Towards A History of Modern Czech Purism: The Problem of Covert Germanisms Author(s): George Thomas Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Jul., 1996), pp. 401-420 Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212144 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:19 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic and East European Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:19:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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Towards A History of Modern Czech Purism: The Problem of Covert GermanismsAuthor(s): George ThomasSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Jul., 1996), pp. 401-420Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212144 .
Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:19
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and EastEuropean Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavonic andEast European Review.
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IT is widely recognized that purism has played a key role in the formation and development of modern Standard Czech (Cz spisovna cehtina, hereafter SCz).' This purism addresses three primary concerns, which derive ultimately from the specific extralinguistic conditions in which SCz evolved: the problems associated with the well-known decline in its use during the Baroque period and its virtual replacement by German (hereafter G) as the main language of discourse among the educated classes during the reign of Maria Theresia. The first of them is the need to preserve the phonological, morphological and syntactic norms of 'Golden Age' Cz,2 which may be characterized as a form of archaizing purism.3 The second, a form of eitist purism, is the need to maintain a distance between SCz and Common Czech (Cz obecna cehtina, hereafter CCz), the most widely distributed interdialekt spoken in
George Thomas is Professor of Slavic Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages at McMaster University.
1 The most useful treatments of purism in SCz are: 0. Sevcik, 'Ceskyjazykovy purismus zW hiediska funkcni teorie spisovneho jazyka', Sbornik praci Filosofickefakuly Brneske univeristy. Radyjazykovedni, 22/23, I974/75, pp. 49-58; M.Jelinek, 'O ceskem purismu' in Pfednas.fk ve xiv. behu LetniUko1y slovanskjch studil v roce I970, Prague, 197 I, pp. 18-37.
2 The Czech Golden Age refers to the language of the Czech Brethren of the sixteenth century. Its norms are those of the Kralice Bible and the grammar ofJan Blahoslav.
3 This term and those which follow are taken from G. Thomas, Linguistic Purism, London and New York, I199 I, pp. 7 5-8 I.
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Bohemia.4 The third is the need to eradicate, or at least to restrict, the impact of G on SCz, which may be, characterized as targeted xenophobic purism. Each of these overlapping concerns deserves proper attention in an overall treatment of the impact of purism on Cz. However, it is the last which in my view is the most pervasive and characteristic of the problems confronting Czech purists from I 870 onwards.
When viewed more closely, the problem of Germanisms centres around not one but two issues. The first -and more obvious, which has occupied Czech intellectuals more or less continuously since the fourteenth century is what to do about the very large number of G loan-words which have traditionally played such an active role in spoken Cz. At various times (notably at the Court of Charles IV, in the writings and sermons ofJan Hus, in the language treatises of the High Baroque, during the Renewal period and again in the 1920s and 1930s) intensive efforts were made to rid the language of these loan-words and replace them with native equivalents (neologisms, calques or loan- words from other Slavonic languages).5 Less obvious but far more insidious are those covert influences from G which result from the prominent role German has played for centuries in the culture, commerce and intellectual life of Bohemia and Moravia.6 These covert Germanisms or calques (Lehnprdgungen) may be uncovered in the phraseology (Lehnwendungen), syntax (Lehngyntax), word-formation (Lehn- bildungen) and lexical semantics (Lehnbedeutungen) of spoken and written Czech.7 The very fact that they are covert has led many Czechs to be deeply suspicious of the origin of many elements in their native language and this has caused at certain periods a threat to the national self-confidence of Czech intellectuals. How this came about and what language attitudes were involved is the subject of this article.
Before turning to the specific problems of Czech I should like to make some general remarks about the position of calques within puristic circles.8 Many purists are ready to tolerate calques even when loan-words from the same source are regarded as inadmissible. This is because the foreign impulse remains discreetly hidden from view. For
4 For recent treatments of the differences and tensions between them, see P. Sgall, J. Hronek, A. Stich, J. Horecky, Variation in Language: Code Switching in Czech as a Challenge for Sociolinguistics, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1992; P. Sgall and J. Hronek, Cestina bez pftkras, Prague, 1992.
5 For the extensive literature on the replacement of G loan-words, see G. Thomas, 'The Role of Calques in the Early Czech Language Revival', SEER, 56, I978, pp. 481-504.
6 For a description of the ascendency of G over Cz, see J. Povejsil, Das Prager Deutsch des I7. und I8. Jahrhunderts: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Schriftsprache, Hamburg and Prague, I 980, pp. 6-9.
The G terms are taken from: W. Betz, 'Die Lehnbildungen und der abendlandische Sprachenausgleich', Beitrige zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 67, I944,
pp. 275-302. 8 These remarks are based on Linguistic Purism, pp. 70-72 (see 3 above).
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other less compromising purists, however, calques constitute a greater danger than loan-words because they may incur a restructuring of the word-formational, syntactical, phraseological or semantic structure of the language. When one considers attitudes to calques, it is important to distinguish between conscious, literary creations and spontaneous, vernacular ones,9 for, while literary calques may be justified as part of the enrichment and intellectualization of a language, vernacular calques may indicate the extent of foreign domination. Another crucial distinction is between two types of Lehnbildungen: Lehniibersetzungen ('die genaue Glied-fur-Glied Ubersetzung des Vorbildes') and Lehniibertra- gungen ('die freiere Teil-Ubersetzung des fremden Vorbildes').'0 While the former may appear to be slavish imitations, the latter provide an opportunity for more creative freedom. Moreover, where the word- building structures of the two languages in contact are different, employment of a Lehniibertragung is essential if the calque is to conform to the word-building constraints of the loaning language. To sum up, calques provide the purist with a dilemma: on the one hand, they may be welcomed as acceptable alternatives to loan-words or clumsy neologisms; on the other, they represent an intrusion from a foreign source at a much deeper level than any loan-word.
II
Concern about the possible deleterious effects of calquing in Czech begins with Josef Dobrovsky.II The main focus of his criticism was the unprincipled calquing by Baroque language reformers such as Rosa, Pohl and Simek. Dobrovsky was chiefly worried lest the vocabulary of SCz should be too slavishly modelled on G. 'If we carry on like this', he wrote, 'we will no longer be writing Czech but German with Czech words."2 In example after example, he pointed out how the word- building rules of Czech were being contravened in the process. The following generation, spearheaded by Josef Jungmann, followed Dobrovsky's advice with respect to observing the strictures of Czech derivational morphology but, like their Baroque forebears and Dobrov- sky's more flexible contemporaries Tomsa, Tham and Zlobicky, was insistent on the need to enrich and purify the lexicon if SCz was to take its place among the established standard languages of Europe. It sought a middle way between the extremes of Baroque xenophobic purism
9 Such a distinction is made by B. 0. Unbegaun, 'Le calque dans les langues slaves', Revue des etudes slaves, I 2, I 932, pp. I 9-5 I .
