From Wikipedia:
“The Czechoslovak language (Czech: jazyk československý, Slovak: Československý jazyk) was a political sociolinguistic concept used in Czechoslovakia in 1920–1938 for the definition of the state language of the country which proclaimed its independence as the republic of two nations, i.e. ethnic groups, Czechs and Slovaks.
In practice, in the international documents this role was played by the Czech language. Meanwhile, the Constitution of 1920 and its derivative acts allowed the usage of minority languages provided they were spoken by not less than 20% of the local population of certain areas.
Officially the 1920 constitution was superseded on 9 May 1948 with the Ninth-of-May Constitution where the concept of the official language was omitted.
The Czech-Slav Society (also called the Society for the Czechoslovak Language and Literature) was created in 1829 by students of the Evangelical Lyceum in Bratislava, and became an important entity in the Slovak national movement.
In 1836, Ľudovít Štúr, the leader of the Slovak national revival in the 19th century wrote a letter to the important Czech historian František Palacký. Stating that the Czech language used by the Protestants in Upper Hungaryhad become incomprehensible for the ordinary Slovaks, Štúr proposed to create a unified Czechoslovak language, provided that the Czechs would be willing to use some Slovak words – just like Slovaks would officially accept some Czech words.
However, in the first half of the 20th century the radical concept of “Czechoslovakism” set forward the Czech language as the literary norm, while the Slovak language was considered to be a local dialect, as was the Moravian language. The concept of Czechoslovakism was necessary in order to justify the establishment of Czechoslovakia to the world, because otherwise the statistical majority of the Czechs as compared to Germans would be rather weak.
On 29 February 1920, the National Assembly of the First Czechoslovak Republic adopted the Czechoslovak Constitution and, on the same day, a set of constitutional laws. The Language Act (Jazykový zákon) 122/1920 Sb. z. a n., on the grounds of § 129 of the Constitutional Charter (CzechÚstavní listina Československé republiky) has set the principles of the language regulations, where § 1 ruled that the Czechoslovak language “jazyk československý jest státním, oficielním jazykem republiky” (‘is the state, or official language of the republic’).
The Czech-Slovak dialect continuum historically blended into Silesian in the west and Old Ruthenian (also known as Chancery Slavonic) in the east. With the development of the written standards in the 19th century, it has become less diversified, but there remains a pronounced dialectal division in Moravia. The southeastern Moravian dialects, in particular, are sometimes considered dialects of Slovak rather than Czech, e.g. using the same declension patterns for nouns and pronouns and the same verb conjugations as Slovak.
- Czech language: since the later 20th century largely standardised, dialectal use is now mostly restricted to older speakers) Common Czech (obecná čeština) is the main vernacular based on the dialect of the Prague region.
- Nářečí středočeská (Central Bohemian dialects)
- Nářečí jihozápadočeská (Southwestern Bohemian dialects)
- Nářečí severovýchodočeská (Northeastern Bohemian dialects)
- Podskupina podkrknošská (Krkonoše subgroup)
- Moravian dialects (moravština)
- Bohemian-Moravian (Nářečí českomoravská, transitional to Bohemian Czech)
- Central Moravian (Hanakian, Nářečí středomoravská)
- Podskupina tišnovská (Tišnov subgroup)
- Lach/Silesian (Nářečí slezská, transitional Silesian)
- Eastern Moravian (Moravian-Slovak, Nářečí východomoravská, transitional to Slovak)
- Podskupina slovácká (Moravian Slovak subgroup)
- Podskupina valašská (Moravian Wallachian subgroup)
- Knaanic language (Judeo-Czech)
- Slovak language
- Western Slovak dialects (in Kysuce, Trenčín, Trnava, Nitra, Záhorie)
- Central Slovak dialects (in Liptov, Orava, Turiec, Tekov, Hont, Novohrad, Gemer and the historic Zvolen county)
- Lowland (dolnozemské) Slovak dialects (outside Slovakia in the Pannonian Plain in Serbian Vojvodina, and in southeastern Hungary, western Romania, and the Croatian part of Syrmia)
- Eastern Slovak dialects (in Spiš, Šariš, Zemplín and Abov, transitional to Ruthenian)
In a 1964 textbook on Czech dialectology, Břetislav Koudela used the sentence “Put the flour from the mill in the cart” to highlight phonetic differences between dialects: Standard Czech:Dej mouku ze mlýna na vozík.Common Czech:Dej mouku ze mlejna na vozejk.Central Moravian:Dé móku ze mléna na vozék.Lach:Daj muku ze młyna na vozik.Eastern Moravian:Daj múku ze młýna na vozík.Standard Slovak:Daj múku z mlyna na vozík.”
Julia Upton 