Jak mluvil (a psal) český venkovan na přelomu 18. a 19. století? // How did Czech country folks speak (and write) at the turn of the 19th century?

Abstract

The paper deals with authentic written and spoken utterances of ordinary Czech people of the turn of the 19th century, as recorded in linguistic works by the Czech philologist and translator František Jan Tomsa (1751–1814). It analyses the examples published in the books Elementarwerk der böhmischdeutsch- und lateinischen Sprache (1784), Von den Vorzügen der čechischen Sprache (1812), Über die Veränderungen der čechischen Sprache (1805), and Über die Bedeutung, Abwandlung und Gebrauch der čechischen Zeitwörter (1804), which are at least partly written with scholarly precision and often provide accurate information about who said what when, and in what situation. Thus they represent a unique source of information not only about the manner of speaking of ordinary Czech people at the beginning of the National Revival period and about the differences between the language spoken in Prague and in the country, but also about the usual topics of conversation, including the history of agriculture.

Keywords

• František Jan Tomsa
• Czech National Revival
• colloquial language
• history of Czech language
• history of grammatography