Downloaded from https://www.everyspec.com FM 34-54 It is often difficult to distinguish between the Roman alphabet Slavic languages. Of these languages, Polish is easiest to distinguish from the rest because it does not use hacek >, whereas the others do; and V because it uses frequently and almost never, whereas the opposite situation occurs in the other languages. The languages of Czechoslovakia—Czech and Slovak—can be distinguished from the Roman alphabet languages of the former Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Serbia because Czech and Slovak use acute on vowels (including ) and Croatian and Slovenian do not.
Acutes are so frequent in Czech and Slovak that the absence of acutes in an average- length sentence can be taken as a valid negative test. The presence of the diacritics listed above for Croatian indicate that it may be Croatian; but there is no convenient way to test for Slovenian against Croatian. If in doubt between Croatian and Slovenian, assume Croatian unless it can be established that the text was published in Ljubljana. POLISH: Polish uses acute > on ; ogonek > on ; bar (occasionally depending on font as a substitute for slash) on , such as ; and dot on . Letters and are very frequent in Polish, and the almost never occurs. CZECH:
Czech uses acute > on , hacek > on V z>, krouzek > on . The letter with hacek is frequent in Czech and O lacking in Slovak. SLOVAK: Slovak uses acute > on ; dieresis u > on ; circumflex on ; hacek > on ; and apostrophe V on . The digraph is fairly frequent in Slovak and very infrequent in Czech. Slovak is used in eastern Czechoslovakia. Suspect Slovak if Bratislava is the origin. CROATIAN: Croatian uses acute > on , hacek > on , and bar on V . Croatian is used in northern and coastal Yugoslavia around the city of Zargreb. G-8 ROMAN ALPHABET SLAVIC LANGUAGES