Linguistic Authority, Language Ideology, and Metaphor

Linguistic Authority, Language Ideology,
and Metaphor
≥
Language, Power and
Social Process 17
Editors
Monica Heller
Richard J. Watts
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Linguistic Authority,
Language Ideology,
and Metaphor
The Czech Orthography Wars
by
Neil Bermel
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bermel, Neil.
Linguistic authority, language ideology, and metaphor : the Czech
orthography wars / by Neil Bermel.
p. cm. ⫺ (Language, power and social process ; 17)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018596-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 3-11-018596-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018826-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 3-11-018826-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Czech language ⫺ Orthography and spelling ⫺ History. 2. Czech
language ⫺ Reform ⫺ History. 3. Language planning ⫺ Czech
Republic. I. Title.
PG4141.B47 2006
491.816⫺dc22
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I carried the purple book with me at all times; in the tram, in line at the
store, sometimes even as I walked along the street, I would open it and
study the unfamiliar symbols over and over again. I could already
recognize individual letters, although I didn’t know what sounds they
represented. I was impressed by the fact that there were seventy-six signs;
the writing must either distinguish sounds that we find to be variants of one
phoneme, or it indicated a multitude of sounds that are completely different
from ours. (…) Why do those who use this unfamiliar writing feel such a
need to distinguish all these sounds graphically? Is it joy at the sensory
richness of the voice, wanting to make the text approximate a musical score
that could capture the life forces pulsating in the language, or is the
fecundity of letters instead an expression of fearfulness: that meanings too
closely bound to individual shades of sound are constantly escaping us? To
me at least, the tension radiating from the shapes of these letters testified
that they grew from a world of fear.
Michal Ajvaz, Druhé mČsto (‘The Other City’), 2005 [1993]: 32

Contents
Foreword and acknowledgments xi
Chapter 1
Orthographic reform and language planning 1
1. The language planning context 2
2. Terminology 3
3. Components of spelling reform 8
4. Motivations for language planning 24
5. Introducing ideology 26
6. Looking forward 33
Chapter 2
Standard Czech in its social and linguistic setting 34
1. The Czech Republic 34
2. The Czech language 44
3. Phonology and the orthographic system of Czech 46
4. Quasi-diglossia in Bohemia 51
5. Phonology and Czech language regulation 55
6. Morphology and Czech language regulation 60
7. The 1993 Rules of Czech Orthography 64
8. The Addendum to the 1993 Rules 78
9. Conclusions 81
Chapter 3
Spelling reform in Czech, 1400–1900 82
1. To 1620: Early Czech 83
2. 1620–1790: Baroque Czech 88
3. 1780–1900: The National Revival 92
4. Conclusions 105
Chapter 4
Spelling reform in Czech, 1900–1980 107
1. 1900–1945: Standardization and purism 107
2. 1918–1945: The beginnings of functionalism 117
3. 1945–1957: The first years of communism 122
viii Contents
4. 1957–1958: The first communist-era Rules 129

5. Conclusions 143
Chapter 5
Czech orthographic reform, 1980–1994 151
1. The reforms from 1980–1989 151
2. The commission after 1989 159
3. The publication of the Rules and initial reactions 163
4. Official responses to the public reaction 166
5. The endgame of the 1993 Rules 172
6. Conclusions 177
Chapter 6
The actors in spelling reform: Issues and debates 178
1. Participants, beneficiaries, and victims of reform 179
2. The reformers 182
3. The press 191
4. Other actors 205
5. Conclusions 213
Chapter 7
Debating linguistics, authority, and legitimacy 214
1. Linguistic motives for spelling reform 214
2. Authority and the 1993 reforms 230
3. Obligation or recommendation? 235
4. Consultation, dissemination, and legitimacy 248
5. Conclusions 256
Chapter 8
Metaphors and the conceptualization of language 262
1. The place of metaphors 262
2. The metaphorical patterning of language 268
3. Data from the corpus 271
4. Metaphors for language 272
5. Metaphors for orthography 275
6. Metaphors for regulation 277
7. Metaphors for discussion 281
8. Metaphoric networks crossing domains 284
9. Conclusion 289
Contents ix
Chapter 9
Conclusions 292
1. Participants, beneficiaries, and victims of reform 292
2. Conclusions on authority, legitimacy, and reform 296
3. Conclusions on language ideological debates 298
Notes 301
References 340
Index 365
Foreword and acknowledgments
I have taken a number of decisions in this book that I hope will aid readers
from a variety of backgrounds.
There are extensive quotations, the vast majority of which come from
Czech-language sources. I have given these in English, with only a few ex-
ceptions. Unless noted otherwise, any English quotation corresponding to a
foreign-language title in the references section is the result of my own
translation.
For the most part, I have not given the original Czech citations. There
are two exceptions. If I thought the Czech-equipped reader might appreci-
ate a particular turn of phrase or want to know a particular name or piece of
terminology, I provide it in the text or in a note. I have also left the original
texts in the footnotes of the chapter on metaphors, as the original is more
likely to be of interest in a close linguistic analysis. Items in square brack-
ets within citations indicate cuts I have made or my own explanations.
Linguistic terms are discussed in chapter 1. Transcriptions, where nec-
essary, have been given in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The research for this book was conducted over several years and in
various libraries and offices. As it turned out, I was studying a period long
enough ago that primary source materials were not available on the web,
but distant enough that most libraries had by this point disposed of their old
newspapers and magazines. I became well acquainted with the stacks and
microfilms of the Library of the School of Slavonic and East European
Studies, which holds an excellent collection of Czech newspapers, and I am
grateful to the staff there for their assistance. For journals and books, the
Taylor Institution Slavonic, East European and Greek Library at Oxford
University and the Glasgow University Library were treasure troves, con-
taining numerous relevant works and runs of periodicals stretching back to
the early years of the twentieth century. The staff of the periodicals room at
the Czech National Library in Prague uncomplainingly lugged package af-
ter package of old magazines and newspapers for me. I am also indebted to
the staff of the Language Advice Service of the Czech Language Institute
(CLI) for allowing me access to their clipping file, which contained a
wealth of information on reaction to the spelling reforms of 1993–1994.
To fill in some of the substantial gaps in the record, I turned to personal
interviews with some of the main participants in the orthographic contro-
xii Foreword and acknowledgments
versies of 1993–1994. Olga Martincová, one of the project leaders at the

