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| Czechoslovak | |
|---|---|
| českoslovenština | |
| Native to | Czechoslovakia |
| Ethnicity | Czechs,Slovaks |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Czechoslovakia (1920–1948) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
.svg) Czechoslovak Republic as of 1938. | |
TheCzechoslovak language (Czech:jazyk československý orčeskoslovenština,Slovak:Československý jazyk) was a politicalsociolinguistic concept used inCzechoslovakia in 1920–1938[1] for the definition of thestate language of the country which proclaimed its independence as the republic of twonations, i.e.ethnic groups,Czechs andSlovaks.
The Czech and Slovak languages are two closely relatedmutually intelligibleWest Slavic languages; they form their own sub-branch, called theCzech–Slovak languages. In practice, in the international discourse and documents, the role of "Czechoslovak" was played by Czech. However, in local speech in public discourse, and media, it was generally a form of Czech as spoken in the capitalPrague (i.e. either Standard Czech formally orCommon Czech informally) with limited introduction of some Slovak vocabulary. Meanwhile, the Constitution of 1920 and its derivative acts allowed the usage of minority languages provided that 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Officially, the 1920 constitution was superseded on 9 May 1948 by theNinth-of-May Constitution where the concept of the official language was omitted. The Czech and Slovak languages becamede facto official in the parts of the country where they were spoken by the respective ethnic majority, while Czech also preserved the role Czechoslovak had in international affairs.
The Czech-Slav Society (also called the Society for the Czechoslovak Language and Literature)was created in 1829 by students of theEvangelical Lyceum inBratislava (German:Preßburg orPressburg), 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 historianFrantišek Palacký. Stating that theCzech language used by the Protestants inUpper Hungary had 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 as 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 theliterary norm, while theSlovak language was considered to be a local dialect, as was theMoravian language. The concept of 'Czechoslovakism' was used to justify the establishment ofCzechoslovakia 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 theFirst Czechoslovak Republic adopted theCzechoslovak Constitution and, on the same day, a set ofconstitutional laws. The Language Act (Jazykový zákon) 122/1920 Sb. z. a n.,[2] on the grounds of § 129 of the Constitutional Charter (CzechÚstavní listina Československé republiky)[3] 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').