is a voiced one, or voiceless if the last consonant is voiceless. For example, is pronounced and is pronounced . This rule applies also over the word boundary. For example, (to come home) and (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of "" is , and the unvoiced counterpart of "" is . Orthography Slovak uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics (ˇ, ´, ¨, ˆ) placed above certain letters () The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the morphological principle: forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule (see below). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are usually pronounced the same way. Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. = nice – singular versus = nice – plural). Such spellings are most often remnants of differences in pronunciation that were present in Proto-Slavic (in Polish, where the vowel merger didn't occur, and and in Czech and are pronounced differently). Most loanwords from foreign languages are respelt using Slovak principles either immediately or later. For example, "weekend" is spelled , "software" – , "gay" – (both not exclusively), and "quality" is spelled . Personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a fully Slovak form of the name exists (e.g. for "London"). Slovak features some heterophonic homographs (words with identical spelling but different pronunciation and meaning), the most common examples being (beautiful) versus (beautifully). Syntax The main features of Slovak syntax are as follows: The verb (predicate) agrees in person and number with its subject. Some examples include the following: . (The+singer+feminine suffix is+singing.) (, where -∅ is (the empty) third-person-singular ending) . (Singer+feminine suffix +plural suffix are+singing.) (; is a third-person-plural ending, and /j/ is a hiatus sound) . (We the+singer+feminine suffix +plural suffix are+singing.) (, where is the first-person-plural ending) and so forth. Adjectives, pronouns and numerals agree in person, gender and case with the noun to which they refer. Adjectives precede their noun. Botanic