CLI, and JiĜí Kraus, then-head of the CLI, were kind enough to grant me
interviews that provided a view from inside the reforms. Josef Šimandl
(currently of the CLI, formerly of the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts,
Charles University), Petr Sgall (Mathematics and Physics Faculty, Charles
University), and Antonín Kostlán (Institute for Contemporary History,
Charles University, formerly of the Academy of Sciences Archive) pro-
vided a perspective from outside, having participated in many of the de-
bates, discussions and other commissions that surrounded the reforms. In
an attempt to ensure objectivity and avoid misinterpreting them, the inter-
viewees were all sent partial drafts of the book for comment and correction.
I am especially grateful to Professor Sgall and Mr. Šimandl for the exten-
sive suggestions and many corrections that they made to the manuscript,
the vast majority of which are reflected in the text. Dominik Lukeš offered
commentary on sections on functionalism and metaphor. I am also grateful
to the two anonymous peer reviewers of this manuscript and the series edi-
tors, Richard Watts and Monica Heller, for their detailed and helpful com-
ments, of which I have tried to address as many as possible. Some of the
more global suggestions I was unable to make for lack of space and time,
and I take the consequences of that upon myself.
Andrew Swartz provided regular technical assistance, especially in the
preparation of the manuscript, and seemingly endless amounts of moral
support from the very beginning of this project. I’m also grateful to LudČk
Knittl for transcribing hours of taped interviews in Czech, and to Paul
Peace for the proofreading.
The completion of this work was greatly facilitated by a semester’s
leave from the University of Sheffield, plus a matching semester funded by
the Arts and Humanities Research Board’s Research Leave Scheme, and I
acknowledge both institutions for their support.
Finally, this book is dedicated to Nigel Gotteri, Bill Leatherbarrow and
Bob Russell, the Sheffield Russian Department’s “Class of 1972”. Ten
years of their advice, support and guidance helped to make this work possi-
ble.
Chapter 1
Orthographic reform and language planning
On 17 July 1994, while his boss was on holiday, a junior minister in the
Czech Ministry of Education announced that he was rescinding the ap-
proval certificate for the new Rules of Czech Orthography. At a stroke, all
the textbooks that had been painstakingly re-edited, re-typeset, and reissued
over the last year were rendered invalid. Publishers threatened legal action,
and schools that had been purchasing them and retraining their teachers
cried foul. The Minister cut short his holiday and rushed back to Prague.
For several weeks it looked unclear whether pupils across the Czech
Republic would have books to learn from that autumn, and newspapers car-
ried daily updates on the crisis. With chaos looming across the education
sector, a compromise was hastily hammered out between the supporters and
detractors of the Rules, and a revision was rushed into print, arriving at
schools only days before the beginning of term in September.
How could things get to such an impasse, with an entire country finding
it has no materials suitable for teaching its native language thanks merely to
a few changes in spelling? What factors behind the scenes conspired to cir-
cumvent the usual planning process? Why, in fact, engage in orthographic
reform at all, when the outcome is so drastically negative?
This is a monograph about changes to spelling, the people who are in-
volved in them, and their social context. It takes as its main subject the lan-
guage of what British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain once called a
“far-away country” populated by “people of whom we know nothing.” The
Czechs are neither as far away nor as uninteresting as Chamberlain thought
they were, but their example need not be fascinating to everyone for its
own sake. Instead, it is an academic parable: a case study using unfamiliar
material to illuminate the same disputes that go on every day, in every lan-
guage community that uses a written form of communication.
The first two sections of this chapter examine concepts and terms. Sec-
tion 3 takes a close reading of Cooper’s accounting scheme for language
planning and applies it to spelling reform. In sections 4 and 5, we consider
sociolinguistic aspects more closely: internal motivations that drive spelling
reform and critical evaluations of authority and ideology in language plan-
ning. Section 6 lays out the structure for the remainder of the book.
2 Orthographic reform and language planning
1. The language planning context
The way we spell and the marks we make on a page are the most visible
manifestation of our attempt to communicate, and it is therefore not sur-
prising that there is substantial pressure to regulate them, just as there is
pressure to regulate the rest of language.
Spelling reform is a small but highly visible part of the field known as
language planning. Language planning itself is a vast area, and it will help
to survey it quickly in its entirety before proceeding to our corner of it.
First, language planning covers written language and spoken language.
Sometimes regulation of one goes hand in hand with the other, but many
specific points refer only to one of the two. The Quebec language law of
1977 had a provision mandating that all signage be in French; this point of
legislation applied only to the written domain. US state language laws
privileging the use of English in the workplace attempted to legislate the
code that employees used in everyday speech; they did not prohibit, for
instance, the printing of brochures and informational material in foreign
languages.
Second, language planning encompasses both the creation of new sys-
tems (usually written, but sometimes spoken as well) and the regulation of
existing systems. These days, the creation side is mostly limited to smaller
minority languages, although as little as fifty years ago this was not the
case. Attempts to formulate a standard can come from within the
community or without. Some minority European languages, like Walloon,
have native movements for standardization, and are still gaining consensus
on a standard orthography.1 In the case of many small African languages,
the creation of a standard is initiated by missionaries, whose goals are both
linguistic and evangelical. Once those standards are in place, further efforts
serve to regulate or guide the existing norm or language community.2
Third, language planning covers both corpus planning and status plan-
ning.3 Corpus planning constitutes “planned efforts to change the lexicon,
grammar, phonology, orthography and/or writing system of a given lan-
guage” (Fishman 2004: 79 following Kloss). For example, a corpus-plan-
ning study of Norwegian could look at the specific words or forms of
words that are permitted or prescribed in the two standard varieties,
Nynorsk and Bokmål. Status planning is concerned with activities that
regulate use of the language or the spheres in which it is used. Herriman
and Burnaby (1996: 4) define it as follows: “Status planning involves
decisions which affect the relative status of one or more languages in
respect of that of others”. A status-planning study of Norwegian might ask
Terminology 3
which variety is taught in which schools, what influence various official

bodies that participate in regulating the language have on the choice of
variety, and how the functionality of one or the other variety is expanding
or contracting. It follows that corpus planning focuses on the charac-
teristics of a single language or variety, while status planning implies the
existence of competing languages or language varieties within a
community.
Let us now locate spelling reform in this framework. It operates in the
written sphere of language, although it can be influenced by developments
in the spoken language. It constitutes regulation, as opposed to creation, as
the examples we will be interested in concern language communities that
have well-established conventions. With respect to the third category, we
can look at spelling reform from a corpus planning or a status planning
perspective. For example, a study of the Dutch spelling reform of 1994
could examine it from a corpus planning angle, analysing the changes that
were made and the principles that underlay them, or from a status planning
angle, asking who was on the committee that proposed it, why they were
there, how the results were disseminated, and what the reaction was.
Fishman (2004: 80) points out two pitfalls that these concepts pose for
the scholar. First, status planning has been portrayed as the stimulus to cor-
pus planning; and second, corpus planning itself is painted as a purely intel-
lectual exercise. In fact, there is an ideological dimension to the particulars
of corpus planning (see section 4), and ample evidence that the interaction
between these two types of planning is a two-way street: corpus planning
can prompt changes in the status planning activities of a language.
Our focus will thus be the intersection between corpus planning and
status planning. Some digging in the particulars of Czech corpus planning
will be necessary, but the specific reforms are merely markers for a debate
that has been ongoing in Czech society for two hundred years about the na-
ture and extent of regulation and its place in the language community.
2. Terminology
Words like spelling, orthography, writing system, grammar, alphabet,

script, norm, standard, reform are notoriously labile, as they have a place
in both the scholarly and the lay vocabulary. It will be useful to have a few
basic definitions, which we can modify and dissect later.
I will use the term spelling for the sense it usually has in English – that
is, which letters we choose and which order we put them in. I will allow
orthography the slightly broader meaning it has in many languages: spel-

ling, plus punctuation and capitalization – in other words, the arrangement
of graphic symbols and conventions that are necessary to render in writing
an example of standard speech.
Coulmas (2003: 35) distinguishes two distinct meanings for a writing
system: the conventions for implementing a specific alphabet, and the gen-
eral principles that underlie the creation of these conventions. Thus we can
speak of the writing system of French, meaning the set of specific rules that
govern the spelling of French words, as well as a phonetic writing system
and an etymological writing system to denote two different principles on
which e.g. Serbian and French are based: Serbian favours a principle that
says “in most instances choose the letter that most closely approximates the
sound”, whereas French spelling relies heavily on inherited (or recon-
structed) etymologies to establish a standard spelling, with a large number
of silent letters and homophones. The two meanings of writing system are
easily disambiguated in context.
Grammar we take to mean the set of recognized forms of a language or
code, and the rules governing their arrangement to form comprehensible,
“native” speech or writing. Language planners would probably argue that
most activities directed at defining or standardizing these rules fall outside
the scope of orthographic regulation. However, often the orthography en-
codes and promotes certain grammatical distinctions; for example, capitali-
zation in German distinguishes Sie ‘you (formal)’ from sie ‘they’, and the
placement of a dash between English words like well-meaning depends on
the relationship between the two modifiers. As we will see in chapter 2,
standard Czech orthography frequently makes reference to grammatical
features in the language. Given this overlap, it is not surprising that the
public often include all of grammar within the remit of orthography.
Alphabet is a slippery term that has a variety of meanings. Coulmas
(2003: 35) identifies one of them as “the inventory of basic signs of any
writing system”, which is the sense in which I will use it here.4 Other
senses in which it is often used are: the set of basic characters shared (with
minor differences) by a number of languages; a set of characters in a
particular order, descended from the Phoenician writings through Latin and
Greek. Thus, we speak of the Macedonian alphabet (the inventory of letters
used in writing Macedonian); the Cyrillic alphabet (the inventory of letters
used in writing Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Uzbek,
Kazakh and so forth); and simply the alphabet (the series of characters
typically beginning A, B, C… as opposed to e.g. Chinese characters,
Cyrillic, Armenian, and other systems). I will follow Coulmas in using
Terminology 5
script instead for the second meaning, and Latin script for the third
meaning.
Norm and standard are related but distinct terms. Both concern
acceptability of spoken or written forms or utterances: of the two, norm is
the superordinate term. A norm encapsulates a general consensus as to what
constitutes acceptable communication in a language or any area of it. To
define a feature as part of a norm, we look for evidence of its preferred
standing within a language code or variety. This might take the form of ex-
plicit sanctioning in authoritative works, but it also might include surveys
of opinion or usage.
A standard entails approval, formal or otherwise, of a particular series
of means of expression. To define a feature as part of a standard, we cite
works or opinions considered authoritative by the language community; we
need not make reference to its frequency or use.
Language varieties can have norms without entailing the existence of a
standard based on those norms. We can speak of norms within, for in-
stance, a dialect, because every community recognizes speech that belongs
to it and speech that does not – when the accent (pronunciation, intonation),
choice of grammatical forms, syntactic structures or vocabulary are per-
ceived as “not ours”. However, only some varieties form the basis of a
standard throughout the language community. Standard and
standardization are terms that apply to language varieties which are
cultivated for particular purposes: either overall as a written code, or for use
in a specific field. In all instances, language standards appeal to two beliefs:
that for certain purposes, it is best to have agreed methods of expression;
and that there are recognized authorities who can be depended on for
guidance in setting these standards. The usual Czech term for standard
Czech, spisovná þeština, prominently features this notion of
authoritativeness; its closest relations are words like spisovatel ‘author’,
spis ‘treatise, publication, file’, spisovat ‘compose, set down’.
“Spelling” is a value-neutral term, but not all such terms lack evaluative
content. The word orthography comes from a Greek compound meaning
‘correct writing’. This word is borrowed or calqued into a number of other
languages. French has the loan orthographie, Italian ortografia. German
and Russian have the calques Rechtschreibung and ɩɪɚɜɨɩɢɫɚɧɢɟ; Czech
and Slovak use the calque pravopis. The meaning of ‘correctness’ intrudes
here in a way missing from the term spelling.5
In English, “spelling” (or more rarely “orthography”) means strictly the
arrangement of letters to form words. Noah Webster’s reforms – omitting
 from colour, favour, using single consonant letters – traveling instead
of travelling, and so forth – fall under spelling. Hyphenation at line breaks

