Czech language

“ The romantic period of the renaissance affected not only Czech and Slovak literature, but it left its imprint on all the arts—on philosophy, religion, the sciences, and political, social and moral life. The protest of rich imagination, of unfettered freedom in feeling and expression against the cold reasoning and polished conventionality of the eighteenth century found its outlet among the Czechs and Slovaks in an enthusiastic exaltation of their nation and language—two concepts never separated in the mind of the true patriot of that land. ”

“ Indeed, for two centuries, the Czech language had been practically dead and buried. Bohemia suffered perhaps more severely than any other country in the Thirty Years’ War, and after their defeat in the battle of the White Mountain in 1621, the Czech nation as such disappeared from European history. The country became an appendage of Austria; the Czech language was repressed. ”

“ Within the quadrangle the Czechs are interspersed with Germans, against whom they have maintained a continuous struggle. (See Czech Literature.) Literary Czech is most nearly related to the dialect of the Prague district, but taken as a whole the Czech language presents a great variety of well-defined dialects. ”

“ Divines belonging to the same community also at the end of the 16th century published at Kralice in Moravia a complete Czech version of the Old and New Testaments. Together with the Labyrint Světa (Labyrinth of the World) of Komensky (Comenius) , who was also a member of the brotherhood, it can be considered a model of the Czech language in the period immediately preceding its downfall.
The Czechs have always enthusiastically upheld the language of their country. In ancient Czech, indeed, the same word jazyk denotes both “nation” and “language.” ”

“ The Czech language is distinguished as highly inflectional, with great facility for forming derivatives, frequentatives, inceptives, and diminutives of all kinds. Like the Greek it has a dual number, and its manifold declensions, tenses, and participial formations, with their subtle shades of distinction, give the language a complex grammatical structure. The alphabet consists of 42 letters, expressing a great variety of sounds. In musical value the Czech comes next to Italian. ”

“ Already men who under the Austrian regime would never think of calling themselves Czechs now vie with one another in promising loyalty to the new state and using the Czech language in place of German. In cities like Hodonín, Masaryk’s birthplace, where the Germans artificially maintained their rule, German schools are empty, because most of the children attending them have been placed by their parents in Czech schools. The Jewish element of the population claims to be Czech now and speaks Czech in public. ”

“ The revival of the Czech nationality and the inroads made by the Czech language upon the German, tended to a limitation of intellectual development which would have boded ill for the Czechs, had these evils not been arrested before they had time to spread. ”

“ In the 19th century the Czechs of Hungary—much to their own detriment—developed a written language that differs slightly from that used in Bohemia, but as regards their race they are identical with the Bohemians and Moravians. Beyond the borders of this continuous territory there are many Czechs in Lower Austria. Vienna in particular has a large and increasing Czech population. There are also numerous Czechs in Russia, particularly Volhynia, in the United States—where a large number of newspapers and periodicals are published in the Czech language—and in London. ”

“ After Komenský, there were no great writers in the Czech language until the close of the eighteenth century. It must be remembered that every effort was made to suppress not only the language of the Czechs but to prevent the publication of any work in that tongue. ”

“ It is unfortunately true that in spite of all effort on the part of parents and teachers, comparatively few young people are growing up to read the Czech language. Many speak it because of the presence in the home of grandparents who have never learned English, but they throw away their opportunity to know its fine literature and associations. ”

“ CZECH (chĕk) or BOHEMIAN LANGUAGE. The Czech language, like the Polish, Kashubian, and Sorbian, belongs to the northwestern group of the Slavic languages (q.v.) . The number of persons speaking Czech, exclusive of the Slovaks, is about 6,000,000. Of these 3,650,000 are found in Bohemia, 1,550,000 in Moravia, 130,000 in Austrian Silesia, 300,000 in other Austro-Hungarian provinces, 30.000 in Russia, 100,000 in Germany, and 250,000 in America. The Czechs occupy the quadrangle bounded by the Bohemian Forest, the Erzgebirge, the Sudetic Mountains, and the Little Carpathians. ”

“ In the years 1816 to 1818 you could still find the Czech language forming a part of the curriculum of the gymnasia, but later it was forced out by the enemies of the Czech people on the ground that it was taking up too much time that could be used for other subjects. If the professors voluntarily gave two Czech lessons in a week, they were denounced as Panslavists, Russian agents, modernists, abusers of religion and contaminators of morals. The memorandum backs up its demands with a quotation from Herder: “Civilization cannot be forced upon a nation in a foreign tongue. ”

“ Now, if two hundred some thousand people can support more than eighty periodicals in the Bohemian language, why should not three hundred thousand of their children, more used to the English language, establish and support just one organ devoted to their interests as Americans of Czech descent, men and women having an affection for the country they had never seen, but in which generations upon generations of their ancestors had lived and suffered? ”

“ The Germans demand the recognition of German as a customary language in every part of the empire, so that a German may claim to have his business attended to in his own language, even in Dalmatia and Galicia. In Bohemia the Czechs claim that their language shall be recognized as customary, even in those districts such as Reichenberg, which are almost completely German; the Germans, on the other hand, claim that the Czech language shall only be recognized in those towns and districts where there is a considerable Czech population. ”

“ The common will is to abandon it. Unfortunately, the Czech language is of limited use, but there is now a remarkable passion for learning English, and there are thousands of students at the University classes. ”

“ Throughout Austria the struggle between Czechs and Germans is particularly keen over the schools. Two rival school associations, one German and the other Czech, use every means in their power, the one to Germanize the Czech children, and the other to teach them the cult of the Czech language and nationality. ”