'? Betz, 'Die Lehnbildungen. . .', p. 296 (see 7 above). " This period was treated in detail in Thomas, 'The Role of Calques' (see 5 above). 12 Bohmische und mdhrischeLitteraturaufdasJahr I780, Prague, I780-84, vol. 2, p. I00.
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with its predilection for neologisms on the one hand and the conserva- tive archaizing purism of Dobrovsky's disciples Nejedly and Palkovic on the other. This was achieved by borrowing liberally from Polish and constructing well-formed Lehniibersetzungen and Lehniibertragungen of G models. True,Jungmann demonstrates his scepticism towards calques firstly by putting them in last place in the sources available for lexical enrichment,13 secondly by suggesting they be used cum grano salis14 and finally by including fourteen calques in the list of unnecessary neologisms he presented to the Kralovskd ceska spolecnost nauk in i843,15 but, as JedliZcka has pointed out, 'for Jungmann the acceptance of calques is not at variance with a puristic viewpoint'.16 Moreover, Jungmann's mild to moderate, reformist, xenophobic purism set the seal for the subsequent development of SCz. Only in phraseology, to which Jungmann devoted much less attention, did an openly critical attitude towards Lehnwendungen take root, for example in the pioneering work of Sychra.17 The main task of lexical enrichment especially in the field of specialist terminology fell to Safarik, whose attitudes to words of foreign origin were, if anything, more tolerant thanJungmann's. In I845 the Czech Museum announced a prize for a work which would lay bare the shortcomings of SCz, but for a quarter of a century no one answered the challenge.
III
The I87os, however, saw a sudden increase in publications dealing with the correctness of Czech. On 9 November i870 the Matice ceskd met to discuss for the first time the need to combat incorrectness in Czech and on 2oJune I87 I set up a commission comprising Gebauer, Hattala, Jedlicka, Kott, Tieftrunk, Zeleny and others to write a Brus jazyka 6eskeho,18 thereby deliberately reviving the title ofJiri Konstanc's book published almost exactly two centuries earlier and with it the image of the whetstone and the knife-grinder.'9 For the next seventy
13J. Jungmann, Slovesnost, 1820; for a discussion of this point, see R. Auty, 'Sources and Methods of Lexical Enrichment in the Slavonic Language Revivals of the Early Nineteenth Century' in D. S. Worth (ed.), The Slavic Word: Proceedings of the International Slavistic Colloquium at UCLA September i i -i6, 1970, Los Angeles, I972, pp. 4 I-56.
'4J. Jungmann, Beleuchtung der Streijfrage uber die bohmische Orthographie, Prague, I829, pp. 6o--6 i.
15 J. Haller, 'Spisovny jazyk cesky' in Slovanske spisovne` jazyky v dobe' pfttomn6, ed. M. Weingart, Prague, I937, pp. i i--6o (21-22).
16 A. Jedlicka, Josef Jungmann a obrozenska terminologie literarnte vidni a linguisticka, Prague, I 948, p. I 7.
17 M.J. Sychra, Versuch einer bohmischen Phraseologie, Brno, i82I-22. 18 By the time the book was published in Prague in I877, Hattala, Gebauer andJedlicka
had left the commission and Zeleny had died. '9 Jiri Konstanc, Lima linguae bohemicae/Brusjazyka i&eskiho, Prague, I 674; for the image of
the purist as knife-grinder, see Thomas, Linguisitic Purism, pp. 2 I-22.
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years, the terms brusic and brusicstvz' were to be key epithets of opprobrium or approval in the puristic debate. In its proclamation to contemporary writers the commission singled out Germanisms as one of the central problems confronting Czech. It maintained that many of them went completely against the spirit of the language. Nevertheless, the authors claimed 'Our brus . . . is far from all puristic excesses'.20 They took as their criteria for judging whether an element was genuinely Czech or not i) the written language up to Komensky, 2) the common speech of the Czech and Slovak peoples and 3) if these proved insufficient, analogy with other Slavonic languages. However, in their pronouncements they did not always adhere strictly to these criteria. For example, the expression co za 'what sort of' is labelled as a Germanism (cf. G wasfur) and to be replaced byjaky even though it is recorded already in the sixteenth century.2' Similarly inconsistent is their preference for sedmadevadesat 'ninety-seven' (cf. G siebenundneunzig) over devadesat sedm,22 a form with obvious parallels in Slavonic languages not subject to G influence. The authors also claim (p. I42) that only namlouvati was used by older writers in the sense of G uberreden 'to persuade'23 despite the evidence of Jungmann's dictionary,24 which cites premlouvati in Veleslavin.25
Lehniibersetzungen Criticism of Lehniibersetzungen figures prominently in their recommenda- tions. Nevertheless, the seal of approval was pronounced on several Lehniibersetzungen recently coined or made popular by Jungmann's circle, for example, vliv 'influence' (G Einfiuss) (at least it is preferable to VpyV),26 v'let 'excursion' (G Ausfiug) (although the trope is considered contrary to the spirit of Cz),27 pokrok 'progress' (G Fortschritt), dojem 'impression' (G Eindruck),28 pojem 'concept' (G Begrzf (though not in phrases like nemam pojmu 'I haven't a clue' [G ich habe keinen Begraff] ).29
The list of proscribed Lehnabersetzungen is too long to reproduce in full. It includes adjectives with the prefix bez- for the G suffix -los. For example, bezplatnj 'free' (for G kostenlos) should be replaced by zdarma30 despite the fact that i) the latter is an adverb not an adjective, 2)
20 Brusjazyka &eskzho, p. xiii. 21 Ibid., p. 74. 22 Ibid., p. 75. 23Ibid., p. 42.
24J. Jungmann, Cesko-nemecky slovnik, Prague, I835-39, 5 vols, S.v. 25 Daniel Adam z Veleslavina, Nomenclator quadrilinguis boemico-latino-graeco-germanicus,
Prague, I 598, s.v. 26 Brusjazyka eskjho, p. I83- 27 Ibid., p. i86. 28 Ibid., p. 79. 29 Ibid., p. 126. 30 Ibid., p. 68.
