Prekmurje Slovene, also known as the Prekmurje dialect or Eastern Slovene (Slovene: prekmurščina, prekmursko narečje; Hungarian: vend nyelv, muravidéki nyelv; Prekmurje Slovene: prekmürski jezik, prekmürščina, prekmörščina, prekmörski jezik, panonska slovenščina), is the language of Prekmurje in Eastern Slovenia, and a variety of the Slovene language. As a part of the Pannonian dialect group, it is spoken in the Prekmurje region of Slovenia and by the Hungarian Slovenes in the Vas County in western Hungary. It is used in private communication, liturgy and publications by authors from Prekmurje as well as in television, radio and newspapers. It is closely related to other Slovene dialects in neighboring Slovene Styria as well as to Kajkavian with which it is mutually intelligible to a considerable degree, and forms a dialect continuum with other South Slavic languages.
Prekmurje Slovene is part of the Pannonian dialect group (Slovene: panonska narečna skupina), which is also known as the eastern Slovene dialect group (vzhodnoslovenska narečna skupina). Prekmurje Slovene shares many common features with the dialects of Haloze, Slovenske Gorice, and Prlekija, with which it is completely mutually intelligible. It is also closely related to the Kajkavian dialects of Croatian, although mutual comprehension is difficult. Prekmurje Slovene, especially its more traditional version spoken by the Hungarian Slovenes, is not readily understood by speakers from central and western Slovenia, whereas speakers from eastern Slovenia (Lower Styria) have much less difficulty understanding it. The early 20th-century philologist Ágoston Pável stated that Prekmurje Slovene is actually a major, independent dialect of Slovene, from which it differs mostly in the aspects of stress, intonation, the softening of consonants and—as a result of the lack of linguistic reform—in the striking dearth of modern vocabulary and that it has preserved many older features from Proto-Slavic.
