Talk:Czech language

message: , I've finally gotten around to looking at that citation issue and I've figured it out: it was an error in the "harv" citation to Hajičová regarding the author fields. I've fixed it now; to be clear, it was correctly referring to her rather than Stankiewicz. Tezero (talk) 04:05, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hajičová 

message: Could a legend be added for the upper map in that box (does those have a particular name?) on the right? It looks as though all of Europe speaks Czech as a majority... Cwbr77 (talk) 10:23, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm also not sure what that's supposed to show. I'm even more unsure about the map below saying that Czech is spoken by a "significant minority" in the whole of Zaolzie... are there any figures on how many Cieszyn Silesian speakers there are left? The :Template:Polish municipalities in the Czech Republic can only name three towns and a scattering of villages with 10% Poles in them. – filelakeshoe (t / c)  22:10, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I have gone ahead and boldly removed the map, since the data is unsourced and questionable, this is a GA, and there were no comments forthcoming to my query on Commons here. – filelakeshoe (t / c)  08:00, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: The maps

message: In Verb conjugation, "ona běžela could mean she ran, she has run or she had run.[92]"  It could also mean (and it often means) "she was running". (I hesitate to simply add this meaning because it might require modifying the introductory phrase and/or the reference [-?])Svato (talk) 15:16, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Ona běžela" 

message: This article doesn't link to articles in other languages about the Czech language. Can somebody please fix this?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.179.23.154 (talk) 12:08, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Why should it? This is the English Wikipedia. 68.19.5.207 (talk) 21:23, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language links missing 

message: Is hovorová čeština still a thing or has it been basically replaced by obecná čeština? Or are they just different ways of describing standard vernacular from different eras? This article prescribes the viewpoint that OČ is the standard vernacular in most of the country, but some sources seem to dismissively hand-wave it away. Komárek (2012) p117 dedicates a mere two sentences to it under the heading "tzv. obecná čeština":
The so-called "obecná čeština", which can be seen as an intersection of "hovorová čeština" and regional dialects, is a levelled interdialect which resulted from the dominant influence of the Central Bohemian dialect, and from which local dialectal features restricted to certain parts of Bohemia have been removed.
Meanwhile OČ enthusiast Milan Hrdlička frames it in the introduction to his book on OČ as simply being the common vernacular of today, as we do. – filelakeshoe (t / c)  21:31, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I'm out of time now, but for the time being my short answer is that hovorová čeština is merely the spoken form of spisovná čeština, the codified, recommended and received standard taught at primary and secondary schools and used in public as well as most private media (with many buts). Obecná čeština is really an inter-dialect rather than a true dialect, since it's actually a (sub)set of features (mostly morphological, from the synchronic perspective) that are shared by many speakers of Czech in all of Bohemia and western parts of Moravia, but is considered substandard, displeasing even, in other parts of the country (again: with many buts). If I have some time tomorrow, I'll try to give you a more comprehensive answer. Anyway, the impression that OČ is the dominant vernacular is objectionable, because it really depends on the sociological domains and language functions. I, for one, commonly switch between OČ, SŠ/HČ and my own lect depending on whom I speak to, the context, environment, situation. More to share tomorrow! ;) --Pětušek 22:38, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah okay so hovorová means "spoken written Czech" (I remember looking for sources on that during the GA push). Thanks. Interdialect is a trendy word in Czech dialectology at the moment and "obecná X" seems to be synonymous with it – the mush Central Moravian is becoming is referred to as "obecná hanáčtina" in this source for example, so there are a few vernaculars called "obecná something" but they don't together form one "main vernacular", they're all rooted in different phonological systems for a start. The Common Czech morphology is clearly linked to the Central Bohemian vowel shifts (ý > ej, é becoming a peripheral phoneme etc.) I'm going to at least add "in Bohemia" to that sentence. – filelakeshoe (t / c)  05:19, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the issue is a bit more complicated, and I'd really like to write more some time soon, but one minor point now at least: "spisovná" is not the same as "psaná". While the latter is derived from the verb "psát" (to write) and hence means "written" indeed, the former is derived from "spis" (a piece of writing, a written document). "Spisovná čeština" is (or should be) translated as "Literary Czech", hence "hovorová čeština" could be translated as "Spoken Literary Czech". Some people use "Colloquial Czech" instead, but that should be restricted to non-standard language. "Spoken Literary Czech" is the spoken "version" of "Literary Czech". I hope I haven't blurred the picture even more for you. :))--Pětušek 10:28, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obecná / Hovorová 

message: Firstly apologies to  for the revert, for some reason my browser was still showing the old map with the borderlands coloured in light - clearing cookies fixed it.
The map is still unsourced though, and I still question whether Czech is really a minority language in Zaolzie today. I couldn't find a map (probably because a map would be fairly unrevealing in this case) but Ethnologue only counts 33,600 L1 indigenous Polish speakers in Frýdek-Místek District, which has a population of 209,326 (2007). It's not the majority language in the whole district, though there may be individual villages where it is. And the sourced analysis of census data in Zaolzie says Czechs were the majority in 1991.
Would anyone object to me colouring the whole of Czechia in dark and leaving the light bits in Vojvodina and Croatia – and maybe adding the Czechs of Romania as well? – filelakeshoe (t / c) 10:09, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth, I looked in Hannan (1996) and was merely reminded of how complicated the question is of whether the Polish spoken in Zaolzie nowadays is really "Polish" or if it can be seen as belonging to both Polish and Czech as per the classification of Belič, Kellner etc... but I suppose my question is rather whether a majority of people in that region actually speak ponaszymu nowadays or whether the north Moravian interdialect is more predominant. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 10:27, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Majority of population of Zaolzie nowadays clearly speaks Czech language. The Cieszyn Silesian dialect is spoken as a first language predominantly by Polish population there. People who identify themselves as Czechs, or even "Silesians" speak Czech. Many of them understand Cieszyn Silesian dialect but the dialect they speak is already closer to north Moravian dialect. Having said that, I believe the whole map should be in dark blue, as Czech language is clearly a majority language in Zaolzie (or districts of Karviná and Frýdek-Místek). - Darwinek (talk) 11:53, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map in infobox 

