Czech

Czech is a West Slavic language spoken in Central Europe, especially in Bohemia and Moravia. The medieval Czech is called Old Czech.

Language

The Czech language, a member of the West Slavic language family, emerged around the year 1000. Its earliest phase, lasting up to the mid-12th century is referred to as early Old Czech. The period from the mid-12th century to 1500 is known as Old Czech.

Script

The Czech lands in the Middle Ages produced several orthographic reforms, the number of which is unparalleled in Europe. Old Czech was written using the Latin script.  The first stage is represented by the so-called simple orthography, an unsystematized use of the Latin alphabet before 1300. unparalleled in Europe. Old Czech was written using the Latin script. However, at the beginning of the 14th century, the need to accurately represent the language’s distinct phonetic features led to the development of a digraphic orthography. For example, using this orthographic system, the phoneme /č/ was written as “c(h)z”, while /ř/ appeared as “rs” or “rz”.

The first stabilized system for recording Czech speech was used by Prague-connected Jews in the first half of the 13th c. Utilizing Hebrew letters, they strictly differentiated between voiced and voiceless consonants and had more letters for recording sibilants and affricates at their disposal. At the beginning of the 14th c., a brilliant proposal of an orthographical system based on the Latin script appeared, however, it was limited only to a single scriptorium or several scribes.

The profoundly thought-out older digraph system, combining rules of Latin and German orthographies with an original contribution of the creator, is among contemporary European writing systems phonetically the most sensitive one. It perfectly discerns between voiced and voiceless sibilants and affricates, although it disrespects the boundary of voicing, featuring e.g. <zz> for a voiceless sibilant and <z> for a voiced one. For its complexity, comprising also a unique three-letter combination <chz>, it was only applied in a limited number of literary works.

The place of the prevailing system in the medieval era was occupied by the younger digraph system. Having crystallized in usage in the first half of the 14th c., it was far less ambitious with respect to precision, so that the letter <z>, for instance, stood for both a hissing and hushing sibilant. Despite its imprecision in this respect, this system proved to be effective enough to dominate the field.

In the early 15th c. up to 1419, Old Czech was also written down in Glagolitic script of the Benedictine Emauzy monastery in Prague. Only fragments of this activity remain, including one large volume of the Old Czech Glagolitic bible (1416).

At the beginning of the 15th c., in the year 1412, another splendid proposal of orthographical reform based on the Latin script appeared, most probably authored by the reform-minded Master John Huss. The diacritical orthography, aiming at reducing the number of digraphs and thus retaining only some of them (<ch>, <ie/ye>, partially <w>), exploited two kinds of diacritical marks, namely the dot (punctus rotundus, which would develop into a more conspicuous hook by the mid-15th c.) for signalling the marked consonants in pairs of phonemes such as r ‒ ř, z ‒ ž, l ‒ ł etc. and the accent (gracilis virgula) for signalling length of vowels (e.g. á, é) and sonants (e.g. ŕ). The proposal formulated in the tractate Orthographia Bohemica further suggested discerning <v> and <w> according to the place of articulation of these allophones. Huss in his writings cares most for <i> and <y> and <l> and <ł>, the author of the anonymous treatise puts at its end stress on <i/y>, on <c> instead of <cz> and furthermore on differentiating <v/w>. In the tractate two writing systems are named which probably served as inspirational sources, the Hebrew alphabet and the Glagolitic script. In 1412 there occurs the first indirect evidence of the use of the novel orthography in the writings of John Huss. Early attestations in the 1410s stem all from literary activities of the Hussʼ circle. Although the diacritical orthography significantly simplified writing down Czech, it proved difficult for the scribes to adopt it consistently and there appear very few manuscripts respecting the reform to a high degree. Most scribes would employ a mixture consisting of the younger digraph system and selected diacritical marks. Vowel quantity was not yet marked by an accent in incunables.

Cryptographical use of Czech has also been documented in the Middle Ages, be that for incomprehensibility of this vernacular in foreign countries (Albert Beheim, see below) or in a rather simple cipher in the case of John Hussʼ encoded messages during his imprisonment in Constance.

