The article discusses Early Slovenian, that is to say the South Slavic language of the Eastern Alpine and the western Pannonian regions which, in the 11th and 12th centuries, spanned the area from the Danube in the north to the Adriatic in the south, and reaching the margins of western Pannonia in the east. Through careful consideration of the written sources dating from the end of the 6th to the 12th century the geographical expansion of the Slavic linguistic area in the Eastern Alps is more precisely delimited. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of the geographical and personal names attested in the available documents the defining features of Early Slovenian are harvested, systematized, and finally juxtaposed with the linguistic characteristics of the contemporaneous Slavic idioms to the immediate north (the later Czech and Slovak) and to the south (the later Čakavian).V članku je obravnavana zgodnja slovenščina, tj. južnoslovanski jezik v vzhodnoalpskem in zahodnopanonskem prostoru, ki se je v 11. in 12. stoletju razprostiral od Donave na severu do Jadrana na jugu in roba Panonske nižine na vzhodu. Prikazan je zemljepisni obseg slovanskega jezikovnega prostora v Vzhodnih Alpah, kakor se kaže predvsem v pisnih virih od konca 6. do vključno 12. stoletja. Na osnovi jezikoslovne analize v virih dokumentiranih zemljepisnih in osebnih imen so določene jezikovne lastnosti zgodnje slovenščine, in sicer v prvi vrsti v razmerju do tedaj zemljepisno stičnih slovanskih geolektov na severu (poznejši češčina in slovaščina) in jugu (poznejša čakavščina)