and writing words together or separately (timescale vs. time scale vs. time-
scale) also constitute part of spelling, broadly conceived.
English capitalization is only considered a part of “spelling” for the
names of months, cities, nationalities, languages, and so forth, which are
invariably capitalized. Finer points, such as the capitalization of names of
institutions vs. common nouns (e.g. the University vs. the university), tend
not to be considered part of English “spelling”. Where to place commas and
how to use a semi-colon almost certainly would not fall under the heading
of spelling; English speakers typically call this punctuation.
There are other questions that almost no English speaker would describe
as “spelling” issues. Do we write octopuses or octopi, he dived or he dove,
passers-by or passer-bys, and ain’t or isn’t?
In some languages, however, the scope of spelling or orthography is
greater than in English. The Czechs have traditionally considered comma
placement and capitalization in all its aspects to be integral parts of what
they call pravopis ‘orthography’; this is true for linguists and non-linguists
alike. Orthography, then, covers both spelling and punctuation in this
community; it concerns the use and display of the entire set of symbols ap-
proved for the standard language, even when many of those symbols have
primarily a grammatical, rather than a purely lexical function.
The public may go even further in this direction than the linguists. The
most popular Czech spelling manuals contain grammatical information
(plurals, case forms, conjugations), and the public labels this sort of infor-
mation “orthography” as well. In Norway, the public generally considers
questions of which words belong to which standard as an “orthographic”
matter, although a language planner might see it primarily as an issue of
language norms.6 In the mind of the average citizen, then, orthography
often comes to represent the entire sphere of “correctness in writing” – for
example, everything they need to know to write a minimally literate letter
(see Figure 1). This definition is goal-oriented rather than taxonomical, but
there is no reason to regard it as less valid for that reason alone.
Typically we think of a reform as consisting of a series of proposed
changes, often linked by one or more consistent rationales and principles;
instances where, for example, a few words unobtrusively gain an alterna-
tive spelling in a dictionary might not qualify as a reform. Inherent in the
concept is a substantial effort to justify the changes based on linguistic or
social principles and to convince the public of their utility or necessity.
Terminology 7
Even with these parameters, the label of “reform” is partially in the eye
of the beholder. For example, the script reforms carried out in Azeri three
times in the last century involved replacing the Arabic script with a Latin
one, then Latin by Cyrillic, and finally re-Latinization in the 1990s
(Bayatly 1997). Compare this to the Russian reforms proposed in the 1960s
and the late 1990s, where the major questions involved the spelling of
compound words – relatively infrequent in Russian compared to, say,
German – and rules for writing doubled consonants (see, e.g., Avanesov
1974).
“correctness”
grammar
lexicon
public
punctuation perception
spelling
capitalization
orthography
Figure 1. Spelling and its place in a scheme of “correctness”
What is gained by giving these disparate efforts the same label? First,
we can see commonalities in the pronouncements of the responsible parties,
who in the case of the Russian situation harked explicitly back to more
major reforms and portrayed their work as a necessary exercise in
standardization. By placing themselves in that tradition, they appropriated
the label of reformers. Second, the public reaction to these proposals in
Russia shows that they were not perceived as minor corrections, but as a
programmatic interference in the look and feel of standard Russian.
Reform, of course, implies that what is being carried out is a change or
improvement to an existing norm, which is itself an ideological position.
Issues that come to the fore in reforms are, naturally, not only the adequacy
of the proposed changes, but also the adequacy of the current system. The
push for reform implies that the current state of affairs is inadequate to the
needs of language users. Spelling reform thus has an extra set of tasks be-
yond simply mapping the extent of proposed changes and justifying them.
Despite their potential ideological content, I will nonetheless continue to
use the terms reform, reformer for language planners in this book.
3. Components of spelling reform
What should a study of spelling reform encompass? Cooper (1989: 88) pro-
poses the following “accounting scheme for the study of language plan-
ning”, based on models of innovation management, marketing, and power
maintenance:
What actors attempt to influence what behaviours of which people: for
what ends, under what conditions, by what means, through what decision-
making process, with what effect?7
This scheme is useful in outlining the different contributors to the proc-
ess of spelling reform, although we will need to look elsewhere for more
detailed descriptions of the particular areas it takes in.
The actors in spelling reform represent various individuals and institu-
tions; returning to a language planning perspective, Kaplan and Baldauf
(1997: 6) classify them as government agencies, education agencies, non-
or quasi-government organizations and other organizations. In practice, the
rationale behind these groupings is not always evident for a given language,
nor is it always possible to assign an actor to one or another group.8 There
is no single way to define the term “quasi-governmental”, which covers a
variety of approaches and structures. For example, the Norwegian
Language Council is composed of representatives of various interest groups
(schools, universities, the press, other media, private interest groups), but
has tasks defined under Norwegian law (Bull 1993: 26).9 France has at least
three bodies charged under law with the maintenance and regulation of
various (overlapping) aspects of the language: the Académie française, the
Conseil supérieur de la langue française, and the Délégation générale à la
langue française et aux langues de France. The Academy is the body
legally responsible for the defence and preservation of the French language
and specifically its spelling, and its members are nominated by the head of
state; yet they do not constitute a state agency as such, and are chosen from
the ranks of writers and other leading cultural figures. This pattern is
Components of spelling reform 9
replicated in the other bodies as well.10 The term “quasi-governmental”

does not really help us to understand which aspects of it seem more like a
government agency, and which aspects make it more like a non-
government organization. In Europe, the number of such hybrids is quite
high; governments seem anxious to regulate language policy, but are
happiest to have outside specialists in charge of the details of corpus
planning, and cope with this through a variety of legislative strategies.
Terminological commissions are a covert source of spelling regulation.
Typically composed of members of a particular profession and representa-
tives of an official language body or commission, their primary mission is
to standardize the set of words used in a particular field. However, when
this consists largely of foreign borrowings and derivatives of them, the
issue becomes one of spelling. These commissions sometimes have a
political or ideological origin. An excellent example of this is the recent
dramatic increase in activity on the part of Estonia’s Place Names Board,
which has been charged under law in the newly independent republic with
establishing Estonian-language place names.11 Its primary rationale is to
widen the functionality of Estonian vis-à-vis Russian, as the former had in
many instances lacked standardized terms and names for foreign and even
occasional domestic place names.
3.1. Behaviours
In the most basic view of spelling reform, “behaviour” refers to the act of
writing. In practice, most orthographic reforms do not strive to change all
writing at once. Typically, they are limited to a particular sphere of endeav-
our. The Uzbek script reform of the 1990s was applied first to certain obvi-
ous symbols, such as street names and government documents, and then
extended to the earliest grades of primary school, with the intention of
eventually rolling it out through the entire educational system (Schlyter
1998: 161–166). Reforms in Norway and other Scandinavian countries
have traditionally been made binding on civil servants as well as schools.12
The primary work of language regulation in Estonia in recent years has
been the standardization of Estonian-style place names for locales that
previously only had names in Russian. This again has an impact primarily
on those who write these names in official or public contexts, but also on
those who repeat them in the broadcast media; fines are to be levied for the
use of non-Estonian names (see http://www.eki.ee).
Not all participants in a reform agree on what behaviours are to be re-