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Russian also has bezplatnyj, 3) bezplatnj does not in fact calque kostenlos. Together with many others of this type, bezplatny is retained in contemporary SCz.31 Certain prefixes are also called into question: nad- 'over-' (for G uiber-), pod- 'under-' (for G unter-), both used for example with -ceniovati 'to value' (for G schdtzen)32 (both are still attested in SSJC); proti- 'counter' (G Gegen-) as protisluzba (G Gegendienst) should, they claim, be replaced because proti- was not traditionally used in Czech word-formation although there are a great number of recent comings.33
Among individual words criticized it is worth noting the following: kazdopadne (G jedenfalls) 'in any case',34 a constant thorn in the side of purists and still condemned and given as incorrect in SSJC; sebeduve'ra (G Selbstvertrauen) 'self-reliance', would better be ddve6ra v sebe;35 together with many similarly formed words it is registered in SSJC.36 zajmeno (Lat pronomen, G Fiirwort) 'pronoun', would better be na'me'stka,37 and yet SSJC lists the former without comment and the latter as old- fashioned; okamzik (G Augenblick) 'moment', would better be okamzen,38 considered acceptable on the rather spurious ground that it is really two words written as one.39
Lehnbedeutungen The following Lehnbedeutungen are criticized for introducing German meanings which are not compatible with Cz:40 panovati (G herrschen) in the sense of 'be',41 marked in SSJC as bookish; pfirozene6(G naturlich) in the sense of 'naturally, of course';42
31 As a guide to contemporary SCz throughout this article, I have consulted Slovnz'k spisovn6hojazyka ceskeho, Prague, I989, 8 vols (hereafter, SSJC). One should remember that this dictionary has been criticized for its conservative approach to what constitutes the codified norm, see C. E. Townsend, A Description of Spoken Prague Czech, Columbus, Ohio, I 990, p. I 4. However, this conservativeness suits our purpose rather well.
32 Brusjazyka ceskeho, p- I 05. 33 Ibid., pp. I 35-36; a great many examples of words with this prefix are cited in SSJC. 34 Ibid., p. 96. 35 Ibid., p. i6o. 36 Like many of the other calques in this list, this is really a Europeanism rather than a
Germanism in the strict sense of the word. Nevertheless, while in some cases it is difficult to ascertain whether a word is calqued on German, it should be noted that in others the German form clearly provides the model for the Czech word. Only very rarely can the impetus of German be totally excluded. As we shall see later, the question whether these words should properly be regarded as Germanisms was raised by the opponents of purism.
3 Ibid., p. 192. 38 Ibid., p. I20. 39 Ibid., p. I64- 40 It will be readily apparent that most of them parallel developments in other European
languages. 41 Ibid., p. I22. 42 Ibid., p. I50.
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sdHeIiti, sdzleti (G theilen) in the sense of 'share, for example, opinion', better is snaszm se.43
Lehnwendungen v padu 'in case', na kazdy pad 'in any case', na zadny pad 'in no case' (G im Falle, auf jeden Fall, aufkeinen Fall) should all be replaced, but all are listed in SSJC and only the second is given as 'now incorrect';44 podzl brati (G Theil nehmen) 'to take part', proper Cz would be ucasten byti or u6astenstvi miti;45 skildati diky (G Dank ablegen) 'to express thanks' for diky ciniti or vzddvati.46
Lehnsyntax napada mne co (G esfdllt mir ein) 'it occurs to me', better is napadd me co (constructions with both dative and accusative are given in SSJC) or smyslim si;47
nechati as an auxiliary in imitation of G lassen (given in SSJC as CCz and inappropriate for SCz);48 ten (for G der) with superlatives;49 veriti na nekoho (G glauben anjemanden) 'to believe in someone' for verzti v ... (the construction with na is listed in SSJC as CCz);50 viseti od neceho (G von etwas abhdngen) 'to depend on something' for viseti na necem (the construction with od is given as obsolete in SSJC).51
One original member of the Commission, the Slovak philologist Martin Hattala, resigned and in an attempt to forestall the impact of the Matica's Brus published his own Brus, which also appeared in I 877.52 This somewhat rambling essay, reflecting the neo-grammarian view of language as an organic phenomenon following laws of development, attacked both the unscientific xenophobia of many purists and their failure in spite of their humbler origins -to accept that popular speech is the true reflection of the spiritual character of a people. Hattala was particularly dismissive of attempts to perfect the terminol- ogy, which he likened to offering an empty plate of the very best porcelain to a hungry man,53 and he branded as heresies the notions that 'the use of foreign words cannot be consistent with national honour' and that 'Czech will cease to smack of foreignness as soon as it
43Ibid., p. 159. 4 Ibid., pp. I2I-22. 45Ibid., p. I26. 46 Ibid., p. i6i. 47 Ibid., p. io8. 481 Ibid.,IP. II I. 49 Ibid., p. I74. 50 Ibid., p. i 8o. 51 Ibid., p. i8i. 52 M. Hattala, Brusjazyka ceskeho: pispe'vek k d6jindm osv4ty vu'bec a slovanske i eski zvlate,
Prague, i877. 53 He had first expressed himself on this subject back in his Obrana skladby, I 855, p. I 2.
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gets rid of foreign words'.54 For him syntax, not the lexicon, was the key issue: the more idioms in a language, the purer it was.
Among the many brusy of rather variable quality from this period are the various editions of the work of Backovsky.55 He finds many German-based Lehnibersetzungen contrary to the spirit of the language and often suggests a rather freer translation in their place: dodnes (G bis heute) 'up to now' (frequently the subject of puristic criticism but nevertheless registered in SSJC) to be replaced by podnes;56 krasomluva (G Schonrede) 'rhetoric' (SSJC, which lists a number of similarly formed compounds, gives it as bookish) to be replaced by krasna mluva;57 olejomalba (G Olgemdlde) 'oil painting' (listed in SSJC), better is olejova malba;58 podivukrasny (G wunderschdn) 'exquisite' (SSJC gives it as obsolete), better is kupodivu krasny;59 povstdni (G Aufstand), better is odboj60 (both words are registered in SSJC with the meanings 'uprising' and 'resistance' respectively); slovosled (G Wortfolge) 'word order', better is pordadek slov6' (both are given in SSJC); tabakoobchodnak (G Tabakhdndler) 'tobacconist', better is tabac6nik2 (SSJC gives only the latter but with the note that it is old-fashioned for obchodnik s tabakem). Bac%kovsky also objected to the Lehniibertragung oldvko (G Bleistift) 'pencil' preferring instead tuWka63 (from tuha, a word occurring in popular speech and derived ultimately from Bavarian dialect),64 the Lehnwendung bMhem casu
G im Lauf der Zeit) 'in the course of time', for which he preferred casem,65 the Lehnsyntax spokojen s cim (G mit was zufrieden) 'content with . . .' for spokojen 6am66 as well as a number of items already noted in the Maticnz' brus, e.g. kaWdopadneL. sebeddve'ra, zajmeno.