Literature

Czech continuous texts emerged only around the mid-13th c. Before that time, only Bohemisms (Czech phonetical, morphological and lexical features in foreign words), bohemica (Czech words in foreign texts, e.g. proper nouns in chronicles and charters, the latter containing also juridical terminology), glosses and inscriptions are attested, extending to the length of a compoud sentence at the most. The oldest spiritual song Hospodine, pomiluj ny, possibly from the second half of the 10th c., lived mostly in oral tradition, judging from its performance during coronations, before battles etc. From the 11th century, only 17 bohemica are attested. The first Czech simple sentence comes probably from the end of the 11th c. and consists of only three words (<strahotelnu tacii>), interpreted as Strachotě lnú tací (ʻsuch lean towards Strachota, i.e. Methodiusʼ). There are hundreds of glosses from the 12th c., including glosses in Czech and Czech Church Slavonic (Jagić Glosses and Patera Glosses), and the 13th c., often in charters and chronicles (such as the Cosmas Chronicle, which itself contains in its Latin text about 400 bohemica). The first compound sentence is added as a secondary inscription on a Foundation Charter of the Litoměřice Chapter from 1057, the sentence was inscribed probably at the beginning of the 13th c. There is, nevertheless, another candidate in Hebrew script in a commentary authored by a pupil of the most famous medieval Jewish exeget Rashi, Joseph Kara (died in the 1120s). The commentary is preserved in a later copy yet displays archaic linguistic features. In the first half of the 13th c. monumental works originated in Bohemia such as the Latin Codex Gigas, the largest preserved manuscript in the world, and two immense Hebrew works, the Arugat Ha-Bosem, preserved in two redactions, and partially Or Zarua. These Hebrew writings comprise dozens of Old Czech vocables in their eldest attestations, the oldest Czech direct speech, the first metalinguistic use of Czech, three or even four-language synonymic rows (e.g. Hebrew ‒ Old French ‒ Old Czech ‒ German equivalents) and explanations of semantics of Old Czech words. There must have existed orally performed cultic pagan songs, epic songs and folklore compositions as some of these are repeatedly mentioned in ecclesiastical bans as “diabolical songs”.

Between 1244 and 1256 the papal legate Albert Beheim (Bohemus) wrote his extensive diary in which Old Czech was used in a cryptographical function in four notes dealing with property and sexual matters. At the same time around the mid-13th c., the German colonisation in Czech lands culminated, resulting in increasing impact of German in the following decades and centuries, e.g. between 1350 and 1500 there occurred over 500 German loans in Old Czech. In the years 1278‒1285 the oldest Czech written song, the Ostrov Song, was recorded, a 16-verset long euphonically elaborated masterpiece on the history of salvation. Another exclusive composition is Kunhutaʼs Prayer, consisting of 152 versets. Among curiosities almost incomprehensible Czech sentences belong intended for memorizing and thus revealing the order of important feasts of saints during the ecclesiastical year, which are called cisiojani (singular cisiojanus). The oldest one in Czech stems from the second half of the 13th c. (from before 1258 up to 1278). Religious literature reached its early peak when around 1300 the translations of both an evangeliary and a psalter were prepared, surviving however only in later copies. The courts of the last mighty Přemyslid kings were to a certain degree Germanised as proved by three minnesang compositions of the king Wenceslas II.

After 1300, the noblemen enter the Czech literature and the literary history suddenly evidences a large amount of versed epic. The first great author composed the oldest circle of Czech legends written in the older Czech digraph system in the first decade. At that time the Old Czech Alexandreis occurred, a high-style modelled octosyllabic translation comprising originally around 9000 versets of which only about a third has survived till our days. The Czech version appeared shortly after a German translation. Around 1310 the first Czech-written chronicle (Dalimilʼs Chronicle) appeared showing an anti-German tendency and a simple style. The first Czech drama piece of work called Mastičkář (Ungentarius), masterfully combining the sacred and the profane in the milieu of multilingual Prague, comes from the first half of the 14th c. From the same time we possess the oldest Czech-written legal book (Kniha rožmberská).