formed. There may be attempts to give the reforms legal status, which may,
as in the German case, be quite explicit. However, this does not mean that
the right to do so is cut and dried. As Sally Johnson shows, the attempt to
enshrine the reforms in law can founder either through challenges to their
overall legal basis or to their applicability. In the German orthography de-
bates of the 1990s, opponents brought suits on a variety of counts. Some
challenged the laws that gave the federal government the right to conduct
such business at all. Others attempted to limit the obligations of various
parties to introduce and enforce use of the reformed spellings. Court cases
revolved around the rights of physical and corporate persons to learn and
conduct transactions using the older, now unsanctioned norms (see Sally
Johnson 2002, 2005: 87–148).
The German reforms were meant to be rolled out to all forms of public
written discourse. In other cases, reforms have had more of a force of re-
commendation. But even there, members of the public frequently take a
more drastic view of these reforms, behaving as if the state is going to start
monitoring their personal correspondence to ensure compliance with new
spelling rules. Words like “required” have a range of meanings that
frequently leaves the public scratching its collective head as to what
responsibilities and sanctions apply to the ordinary citizen writing in one of
his various capacities – for instance, as employee, petitioner, and private
individual. We will have ample opportunity to observe this clash in the
debate on Czech orthography.
3.2. People affected
Spelling reform affects the members of a language community in a variety

of ways. Any reform will offer certain benefits and impose certain costs.
Certain segments of society stand to reap more benefits than they incur
costs; for others, the balance tips in the opposite direction. Reforms thus
have a target audience and other affected audiences.
Paradoxically, those who are not yet literate are most easily seen as the
beneficiaries. They will reap the proposed benefits without the costs of hav-
ing to re-learn, re-orient, or re-do. The reform may carry positive benefits
for others, although their opportunity costs will be higher.
If planners could somehow use this information to predict response to a
proposed reform, then it would be useful indeed. The problem is that antici-
pated benefits and costs may not be good predictors of whether or not
people want a spelling reform. Those for whom it should not be a matter of
much concern because they only write in a private capacity (e.g. personal
letters or e-mails), or only consume written material passively, may
nonetheless have very strong opinions. Conversely, those who will suffer
major upheaval in their working practices (copy editors, for example) may
favour the reforms. Group allegiance does thus contribute to how people
respond to spelling reform, although its results are not necessarily
predictable using a cost–benefit analysis. The discussion in chapters 6
through 8 aims to further our understanding of this conundrum.
As Cooper points out, planning can be targeted at individuals or or-
ganizations. We will see later that the decision-making process can treat
organizations as perfect representatives of the individuals who comprise
them, but just because a union, trade journal or professional association is
involved and approves a reform does not mean its rank and file will fall
into line. The assent of major journalistic and educational associations is no
guarantee that individual people and enterprises will accept a spelling re-
form, and as we will see below in the case studies, people’s reactions seem
to be largely determined by cultural-specific, non-linguistic factors.13
Later in this study, we will provide a scheme for classifying both actors
and those affected based on the Czech context (see chapter 6, section 1).
3.3. Ends
Cooper (1989: 90–91,98) asks us to consider overt and latent ends. Overt
ends are those closely tied to linguistic behaviour; latent ends are those
non-linguistic behaviours influenced by the reform. This facet of language
planning has been worked out in greater detail by Ager and Fishman, and is
treated below in section 4.
The most overt ends in a spelling reform are simply the set of alterations
that planners want people to take on board, but we cannot learn much by
looking at these alone. By and large, any spelling reform seeks to alter atti-
tudes and overall practices, rather than merely gaining acceptance for a set
of arbitrary rules divorced from a system or social context. A series of de-
tailed changes to spelling could in fact represent an etymologizing reform,
which reinforces the continuity of the language with an earlier variety or
language, possibly also adding prestige associated with these older
varieties; the failed proposals of the early 1990s to return Central Asian
languages to the Arabic script are a case in point. A phoneticizing reform
might aim to make the language more accessible to a wider variety of users,
both in its ease of production and ease of reception. Many reforms will not
shove a writing system radically in either direction, but reflect a gradual but
perceptible shift towards one or the other attitude.
The reform of the Russian script in the early eighteenth century shows
how reforming the visual identity of a language can form part of a larger
social programme. When Peter the Great ascended the throne, the fonts
used in printing were for the most part a stylized representation of Russian
handwriting. Peter commissioned a new printed style of letter that was
more similar to French and English models, which came to be called the
civil font (ɝɪɚɠɞɚɧɫɤɢɣ ɲɪɢɮɬ). Along with a change in the look of the
letters came spelling changes, prompted by the proposed elimination of
more than a dozen letters. Some of the letters slated for elimination were
already moribund by the beginning of the eighteenth century (for example,
those marking nasal vowels) but others were very much in use. Peter also
decreed that the profusion of accent marks being used over words in
imitation of Greek should cease completely.
Nearly all of these changes reflected Peter’s strong bias towards things
western and Latin. Wherever there were two letters, one with more of a
Greek look and one more Latin, Peter’s proposed reform favoured the more
western-looking variant ( instead of <ɢ>, for instance, or <z> instead of
<ɡ>).14 Changes in society – for example, the tax on traditional Russian
beards, the importation of Dutch and German specialists, and the building
of a new “window on Europe” in the form of Peter’s new capital at St.
Petersburg – were further expressions of Peter’s programme.
We expect language planners to make their overt ends clear in the
various papers, interviews and public discussions leading up to and
following a reform. Certain latent ends, however, are more difficult to
establish, because they are less widely discussed and less predictable.15
Cooper posits that decision makers, “if they are an elite, […] make
policy in order to maintain or extend their privileges” (1989: 90). Certainly
no language planning agency will admit to existing simply in order to
reinforce its own standing in the society. However, the simple fact of
continued reform bolsters the visibility of the planning institution. It is an
opportunity for increased media coverage, in which the agency’s
employees will be presented to the public as knowledgeable experts, and
book sales, in which the agency’s publications will be seen as an
authoritative source of information. In essence, spelling reform can

reinforce a societal trend in which the public looks to the agency for expert
guidance and direction.16
Undertaking spelling reform also ties a linguistics institute more closely
into channels of power at whatever level of government is involved in the
reforms. In a democratic society, this may entail a commitment to mild
nationalist ends, as in France, or to more extreme ones, as in Latvia, where
language laws are actually enforced and a “language police” operates to
assess people’s competence and the purity of their language use.17
3.4. Conditions: A case study
Conditions represent the background to a reform. Cooper (1989: 93–96),