One of the more sophisticated treatments of Germanisms in the nineteenth century is the RukovePof F. M. Bartos, Professor of Czech at the University of Brno.67 Unlike most of his contemporaries, Bartos was well aware that German influence had already infiltrated the language of Czech writers before I620. He notes, for example, that jeden was already used in imitation of the G indefinite pronoun ein in the
54 Hattala, Brusjazyka &eskiho, p. 53. 55 The fourth edition is Backovsky, Oprdvce poklesku mluvnicklch neboli brus jazyka ceskeho,
Prague, I894. 56 Ibid., p.I26.
57 Ibid., p. I48. 58 Ibid., p. I82. 59 Ibid., p. 193. 60 Ibid., p. 20I. 61 Ibid., p. 229. 62 Ibid., p. 24I. 63 Ibid., p. i82. 64 Vaclav Machek, Etymologicky slovnikjazyka ceskiho, Prague, I 97 I, p. 659. 65 Ibid., p. II2. 66 Ibid., p. 232. 67 F. M. Bartos, RukovMt' sprdvne &Rztiny, I st edn: 189I, 2nd edn: I893, 3rd edn: I9o I; the
edition treated in this article is the second.
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Kralice Bible68 and that zachovati was already followed by pred plus instrumental rather than do plus genitive in imitation of G vor in Komensky.69 Indeed, he points out that Blahoslav's grammar admits that many Czechs speak incorrectly, incomprehensibly and often under the influence of German and Latin70 and that Melantrich sought expressly to redress the spoiling of Czech in his Krdtkc sprava praveho mluveni published in 158i.11 By the end of the eighteenth century the situation had grown worse, as German had begun to replace Latin as the language of instruction in the higher schools and Czechs had to learn German if they were to gain access to the German-Latin gymnasia. Whole generations of priests, teachers, doctors and clerks were educated in German; the seminaries were also totally German- speaking. This remained so up to the i86os.72 In the i850s, to judge from the testimony of Fr. Pravda, Czechs learned Czech grammar from Tomicek's German grammar and for their compositions had to have recourse to Rank's German dictionary. Bartos also knew from personal experience how deep these influences ran: 'when it came to scholastic matters we were compelled not knowing the Czech terminology to converse among ourselves in German.'73 Moreover, '[i]n German schools we got out of the habit not only of speaking but even of thinking in Czech'.74 Bartos conveyed his attitude to the two languages in terms which must have struck a painful chord in many of his contemporaries:
In this way it came to be that every educated Czech graduating from those schools has within him a dual keyboard.... One of them the Czech one after practising on it a little in childhood, he abandoned: on the other at German schools he turned himself into a complete virtuoso. When later on, having by now become a patriot, he again began to plonk on that neglected, out-of-tune keyboard, it is not surprising that it often sticks and produces music which to the refined Slavonic ear is a real caterwauling.75
This passage illustrates not only the entrenched position of German in Czech life but also how many Czech intellectuals never felt quite at home in SCz. This was especially true of everyday spoken discourse,
68 Ibid., p. iv. 69 Ibid., p. v. 70 Ibid., p. vi. 7' Ibid., p. v. 72 This account is consistent with an excellent recent treatment of the competition
between Czech and German: E. Skala, 'Diachronische und synchronische Aspekte der deutsch-tschechischen Interferenz', Zeitschriftfuir Germanistik, 2, I98I, pp. 389-403; see also E. Skala, 'Vznik a vyvoj cesko-nemeckeho bilingvizmu', Slovo a slovesnost, 38, 1977, pp- 197-207.
73 Bartos, Rukovft' (see 62 above), p. ix. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid.
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where full use of SCz was never achieved.76 How, then, could they rely on their Sprachgeflihl when they questioned themselves whether such and such an element was in keeping with the 'spirit of the language'? This situation no doubt contributed to the almost pathological examination of SCz carried out by Bartos for hidden symptoms of Germanification:
Lehniibersetzungen bleskujychle (G blitzschnell 'fast as lightning', better is bleskem orjako blesk77 (SSJC accepts bleskuychle); maloobchodnik (G Kleinhdndler) 'retailer' should be replaced by mal obchodnfk78 (the word is registered in SSJC); napadnout (G einfallen) 'to occur to', for example jen mi tak ne'co napadlo 'something just occurred to me', should be replaced byjenjsem si tak na neco vzpomnRl '(lit.) I just remembered something'79 (retained in this meaning in modern Cz, cf. SSJC); plnovous (G Vollbart) 'beard', better is plnj vous80 (but plnovous is registered in SSJC);
Lehnbedeutungen beVhem (G im Lauf) 'in the course of', better is za8l (SSJC gives behem in this precise meaning); patiiti (G gehdren) not to be used in the sense of 'to be'82 (used widely in this meaning in modern Cz, cf. SSJC); tdhne (es zieht) 'there is a draught', better is jest prdvan83 (tdhne is still commonly used in this meaning, cf. SSJC); predmWt 'object' to be used as a grammatical term only not as a calque of Gegenstand84 (but cf. SSJC).
Lehnwendungen mzti smulu (G Pech haben) 'to be unlucky' criticized85 (but still in use, cf. SSJC); ne divu, ze should be retained even though it is based on kein Wunder, dass 'no wonder that';86
76 See Sgall et al., Variation in Language (see 4 above), I 73-74; A. Stich, 'Cesky jazyk a dramaticky text v i9. stoleti' in Divadlo v ceske kulture i9. stoleti, Prague, I985, and 'On the Beginnings of Modern Standard Czech' in Studies in Functional Stylistics, edsJ.Chloupek and J. Nekvapil, Amsterdam, 1993, pp. 92-98.
77 Bartos, Rukovie p. 2. 78 Ibid., p. 29.
79 Ibid., p. 33- 80 Ibid., p. 40. 81 Ibid.,p.2. 82 Ibid., p. 39. 83 Ibid., p. 8i. 84 Ibid., p. 59. 85 Ibid., p. x. 86 Ibid., p. 8.
