Abstract
Explores the sources, processes and consequences of various forms of language planning which ultimately led to the current situation in Czech as a mother tongue. A point stressed in the chapter, which has special significance for any discussion on language planning, is the rejection by a substantial number of Czech linguists, Czech society in general, and the government itself of state interference in most forms of language-use-and-development activity, in the period since the dismantlement of the socialist/communist system in the early 1990s. Particular attention is paid to disputes, since the start of the new era, between linguists with sharply opposing views on the merits of prescribing norms for language use and development.
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- 1.
The Prague Linguistic Circle was established on 6 October 1926. It was a grouping of linguists and literary theorists who applied a structuralist-functionalist approach to linguistic and literary research.
- 2.
The Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts (Česká akademie věd a umění) was established in 1890; from 1953 to 1992 it was called the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Česko-slovenská akademie věd); its current name (Akademie věd České republiky) dates from 1992.
- 3.
The alternative versions prezident, filozofie, univerzita, gymnázium were not officially codified until the 1970s.
- 4.
Under the new 1993 Rules, the decision on using initial capitals for honorific purposes is more frequently left up to the discretion of the writer.
- 5.
It should be noted that the authors of the Rules of Czech Orthography invited input and discussion well in advance of the scheduled date of publication, issuing a brochure entitled What the New Rules of Czech Orthography Are Bringing (Co přinášejí nová Pravidla českého pravopisu 1991). No significant objections or protests against the proposed new rules were registered, and so the Ministry of Education (which issues the final approval of all codification documents and textbooks) initially ordered the Rules to be introduced from the school year 1993/94. The Ministry later rescinded this order as a result of protests and declarations by the mass media that they would continue to use the previous codification. However, many teachers had already begun using the new Rules, and this caused problems at school-leaving examinations and university entrance examinations. The authors of the Rules also retreated somewhat in the face of the protests; in 1994 they published an Addendum to the Rules (Dodatek k Pravidlům), which reversed the changes to many loanwords and returned them to their original forms.
- 6.
For example, the author of this chapter experienced problems when checking in to a hotel in Washington, D.C., with her seventeen-year-old son: the receptionist did not understand that Srp and Srpová could be members of the same family. People outside the Czech Republic cannot be expected to be aware of the principles of Czech morphology.
- 7.
In the relevant approval clause, the Ministry of Education explicitly adds the new edition of the Rules to “the list of textbooks for elementary schools for the teaching subject ‘Czech Language’” and requires the authors of teaching texts to abide by the Rules. Moreover, no publication can denote itself as a textbook until it has been granted approval by the Ministry.
- 8.
One unfortunate consequence of this is young people’s limited ability to express their thoughts. A contributing factor is the continuing effort to ensure objective assessment, leading to an increase in written forms of testing. Tests frequently require students merely to choose from a number of options, and questions requiring students to formulate answers in their own words are sporadic.
- 9.
This echoes the situation in the nineteenth century when some secondary school teachers published grammars for their students, drawing on their own subjective views of the Czech language. The first unified compendium presenting standard Czech orthography and grammar was not published until 1902.
- 10.
Moravia (along with Silesia and Bohemia) is a historical province that forms part of the Czech Republic . A declaration of ‘Moravian’ as a mother tongue is in reality a declaration of Moravian nationalism by a certain group of the population and an expression of rebellion against the perceived ‘repression’ of Moravia by the capital city Prague (and Bohemia in general). In any case, the notion of a standard Moravian language is a chimera, because the large variety of dialects and the wide use of standard Czech by the Moravian population make any codification of ‘Moravian’ virtually impossible.
- 11.
In the late 1930s some left-wing linguists proposed the introduction of Russian as a compulsory foreign language in Czechoslovak schools, but without success. Under the Nazi occupation (1939–1945) German was a compulsory school subject, as well as being the medium of tuition in all other school subjects.
- 12.
During communist era often Russian teachers themselves lacked enthusiasm for the subject, and this naturally had a negative impact on their lessons. It was well known that the less successful secondary school students had a higher chance of being accepted to study at university if they applied for teacher training degrees in two subjects: Russian in combination with another subject.
- 13.
Some high-ranking political representatives are willing to pay exorbitant fees to educate their children at private schools teaching in foreign languages rather than sending them to public schools.
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Srpova, H. (2018). Forms of Language Planning and Policy in the Czech Republic. In: Andrews, E. (eds) Language Planning in the Post-Communist Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70926-0_12
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