basing his classification on that of the political scientists, Leichter and Al-
ford, distinguishes environmental conditions, structural conditions, cultural
conditions, situational conditions, and informational conditions. Environ-
mental conditions are influences from outside the system. Structural condi-
tions consider the type of political system and economic model, as well as
demographic data. Clearly distinguished from this are cultural conditions,
which explore the “openness” of the regime and the populace to language
manipulation. Situational conditions are essentially current events: what is
happening at the time. Informational conditions are concerned with the data
available in the service of informed policy-making.
The Azeri language presents a wealth of data on which we can
exemplify these conditions. Along with other Central Asian languages of
the former Soviet Union, Azeri has undergone frequent and radical changes
to its orthography over the last hundred years, involving moves between the
Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic scripts.
The environmental conditions of Azeri partially explain the pressures
for script reform. It is the majority language of Azerbaijan, which lies south
of the Caucasus Mountains, bordering Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Iran,
Turkey, and the Caspian Sea. A former republic of the Soviet Union,
Azerbaijan became an independent state in 1991. Its population of seven
million is predominantly ethnic Azeris (six million), who speak a language
closely related to Turkish. Significant minority populations include
Armenians and Dagestani, as well as half a million Russians. While the first
two groups are concentrated in the rural areas that they have historically
populated, the Russians are predominantly urbanized and descend from
those who migrated to Azerbaijan during Russia and the Soviet Union’s
200-year rule of the area.
The Azeri language is spoken more widely outside Azerbaijan than
inside it. Dialectologists recognize two major dialect groups of Azeri:
North and South, which are divided by the old Soviet/Iranian border. About
23 million speakers of South Azeri live in Iran. Despite southerners
constituting an overwhelming majority of Azeri speakers, Standard Azeri is
based on the language of the six million northerners, and very few
southerners use it.18
This complex set of environmental conditions means that relations with
Azerbaijan’s more powerful neighbours – Russia, Turkey, and Iran – have
made their contributions to the country’s rich alphabet soup. With Azeri,
reforms have thus been tied explicitly to nationalist, political goals that run
alongside and sometimes intersect with practical concerns such as ease of
learning, ease of technical production of texts, and ease for bilinguals.
Russia is the pre-eminent power in the region and Russian the language
of the former colonial power. The establishment of an Azeri Cyrillic
writing system was, as we will see, a political decision taken primarily in
Moscow, and Azerbaijan’s ties to other Soviet republics made knowledge
of Russian a prerequisite for advancement. Even today, Russia is one of the
country’s largest trading partners and Azerbaijan remains part of the
Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, a successor
organization composed of 12 of the former 15 Soviet republics.
Turkish scholars and the Turkish government have been active in selling
the benefits of Latin orthographies. In the 1990s, they provided experts and
convened congresses and seminars to promote the use of Latin script across
Central Asia. Latin script identifies Azeri conveniently with a closely
related language that belongs to one of the Islamic world’s only democratic
states. In practical terms, the Latin script is favoured for its internationality,
and the fact that it eases the learning of both Turkish and West European
languages. Ease of computer communication is also sometimes linked to
the Latin script, although the Azeri alphabet contains enough special
characters to make the display of Azeri texts problematic regardless.19
The fact that a majority of Azeri speakers live in Iran should have
played a significant role in the choice of scripts for North Azeri, but Iranian
language policies rendered it virtually a moot issue. Between 1925 and
1979 the Iranian regime suppressed the use of South Azeri as a standard
language. Although traditionally South Azeri employed the Arabic script, it
was by the end of the twentieth century so little used in writing that there
was hardly any Azeri language culture there to take account of (Bahadori
1993). In essence, the Iranian policy of promoting Farsi as the only national
written language actually weakened calls for the North Azeris to return to
the Arabic script.
As far as structural conditions go, state intervention in Azeri, which was
mirrored across Soviet Central Asia, shows how a language policy
favouring reform arose at government level, with language commissions
directly appointed by governing bodies.20 The first major script change
came after Azerbaijani independence in 1920; a 1921 New Alphabet
Committee, set up by the Soviet of Azerbaijani People’s Commissars,
developed a new alphabet based on the Latin script to replace the previous
Arabic script (Bahadori 1993). The new Latin script was adopted in 1923,
but was not made mandatory until an order from Moscow in 1929.21 In
1939, the Latinization of writing systems that was occurring across Central
Asia began to raise concerns in the Soviet government. Orders came down
from Moscow to force the adoption of Cyrillic. Azeri texts on the subject
repeatedly attribute the decision to Stalin himself.22
In the years leading up to Azerbaijani independence in 1991, Azeri
intellectuals began to advocate a return to either the Arabic or Latin
alphabets (Bahadori 1993). In May 1990, a commission was established by
the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan to work out a plan for (re-)Latinization.
Only three months after independence in 1991, the National Council of the
Republic of Azerbaijan approved the plan and decreed a gradual process of
Latinization to be in effect, a process to be completed over the next two
years. It is telling that, even after the parliament passed a law bringing the
new Latin orthography into force, a commission was still tinkering with it
and adjusting it (Landau and Kellner-Heinkele 2001: 131–132).23 In 2001,
matters moved a step further, when Azerbaijani president Haidar Aliev is-
sued a decree entitled “On Improving the Usage of the State Language”.24
The decree declares that the “current positive conditions allow for the re-
moval of the consequences of unjust relations, persecution and
falsifications perpetrated at various points in history with regard to our
national language.”25 It sets out a number of orders to various ministries to
ensure that Azeri is used in more official contexts and that the replacement
of Cyrillic with Latin script is speeded up. Among these measures were
“securing the transfer of all Azeri-language publication to the Latin
orthography” within ten weeks,26 an order which has not yet been
realized.27
Structural conditions need not only be political in nature. In favour of
Cyrillic is the fact that the preponderance of books produced in Azeri use
that script. Vastly improved literacy rates during Soviet times meant that
books published in Cyrillic greatly outnumbered those that predated the
script’s introduction. With the implosion of Azerbaijan’s economy in the
early 1990s, from which it is only now starting to recover, there was abso-
lutely no possibility of retooling presses, let alone of republishing what al-
ready existed in Cyrillic.
The way the reforms have been implemented was chaotic and squan-
dered public good will. The journal Azerbaijan International conducted
interviews in 2001 with Azerbaijanis from every walk of life, and found
widespread disenchantment. A television presenter resented having to read
in Latin script off a teleprompter, saying it slowed him down; a librarian
worried that over time everything published and catalogued in the Soviet
era would be inaccessible to younger readers. Several people complained
about the poor quality of the first-generation textbooks published in the
Latin orthography; a student bemoaned the fact that Azeri Latin books were
scarce, colourless, and boring compared to those available in Turkish, and
an older computer scientist made the same claim with regard to Russian.
The government’s failure to quickly establish computer standards for the
new alphabet was castigated, as it made for chaos on the Internet.28 Among
the less-educated, there was worry that they would be unable to adapt
themselves, or to help their children with schoolwork. A BBC report of
August 2001 gave much the same picture.29
As far as cultural conditions for reform go, these subsume some of what
we will later consider under ideology: the existence of “attitudes and values
held by groups within the community or by the community as a whole”
(Cooper 1989: 94). The North Azeri language community has seemed
receptive to the notion of script reform over the last 15 years. In this
respect, Azerbaijan bucks the trend seen elsewhere in Europe against
radical changes. Support for the process of Latinization overall seems to be
high, while opposition focuses on the desultory way it has been
implemented. Scholars and journalists alike have documented the public’s
enthusiasm for the concept of script reform (see Landau and Kellner-
Heinkele 2001: 130–131; Khalilova 2001), much of which is connected
with Azeris’ feeling that Latinization marks out their language as special,
worthy, or dignified.
Other cultural conditions in modern Azeri society have favoured the re-
introduction of the Latin and Arabic scripts and disadvantaged the Cyrillic
script. The close genetic relationship between Azeri and Turkish has
traditionally been a significant component of Azeri identity. Indeed Azeri
was first identified as a separate language in the mid-1930s in one of

Stalin’s decrees; up until then, it had simply been described as a variety of
Turkish. A similar line was stressed in 1992–1993 in the first flush of post-
independence enthusiasm for the Latin script (Landau and Kellner-
Heinkele 2001: 151–152).30 Latin script identifies Azeri conveniently with
a closely related language of the Islamic world’s only democratic states.
The Arabic script is linked to Islam, and this historic tie has seen some
in the Azeri literati call for its restoration. For this very reason, however,
the state’s powerful ex-communist political leaders have been leery of it,
seeing the resurgence of Islam and the allied possibility of a politically and
socially powerful clergy as a threat to their rule. The Latin script provides a
compromise: it breaks with the Soviet past, and hints at a more Turkish
(Westernizing, secular, democratic) model of behaviour. The secular gov-
ernments of Haidar Aliev and his son and successor used the alphabet
controversies to steer a politically prudent course amid the obstacles of
post-Soviet times. Rejecting calls for a return to the Arabic script, they
belatedly embraced Latinization as an affirmation of Azerbaijan’s distinct
culture and identity.
The Cyrillic script is associated with communism and the Soviet
Union’s pseudo-internationalism, in which some nations were more equal
than others. Despite the many situational, environmental and structural
conditions favouring the retention of Cyrillic script, the way it was imposed
on the Azeri language has become emblematic of Azeri’s second-class
stature vis-à-vis Russian, and thereby of Azerbaijan’s position as a Russian
client state.
Informational conditions seem not to have played a large part in the
Azeri script reform. Documents on the reform make no reference to studies
of the financial costs and practical implications of the reform. Instead,
policy seems to have been made on the basis of emotional, cultural and
political appeals. The lack of such studies is not surprising; Cooper notes
that “although modern governments and other large organizations devote
considerable resources to the gathering and evaluation of information,
serious questions are often decided on the basis of relatively little good
data” (1989: 95).
3.5. Notes on conditions
The previous discussion might lead us to conclude that certain structural

conditions entail other cultural ones, but this is patently not the case. A
tightly controlled, totalitarian society may place a high value on national

