| Moravian | |
|---|---|
| moravská nářečí | |
| Native to | Czech Republic, Slovakia |
| Region | Moravia and Czech Silesia |
Native speakers | 108,469 (2011 census)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | czec1259 |
 Map of Moravia and Czech Silesia (borders between the two regions not shown) indicating the major dialect groups:[image reference needed]
Central Moravian dialects | |
Moravian dialects (Czech: moravská nářečí, moravština) are the varieties of Czech spoken in Moravia, a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic. There are more forms of the Czech language used in Moravia than in the rest of the Czech Republic. The main four groups of dialects are the Bohemian-Moravian group, the Central Moravian group, the Eastern Moravian group and the Lach (Silesian) group (which is also spoken in Czech Silesia).[2] While the forms are generally viewed as regional variants of Czech, some Moravians (108,469 in the 2011 census) claim them to be one separate Moravian language.[1]
Moravian dialects are considerably more varied than the dialects of Bohemia,[3] and span a dialect continuum linking Bohemian and West Slovak dialects.[4] A popular misconception holds that eastern Moravian dialects are closer to Slovak than Czech, but this is incorrect; in fact, the opposite is true, and certain dialects in far western Slovakia exhibit features more akin to standard Czech than to standard Slovak.[3]
Until the 19th century, the language used in Slavic-speaking areas of Moravia was referred to as “Moravian” or as “Czech”. When regular censuses started in Austria-Hungary in 1880, the choice of main-communication languages[note 1] in the forms prescribed in Cisleithania did not include Czech language but included the single item Bohemian–Moravian–Slovak[note 2] (the others being German, Polish, Rusyn, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian).[5] Respondents who chose Bohemian–Moravian–Slovak as their main communicating language were counted in the Austrian censuses as Czechs.
On the occasion of 2011 Census of the Czech Republic, several Moravian organizations (political party Moravané and Moravian National Community amongst others) led a campaign to promote the Moravian ethnicity and language. The Czech Statistical Office assured the Moravané party that filling in “Moravian” as language would not be treated as ticking off “Czech”, because forms were processed by a computer and superseding Czech for Moravian was technically virtually impossible.[6]
According to the results of the census, there was a total number of 108,469 native speakers of Moravian in 2011. Of them, 62,908 consider Moravian to be their only native language, and 45,561 are native speakers of both Moravian and Czech.[1]
- ^ a b c "Obyvatelstvo podle věku, mateřského jazyka a pohlaví". Czech Statistical Office. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ^ "Forms of the Czech language (in Czech)". University of Ostrava. Archived from the original on 2017-02-02.
- ^ a b Rejzek, Jiří (2021). Zrození češtiny (in Czech). Prague: Univerzita Karlova, Filozofická fakulta. pp. 102, 130. ISBN 978-80-7422-799-8.
- ^ Kortmann, Bernd; van der Auwera, Johan (2011). The Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide. Walter de Gruyter. p. 516. ISBN 978-3110220261. Retrieved 2 November 2012.
- ^ "Šlonzaci a Volkslista". Archived from the original on 29 May 2012.
- ^ "Ujištění ČSÚ o sčítání moravského jazyka". Moravané. 19 January 2011. Archived from the original on 2012-04-22. Retrieved 2020-01-22.
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