Czech prose arose only in the mid-14th century, the first author being the Dominican, an anonymous learned member of the order of preachers. He translated Život Krista Pána, Pasionál (including a Latin St. Wenceslas legend composed by the Emperor Charles IV) and functioned as the head of the Dominican group of translators preparing the first Old Czech bible in the 1350s. The other group, using a slightly different terminology and a more archaic language, were probably Benedictines. We do not know for whom the translation was made. Its early copy, the Dresden Bible, was burned in Louvain, Belgium, in 1914 under the German attack. Luckily, about one third of the text has survived in photocopies and in handwritten copied parts. In the second half of the 14th c. Prague experienced a rapid growth as the seat of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Charles IV and its university, first north of the Alps, attracted scholars from neighbouring countries. At that time, the Czech lands comprised around 3 million people, of which the highest share fell to Bohemia (ca. 1 million). In the plans of the Emperor, Prague was projected as the New Rome. It quadrupled in size, with its population of about 40 thousand people it could compete with London and it became one of the European largest centres of concentration of clerics, boasting with relics of saints and the largest square in contemporary Europe. The university teacher Claretus de Solencia (shortened as Klaret) compiled in the 1360s versed dictionaries unparalleled in European langauges of the time, broadening the terminology by sophisticated coinages and by loans, also from Croatian Church Slavonic of the Emauzy monastery in Prague. A former student of the university Tomáš Štítný of Štítné ventured writing in the Czech vernacular about theological and philosophical scholastic questions, founding thus the Czech scientific style. The period saw a speedy enrichment of the Czech vocabulary (estimations speak about 30 per cent). Only in the last quarter Czech enters the charters and even later Central European diplomacy.

The artistic peak of the Old Czech versed epic is the St Catherine Legend (2nd half of the 14th c.), an excellent octosyllabic, euphonically composed and on symmetry and symbolical role of colours focused translation by a non-Praguian author. Its counterpart in the courtly love lyrics in the relatively short Záviš Song (probably by Záviš of Zápy), featuring frequent diminutives, metaphors of animals and formal complexity. A prosaic counterpart and a peak of the existential philosophy is Tkadleček, based on a German model (Ackermann aus Böhmen) but exceeding it four times. It was composed shortly after 1407 and presents a dispute between a man and the Misfortune, abounding at the same time in rhetorical devices such as repetitio. Czech in written records shows linguistic unity as it is consitently based during the whole Middle Ages predominantly on the Central Bohemian dialect. Such a unity is extraordinary in the Central European area and even in a broader European context.

Advancement of the Czech lands is mirrored also in efforts to reform the Church. Already in the latter half of the 14th c. there appeared reform preachers such as the Moravian Jan Milíč of Kroměříž, the author of the lengthiest medieval tractate on communion, and foreigners Matthias of Janov and Conrad Waldhauser. Whereas during the reign of Charles IV these increasing conflicts were successfully averted, they burst out during the reign of his son Wenceslas IV: the greatest pogrom in Prague Jewish town in Czech history took place in 1389 and the tension between Czechs vs. Germans, adherents to Wycliffism vs. orthodoxy, philosophical realists vs. nominalists gradually intensified and escalated after the Kuttenberg Decree of 1409 inverting the votes at the Prague university in favour of the Czech nation, which resulted in departure of German masters. Only in Prague there arose a real eucharistic movement stressing frequent communion and Prague universityʼs philosophical realism made it an exception among comparable European institutions. Master Jeroným Pražskýʼs (or Jerome of Pragueʼs) definition of a true Bohemian at the beginning of the 15th c. emphasized also mastering of the Czech language.