“ The reformer Jan Huss, who, by the religious movement which he inaugurated, contributed so powerfully toward the assertion of nationality by the Czechs, gave an immense impulse to the development of Czech literature, and 1410—the year of his open breach with Rome—is commonly considered the beginning of a new era. Though a master of the Latin tongue, Huss preferred Czech for works which were designed for the people as a whole, and the language received at his hands a perfection which it had never before attained. ”

“ To that reason for the creation of a journal dealing with Bohemian questions in the English language the war has added a reason still more cogent. The war will decide whether Bohemia shall flourish or perish, whether the Czech tongue will continue to enrich the literatures of the world, or become one of the dead languages, whether the Czech people will again become one of the nations of the earth or be swallowed by German Kultur. ”

“ World War I got rid of the Austrians, the Nazis got rid of the Jews, the aftermath of World War II got rid of the Germans and Hungarians, and the Velvet divorce in 1998 got rid of the Slovaks. And so now, for the first time in centuries, the Czech people have a country, the Czech Republic, where people of the same ethnic origins make up about 98 percent of the population, and there is one official and uncontested language and a flourishing national culture (a reminder of the ethnic divisiveness of earlier times remains, however, in the Romany minority of about 250,000 gypsies) . ”

“ However, we did talk German in certain streets in Prague; it was a case of talking German or nothing. The Czech dialect is said to be of great antiquity and of highly scientific cultivation. Its alphabet contains forty-two letters, suggestive to a stranger of Chinese. It is not a language to be picked up in a hurry. We decided that on the whole there would be less risk to our constitution in keeping to German, and as a matter of fact no harm came to us. The explanation I can only surmise. The Praguer is an exceedingly acute person ”

“ Culturally the Slovaks remained constantly in close relation with the Czechs. The Magyars depend culturally on the Slovaks. The union of the Czechs and Slovaks is therefore a legitimate demand. The demand was made not only by the Czechs, but also by the Slovaks. The Slovaks will employ their own dialect in the schools and in the public administration; there can be no language question, because every Slovak, even without an education, understands Czech and every Czech understands Slovak. ”

“ But that the Czech could not long remain content without some intellectual pabulum in addition to the simple necessities is amply proven by the fact that barely had a handful of them settled in the state when they clamored for a newspaper published in their own language, that intelligence of the world and its progress might be purveyed among them. ”

“ The Czech churches in the country and in the cities, are now finding it necessary to carry on many of their activities in the English language in order to reach the young people, and the day is not very far distant when most of these churches will be using the English language entirely as our Dutch and German churches are doing. ”

“ In western and northern Bohemia a struggle for supremacy between German and Czech has been carried on for years with unabated vehemence. The scene of contest between the two peoples is often laid in individual communes. Clerical, industrial and educational influences are constantly at work for the extension of the linguistic area with which they side. On the whole the Bohemians, being in command of superior pecuniary resources, appear to be gaining ground, although from special causes the German element shows an advance in certain districts. ”

“ The National Revival also made a concerted attempt to create interest in traditional Bohemian and Moravian folk culture as central to the Czech identity (the survival of the language had owed a great deal to its continuing presence in the countryside) . Artists celebrated old folk costumes, and musicians deliberately emphasized traditional folk melodies in their operatic and symphonic compositions. ”

“ The material of this collection is a good reflection of the soul and thoughts of the Czech people, the simple rural people, in whom the love of their language and their traditions remained alive through centuries of oppression and repression. It is difficult to select any one of the ballads for preferential position, for every one of them has become near and dear to the Czech readers. ”

“ Without subscribing to Professor Mommsen's somewhat insolent dicta about 'inferior races,' one must admit that the Czech and German languages do not stand on altogether the same footing. German is a language spoken by some 60,000,000 of people, the language of a great literature and a great commerce. ”

“ It can only thrive on its own national soil, in the language inherited by the people. The heart of a nation can be reached only through its own language.”
The noble task of the Austrian rulers, according to the memorandum, is to lead the nations entrusted into their care to a true civilization, each of them in its own peculiar way. These were the arguments supporting the Czech demands in the “Denschrift über den gegenwärt Zustand des böhmischen Sprachunterrichtes an den Lehranstalten Böhmens.” ”

“ Czardas, zär′das (Hung. pron. chär′dosh) , n. a Hungarian national dance, consisting of two sections—a slow movement called a lassu or lassan, and a quick step, the friss or friska.
Czech, tshek, n. a member of the most westerly branch of the Slavic family of races, the term including the Bohemians, or Czechs proper, the Moravians, and the Slovaks: the language of the Czechs, Bohemian, closely allied to Polish.—adj., also Czech′ic. ”

“ There was an equality, beofre the law, of the German and the Czech languages even under Ferdinand; but that was only on paper. Czech complaints were suppressed by the censor. Bohemian and Moravian Estates relaxed in all their demands, especially the so-called State-Rights and Educational demands. There ewre afraid of education.
But the Czech nation grew in spite of all these obstacles. It took recourse to self-help. ”

“ Such is, in its broadest outlines, the Czech poetry of recent years. It is the poetry of a nation that has been labouring under a heavy yoke, but whose bonds have at length been shattered. And in its verse is heard the exultant cry of freedom, the vigorous utterance of young and lusty spirits. The poetry of the Czechs has won for itself a place among the poetry of more favoured nations, whose languages are widely spoken and who are able to look back upon a glorious literary past. ”

“ They had no rich tradition of printed works written in Czech (literature, history, poetry, or even school books, the essential tools for cultural development) . All these had to be produced. A Czech tradition had to, as it were, be invented, so that the National Revival had an effective Czech content. It is an astonishing tribute to the untiring efforts of Czech intellectuals and artists that their efforts in the second half of the nineteenth century were so successful. ”