История и происхождение словацкого языка.

The Slovak language is a West Slavic language. Historically, it forms a dialect continuum with Czech. The written standard is based on the work of Ľudovít Štúr, published in the 1840s and codified in July 1843 in Hlboké.

The centrist hypothesis was popular in the 19th century when it played a positive role in the Slovak national movement. According to this theory, Slovak is the remnant of the Proto Slavic language spoken in the Middle Danube region before the great migration of the Slavs. This hypothesis is based on Nestor's Primary Chronicle and was supported by Matej Bel and several notable members of the movement, like Pavel Jozef Šafárik, Anton Bernolák and Ľudovít Štúr. Most modern scholars oppose the opinion about the Slavic homeland being in the Middle Danube, but the theory was revived in the 20th century by a Russian linguist Oleg Trubachyov.

The theories about the nonhomogeneous origin of Slovak assume its late integration in the 13th to 14th centuries or even after the 16th century. They claim that the Proto Slavic basis of Slovak emerged on the border of early Western, Southern and Eastern Slavic macro dialects or that Slovak emerged from early or late mixing of neighboring languages. A prominent Slovak linguist, Samuel Czambel (1856–1909), believed that Western Slovak dialects are derived from early Western Slavic, that Central Slovak dialects are remains of the South Slavic language area (Czechized over centuries) and that Eastern Slovak dialects come from Old Polish and Old Ukrainian. Samuil Bernstein supported a similar theory. István Kniezsa suggested a mixing of languages in today's Central Slovakia after the Mongol invasion of Europe and Ottoman wars, thus forming modern Central Slovak dialects. The opinion about the late integration is not compliant with the current state of knowledge about the development of Slovak dialects from Proto Slavic.

This theory was proposed in the interwar period by Czech linguists František Trávníček and Václav Vážný. Its proponents believed that Slovak and Czech emerged from a common Proto Czech Slovak (Proto Czech). Trávníček explained unique features of Central Slovak dialects by later differentiation, Vážný, by expansion from the south. Trávníček's attempt to explain the origin of Slovak from Proto Czech Slovak is now thought to be erroneous, and the creator of the theory abandoned it already after World War II.

Modern theories are based on a nonhomogeneous Proto Slavic basis of Slovak. The prevailing theory is the migration integration theory of Rudolf Krajčovič.

Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic in 1993. Slovak became the official language of Slovakia.