Slovene dialects

Slovene dialects () are the regional spoken varieties of Slovene, a South Slavic language. Spoken Slovene is often considered to have at least 48 dialects ("narečja") and subdialects ("govori"). The exact number of dialects is open to debate, ranging from as many as 50 to merely 7. The various dialects are so different from each other that a speaker of one dialect may have a very difficult time understanding a speaker of another, particularly if they belong to different regional groups. Speakers of dialects that strongly differ accommodate each other by gravitating toward standard Slovene. Slovene dialects are part of the South Slavic dialect continuum, transitioning into Serbo-Croatian to the south and bordering Friulian and Italian to the west, German to the north, and Hungarian to the east.
History of classification.
The first attempts to classify Slovenian dialects were made by Izmail Sreznevsky in the early 19th century, followed by Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay (focusing on Resia, Venetian Slovenia, Cerkno, and Bled), Karel Štrekelj (focusing on the Karst), and Ivan Scheinig (focusing on Carinthia). This was followed by efforts by Ivan Grafenauer (Gail Valley), Josip Tominšek (Savinja Valley), and others. Efforts before the Second World War were spearheaded by Lucien Tesnière, Fran Ramovš, and Aleksander Isachenko, and after the war by Tine Logar and Jakob Rigler (). Eventually, the classification proposed by Ramovš was accepted with corrections and additions by Logar and Rigler, published in 1983 as the "Karta slovenskih narečij" (Map of Slovenian Dialects).
Criteria for classification.
The division of Slovenian into dialects is based on various non-linguistic and linguistic factors. Non-linguistic factors include settlement patterns and geographical features (rivers, mountains) that helped shape various isoglosses. Linguistic factors include language contact with non-Slavic languages to some extent, phonological and prosodic elements in particular, and to a lesser extent word-formational, lexical, and inflectional elements. Specifically, the primary distinguishing linguistic features are 1) preservation or loss of pitch accent, 2) reflexes of nasal *"ę", nasal *"ǫ", jat ("ě"), and the yers ("ъ, ь"), and 3) (to a lesser extent) vowel inventory, diphthongization, and degree and type of vowel reduction.
Regional groups.
The main regional groups are:
List of dialects.
The following grouping of dialects and subdialects is based on the 1983 map of Slovene dialects by Fran Ramovš, Tine Logar, and Jakob Rigler () (from which the first Slovene term listed in parentheses is taken) and other sources.