 In the head of the wing of Czech university masters appeared John Huss, who took over the idea of predestination from Wycliff and whose burning at the stake during the Counsil of Constance in 1415 ignited the Hussite revolutionary movement, to a high degree identified with the Czech language (note that the Old Czech word jazyk denoted both ,a nationʻ and ,a languageʻ). Huss had aimed at intermediating the reform ideas to wider public and after he had to flee from Prague and lost his Bethlehem Chapelʼs numerous audiences he turned to writing his works in Czech in 1412, facilitating the writing system by diacritical marks and orientation of the reader by introducing a subject index for the first time into the Czech literature. His Czech writings display a great mastery of rhetorical devices catching the recipientsʼ attention, including rhetorical questions, gradation, apostrophe and word puns, keeping the high style by archaic features in phonetics and phonology, but enlivening it with progressive morphological traits and a variety of vocabulary layers, including coinages, idioms, compounds and diminutives featuring negative expressivity and often scolding ecclesiastical officialsʼ immorality (e.g. břichoplncě, hodokvásek, změtenička, krkáček). His intention to supply Czech words instead of Germanisms and Latinisms rank him as the first purist of language on the Czech soil. This Bohemo-centric character of the movement, the first successful split within the Christian West, resulted in deep-rooted Czech messianism.

As inter arma silent musae, the 15th c. saw shrinking and rearranging of genres of vernacular Czech production. The Czech language entered the field of Central European diplomacy, the radical currents of Hussitism fully Bohemicized liturgy (as evidenced by the celebrated Jistebnice Hymnbook of the 1420s) and oral genres such as preaching, rhymed chants, sung hymns and agitation speeches dominated in the public, bringing with themselves also approximation of written language to spoken Czech, visible in some respects already in John Hussʼ Czech writings. Legends on saints were no more cultivated, many monastic libraries were burnt down and the Czech lands infamous for heretic teaching became isolated from business and intellectual routes. The Hussite military terminology (píšťala, hákovnice, tarasnice etc.) was in the form of loans spreading across European languages. The greatest Czech poet of the time, the anonymous author of the epic preserved in the Budyšín Manuscript with more than 4,000 versets, voiced for the first time the principle of the sole Scripture, known later as sola Scriptura, and did not forget to warn against Germans, paralleling Hussʼ handwritten mocking note Haha, Němci, haha directed towards Germans in his copy of Wycliffʼs writings.

Importantly, the Old Czech bible production rapidly grew during the 15th c. As early at its dawn it ceased to be limited to monasteries and became a sign of luxury and wealth of the layman elite circles. Around 1410, the Huss-minded reform university intellectuals prepared already the third redaction of the Old Czech translation, which unexpectedly excels in word-for-word literal translation. Knowledge of the bible and its aural and even visual perception became relatively widespread as testified by the pope-to-be Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini confirming that a Czech woman in the country masters the bible better than many of Italian priests. There are nearly thirty complete manuscript bibles in Czech preserved from the 15th c. The Czech bible underwent modernization of its language in the mid-15th c. in the version prepared by the Utraquist Bishop Martin Lupáč, only to return to the more conservative style in the early prints of the complete Bible representing the fourth Old Czech redaction. Although the radical Hussites were defeated at Lipany in 1434, their heritage, combined also with the inspirations by the ruminating pacifist Petr Chelčický, developed in 1467 into the first successfully established Christian denomination fully independent on the pope, the Unity of the Brethren. At that time it was a prosecuted and illegal sect gathering less that one per cent Czech-speaking populace but embracing fully the Czech language, including liturgy. On the contrary the main current of the Utraquists inclined to a mixed type of mass liturgy, with some parts in Czech and others in Latin. The town scribe Prokop composed in the 1450s the first manual for Czech-written charters and letters entitled Ars dictandi.

With the arrival of the book printing into the Czech lands in the 1470s, the spread of information radically changed since European incunable production outnumbered the whole medieval manuscript copying output. The first Czech-language book, unsurprisingly a New Testament (the New Testament with a Signet) was published in the early 1480s (1481‒1484) in the Catholic southwestern town of Pilsen. The Czech lands stand out in the incunable European production in the proportion occupied by prints in the vernacular. Whereas in England such a proportion reached 61 per cent and in Spain 50 per cent, there were 85 per cent Czech language prints, confirming the importance of the vernacular in the overall local cultural situation. Towards the end of the century The Kuttenberg Peace Treaty (1485) for the first time in the European history legalized two equal Christian faiths, namely the Catholics and the Utraquists.