culture and yet reject spelling reform entirely, while a democratic society
prizing the right to free speech may be quite accepting of repeated changes
to its orthographic standards. Lithuanian had, under Soviet rule, an official
language commission with wide-ranging powers beginning in 1970, but it
never managed to officially sanction any spelling reforms at all; every pro-
posed revision eventually foundered. It was not until independence and the
establishment of a civil society that a flow of edicts standardizing spelling
and other aspects of the language began to be implemented.31 French, the
language of a country whose motto begins with “liberty”, provides for the
regular manipulation of its orthography by law (amply documented in Ager
1999). The Czechs conducted one major reform of spelling in the
communist era, as well as several minor revisions to it, while attempts at
implementing spelling reform in Russian foundered several times in the
same period.
Simply because a totalitarian system offers the potential for easy
manipulation of spelling does not mean it will be culturally acceptable, and
“democratic values” can encompass the content of expression without re-
jecting regulation of the manner of expression.
One environmental condition hinted at in the previous discussion was
the ebb and flow of local and international languages. However, the
dominant influence of English, which has such a considerable role in other
language regulation debates, seems to have been sidelined in Azeri script
reform.
In other languages, the pace of borrowings from English has accelerated
in recent years, outstripping previously prominent source languages like
French and German. For languages in the former Soviet Union and else-
where in the former eastern bloc, the influx of English words has been ac-
companied by the sudden collapse in power and prestige of Russian, which
was the dominant language of commerce, education, and industry in the
region for much of the last century. The source of the loan words affects
how they are rendered in a language; matters like whether the languages
share a script, how closely the languages are related, and how numerous the
loan words are can influence the spellings proposed. But other aesthetic
factors can intervene as well, such as the esteem a particular environmental
language commands among the population at large and among linguists.
Further environmental conditions affecting language regulation, and
spelling reform in particular, might involve particular educational or schol-
arly trends coming from outside the country and how they are received. For
example, language planning in communist Czechoslovakia was influenced

by the need to react to and rebut new views of the Czech language situation
that were developed in the outside world, particularly in the United States,
in order to show the adequacy and versatility of the domestic model.
Informational conditions seem straightforward, but there is no easy way
to gain consensus on what constitutes enough data to make a language
planning decision. Typical methods would be undertaking a corpus
planning study to outline “problematic” areas, and a status planning study,
determining values and attitudes towards spelling change in society. One
stumbling block is that sometimes the results of these studies conflict with
public reaction after the fact, indicating that perhaps the informational
conditions for reform were not as complete or reliable as the planners had
supposed.
We will see, for example, that when the Czechs undertook consultations
to assist in the drafting of reforms, they framed them to include only certain
key groups of actors, and asked for very limited sorts of feedback on par-
ticular words and phenomena. Informational conditions are thus easily con-
structed and manipulated, possibly unconsciously, to serve various
ideological goals underlying a reform.
3.6. Means: Authority, legitimacy, and force
Cooper lists authority and force as the two relevant means of disseminating
language planning. In the former, the authority has an a priori acknow-
ledgement of his right to rule, while in the latter, the privilege of decision-
making is enforced through sanction and punishment. Authority rests on
the legitimacy of the arbiter, which Cooper, following Weber, classifies as
either rational (based on law), charismatic (based on a valued personal
characteristic of the arbiter) or traditional (based on the worth of the tradi-
tion the arbiter upholds) (1989: 85).
Writing as an act occurs with a variety of purposes and contexts that
cannot easily be covered by a single means of dissemination. In order to
create and embed themselves across the range of written endeavours, spell-
ing reforms thus rely on a combination of force and authority based on
various sorts of legitimacy. Even in countries like Germany and Norway,
where adherence to spelling reforms becomes legally binding in the public
sphere after a certain amount of time, there is still the murky area of private
use of language. A civil servant or journalist may be obliged to observe a
particular standard at work, but the language he uses in a personal letter or

e-mail is not subject to these strictures. The personal sphere tends to be the
subject of persuasion and promotion on the grounds of legitimacy.
Russian spelling reforms in the modern era have used a variety of means
to institute orthographic reform. Typically, traditional legitimacy has dic-
tated the institutional basis for reform commissions, while charismatic le-
gitimacy has dictated who is appointed to them. Force and authority deriv-
ing from rational legitimacy have then accompanied their implementation.
Traditional legitimacy has come from the use of established institutions
in Russia to constitute the reforms. The Academy of Sciences (first
Imperial, then Soviet, now Russian) has traditionally been seen as the home
for these reforms. It houses the Russian Language Institute, with which
many of the nation’s most respected scholars are associated, and its
imprimatur implies that the reforms have been vetted by the Russian
scholarly establishment.
The Russian commissions have tended to select scholars with the clout
to win over other linguists. The first commission, established in 1904, was
headed by noted linguist Filipp Fortunatov, and among its members
counted such linguistic heavyweights as Aleksandr Shakhmatov and Jan
Baudouin de Courtenay. The second, established in 1929, included many of
the leading lights of Russian linguistics, including Aleksandr Peshkovskii,
Nikolai Durnovo, Sergei Obnorskii, and later on Sergei Ozhegov. The
third, chaired by distinguished linguist Viktor Vinogradov, convened in
1963, a fourth under the chairmanship of Viktor Borkovskii, continued this
work beginning in the early 1970s, and the fifth, under the chairmanship of
Vladimir Lopatin, was formed in 1988 (Lopatin 2000).
The Russian reforms acquire rational legitimacy when adopted by law-
and policy-making bodies. The Academy of Sciences takes a view on them,
as does the Ministry of Education. In the case of the 1917–1918 and 1956
reforms, the Council of People’s Commissars (ɋɨɜɧɚɪɤɨɦ), which was
responsible for the implementation of policy and legislation through the
commissariats, also approved the reforms, after scaling them back from the
version recommended by the commissions.32
Force has accompanied authority in Russia as a means of implementing
reform. In 1917, when the reforms eliminated the redundant letters <ԧ, Ȟ, ɿ,
ɾ, ȟ, ͣ>, the commissars ordered the offending sorts to be seized from print-
ers, thus forcing them to use the letters <ɮ, ɢ, ɢ, ɡ, ɤɫ, ɟ> respectively
(Shmelev 2002).
Curiously enough, examples of force outside these clear examples are

few and far between. A student writing an essay who fails to obey rules of
orthography set down by his school may be marked down or fail. In
general, though, as Shmelev (2002) notes, there is an assumption that
occasional inadvertent infractions are not punished.
Nonetheless, if a teacher refuses to teach the new orthography, or if an
author refuses to implement it consciously, a different situation obtains.
Normally it is resolved through the application of authority based on
rational legitimacy: the teacher is overruled by a superior or the author by
an editor. If this does not happen, there should clearly be sanctions, but the
precise penalties are unclear. In a totalitarian system like that of Soviet
Russia, though, they need not be spelled out explicitly. Outside the
boundaries of the totalitarian state, the reforms remain unenforced and
optional.
In the Czech context, we will have occasion to see how tangled the vari-
ous sources of authority can be. Language planning bodies tend not to have
a free hand to implement whatever reforms strike them as appropriate. In-
stead, a system of approval operates, in which more prestigious and power-
ful bodies with clearer legal authority are asked to approve reforms, adding
to the authority of the issuing body and increasing their legitimacy.
3.7. Decision-making process
Hand in hand with the means used, we can look at the processes that an
agency develops to formulate the problems it is trying to address,
enumerate the goals of its reform, and arrive at the means it will employ to
attain them. This is explicitly a rational decision-making model (Cooper
1989: 87–91) and does not account for non-rational incursions into
language planning.
Spelling reform commissions can be remarkably tight-mouthed about
their decision-making process. Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly the
process of authority creation discussed above; excessive openness simply
provides more entry points for critics to deconstruct their legitimacy.
In all the cases discussed so far, the first product of a commission is an
assessment of the current situation. The formation of the commission in and
of itself presumes the existence of deficiencies, so it is rarely surprising
when they are found. While an assessment of this sort is thus part of the
rational model, its source may be the ideological belief that deficiencies are
harmful to writing, literacy, culture, etc. and must be eliminated. Cooper

notes that “the way one defines the problem influences the policy set out to
deal with the problem” (1989: 92), and certainly in spelling reform, much is
laid at the doorstep of complex writing systems: poor self-esteem, low liter-
acy, excessive focus on form to the detriment of content, and so forth.
The next step of drafting a programme is what Cooper terms the “pro-
duction of possible solutions” and “choice of one solution” (1989: 91). The
authors have to decide which of the criticisms can actually be dealt with in
a spelling reform and how to treat them.
Spelling reform often involves some element of public consultation, al-
though interestingly enough, this often occurs towards the end of the
process rather than towards the beginning. Consultation may thus be part of
implementation and prediction of consequences, rather than part and parcel
of establishing what the reform will consist of.
As we will see in the Czech example, the decision-making process can
be manipulated to achieve what reformers hope will be the most favourable
outcome. Indeed, it would be strange if reformers did not approach their
task strategically, attempting to gain consensus among themselves and in
the political and educational power structures to maximize the chance that
their reform will succeed.
3.8. Effect
The big question mark at the end of this analysis is, of course, what actually
happened in any given reform, as opposed to what was predicted.
Sometimes spelling reforms take root quickly; others go off in directions
completely unanticipated, like the Dutch reform of 1994, which was
unexpectedly rejected by the Parliament (for a detailed discussion see
Jacobs 1997), or the German reform, which ran into substantial opposition
at the state level, in the courts, and in the press. An interesting example of
an unexpected effect comes from Portuguese, which is regulated by
separate commissions in Portugal and Brazil. These commissions at various
points have attempted to negotiate accords that would standardize
Portuguese across the Lusophone world, but have not succeeded in
implementing these accords in any consistent fashion. Given the conflicting
interests and priorities of its major players, Garcez (1995: 174) concludes
that:
…the case of corpus renovation discussed here is indicative of the extent to

