This is a presentation of the Slovene language, one of the three official languages of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the official or administrative language of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. The presentation covers the following topics: (1) description of the language, the speech area, and contemporary standard Slovene; (2) historical background; (3) the situation of Slovene among other Slavic languages and dialects; (4) the history and evolution of Slovene; (5) the dialects of Slovene; (6) phonology, morphology, grammatical categories, nominal inflectional pattern, and verbal conjugational pattern of contemporary Slovene; and (7) the history of Contemporary Standard Slovene and its sociolinguistic problems. A selection of texts and bibliographic documentation conclude the volume. (AMH)