Influence

In the Middle Ages, Czech appears as the most important vernacular West Slavic language overall. It is the only highly developed standard Slavic vernacular in the Middle Ages, displaying in the 14th century a variety of genres unrivalled even in Western Europe, entering in the 15th c. also diplomatic communication in Central Europe and Christian liturgy, the most sacred language function. As for the lexical heritage from Common Slavic, Old Czech preserved 98 per cent of the Common Slavic core vocabulary and shows the greatest proximity among all Slavic languages to Old Church Slavonic vocabulary. In language typology Czech has remained the most inflectional Slavic language, the Old Czech being even a more inflecting tongue. Up until the present day, the Czech declension of nouns in plural has been the most conservative among Slavic languages as well as the use of transgressives, differentiated according to gender and number. The amount of Old Czech vocabulary as preserved in written records and indicated by Old Czech dictionaries exceeds 100,000 lexemes, which represents according to estimations about two thirds of the then existing words.

The advancement of medieval vernaculars may be measured according to the Bible translations, which represented the most expensive and largest written works and before the spread of print equalled in the price to a smaller dominion. A complete translation of the bible into Old Czech emerged in the mid-14th c. with sanctification of the highest political and ecclesiastical authorities and Czech became only the third European vernacular after French and Italian to accomplish this task. The preserved medieval production of whole Old Czech bibles reaches about thirty and comparison with Old Polish with its single incomplete bible of the Queen Sophia from the mid-15th c., adapted moreover from Old Czech, reveals the cultural superiority of the Czech lands at that time. Anne of Luxemburg (or Good Queen Anne, Anne of Bohemia), the wife of the English king Richard II, brought with herself to England a trilingual gospel version in Latin, Czech and German and the first translation of the Bible into English, the Wycliffite Bible, refers in the preface to Beemers (ʻBohemiansʼ) possessing their vernacular Bible. The first incunable Czech bible was issued in Prague in 1488, ranking fourth among European vernaculars.

Czech served as the standard Slavic written language in the Slovak territories, especially in the west, since at least the 15th c., possibly already in the second half of the 14th c. Its influence continued in the following periods.

The medieval Czech language had a huge impact on Polish. It is estimated that 70 per cent of Polish religious terminology comes from the contact with Czech and Czech Church Slavonic. During the 12th and 13th centuries the Czech influence intensified and also lexical items from civilization semantic field were taken over, in the 14th c. accompanied by legal (pokuta, trestać) and school terms (szkoła, żak) and also personal names (e.g. Wacław). Many instances of early Polish literature, such as Fragments of Evangeliary of Kraków Regular Canons, Psałterz floriański, Psałterz puławski, were heavily dependent on Czech models and the first treatise on Polish orthography (ca. 1440) by Jakub Parkoszowic quoted parts of Orthographia Bohemica. There are mentions about Bohemopoloni (Bohemizing Poles), Czech became even a fashionable speech of the noblemen and penetrated to the Polish royal court. A Polish nobleman Łukasz Górnicki concludes as late as the 1560s that Czech is the most perfect language used in Poland. Some features of Czech diacritical orthography became domesticated in Polish written records.

Under Přemysl Otakar II, who ruled also in Austria, Czech became for a short time a fashionable speech in high circles of Vienna. The earliest Lusatian written records comprised significant Bohemisms, e.g. the earliest Upper Lusatian oaks of the Bautzen citizens from the end of the 15th c. The earliest Lower Lusatian manuscript translation of the New Testament (1548) largely relied on its Czech printed model. Several Old Czech words penetrated into medieval Croatian due to mutual relations between the Emauzy monastery and the Slavic South. The medieval Czech also influenced Yiddish, one element (nebech from Old Czech nebohý ,poor, pitifulʻ) spreading universally, some others (e.g. smetene ʻcreamʼ, knihe ʻpart of a cowʼs stomachʼ), including proper nouns (e.g. Černe, Dobra, Dražna), travelled with their bearers eastward to Poland and further. Names of Czech origin appear on Jewish tombstones also in some German regions. Via Poland the influence of Old Czech in the 15th c. reached the Ruthenian language, e.g. in the biblical translation of the Song of Songs and in juridical formulas in charters. For some time Czech exerted influence in the 15th c. also in Lower Hungary, especially during the reign of Matthias Corvinus. Bohemisms must have certainly influenced German dialects and the language of gypsies in the very Czech lands, too.

