short vowel. also counts as a long vowel, though there is no * sequence to rival it, as never appears before a vowel within the same word. Sound–spelling correspondences 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 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. pekný = nice – singular versus pekní = nice – plural). Most foreign words receive Slovak spelling immediately or after some time. For example, "weekend" is spelled víkend , "software" - softvér , "gay" - gej (both not exclusively), and "quality" is spelled kvalita (possibly from Italian qualità). 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. Londýn for "London"). To accelerate writing, a rule has been introduced that the frequent sequences , , , , , , , , , , , , , , are written without a háček as de, te, ne, di, ti, ni, dí, tí, ní, die, tie, nie, dia, tia, nia. These combinations are usually pronounced as if a háček were found above the consonant. In the case of , e, i, í, ie, ia have no effect on the pronunciation of , which remains alveolar even in this context: , , , , . Thus, uniquely among the alveolo-palatal consonants, the alveolo-palatal lateral is only ever spelled with the dedicated letter ľ. Some exceptions are as follows: foreign words (e.g. telefón is pronounced ) the following words: ten 'that', jeden 'one', vtedy 'then', teraz 'now' nominative masculine plural endings of pronouns and adjectives do not turn the preceding d, n, t into palatal consonants (e.g. tí odvážni mladí muži , the/those brave young men) in adjectival endings, both the long é and the short e (shortened by the rhythmical rule) do not make the preceding d, n, t