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skrz na skrz (G durch und durch) 'through and through, completely' should be replaced by venkoncern, vsecko87 (but SSJC gives skrz na skrz as popular, and venkoncem as outmoded); v ?patnem stavu (G im schlechten Zustande) 'in poor (lit. bad) condition' should be avoided88 (but see SSJC); za kazdou cenu (G umjeden Preis) 'at any cost' should be replaced89 (but see SSJC). With some justice Barto's also warns against the use of the preterite of chtz't 'to wish' with perfective verbs to express unrealized intention where SCz should employ an imperfective verb, e.g. Chtdjsem si koupit novy kabat, ale nekoupiljsem 'I intended to buy myself a new jacket but didn't' should be replaced by Kupovaljsem si... 90 However, in modern Czech both are possible without any obvious semantic differentiation. As with certain other Germanisms, Czech has simply used this means to expand its available repertoire.
There is no question that the singling out of covert Germanisms as the principal symptom of the decay of Czech represented a fresh departure in the puristic debate. Moreover, the suspicion that modern Czech was tainted by its contact with German drove many of the puristically inspired practitioners of this period to repudiate all modern developments in favour of an exaggerated respect for the humanistic past.
IV
From the available anecdotal evidence it is apparent that by the turn of the century two opposed schools of thought on the subject of Germanisms had evolved in Czech philological circles.9' According to Zabransky, who was a secondary-school boy at the time, the older teachers followed Hattala's brand of purism. They were irreconcilable enemies of certain words, constructions and phrases. Woe to the student who wrote, for example, sjedne' strany na druhou (G von einer Seite zur anderen) instead of se strany na stranu ('from side to side'). Some words (for example, stav [cf. G stand], prostfedek [cf. G Mittel] ) were anathema 'if they occurred in various idioms and meanings similar to German'.92 Bartos, with his respect for popular speech uncorrupted by foreign
87 Ibid., p. 71. 88 Ibid., p. 79. 89 Ibid., p. 5. 90 Ibid., pp. I6-I 7. 91 F. Zabransky, jakjsme prozivali snahu o cistotujazyka', Ni2ae riec, I 9, I 934, pp. 35 I -56.
Kv. Hodura, 'Me vzpominky najana Gebauera', Nate fe 28, I943, pp. 32-33. Relations between these two philological schools were already exacerbated by the battle of the manuscripts, see Th. Syllaba, jan Gebauer, Prague, I986, pp. 64-77.
92 Ibid., p. 35I.
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(especially German) influence, was also influential in the formation of attitudes.93 The younger teachers meanwhile had embraced the ideas ofJan Gebauer, who, although sympathetic to the goals of the brusici94 and appreciative of Barto-s's contributions to Czech dialectology,95 thought that -sureness of expression was being sacrificed. As Nejedly pointed out in his obituary: 'Gebauer put an end forever to all the idiosyncratic brusic whims and returned full language rights where they belonged -to the people'.96 In contradistinction to the brusici Gebauer 'was content in his grammars to uncover the state of affairs, as appeared to him correct, but did not exploit his great authority to enforce the validity of his opinion in schools and in literature in any other way'.97 Germanisms are not a central concern in these grammars. The only references to Germanisms in the widely used grammar published long after his death deal with the need to insist on phrases such as dam od domu 'from house to house' and den od dne 'from day to day' for od domu k domu (cf. G von Haus zu Haus) and ode dne k dni (cf. G von Tag zu Tag) respectively and the correctness of v'let 'excursion' even though it is a Lehniibersetzung of G Ausftug.98 While he regarded Germanisms as a nuisance, he said there were few of them and thought the influence of schools would remove them.99 Furthermore, the interest roused by Gebauer in comparative Slavonic philology and historical grammar affected his followers' overall point of view and, although they did not indulge in open polemics, they began to view the efforts of the brusici with condescension.I00
V
A major landmark in the cultivation of SCz was the founding in I9I6 of the journal Nas'e r1ec0.1 The initial editorial board consisted of Franti'sek Bily, Emil Smetanka,Jaroslav Vlcek andJosef Zubaty, to be joined the following year by Vaclav Ertl. Except for the loss of Bily through death in I9I9, this board was to remain unchanged for the
Ibid., pp. 35I-52. 94 J. Haller, 'O jazykovem brusicstvi', Skola a kultura, 2, I 947, p. 2 I 1, goes so far as to put
Gebauer in his pantheon of 'slavni brusici' together with Hus, Jungmann, Palacky and Zubaty.
95 Syllaba, Jan Gebauer, p. I 35. 96 Reprinted in: Zd. Nejedly, Z eski kultugy, Prague, 1953, pp. 323-29 (p. 326). 97 Ibid., p. I34; V. Mathesius, Cestina a obecnjjazykozpyt, Prague, 1947, p. 447. Mathesius
also contends that Gebauer was responsible only for the apuristic signed introduction to the Pravidla of I 902, the main text of which is more in the spirit of Fr. Bily.
98 Pfirucnf mluvnicejazyka &eskdho pro ucitele a studium soukrome', ed. Fr. Travnicek, Prague, 1925, p 432.
99 Syllaba, Jan Gebauer, p. 146. 100 Zabransky, p. 352; Syllaba, Jan Gebauer, 140. 'O' For the early history of the journal, seeJ. Haller, 'Dvacet let NaJi reW', Nafe re 2 I, 1936,
pp. I-IO, 33-46.
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first twelve years. Although its entire membership had been taught by Gebauer, the board represented both of the currents in Czech philology: Bily and Vlcek reflected the intensely nationalistic and puristic viewpoint deriving from Hattala and Bartos, while Smet'anka, Zubaty and Ertl espoused the other more tolerant and internationalist attitudes inherited from Gebauer. For the moderates, the presence of Smetanka was the guarantee that Naae rec, despite its concern for SCz, would not follow the old brusic line.102 With the death of Bily, the second current was clearly dominant. Indeed, many of the articles especially those by Zubat -were openly critical of the old brusici and sought to overturn their prescriptions. 103 They were particularly dismissive of what Haller was to call 'the spectre of Germanisms' which had haunted the earlier purists: Germanisms were not necessarily wrong because they were Germanisms but might be so because they were contrary to the spirit of the Czech language.'04 The first twenty years of Nas'e rec are also full of articles on German words in Czech and the need to replace them. Many of these articles openly advocate the use of calques based on these very German words.