message: Alphabet?????  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.45.238.165 (talk) 21:09, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Look here: Czech orthography, first paragraph. Jirka.h23 (talk) 12:59, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alphabet 

message: Please, can somebody change the photo of "Prohibition signs written in Czech, by entry #3 into the building of National Technical Library in Prague." In vain, I am trying to add the note, that the word "střežena" is misspelled on the photo. source
As a native speaker, I think it is a shame to have an english wikipedia page about czech language with grammar mistakes.
Thank You.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.190.74.149 (talk) 01:16, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the notice, the word "střežena" is really misspelled. I have changed the description at the photo and changed the article image. Jirka.h23 (talk) 08:37, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photo of "Prohibition signs written in Czech..." 

message: Can someone substantiate the comment in the Phonology section that in Irish there is the raised alveolar trill? In the section, it notes that this can be found "in front of a slender vowel, as in the word Éire, the Irish name of Ireland", but neither the page for Ireland nor wiktionary's page for Éire nor the pages for Irish phonology nor mutations support this (instead, the pronunciation for Éire given in both articles reflects a palatalised alveolar tap).  Thanks, -- Necro Shea mo 21:49, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just removed it, since it was unsourced as well as being very suspect. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 13:18, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ř in Irish?? 

message: The modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century.[1] By then the language had developed a literary tradition, and since then it has changed little; journals from that period have no substantial differences from modern standard Czech, and contemporary Czechs can understand them with little difficulty.[2] Changes include the morphological shift of í to ej and é to í (although é survives for some uses) and the merging of í and the former ejí.
The bit in bold is a little confusing. The í > ej vowel shift happened some time before the 18th century in Bohemian dialects, but the Kralice Bible held out against it, and probably because of this it never made it into the standard language. The way this is written makes it seem as if a) the í > ej and é > í vowel shifts are part of the standard language and b) they happened in the 18th century, both of which are false. And it is surely not a "morphological shift" but a phonological one. Does anyone have access to the source cited, Chloupek, Jan; Nekvapil, Jiří (1993). Studies in Functional Stylistics? – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 22:58, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I found the source online, and checked this against it, and indeed, it was not discussing the modern standard language but a Havránek study of Baroque-era Czech (before the 18th century). It also doesnt quite say -í and -ejí "merged" (which begs the question "into which form") but that they were "mixed". I have removed the last sentence of the above segment. The í > ej vowel shift can definitely be covered in a more relevant place, preferably from a more in-depth source, I will check Komárek, Lamprecht-Slošar-Bauer and Koupil at home when I get a chance. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 08:20, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing sentence in "modern Czech" section 

message: I just removed this because it is an oversimplified analogy to English and full of holes:
Although Czech's use of present and future tense is largely similar to that of English, the language uses past tense to represent the English present perfect and past perfect; ona běžela could mean she ran, she has run or she had run.
*Firstly whether English even has a "future tense" is highly debatable. English has a number of constructions that can be used to talk about the future, such as modal verbs ("will", "shall", "might"), periphrastic constructions ("be to", "be going to", "be about to"), the present continuous (be+ing), and the present simple, when the context is obvious. Czech by contrast does have a morphological future tense, so the claim that Czech's use of "future tense" is similar to English is flawed from the off.
*Czech's use of future tense differs from English in context-dependent constructions such as conditional clauses - conjunctions like "když", "až" and "jestli" (when~if) require either a future tense verb or a perfective present tense verb (semantically future) following them to refer to a future event, unlike in English where a present tense verb is used. This is a pretty significant difference, IMHO. Another significant difference is the use of specifically perfective verbs in the present tense to talk about actions completing in the future.
*Naughton p140 makes no comparison between Czech and English present and future so this is original research.
*Czech does not always use the past tense to represent the English present perfect - there are cases where the imperfective present is used. For example "bydlím v Praze 10 let" means "I've lived/been living in Prague for 10 years", as this is an ongoing action upto the present. What Naughton actually says is "The Czech past tense may correspond to any of the past-tense forms of English, e.g. ‘he did’, ‘he was doing’, ‘he has done’, ‘he has been doing’ etc." This isn't quite the same as what was stated, and even that is in a chapter before he introduces aspect, which can make a couple of these distinctions, e.g. between "I wrote a book" and "I was writing a book" (see p149).
I think it would be a far better idea to describe Czech tense and aspect in its own terms rather than by way of dodgy comparisons to English. I have made some further clarifications. Hopefully the section on verb conjugation is a bit more accurate now. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 22:44, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  On tenses 

message: I would like to submit this article for FAC soon. Any comments would be appreciated. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 12:26, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I've only had a quick look at the Grammar section. I think it could do with having less detail about the morphology (e.g. no need to give the declension of the numerals or to list the Czech names of the cases) and more content about the syntax (currently, there's just five short paragraphs and they're all only about word order). – Uanfala (talk) 12:10, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  FAC?