Main Challenges Faced by Czech as a Medium-Sized Language: State of Affairs at the Beginning of the 21st Century

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Main Challenges Faced by Czech as a Medium-Sized
Language State of Affairs at the Beginning of
the 21st Century

• Jirí Nekvapil, Charles University, Prague
• jiri.nekvapil_at_ff.cuni.cz

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Czech Republic
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Czech Republic Basic facts

• Territory of 78,866 square km (approx. as large
  as Austria or Portugal)
• Population of 10,230,000 (approx. the same as
  Belgium or Portugal)
• Exists since 1993 as a result of the split of
  Czechoslovakia (which had approx. 15 million
  inhabitants)

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The Issue of Small and Large Languages or Is
Czech a Small Language?

• In some language pairs, the first language may be
  classified as small, the second one as large.
  This may be done on the basis of the following
  criteria number of speakers, spread of the
  language, its economic strength, status of
  speakers, how the language is elaborated, and its
  prestige.
• The notion of a small or large language is
  relative with respect to a particular language,
  a language may be small and with respect to a
  different language, the same language may be
  large.

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Population by mother tongue
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Linguistic confidence of the Czechs in the
Czech language

• The belief in the healthy functioning of
  (standard) Czech has been widespread among Czech
  linguists. Statements of leading specialists
  working in the field of cultivation of Czech
  include formulations such as standard Czech is
  perfectly and thoroughly capable of complying
  with all communicative needs of the educated
  speaker (Uhlírová, Svobodová, Pravdová 2005).
  Significantly, the linguists self-confident
  formulations draw on the linguistic confidence
  of a considerable section of the Czech society.

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Czech is a small language used only by the
Czechs - An ideology typical for the Czechs

• A consequence The Czechs willingly accept that
  they must accommodate linguistically, they dont
  expect the (western) foreigners (tourists,
  expatriates) to speak Czech
• A consequence of that consequence The Czechs
  indirectly discourage these foreigners from
  learning Czech (the absence of the Czech
  Foreigner Talk)

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Position of English in the Czech Republic

• Up to now, Czech domains and genres have been
  relatively sheltered from the expansion of
  English by the rather low level of knowledge of
  English of the general populace in the Czech
  Republic
• Until now, English has also appeared to be
  hindered from overtaking Czech in some domains by
  its competition with German in the Czech
  Republic. While this still holds true to a
  certain extent, English is obviously gaining
  ground nowadays.

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Impact of English

• Use of English in highly specialized branches
  (science, military affairs, astronautics,
  cybernetics) is compensated for by the rich
  metaphorical feature of technical terms used in a
  non-terminological way by the whole population
  overall, there is an extensive process of
  Czechifying of the English terms both in semantic
  and morphological aspects
• Moreover, Czech is used on all levels of the
  schooling system

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Threats for the structure of Czech

• Mechanical introduction of foreign elements into
  the language which break up its typological,
  that is, inflectional character
• Non-declinable attributes (such as fotbalová
  Gambrinus liga the Gambrinus Football League )
  violate the traditional rule according to which
  attributes that do not have the form of an
  inflected adjective should be placed in
  postposition (gt fotbalová liga Gambrinus)
• The rejection of forming feminine forms from
  masculine ones (masc. Johnson, fem. Johnsonová)

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Relevant historical milestones

• Czech national movement of the 19th century,
  revival of the Czech language
• Struggle with German
• 1918 birth of multiethnic and multilingual
  Czechoslovakia
• 1945-47 forced evacuation of 2,5 million
  Germans
• 1993 split of Czechoslovakia (loss of the
  Slovaks)

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Dominant position of Czech

• The contemporary language situation in the Czech
  Republic is characterized by the fact that, in
  spite of the presence of tens of languages in the
  country, Czech holds the dominant position in
  nearly all spheres of social life, from official
  communication to everyday communication. This has
  not always been the case the current situation
  has only been in place for the past 5060 years.

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Recent growing linguistic diversity

• Ever since the opening of the borders in 1989,
  when the Communist regime fell, there has been a
  clear shift toward greater linguistic diversity
  in the Czech lands, especially in large cities.
  This growing linguistic and cultural diversity in
  the Czech lands constitutes a great challenge to
  realize changes in the Czech school system,
  language policy, and last but not least, in the
  attitudes and communicative habits of the
  Czech-speaking part of the population.

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Czech as a Foreign Language and Lingua Franca

• One of the evident changes concerning the status
  of Czech is an unprecedented increase in the
  teaching and use of Czech as a foreign language
  during the last ten to fifteen years. This is due
  to the fact that the Czech Republic has become a
  place attractive for tens of thousands of
  foreigners, both as a result of migration within
  the EU and external migration. The teaching of
  Czech as a foreign language has therefore become
  a pedagogical problem which hundreds of Czech
  teachers have to face.

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Czech as a Foreign Language - Abroad

• The Czech state has been relatively active in
  spreading Czech abroad (teaching fellowships),
  but there is no institution specializing in the
  propagation of Czech, comparable to the Goethe
  Institut for German or Polonicum for Polish
• Moreover, the teaching fellowships are not even
  represented in all the EU member states (they are
  lacking in half of the EU countries).

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The issue of minorities

• The Framework Convention for the Protection of
  National Minorities (ratified in 1997) and the
  Ethnic Minorities Act (2001) protect Czech of the
  following ethnicities Bulgarian, Croatian,
  German, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Roma, Russian,
  Rusyn, Serbian, Slovak, Ukranian. This approach
  was implicitly criticised by the Advisory
  Commitee on FCPNM in its report published in
  2005.
• European Charter for Regional or Minority
  Languages (in effect only since 2007) protects
  only these languages Polish, Slovak (provisions
  of Part II and III), German, Romani (provisions
  of Part II only). Why? The criterion of
  historicity invoked.

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Relative size of the Slovak linguistic community

• cca. 200 thousand speakers of Slovak, but
• no Slovak-language education,
• high language-shift rate.

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Minorities vs. communities in the Czech
Republic

• Who is a minority and who is a community
• The issue of the Vietnamese group amounting to
  cca. 100,000 members
• Legal view vs. common sense view
• Classifications are consequential
• Scientific approaches should be based on common
  sense categories rather than on legal documents
• Majority is just one community among all
  communities in a given state

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Conclusions Main challenges not for the Czech
language but for the Czech speakers

• Restrict their Czech monolingualism
• Becoming aware that Czech is not used only by the
  Czechs
• Accept that Czech is not necessarily a small
  language
• Maintain the typological, that is, inflectional
  character of the language

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Some References

• Marti, R. and Nekvapil, J. (eds) (2007) Small
  and Large Slavic Language in Contact (
  International Journal of the Sociology of
  Language 183, special issue)
• Nekvapil, J. (2007) On the language situation in
  the Czech Republic What has (not) happened after
  the accession of the country to the EU.
  Sociolinguistica 21 (Max Niemeyer Verlag), pp.
  36-54
• Nekvapil, J., Sloboda, M., Wagner, P. (2009)
  Mnohojazycnost v Ceské republice. Multilingualism
  in the Czech Republic. Praha Nakladatelství
  Lidové noviny
• Neustupný, J.V. and Nekvapil, J. (2003) Language
  management in the Czech Republic. Current Issues
  in Language Planning 4, pp. 181-366

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A to už je konec

• Dekuji,
• Moltes gràcies,
• Thank you

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