which language planning is a political and ideological practice rather than a
purely (socio)linguistic enterprise. The Luso-Brazilian Orthographic Ac-
cord for the Lusophone Community and the debate around it exemplify
both the complexity of the forces that operate in language planning and the
lack of clarity among language experts and users regarding what the activity
they are involved in is all about.
In the Russian case described in section 3.6, the reforms dragged out
over many years. The 1904 commission did not issue its recommendations
until 1912, and these were then first curtailed and then adopted only in
1917–1918 after the Soviets seized power. The 1929 commission’s brief to
pro duce a single normative handbook was finally realized in 1956, with
the publication of the Rules of Russian Orthography and Punctuation, also
after some of its more radical proposals were rejected.
The 1963 Russian commission was the first to see its recommendations
rejected wholesale. Its brief was to introduce some changes affecting small
numbers of words; probably the most substantial alterations concerned
which vowel letters are written after particular consonants, and the
reduction of geminate consonants in borrowed words. A further letter, the
so-called “hard sign”, was to be eliminated completely.33 However, when
the recommendations were published in 1964 in full in the national
newspaper Izvestiia with an invitation for the public to discuss them, the
populace duly filled the newspapers with invective, and the reform was
quietly shelved.34 Lopatin (2000) assessed the entire affair as follows:
It seems that despite all the purely scientific, linguistic validity of many of
their proposals, the authors of this project lost sight of the inevitable socio-
cultural shock caused by the reaction to the breaking of a series of tradi-
tionally (historically) formed rules and writing principles, and the ingrained
orthographic habits based on them. This extralinguistic socio-cultural factor
looms far too large in matters of orthography.
Cooper’s guidelines do give a comprehensive picture of the factors that
contribute to the creation of reforms. The reception of these reforms – if
this is indeed what he means by effect – is another matter, and for this we
will need to look outside the planning process.
4. Motivations for language planning
In recent years, focus has moved from the planning process to the assump-
tions underlying it. Ager (2001: 7–12) deconstructs Cooper’s “ends”
(which he presents as motivation) into motives for language use and
planning, attitudes to language and planning, and goals of language
planning. It is a particularly useful scheme for studying spelling reform and
the reactions to it.
4.1. Motives
Ager’s motives fall into the categories of identity, ideology, image, insecu-
rity, inequality, integration, and instrumentality. Identity subsumes positive
constructs that tie a language to a culture or nation. Ideology represents the
fusion of language policy with political or social philosophy; Ager’s defini-
tion thus differs from that used elsewhere in this book (see section 5).
Image concerns how the rest of the world perceives the language and its
community of speakers. Insecurity (in some ways the flip side of identity)
focuses on the threats to a language community or to distinctive features of
it. Inequality comes to the fore in attempts to redress perceived or actual
imbalances between different groups (ethnic, economic, regional) within a
language community. Instrumentality and integration primarily have to do
with the ability of a language to satisfy communicative functions desired by
its speakers and their desire or need to engage with a language community.
Virtually all these points are raised in discussions of spelling reform.
In modifying a spelling system, identity and insecurity can emerge in
decisions taken by planners or by those reacting to plans, as we will see
below.
Ideology, as we will see in chapter 4, is a powerful force under totalitar-
ian regimes, where most forms of publicly available cultural activity have
to pass some sort of ideological litmus test at least pro forma; post-
totalitarian societies suffer from a tendency to react to the previous
ideology in unpredictable ways. On the one hand, previous association with
a totalitarian government or ideology can serve as a blanket pretext for the
public to reject any sort of language planning. On the other hand, reflexive
subservience to authority can be an ingrained habit, allowing reform bodies
to undertake an unprecedented degree of regulatory work without public
complaint.
Motivations for language planning 25
Inequality is a powerful impetus for spelling reforms done under the

banner of simplification. Attempts to reconcile the two varieties of
Norwegian are rooted in the egalitarian wish to prevent users of the
minority variety, Nynorsk, from being disadvantaged.35 In Russian, German
and Czech, illogicalities and inconsistencies in the existing rules were
linked (usually with no particular evidence thereof) to the goal of
increasing literacy and inclusion into modern society.
Ager discusses instrumentality and integration primarily with respect to
non-native speakers in a community, but they also have resonance for
smaller languages, whose functionality and usefulness are receding in
certain areas (tourism, science, technology, commerce). There may be
pressure to adapt the spelling systems of these languages because their
speakers must function in global languages alongside their native ones.
Examples are nearly all the national languages of Central and Eastern
Europe.36
4.2. Attitudes
Attitude includes knowledge about language (e.g. its structure, history,

relationship with society, etc.), knowledge of the vitality of a language (its
usefulness across various domains), and emotions towards language
(whether particular varieties are liked or disliked). As an example of the
latter, we can cite the example of André Bjerke, who in his 1959 Norwe-
gian translation of My Fair Lady, added the following to the programme
notes: “In Norway, we have the paradoxical situation that professor Hig-
gins is being instructed by Eliza Doolittle on how he is supposed to write
and speak his mother tongue correctly. In this country Eliza Doolittle is not
in the gutter, selling wild blossoms; she is in the Language Commission,
circulating language blemishes… [T]he most important written source I
have used to establish the language form of Eliza’s speeches is ‘Proposal
for a Textbook Norm 1957’” (Haugen 1966: 265).
Attitudes, Ager says, do not in and of themselves indicate whether lan-
guage planning will be successful. We also need to factor in the desire (or
lack thereof) to take action regarding language. In other words, strong feel-
ings and justifications may not be enough to overcome public apathy; it is
one thing to feel a particular way, and another to actually take action over
it.
Attitudes about language in general contribute to spelling reform in par-
ticular because spelling is easily construed as the “appearance” or outward
manifestation of a standard code. The existence of an etymological princi-

ple in a spelling system, or any other frequently propounded principle for
that matter, links the language’s history, or the relationship between its
forms, to contemporary spelling conventions. Spelling is held to be a key
component in rendering a standard more or less useful to the reading and
writing public, a point that can manifest itself in the public’s reaction to
spelling reform.
4.3. Goals
Goals, according to Ager, can be precise, short-term targets, realizable and

immediate objectives, and long-term ideals. A target of increasing a minor-
ity group’s literacy in its native standard might match an objective to affirm
that group’s identity as a distinct community. However, Ager notes that
targets, objectives and ideals may conflict with each other (2001: 142–143).
For example, in the 1995 German reform, we can identify certain targets
of simplifying complex rules or removing extraneous exceptions (see Augst
1999, 1997 and Augst and Schaeder 1998). However, in certain instances
this conflicted with the objective of minimizing disruption to the visual
form of the language as current language users know it.37
5. Introducing ideology
To this point, we have concentrated on enumerating the components and

processes that make up language planning. These models have sought to
explain the workings of planning activities, or how they can proceed in op-
timal fashion. As was pointed out at several junctures, though, these
schemes can assume a largely neutral backdrop to language planning, as if
it occurred in a societal and philosophical void where proposals are
developed and then judged on their merits for the system. In reality,
proposals for spelling reform rest on a bed of prior assumptions and value
judgements. Their reception by other members of the language elite and by
the public at large does not seem to be predictable from the linguistic merits
of the proposals.
Introducing ideology 27
5.1. Ideologies of language
One school of thought sees the roots of language planning in non-linguistic