Interesting facts

The origin of the name Čech. One of the etymological riddles is the origin of the ethnical name of Bohemians so that etymological expositions in this case outnumber all other ethnonyms. The most probable hypothesis links the name with a Slovenian appellative čėh ʻa boy between 10 and 15 years of ageʼ and Kashubian čech ʻa young kidʼ.

Dean Cosmasʼ resourceful handling of Czech words. Cosmas the Chronicler wrote his work in elegant Latin but his linguistic background in Czech was also projected into his narration of Czech history. He not only mentions the names of rulers, towns or their parts (including the old name for Vyšehrad Chvrasten, elsewhere unattested) but incorporates the names into the Latin syntactical structure in a declined form necessitated by a Czech translation (de gente Vršovic, from the family of Vršovici; Vršovic is a genitive plural), supplies etymologies (Vojtěch interpreted as Exercitus consolatio, ʻConsolation of troopsʼ), paraphrases Czech idioms in Latin or gives a Latin translation for specific meanings of Czech equivalents. Also Czech words in Hebrew script in the 13th c. are sometimes given in a declined form fitting into a Czech translation of the passage, e.g. the contact genitive pěny after a Hebrew verb with the meaning ʻto touchʼ.

Albertus Bohemus and his Czech passages. The dean of the Passau Chapter was forced to flee more times under dramatic circumstances. His Latin and German diary includes four Czech cryptographic passages, two of which deal with his property deposited with some persons and the other two offer a recipe for an afrodiziakum and an abortive means, respectively.

Voynichʼs manuscript. This undeciphered most mysterious manuscript in the world, which originated in the first third of the 15th c. (1404‒1438) and was later possessed by Rudolph II in his art collections in Prague, may have been written according to one hypothesis in Old Czech yet no persuasive arguments have been submitted yet.

Vulgarisms. As is not unusual in language development, some swear words and vulgarisms underwent a semantic change since the Old Czech times. For example, the Old Czech mrdati had a neutral meaning ʻto move, to shakeʼ. Some Old Czech vulgarisms disappeared such as pezd ʻassʼ or survived only in proper nouns (Pezda, Vavák, Kepka ‒ cf. Old Czech kep ʻvulvaʼ). No wonder that metaphors for body parts and sexual intercourse were drawn from the then everyday experience, cf. koník ʻpenisʼ, přěs pole přějěti ʻto have sex with somebodyʼ.

Depreciating place names Kotopeky, Daskabáty. These composite derogatory place names belong to the oldest layer of Czech toponyms (roughly the 11th c.). There are dozens of attestations, e.g. Daskabáty (a village of thieves where you would be robbed of your coat), Všetaty (a village where everybody is a thief), Kotojedy (a village of eaters of cats), Doloplazy (people living in a sunken area), Postoloprty (a village of shoemakers), Mlékojedy (a village of those who drink milk), Bosonohy (a village of people with barren feet) etc.

Artificial Old Czech in 19th-c. frauds. The most frequently published work of Czech literature during the 19th c. generally were the Rukopis zelenohorský (Zelená Hora Manuscript) and the Rukopis královédvorský (Dvůr Králové Manucript), two Romantic frauds allegedly dated to the 10th and 13th centuries, respectively, celebrating the ancient fame of the Slavs and their heroic deeds. Only in the 1880s did Czech philology undertake decisive steps to expose these collections and some other compositions as modern deceptions.

External resources

Vokabulář webový ‒ a hub for Old Czech dictionaries, linguistic corpora, older Czech grammars and lexicographic works. Includes also a reader of Old Czech, you may listen to some stretches of Old Czech literature with short introductions.

http://www.syd.korpus.cz ‒ application enabling to compare two or more variants in Czech diachronic corpora

Český národní korpus ‒ the nest of corpora of the Czech language, including its diachronic stages

Čeština z Křížových rukopisů - YouTube ‒ listen to several Old Czech texts occurring in the manuscripts of Oldřich Kříž of Telč in the 15th c.

http://www.manuscriptorium.com ‒ a collection of digitized manuscripts on-line