Slovak 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. ”

“ It is enough if we remember the love for our neighbours that is the basis of respect for diversity.
Dear guests, dear fellow citizens,
Slovak history is a history full of struggles. The struggle for our own language, for statehood, the struggle to preserve our faith, for civil liberties, for recognition and for visibility. Each of these struggles has helped to make Slovakia better and been accompanied by positive patriotism and social awakening. We are now witnessing another awakening in society – a political and civic awakening of an inconspicuous and somewhat invisible silent majority. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here among the Slovaks, the seed sown by the American missionary at home and abroad has brought forth more vital fruit, perhaps, than on the home soil. Although these Slovak disciples have gone out to save only this one or that one, they are helping to save a nation and are lifting a race out of degeneration.
Nominally, Jan Chorvat was a teacher in the Slovak language to our expedition; and to learn the more effectually, my students often went with him on his tours from village to village. ”

“ For many centuries the two peoples have had a common literary language; their writers and scholars long maintained that they were a single nation; and if in the last century an effort has been made to develop a distinct Slovak literary language, it has made no great progress. ”

“ The Magyars, in pursuance of this policy, do their best to suppress the Slovak nationality in every way, even to the extent of taking away Slovak children to be brought up as Magyars, and denying them the right to use their language in church and school. The result is a large emigration to America. (See letters by Scotus Viator in Spectator, 1906 sqq.)
The Slovaks are a peaceful, rather slow race of peasants (their aristocracy is Magyarized) , living almost exclusively upon the land, which they till after the most primitive methods. ”

“ The masses have no more intercourse with the rulers than they can help. Linguistic and religious differences intensify the breach.
While the Slovaks form compact populations in the mountains of northern Hungary, their colonies are found scattered throughout the southern parts of this country except in the Transylvanian districts. The campaign waged by Hungarians to suppress Slovak national aims renders the lot of these Slavs particularly trying. ”

“ Since the normal schools are all Magyar, it is obvious that the future teachers of Slovak children will have no means, except by private study, to learn the language of their little charges.
Neither Vienna nor Budapest will listen to their appeal for justice. The Lord is too high and the Emperor-King too far away to hear and see the Slovaks. ”

“ At the University of Budapest, the Slovak idiom is studiously ignored by the instructors, though the Slovaks are heavy taxpayers, and even a biased census concedes 10 per cent. Slovak population in the country. Slovak elementary schools are fast disappearing; those that still remain in Slovakland are either mixed, that is Slovak-Magyar, or pure Magyar. Under the provision of the Apponyi Law, Magyar is the only recognized language of instruction in elementary schools in Hungary which are attended by twenty or more Magyar children. ”

“ The Magyars lack a deeper culture. The Magyar people are in no respect superior to the Slovaks; quite the contrary is evident from the fact that the Magyar language has appropriated from the Slovak quite a number of terms pertaining to agriculture, administration and general culture. ”

“ Slovak, slō-vak′, adj. pertaining to the Slovaks, a branch of the Slavs in the mountainous districts of N.W. Hungary, their language little more than a dialect of Czech.—n. one of this race, or his language.—adjs. Slovak′ian, Slovak′ish.
Sloven, sluv′n, n. a man carelessly or dirtily dressed:—fem. ”

“ Although Slovak-land is an integral part of the Hungarian [152] kingdom, it has proved an attractive field for German colonization since the ninth century. The comitat of Zips was settled by a large colony of Germans in the middle of the twelfth century. Fifty years later the Teutons began to invade the comitats of Pressburg and Neutra [155] by advancing from the west. In Bars and Hont, to both of which they proceeded from the south, they were not known before the thirteenth century. The Germanization of Slovak districts was particularly intense during the Tatar invasion of this period. ”

“ In the other counties of the same district they live more mingled with Russniaks and Magyars; and, together with the numerous Slovakish settlements which are scattered over all Hungary, are computed in all at about 1,800,000. About 1,300,000 of them are Roman Catholics, and the remaining 500,000 Protestants.
The Slovakish language, exposed through the geographical situation of the nation, to the influence of various other Slavic idioms—as the Polish, Bohemian, Malo-Russian, Servian, and Vindish—is more broken up into different dialects than perhaps any living tongue. ”

“ The only thing which belongs to the Slovaks alone, and is not common to any of the other Slavic tongues, is a variety of diphthongs where all the rest have simple vowels; e.g. kuoñ, horse, for koñ; lieucz, light, for lucz, etc. In the counties situated on the frontiers of Galicia, the Slovakish language participates in many of the peculiarities of the Polish tongue; on the frontier of Moravia, the dialect of the people approaches nearer to the vernacular idiom of that province, and consequently to the Bohemian; which has been adopted as their own literary language. ”

“ The Slovaks for nearly a thousand years have retained their national consciousness, in spite of the fact that long ago they were conquered by the Magyars, who have used every possible means to wean them from their language, the one strong link binding them to their historic past. ”

“ Slovak is, in fact, merely a more archaic form of Czech. But whilst the Czechs of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, numbering six and a half millions, at the present day, have fought for the last thousand years against German aggression and suffered from German tyranny, the two and a half million Slovaks who inhabit north-eastern Hungary have had their chief and bitterest enemies in the Magyars. Now when Germans and Magyars are united for life and death in this struggle for dominance over Central Europe, what a joy it must be to them to suggest divisions between their victims! ”

