ima svoj glas", meaning "Every village has its own voice".

Sometimes dialects can be so different from one another that it is hard for people from different parts of Slovenia to understand each other.

There are even dictionaries of Slovenian dialects, which can be divided into seven groups: Dolenjska in the south of the country, Gorenjska just north of the centre, Koroška in the extreme north, Panonska in the north-east, Primorska in the south-west, Rovtarska, just west of centre and Štajerska north-east of centre.

The reason for such dialectological diversity of Slovenia lays in the history of settling the land, its geographical barriers, administrative borders and to some extent the proximity to other countries.

Some of the dialects have quite unique features. In the area of Bled, Haloze and a village in Prlekija in the north-east, women tend to be referred to as males in verb forms, while some dialects do not have dual, a grammatical number unique to Slovenian that is used in addition to singular and plural.

However, some of these features seem to be gradually disappearing, especially among new generations.

"Not that long ago dialects were perceived as less worthy, 'ugly', compared to standard Slovenian, so its use was banished from the public sphere - this kind of attitude unfortunately still exists in some places, but the situation seems to be improving," said Janoš Ježovnik of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU).

"I'd say that in dialects the features that are perceived as the most marked are hit the hardest," believes Jažovnik, a specialist for Slovenian dialects in Italy.

But although it seems that the education system that favours the standard variety of Slovenian, the technological progress, daily and other migrations, and centralisation are driving dialects to extinction, dialectologists at the ZRC SAZU beg to differ.

A language or a dialect does not die because of linguistic innovation, but only if all of its speakers are eradicated, so dialects will merely continue changing, they say.

"Many of us who speak in dialect see the dialect used by younger generations as destroying the system we once knew. But the changes we've made were also seen as rejecting the way of speaking of the older generations, which they saw as solid and unchangeable," said Peter Weiss of the ZRC SAZU.

Language and dialects change because some phenomena become obsolete, sometimes dialects become similar to standard language or to the language spoken in bigger towns near-by, due to migrations to school or work, Weiss explains.

The changes brought about by mobile devices and computers seem horrible in the eyes of older generations just like once people were horrified by the young who read books and later watched television. Neither had a positive effect on the traditional way of speaking, but it broadened the horizons, says Weiss, who is in charge of digitalisation of dialects at ZRC SAZU.

The key is to find the balance between the two, which is not easy, he adds.

However, the head of the dialectology department, Jožica Škofic, admits that dialects are now changing faster than half a century ago. "Some local dialects have become less specific, but most of the fundamental features of dialects remain the same," she has told the STA.

Slovenian was the first written Slavic language in Latin script and is considered to be one of the most archaic languages in Europe.

Slovenian is also spoken by the Slovenian communities in the bordering Italy, Croatia, Hungary, and Austria. Members of the Slovenian communities there speak mainly in dialects. As a result of migrations, Slovenian can also be heard in the US, Argentina, Serbia, Canada, Australia and South Africa.