Zdroje
Resources
Books
This is the most popular textbook series for learning Slovak. It contains plenty of dialogs, grammar explanations, and exercises. While these books are designed to be used in a classroom setting, the motivated self-teacher can certainly make use of them. They come with CDs containing audio recordings of all of the dialogs. In addition, all of the audio recordings are located on the website for the Studia Academica Slovaca at the Comenius University in Bratislava, Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave.
Colloquial Slovak, Routledge
This is a thorough book with audio recordings freely accessible online. It covers all basic grammar, with plenty of explanations, exercises, and a good grammar reference at the end. It also contains a dictionary for all of the vocabulary used in the book.
Online Self-Study
This website has self-study and tutor supported courses. It is an electronic version of the Križom Kražom, A1 and A2 books. If you don't have access to the KK books, this is a great, free alternative to get the same content. I made use of the A1 course before I formally registered for an in-person class.
This is a fantastic and fun YouTube channel where Slovak is taught through short, simple stories and fairy tales (rozprávky). The emphasis is on listening comprehension of clearly spoken, simple Slovak with visual support. Je to super!
This is a multilingual website for learning Slovak, with courses at the A1, A2, B1, and B2 levels. You can select the language of instruction from a list of 15 languages. The course provides texts, exercises, and dictionaries, and what I especially like are the videos, in which you see actual Slovaks speaking Slovak together, with subtitles in Slovak. Because the videos are through YouTube, and subtitled in Slovak, you can easily switch to automatic subtitles in a wide variety of languages (translated via Google Translate). I will post a blog about how to use the subtitles to your advantage.
Software
Who doesn't use this? While the translations are automatically generated, they can give you a really good translation, and Google is constantly improving their algorithms. I'll add a blog about using the phone version for reading physical text material, and for ways you can use Google Translate to practice conversations on your own.
This is great flashcard software that I've used to learn massive amounts of vocabulary. Only takes me 10 to 15 minutes a day if I don't let it pile up for days on end. You create your vocabulary decks on your own, so there is a bit of a learning curve.
Online Dictionaries
I make extensive use of this online dictionary which provides definitions along with abundant examples from their parallel database.
Jazykovedný ústav Ľudovíta Štúra SAV
This resource provides access to various dictionaries and corpora. One useful link is their dictionary portal, the main interface for accessing a dozen or so online dictionaries. These are in Slovak, but can be very useful for intermediate and advanced students.
Courses (In-person and Online)
University of Pittsburgh Summer Language Institute
Full-time, six-week intensive language course, currently expected to be online due to pandemic considerations.
Summer language school for foreigners from the Studia Academica Slovaca at the Comenius University in Bratislava, Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave.
Kurzy slovenčiny ako cudzieho jazyka pre verejnosť
Courses of Slovak language for foreigners from the Studia Academica Slovaca at the Comenius University in Bratislava, Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave.
Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International offers courses in the Czech and Slovak languages online for a fee.