The whole debate about Germanisms in Czech in the interwar years was clouded by the Polish linguist Alexander Bruckner's famous observation that the influence of German on Czech (together with Slovene and Sorbian of contemporary Slavic idioms) had been so great that:
... anyone speaking and especially writing in those languages thinks in German and renders the German phrase, word order, and even expressions in Slavonic. In fact, reading modern Czech, especially in newspapers, you have to translate phrases back into German in order to understand what it is about. 105
Although this observation, unsupported as it was by any concrete examples, did little more than echo issues raised earlier by Dobrovsky and Bartos among others, it seemed to provide independent confirm- ation from abroad of what many Czechs themselves feared to be the truth. While some sought to refute Bruckner's comment,'06 for others it brought home even more strongly the need for incessant vigilance.
102 Zabransky, p. 353; Mathesius, Ce?tina a obecny jazykozpyt, p. 45o; also see Nas'e reG as a deliberate reaction to the dilettante purism of the early twentieth century.
103 Ibid. 104 J. Haller, 'Dvacet let Nasi reci' (see n. I O I above), p. I 64. 105 A. Bruckner, Dziejejezykapolskiego, 3rd edn, I925, p. 283. 106 For example, J. Bukacek, 'Je cestina prelozenou nemcinou?', Nas'e rec' I8, I933,
pp. I I 4- I 5 says the difficulties of translating from G into Cz give the lie to what is obviously a hyperbolic statement on Bruckner's part. Nevertheless, Bukacek gives a list of phrases and idioms where there is a parallelism between German and Czech not shared with Italian as representative of the Romance languages.
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In I 93oJri Haller took over as editor of Nase rec. Though Haller saw himself more in the tradition of Zubaty than that of Bily,I07 this change seemed to release new puristic energy. This renewal of purism provoked a savage attack from the fledgling Prague Linguistic Circle, based on a fundamentally new conception of the standard language and the codification of its norms.'08 From a synchronic, functional point of view, the German origin of a word or expression - be it a loan or a calque -was immaterial. Interestingly, three of the five co-authors of this volume (Havranek, Mathesius and Weingart) had been among the earliest contributors to Nas'e rec.109 Although the issue of Germanisms was not central to the debate, " 0O it helped to discredit purism as a paveda 'pseudo-science'. It was pointed out, for example, that many of the so- called Germanisms were in fact international calques and indeed might not even be based on German at all; that there was an inconsistency in puristic intervention; that the 'spirit of the language' was too vague a notion to be used as a criterion; and, finally, that 'the eradication of Germanisms is more a demonstration than an actual de-Germanization of the language'.
I I I Deeply hurt especially by the virulence ofJakobson's criticism
Haller fought back'12 but was eventually forced to moderate his views."13 Nevertheless, he never fully renounced the need for vigilance against Germanification. For example, as late as I 947 he asks rhetorically: 'Is it then possible to claim with a good conscience that purism is finished and that you have no further use for it?"' 14
VI
The tenets of the Prague School corresponded closely to those of most liberal-minded intellectuals during the 1930s in spite of the turbulent political background. Representative of this point of view among non- professional linguists was the writer and translator Pavel Eisner. His withering critique of the elitist and archaizing purism of the brusici is
107 J. Haller, 'Spisovnd cestina a jazykova kultura', Nasfe rec I7, 1932, pp. I I -20, 50-55, 77-88, 105-12, I38-53 (pp. I07-o8).
108 B. Havranek and M. Weingart (eds), Spisovni cestina ajazykovd kultura, Prague, 1932; the assault on Haller was lead by R.Jakobson's polemical article 'O dneinim brusicstvi ceskem', ibid., pp. 85- I 12. '09 Weingart in vol. I ( 19 I 6), Havranek in vol. 3 (I 9 I 8), Mathesius in vol. 4 (I 9I9). 110 The only wvorks to address this issue specifically was the chapter 'O germanismech' in
M. Weingart, Ceskyjazyk vpfitomnosti, Prague, 1934, pp. 56-62. '"' Jakobson, 'O dnesnim brusicstvi ceskem' (see i o8 above), pp. I I 8- 1 9. 112 Haller, 'Spisovna cestina ajazykova kultura' (see I07 above). 113 This moderation is evident in 'Spisovny jazyk cesky' (see I5 above), though his
unreconstructed views still allow him despite its title to devote almost the entire article to puristic problems.
114 J. Haller, 'O jazykovem brusicstvi' (see 94 above), pp. 2 I 1- 1 2.
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already evident in an article written in the early i930s.15 The full exposition of his attitudes towards language was published immediately after the War."6
Eisner wished to show that, despite the regrettable absence of any systematic linguistic studies on the subject, semantic and phraseological calques were a more important influence on Cz than loanwords. Examples abound from the time of the so-called buditeli 'awakeners' of the nineteenth century: Chmelensky addresses his actors as oblzbeni u'dove'(lit.) beloved limbs' in rough imitation of G Mitglieder 'members'; Safain'k and M'acha use lacine '(lit.) cheap' in the sense of 'fair' by analogy with G billig, while examples of Lehnsyntax include z chinezskeho priklady 'Chinese examples' (G Beispiele aus dem Chinesischen) and zarliveho d6lati 'to make jealous' (G eifersiichtig machen) (Macha). 7 However, the concentration on Germanisms by the brusici has meant that all Czechs writing with any degree of conscience 'were possessed at one time by an alarmist fear of Germanisms'. 118 More than this, the brusi6cviewpoint stems from a reluctance to accept 'a European linguisitic mentality'." 9 For Eisner, the Europeanization of Czech should continue as long as 'the foreign influence does not violate some basic principle of Czech'. 120
He is quick to point out that even words like velkome'sto 'city' and velkoobchod 'wholesale trade' formed in direct imitation of German GrojJstadt and GroJihandel and not following the rules of Czech word- formation have found a place in practical life with meanings quite distinct from velke me'sto 'large town' and velkj obchod 'large store' respectively. 121
VII
The dominant figure in the cultivation of Czech since the War has been Frantisek Travnicek.'22 In his assertion that 'the norm is the conse- quence of language custom','23 Travnicek was clearly siding with the Prague School. This is also generally true of his approach to Germanisms. For example, he says of ten supposedly used in imitation of the G definite article der (cf. too the use ofjeden for the G indefinite ein): 'Even if it were a Germanism, we would not have to avoid it for
115 P. Eisner, 'Brus a zena', RozpravyAventina, 8, I932-33, p. 33. 116 P. Eisner, Chram i tvrz: kniha o &eRtinet' Prague, I 946, republished, Prague, I 992. 117 Ibid., P. 504. "8 Ibid., p. 507. 19 Ibid., p. 593. 120 Ibid., p- 544- 121 Ibid., p. 540. 122 His most detailed treatment is contained in the chapter 'Ojazykove spravnosti' in Cteni
ojazyce apoesii, eds B. Havrianek andJ. Mukarovsky, Prague, I 942, vol. I, pp. I 05-228. 123 Ibid., P. I128.
