Talk:History of the Czech language

"literal" vs. "literary"

I would change the use of "literal" to "literary". "Literal" in English means, "in accordance with the exact meaning of words". For example, "he hit the roof" is a figurative expression meaning he was angry; he did not literally "hit the roof". If you mean the written language, as opposed to colloquial language, you mean "literary". In English dictionaries this difference is noted thusly: "lit." and "col.". Česky literarní je "literary" v Angličtině. Sladek 15:05, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

The National "Renaissance"

I corrected the spelling of Renaissance, but in English, we commonly refer to this period as The National Revival, as it revived the Czech language and national identity. Sladek 15:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for corrections of my English. My dictionary offers "revival", "renascence", "rebirth", "regeneration" or "renaissance" for "obrození". It is difficult for me to choose the most suitable equivavalent. But I think that "The National Revival" would be better than "The National Renaissance" --Pajast 13:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, all of those are offered for "obrozeni"--it's difficult to know when to use which word. We use "Renaissance" as the specific period of European history, or, more generally, "a movement or period of vigorous artistic and intellectual activity". "rebirth" would also work, but, for some reason, we use "Revival" in this case. Some historians probably use a different term.Sladek 16:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Transcription

In this article, I used a linguistic trascription which is usually used by Czech linguists. Since it could be uncomprehensible for non-Czech speaker, this is my attempt to translate it into the IPA characters:

Czech	IPA
š	ʃ
ž	ʒ
c	ts
č	tʃ
ř	r̝
ď	ɟ
ť	c
ň	ɲ
y	ɨ
ch	x
ä, a̋	æ, æ:
ě, ie	ʲɛ, ʲɛ:
' (apostrophe) e.g. s'	ʲ (palatization) sʲ
ę, ǫ	ẽ, ő (nasalized vowels)
´ (acute) e.g. á, ĺ	: (length) a:, l:

I found no sources for this. It is only my idea. Therefore, I place the table here. Your opinion is welcome. --Pajast 15:37, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The main article on the Czech language has IPA transcriptions. I will ask my teachers. Thanks for posting it! Sladek 16:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Oldest Czech sentence

Could someone help me translate the oldest known Czech sentence into contemporary Czech and then into English?

Pauel dal geʃt ploʃcoucih zemu
Wlah dalgeʃt dolaʃ zemu iʃuiatemu ʃcepanu ʃeduema duʃnicoma bogucea aʃedlatu
(in transcription: Pavel dal jest Ploškovcích zem’u. Vlach dal jest Dolás zem’u i sv’atému Ščepánu se dvěma dušníkoma Bogučeja a Sedlatu.)

Contemporary Czech:
Pavel dal Ploškovcím/Ploškovcům (Ploskovicím/Ploskovicům) zemi. Vlach dal Dolas (Dolanům?) zemi a svatému Štěpánu se dvěma dušníky (poddanými/nevolníky?) Bogučejem a Sedlatem.

English:
Paul gave a land to Ploskovice. Vlach gave a land with two serfs (?) Bogučej and Sedlat to Dolas (?) and to St. Stephen

Thank you for help. --Pajast 08:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I think better would be (in the Czech word order)"Paul gave a land in Ploškovice/Ploskovice. Vlach gave a land in Dolany to St.Stephen with two servants, Bogučej and Sedlata." Since I think that -ch in "ploskoucich" and -s "dolas" are variants of the old locative case. And the second servant is definitely not Sedlat, he's Sedlata. --213.220.227.217 (talk) 14:45, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

According other version is extinct word dušník connected with contemporary word duše, duch (=soul,spirit); dušník may be priest. Some circumstances indicate it; for example discovery of the document in old church town, used name of "serfs" in the document, name Bogučej (Bog, Bůh = God). --88.83.179.154 (talk) 07:08, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, -ás denotes an old locative, an archaic feature that gradually disappeared from Old Czech during late 11th through early 13th century. Ploškovice is modern day Ploskovice and Dolany is nowadays called Dolánky nad Ohří, both these are villages located within several miles from Litoměřice (the charter mentions for the first time several dozens other settlements from that region, which makes it a key source for oldest history of many villages, for more comprehensive list and other details on the charter see cs:Zakládací listina litoměřické kapituly).

Saint Stephen here is a title of main church in Litoměřice (nowadays a cathedral), in other words the described property is given to the Chapter of Litoměřice. Word Bogu (to God) is missing before "and Saint Stephen".

Bog- component of the first serf's name does not in any way indicate a relation to clergy/priesthood - no more than e.g. names Gotthard or Gottfried in German do. This just happens to be one of many Czech/Slavic names beginning with root for "God". Even in the Modern Czech we have Bohuslav, Bohumil, Bohumír, Bohdan etc. and in the Middle Ages there were much larger corpus of them. The name Bohučej is however no longer extant...

And dušník (the suffix -ík here denotes a person pertaining to duše (soul) - cf. hřích (sin) and hříšník (sinner) or zahrada (garden) and zahradník (gardener)) in terminology of that time was indeed a kind of serf, who was donated or bequeathed to the church (in this case specifically to Chapter of Litoměřice) for sake of donator's soul. In other words the priests' prayers for soul of the donator were backed by income from those fields and serfs.

NB, that name Vlach also may denote an Italian or more generally someone of Romance origin (as opposite to Slavic and Germanic ethnicity, cf. Vlachs). And regarding domestic Czech names in the period mentioned, "noble" composite names were widespread only among people of high status, while most of mid- and low-ranking people went by simpler names, Sedlata being a prime example of such "plainer" name.

Thus roughly translated into Modern Czech:

Pavel dal v Ploskovicích zemi. Vlach dal v Dolanech zemi Bohu a svatému Štěpánu se dvěma poddanými, Bohučejem a Sedlatou. (word order retained)

Which yields in English:

Paul gave a land in Ploskovice. Vlach gave to God and Saint Stephen a land in Dolany with two serfs, Bogučej and Sedlata.

--Miaow Miaow (talk) 21:34, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

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Origin of vowel length

I am curious if Czech long vowels correspond to vowel length distinctions in Proto-Slavic or other modern Slavic languages, or if they arose some other way. I remember reading a Czech grammar that said the origin was unknown. It was an old book, so perhaps there are theories today. The current version of the article doesn't discuss this topic. — Eru·tuon 00:35, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

@Erutuon: See here.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:43, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

@Erutuon: The link above is broken. To my knowledge, the length is not old, but arose whenever the following syllable contained a yer that eventually disappeared, as a kind of compensatory lengthening – or maybe the length already arose allophonically before the fall of the yers (Havlík's law suggests that even yers themselves were lengthened, originally allophonically, before unlengthened yers), thus already in the Common Slavic (or Common West Slavic) period. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:24, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

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