The Brief History of the Slovak Language

The language of all Slovans was the Praslovan language. This was before the eight century and all Slovan languages, including the Slovak language, have developed throughout the centuries from this old original language. Although there are no written documents from these times, by comparison with certain words from different Slovan languages, linguists were able to identify the vocabulary of the old Praslovan language with high certainty. It is very interesting that some of the words from the old language survived the centuries of cultural and political changes to be part of the current literary Slovak language. Only the simple and shortest words survived and they describe nature (Hora = Mountain, Zem = Earth, Blato = Mud), family ties (Syn = Son, Otec = Father, Ujo = Uncle), parts of the human body (Hlava = Head, Ruka = Arm, Noha = Leg) and quite naturaly the words for the most common tasks from agriculture (Orať = Plough, Žať = Crop, Siať = Sow). When you pronounce these words you can feel the taste of the past.

The past has seen many changes. One of the most important past events that had a huge impact on the culture and religion at the territory of Slovak Republic (in that time Great Moravia) was the visit of the two missionary brothers from Thessaloniki, Saints Cyril and Methodius. From today’s perspective, they can be considered very successful in spreading the Old Church Slavonic language in this region through the translation of Bible and its promotion. The language itself consisted of the Glagolitic alphabet which was based on the small letters of the Greek alphabet and served as the foundation of the first written documents, including the first Slavic Civil Code. The Old Church Slavonic language was used as the official language until the 10th century which has seen the collapse of Great Moravia and the language was substituted by the Latin language. The region became a part of the Ugrian and later Austrougrian state and Latin was used as administrative, liturgical and literary language until the 14th century.

The period from the 14th to 16th century was marked by the renaissance of the native languages. Under the influence of the newly established university of Prague, the Husit army and reformations which supported the use of native language rather than the Latin, the slovakized Czech language was used as the official language at the territory of Slovakia. The language mix of Slovak and Czech language was used until the 18th century, when the first literary Slovak language was legitimized by Anton Bernolák. The grammar of the language was purely phonetic and it did not distinguish between the letters “y” and “i”; moreover, instead of the letter “j” the language used the letter “g” and it included the letter “w”. It was based on the western dialect which was later amended by Ľudovít Štúr, who has based the new version of literary Slovak language on the dialect of the middle Slovakia. Although this can be considered a huge step from the slovakized Czech language, the major amendment was ratified by M. Hodža and M.Hurban. The Slovak language became less phonetic and there were new strict rules for the letters “y” and “i”. These rules are the biggest challenge for the Slovak children learning the language still today.

Finally, when we are looking at the history from the perspective of a language service provider, the most important year is the year 1995. The Slovak government passed the Slovak State Language Law under which all the foreign companies which want to sell their products on the Slovak market have to translate the user guides and manuals into the Slovak language. This law increased not only the volume of translated text into Slovak language, but also the attractiveness of the business. The increased competition resulted in improved quality of services, more competitive prices and innovative approach. Slovakia has entered the 21st Century as an attractive market for all language service providers willing to compete for the businesses and institutions that need to localize their documents into Slovak language.

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Tags: Etymology, language industry, law, slovak

Category: Foreign Language