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the reason that it has taken root in the modern language."24 Similarly, puristic claims that such phrases as jakje stdr? 'how old is he' (cf. G wie alt ist er?) alongside kolikje mu let, or drzeti slovo 'to keep one's word' (cf. G Wort halten) are un-Czech are unjustified.'25 As a result of meddling by the brusi6ci the older generation maintains that t6&i mne 'I am pleased, I have the pleasure' is a Germanism (cf. G esfreut mich) instead of the 'correct' mam radost.'26 This concern for what Travnicek calls napodobe- niny 'imitations' disregards such explanations as shared development from Indo-European, internally motivated changes or common areal factors.'27 'The main criterion of correctness must be the expressive, functional capacity of the imitations and the main discriminating factor is linguistic custom.'"28 He maintains that many imitations of German have become rooted in the language and should be retained whether or not they correspond to native grammatical patterns:'29 i) Lehniibersetzungen prednas?ka 'lecture (G Vortrag), zve'rolekar'veterinary surgeon' (G Tierarzt), zemJpis 'geography' (G Landeskunde),130 zememerfic surveyor' (G Landmes- ser), 'I' stfedov6k 'Middle Ages' (G Mittelalter); 132
2) Leknwendungen musi to byt 'it must be so' (G das muss sein);'33 on the other hand, he objects to some Germanisms: i) Lekniibersetzungen ovlivniti 'to influence' (G beeinftussen) (given in SSJC as bookish), kaWdopadne` 'in any case QG jedenfalls), 134 kamenolom 'quarry' (G Stein- bruch)'35 (but listed in SSJC without comment); 2) Lehnbedeutungen bezpecny in the sense of G sicher 'certain', urciitj in the sense of G ein gewisser. .. 'a certain .*..;136
3) Lehnwendungen jedna se o 'it is a question of' (G es handelt sich um) (given in SSJC without comment), brati v uvahu 'to take into consideration' (G in Erwagung ziehen)
124 Ibid., p. i 6 i. 125 Ibid., p. i62. 126 Ibid., p. 226. Both phrases are used in the modern language, but only the Germanism
can be used in the formulaic sense of 'pleased to make your acquaintance'. 127 Ibid., p. I71. 128 Ibid., p. I73. 129 Ibid., p. I 74- 130 In fact, Latin geographia offers a closer parallel to the Cz word.
31 Ibid., p. I74- 132 Ibid., p. I56. 133 Ibid., p. I73. 134 Ibid., p. 7 I . 135 Ibid., p. i56. 136 Ibid., p. 17I .
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(but listed in SSJC without comment), s 20 lety 'when 20 years old' (G mit 20 jahren), pfedejzti necemu 'to take precedence over something' (G etwas vorgehen);137
4) Lehngyntax zaviset od n66eho 'to depend on something' (G von etwas abhdngen)' 38 (SSJC lists only na c6em). Travnicek also takes exception to the influence of the dialects in introducing such Germanisms as s vlakem 'by train' (cf. G mit dem Zug) instead of standard vlakem.'39 It is instructive, however, that Travnilcek is far more condemnatory of illogically formed or poorly motivated neologisms like ddlnice 'motorway', rozhlas 'radio','40 siloun! silec 'car'l41 (p. 209), preferring the internationalisms autostrdda, radio, auto respectively.
It is noticeable that, despite maintaining that purists have done more harm than good, in practice Travnieek represents a return to a more critical attitude to Germanisms. With the Communist take-over in Prague, the Prague School with its theory of language cultivation, became institutionalized as the official attitude to language problems. 142
Nevertheless, in practice the older elitist, archaizing puristic viewpoint lived on.'43 Moreover, a spirit of xenophobic purism albeit mild in intensity especially towards German elements - can still be detected in the public responses to a I 970 questionnaire on attitudes to foreign words in Czech.'44 However, with the sharp decline in Czech- German bilingualism after 1945, the forced removal of the German population from Czechoslovak territory and the positioning of Czecho- slovakia in the Soviet Bloc, any possible threat to Czech from the German language had receded so far that many Czechs particularly of the younger generation appear oblivious to the possible German origin of phrases such as mit smu'lu 'to be unlucky' (cf. G Pech haben). '45 Indeed, even though other puristic concerns have been voiced recently,
137 Ibid. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid., p. I Io. 140 Ibid., p. I 79. 141 Ibid., p. 209. 142 Typical of post-war officially-sanctioned attitudes to purism is K. Hausenblas, 'O
kultufe jazyka a brusicskem purismu', JVase rec, 35, 195I, pp. 4I -45. For a critical view of sociolinguistics and the theory of language cultivation within the Prague School, see Zd. Stary, 'In nomine functionis et standardisationis', International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 86, 1990, pp. 125-42; 'The Forbidden Fruit is the Most Tempting or Why There is no Czech Sociolinguistics' in Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech Sociolinguistics, ed. E. Eckert, Amsterdam and Atlanta, 1993, pp. 79-95.
143 This revisionist notion underlies much of the final chapters of Sgall et al., Variation in Language.
144 A. Tejnor et al., Cizi slova v ceskemnjazyce, Prague, I97 1, p. 68. 145 J can confirm this from personal experience. When I asked a well-educated young
Czech whether this phrase was a Germanism, he replied 'no; because smula is a genuine Cz word'.
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it seems very unlikely that even the greater exposure to German since I989 will have any serious impact on the level of concern on this particular front.
VIII
Attitudes to covert Germanisms over the last two centuries clearly reflect the changing status of SCz vis-a'-vis German in a Bohemian and Moravian society buffeted by the consequences of the radically fluctuating socio-political situation in the region. As the threat of German domination recedes, so too does the intensity of puristic reaction to the inroads of German on SCz, and vice versa. It is particularly noticeable that the I 87os and i 88os, a period when Czechs were fighting for their cultural survival after the dual tilow of the Ausgleich of i867 and the Austro-Prussian War, saw the most far- reaching attempts to rid Czech of these elements. But there were internal factors at work too: in particular, the fact that no one spoke SCz and that SCz was so far divorced from the usual spoken form, itself heavily Germanized at all linguistic levels, induced a high level of insecurity about the norms of SCz. Given the prevailing historicist and elitist paradigms employed to counter this insecurity, would-be cultiva- tors of language had little alternative but to embark on the fruitless task of attempting to exclude from the canon those elements which 'under German influence' had crept into everyday usage. By the I89os the situation had radically changed: Czech was established as a prestigious language of culture, the language of the newly refounded Prague University, and the norms of the standard language had been stabilized. Thus while some entrenched conservatives retained a xenophobic outlook, a progressive group of intellectuals, secure in its use of SCz and confident of the language's survival, was more accommodating to German and more realistic about the need to eradicate supposed German elements from SCz. The second polemic also stemmed from conflicting paradigms: one irrational and narrowly nationalistic, the other rational and internationalistic.'46 The purists were forced to take heed and backtrack on their pronouncements, and despite occasional sightings, the spectre of Germanisms has been finally laid to rest.