“ The popularization of history, philosophy, of all sciences and arts and knowledge occupied such men as Václav Matěj Kramerius, founder of numerous newspapers and other periodical publications; Antonín J. Puchmajer, writer of many lovely lyrics expressed in purest Czech; Antonín Bernolák, noted Slovak and advocate of a separatist policy who chose as the vehicle for his valuable discussions the West-Slovak dialect; Václav Thám, author of many popular dramas and other plays instrumental in awakening the national spirit. ”

“ The Magyars, whether radical, as under Karolyi, or Bolshevist, as under Bela Kuhn, or Christian socialist, as under the present premier Friedrich, never give up hopes of getting the Slovaks back under their rule. There are still many Magyar officials scattered in Slovakia, there are many men, Slovak by birth, but thoroughly Magyarized, who hold positions of influence ”

“ Already in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it produced works, which would of themselves have constituted a great literature; in the nineteenth, sprouting from the grave of political freedom, it has borne fruit a hundredfold; dismemberment of the state and disfranchisement of the people have only intensified the vitality of the nation, which has found expression in one of the most original and remarkable of contemporary literatures.
The third group of the western division of the Slavonic languages is that known as Čech-Slovak. ”

“ To look at Úprka’s canvas is to look through a window into the Slovak heaven; his colors full of bold contrasts, shimmer in sunshine and shout with joy, even though the motive be a most simple one. His art aims at one thing only—to register on canvas what he sees around him, people at work, at their pleasures, in church, in the field. But everything he sees with a great master’s eye and so all his work is true, delicious art. Always he paints his own Slovak people and above all children, whom he loves. ”

“ Against the Czech aspirations is to be set, not only the matter of fact that Slovakia is by no means Czechia, but also the fact that at any rate a great majority of the Slovaks—in spite of the most furious instigation—do not at all wish to become Czechish, but desire an independent Slovak Republic, whose Government was, already constituted. ”

“ Simultaneously with the French Revolution the historians record the national awakening and renaissance of the Czechs and Slovaks, Magyars, Jugoslavs, and in general of all nations in Austria, Russia, etc., and the same applies to the Germans and Italians. This process of national individualisation is so powerful that we find attempts to create a separate existence for the Slovak, Ukrainian and other dialects and languages that had not as yet literary cultivation. ”

“ Many of the Slavs themselves are apt to exaggerate to the extent to which their languages resemble each other. M. Léger tells of a Slovak who was convinced that his native dialect would be freely understood in Moscow; he was soon disillusioned. V. Hrubý asserts in his "Comparative Handbook of the Slavonic Languages" that he "often had the opportunity of observing how Czech, Polish and Russian workmen conversed readily in their native idioms with Croat pedlars for hours at a time." ”

“ The Slovak lives an isolated life, sublimely ignorant of “wars and rumours of wars”; his breakfast is not spoiled by the glaring head-lines of the daily paper, nor does the magazine or novel press upon him the problems of human society. He knows his camp, his mine, his shop, and though he lives in America and in the most busy States in the Union, his world now is not much bigger than it was when its horizon touched his village pastures. ”

“ The use of Czech, Slovak, Polish, Ruthenian, Serb, Croat, and Slovene for centuries largely as rural languages, with German to a considerable extent a lingua franca for educated intercourse, and Magyar imposed in and around Hungary by an aristocracy, hindered the growth of the Slavonic languages until the nineteenth century, and in that century it has been especially Czech, Polish, and Croat that have pushed forward towards the status of languages of civilization. ”

“ Those Slovak lands which you will see bear not as yet the Turanian yoke; they still know not the sorrow which now for a thousand years has pierced the heavens as changelessly as their mountains eternally tower into the blue sky. ”

“ The Slovak appears mentally slow compared with the alert Magyar, but it must be remembered that the Hebrew in business makes other races than the Slav seem slow, and that, while almost all Magyars can read and write, one third of the Slovaks are illiterate. ”

“ The alphabet is founded on the Čech, the accent is always on the first syllable, long vowels are indicated by acute accents. There are usually reckoned to be three groups of dialects, Western, Central and Eastern; the first being nearest to Čech, the last to Little Russian; the Central dialects exhibit less decided features. The Slovak dialects spoken in Moravia have been well investigated by Bartoš, the others still await satisfactory treatment, as does the question of the relation of Slovak to other Slavonic groups. ”

“ But as a Moravian by birth I cannot understand how it is that for 46 years I have been a Čech and suddenly I find myself a Čechoslovak which means a Čech Slovak. I have always loved our Slovak brothers, but I object to the composite term. It seems to me that a Czechoslovak is either a Slovak who speaks Czech or a Czech who speaks Slovak or lives in Slovakia. Now that does not agree with similar terms. A Jugoslav is a Slav, a Little Russian is a Russian, and therefore Czechoslovak by analogy is a certain species of Slovak. ”

“ We form one nation with the Czechs. The Czech Declaration is among other things a great blow at the Magyar Government which has remained deaf to all Slovak protests. We are indebted to our Czech brothers in that, through them, the whole Europe speaks to day of the oppressed Slovak race.’
“Whoever knows the situation in Slovakia cannot doubt that even the common Slovak people will be captured by Czech agitation, unless we take the proper steps in time. The intellectual class of the Slovaks has for a long time been Czechs. ”

“ In the 12th century, together with the whole mining region of northern Hungary, it was colonized by German settlers, who later embraced the Reformation. Owing to the counter-reformation the German element was driven out during the 18th century, and its place taken by the actual Slovak population. ”