146 For an excellent theoretical model for discussing rational and irrational attitudes to language cultivation, see Fr. Danes, 'Dialekticke tendence ve v'voji spisovnych jazykfu (prispevek sociolingvisticky)' in Ceskoslovenske' prednd?ky pro VI mezindrodny sjezd slavistd v Praze, Prague, 1968, pp. I 19-28 and 'Dialektische Tendenzen in der Entwicklung der Literatur- sprachen' in Grundlagen der Sprachkultur: Beitrdge der Prager Linguistik zur Sprachtheorie und Sprachpftege, Berlin, 1982, vol. 2, pp. 92- I 3; for the application of this model to purism, see Thomas, Linguistic Purism, pp. 35-38, 2I6-I7.
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In some cases it is clear that purists are reacting to Lehniibersetzungen which, by too slavishly following the G model, contravene the word- building conventions of Cz. They usually suggest as a replacement a looser Lehniibertragung, motivated by the very same G word. However, it is noteworthy that the primary target was not the conscious Lehnbil- dungen of Jungmann's circle but the German-influenced phraseology, syntax and word-formation of the vernacular. In a sense, therefore, the purism was not simply directed at an external target but was concerned with corruption from a tainted internal source. Significantly, a number of the Germanisms subjected to puristic criticism are registered as CCz in SSJC.
The most intractable problem facing those who wished to eradicate Germanisms was establishing the criteria for the identification of autochthonous as opposed to extraneous elements in a language. For the most part, they followed the hallowed tradition of appealing to such intangibles as 'the spirit of the language' or 'linguistic feeling'. Such appeals, as their opponents never tired of pointing out, are inevitably subjective and furthermore involve circular arguments. In the Czech case, they encounter the added problem that the standard language is no one's native tongue and is not therefore amenable to 'linguistic feeling'.
As we have seen, it is also debatable whether many of the so-called Germanisms should in fact be regarded as such. In the first place, while it is probable that a good number entered Cz as a result of direct G influence, it is immediately noticeable to the comparativist that analogous constructions, semantic development and word-building patterns are to be found in other languages of the former Habsburg Empire and even of Europe as a whole.'47 These elements should, therefore, be regarded as regionalisms or internationalisms rather than Germanisms in the strictest sense. Moreover, we have had cause in some instances to point to the lack of an obvious parallel between Cz and G, thereby calling into question whether we are dealing with a Germanism at all.
While the Czechs have been on the whole very successful in eradicating German loanwords from the standard language, it is certainly open to question whether the attempt to remove covert Germanisms has enjoyed equal success. We have seen that the vast majority of the Germanisms slated for removal continue to be used without stylistic colouring in the contemporary standard. This failure has several probable causes. First, most of them are part of the living
147 For the place of Czech within the Habsburg area and as a Central-European language, see V. E. Moiseenko, Ce?sko-inoslavjanskie jazykovye sujazi epochi nacionalt'nogo vozroZfden#ja (3o-8oe gody xix veka), Avtoreferat doktorskoj dissertacii LGU, Leningrad, I989 and H. Becker, Zwei Sprachanschliisse, Leipzig, 1948.
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Czech vernacular, which makes it much more difficult to remove them. Secondly, we are dealing for the most part with idiomatic phraseology, syntactical constructions, word-building models and extended mean- ings, which are much less susceptible to change than purely surface lexical items. Finally, in most cases there is no viable alternative: the vernacular is even more Germanized than the standard language, and to attempt to turn Czech into a calque language of Polish or Russian was clearly not a practical proposition. It is also readily apparent that some undoubted Germanisms148 have been neglected in favour of high-profile examples like nemam pojmu or kazdopddne, which recur in virtually every puristically inspired manual. This concentration on certain key examples is typical of purism: the removal of high-profile items serves to placate the puristic conscience.149 Moreover, these Musterbeispiele also have a symbolic significance and help to raise language consciousness within the social elite.'50 Viewed from this perspective, the puristic intervention may be judged a success because it kept the Germanism question in the public's consciousness for at least three quarters of a century: what was covert was rendered overt. On the other hand, there have been prominent Czech intellectuals'51 during this period who have pointed out that this consciousness-raising has had detrimental consequences for Czech intellectual discourse: in particular, linguistic introspection and a curtailment of expressive freedom.
The attitudes to covert Germanisms in SCz which we have chronicled here should not be seen in isolation. For a fuller picture, it is necessary to see how they cohere with such problems as the exclusion of G loanwords and the incorporation of CCz elements in SCz. It is also clear that the Czech situation is paralleled in other speech communities in which Slavonic-German bilingualism has been wide- spread. A particularly good example is Slovene, where language cultivation faced very similar problems and in many cases dealt with precisely the same purported instances of German influence. 152 These, however, are issues I hope to return to at a later date.
148 Among these one could cite for example the word-formational type represented by knihkupectvi'bookshop' (modelled on G Buchhandlung) which lacks the linking element -o- required in all Slavonic languages; interestingly, both knihvazac and knihovazac 'bookbinder' are given on consecutive pages without comment in M. Dokulil (ed.), Tvoreni slov v &eRtine' vol. 2: Odvozovdnipodstatn'chbjmen, Prague, I962, pp. 227-28.
49 See Thomas, Linguistic Purism, p. I63. 150 Ibid., pp. I 80-82. 151 For example, individuals as temperamentally different as Gebauer, Ertl, Zubaty,
Mathesius, Eisner, Travnicek. 152 For an excellent treatment of the problem in Slovene, see E. Prunc, Das innere Lehngut in
der slovenischen Schriftsprache: Versuch einer Typologie der Lehnpragungen im Slovenischen (Dissertation for Habilitation at the University of Graz), Graz, I 967.
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