socially-based views about language. These can best be described as consti-
tuting an ideology of language. In discussing the interaction between ideol-
ogy and planning, Blommaert (1999a: 30) notes that most models of lan-
guage planning begin from a particular presumption about how it works:
The study of language planning (and policy) has been plagued by a number
of theoretical defects (discussed by Williams 1992; see also Blommaert
1996), and one of them is certainly an idealization of the effectiveness of
political decisions on social change. A linear model is often used, in which
societal changes appear to be triggered by expert-backed (and expert insti-
tution-mediated) government decisions. Too little space is left for cultural
and social resistance against such decisions, and the change-inducing effect
of language is strongly overrated. Similarly, in the literature, developments
in one country are rarely connected to larger-scale developments: issues of
global capitalism and imperialism and the way in which language
ideologies in peripheral countries get aligned with or subversive to domi-
nant ideologies from central countries are rare in the literature…
Blommaert proposes the study of language ideology as a necessary
corrective to “idealized” approaches. He recommends focusing on: the
process of language planning itself; the role of language in nation-building;
the use of language and symbolic power; the significance of language
change; and the investigation of politics as a discursive/textual process
(1999a: 30–31). Running through these discussions are issues of the quality
of language: what its status is, how standardized it is, who owns it, and
what the expert voices say about it (1999b: 431–434).
This view treats ideology as both a static concept and a process. An ide-
ology can be simply a “complex of ideas”, an “ism”, if you like. However,
it is also “the political and social semiotic process of instilling ideas about
society in the minds of members of that society”, and its diffusion strives to
create hegemony for that ideology (Blommaert 1999c: 33).
Although Blommaert specifically highlights the post-colonial dimension
of ideology, with the emphasis on capitalism and imperialism, the notion of
an ideological debate is not tied to any specific political outlook.
Woolard (1998: 5–9), for example, offers four definitions of ideology as
it is commonly used, in order of increasing specificity. Ideology can simply
mean a position with respect to the nature of ideas. However, it can also
mean a set of interests representative of the experience of a particular social
position that are presented as universally true. Linking these interests spe-
cifically to positions of power gives her a third definition of ideology, and
focusing on “distortion, illusion, error, mystification, or rationalization”
provides the final definition.
The first definition is not common in linguistic studies, while the other
three are quite frequent. An example of the second definition is Watts’s
discussion of the Swiss German “ideology of dialect”, which he identifies
with the tendency to promote or value non-standard oral dialects over the
written standard for certain forms of communication (1999: 69). This fits
his broad definition of language ideology, which is
a set of beliefs about the structure of language and/or the functional uses to
which a language is put which are shared by the members of a community
(cf. also Milroy and Milroy 1985). The beliefs have formed part of that
community’s overall set of beliefs and the life-styles that have evolved on
the basis of those beliefs for so long that their origins seem to have been
obscured or forgotten (1999: 68).
This definition of language ideology seems most useful, as it avoids the
temptation to oversimplify definitions of social and political positions. As
Gal (1998: 320) points out, there is an inherent problem in defining
ideology solely in terms of power relations:
…if we understand dominant ideology, for the moment, to be the ideology
of dominant groups, there is ample evidence that, like the social makeup of
dominant groups themselves, their ideologies are rarely monolithic, nor
always stable.
In post-communist societies, a mixture of Woolard’s third and fourth
definitions often pertains. “Ideology” becomes synonymous with the half-
truths and misguided pronouncements of the Communist Party and its vari-
ous factions. It is connected with the exercise of power in the pursuit of a
fallacious goal. This is the sense in which polemicists and commentators
use it, and readers will come across it in further chapters in citations from
newspapers and elsewhere.
Elsewhere, I have referred to political arguments instead of ideological
ones when their use is a matter of strategy rather than belief, and to creeds,
doctrines, and dogmas rather than ideologies when it is a matter of adhering
to a particular formulation rather than to an idea or way of thinking.
When I use ideology, then I have in mind Woolard’s second definition
of a language ideology. I will posit that such an ideology or ideologies both
underlie any specific debates or language planning exercises and can aid in
the explanation of their success or failure.
5.2. Nationalism: Non-linguistic ideology
Language ideologies can derive from ideologies functioning in other parts

of society. If an ideology is pervasive enough in society, it may be used in
the service of divergent linguistic ideologies.
Wright (2004: 57–61) pinpoints nationalism as a potent ideology that
paradoxically underpins both purism (the focus on that which is original,
unique, and “pure” in the native language) and universalism or cosmopol-
itanism (focusing on the equal functionality of, or the equal place the lan-
guage holds in, the international linguistic community).
For example, Estonian shows the influence of nationalism and
“imperilment” on state-based language planning. With under a million
Estonian speakers within Estonia, the explicit purpose of language
regulation has been to defend Estonian against encroaching foreign polities
by promoting its functionality and uniformity in a variety of spheres.
In the Estonian Language Council’s Development Strategy of the
Estonian Language 2004-2010 (www.eki.ee), whose recommendations
were approved by the Estonian government, the language is labelled “the
bearer of Estonian identity” (12) and the primary purpose of the Estonian
state is “to preserve the Estonian nationality and culture through time” (15).
While it is not singled out in this document, other sources, including
Raag (1999), Laitin (1996) and articles by the Language Inspectorate’s
head, Ilmar Tomusk, point to Russian as the primary threat (see
http://www.keeleinsp.ee/). Indeed, the general loss of functionality for
Estonian detailed during the Soviet period in the Development Strategy
(19-20) is thus implicitly opposed to the way the state must proceed now, in
independent Estonia. The strategy recommends a series of measures to
revive Estonian, including more actively promoting use of “good” Estonian
and re-establishing mandatory linguistic oversight over government
documents and other published texts (27-28). In other words, increased
monitoring and control of text production are necessary to “protect” the
threatened Estonian language.38
Newly independent states like Estonia offer striking examples of non-
linguistic nationalism contributing to linguistic debates, but they are by no
means the only situation where this cross-over occurs. We will see in
chapter 2 how Czech stereotypes of their own behaviors and values affected
the course of language planning.
5.3. Standardization: Linguistic ideology
Milroy and Milroy (1999: 18–20) are concerned with the phenomenon of
standardization, which they say rests in intolerance of intralinguistic vari-
ability, especially as regards the written language.39 This linguistic ideology
springs from extralinguistic factors: social, political and economic needs.
Furthermore, standardization as a general “striving” for linguistic uni-
formity calls on and interacts with other linguistic ideologies. The Milroys
link it closely to functional efficiency of language: the belief that “everyone
should use and understand the language in the same way with the minimum
of misunderstanding and the maximum of efficiency” (1999: 19).
Functional efficiency they link, in turn, to prescriptivism and the com-
plaint tradition, which are respectively a further ideology concerning the
efficacy of implementing top-down regulation, and a method for
maintaining prescriptive norms (1999: 29–31).
Prescriptivism and a tendency to complain about people’s ignorance of
the prescriptions do seem to be connected in most linguistic cultures. How-
ever, the link between them and an ideology of functional efficiency is not
inevitable. In cultures where standardization is in the hands of the reform-
ers, a different landscape prevails. There, functional efficiency is often
hitched instead to movements espousing spelling and grammar reform.
Fishman (2004) gives an account of motivations in corpus planning that
constitute its “hidden status agenda”. He identifies four axes defining this
agenda, which he labels purity vs. vernacularism; uniqueness vs. interna-
tionalization; classicization vs. Sprachbund; and Ausbau vs. Einbau.
These ideological dimensions of language planning are deeply
established beliefs about how language planning should be conducted.
Purity – the rejection of influences associated with the outside world – is
balanced by vernacularism, which Fishman defines as the belief that a
“natural” language variety, warts and all, is the best guide for language
planners (2004: 83–85). Uniqueness “emphasizes specificity”, stressing the
need to differentiate a regulated variety from all similar varieties, while
internationalization sees value and prestige in allying the language with a
transnational community through the adoption of common words.
Classicization utilizes a prestigious cognate classical language to “advance
local modernization goals” (2004: 87), as opposed to Sprachbund, which
looks to a shared political heritage as opposed to a linguistic one in drawing
on other regional languages as a form of enrichment. Finally, Fishman

exploits the well-known distinction between Ausbau and Einbau
development of standard languages to explain how planners can either
attempt to maximize contrasts between a standard variety and its closely
related neighbor, or to capitalize on a neighbour’s greater prestige by
drawing on its resources.
We will see in the course of this monograph how these dimensions have
changed over time for Czech: purity and vernacularism have more or less
continually occupied a central conflict point, and internationalization has
increasingly grown as a concern in language planning, while classicization
has waned. Although their presence is hard at times to detect, Ausbau and
Einbau dimensions have played roles at various points, with Russian and
Slovak featuring prominently.
5.4. Ideology and culture
An ideology does not spring full-blown ex nihilo; we should be able to find

traces of it elsewhere in the culture. Watts labels the sorts of stories and
beliefs that contribute to an ideology myths; in Heller’s discussion of lan-
guage politics in Canada (1999: 144, 147, 167) images and power relations
come to the fore as contributing to the establishment of one or another
ideology. We will examine some of these myths, images and power
relations later in this work, where we will look both at explicit
deconstructions of them, as well as implicit references to them in the form
of cultural scripts and metaphors.
For example, the Russian spelling reforms of 1917–1918 were based on
proposals drawn up by an imperial commission thirteen years earlier,
slightly watered-down. However, because they were implemented at a time
of great social upheaval, these reforms divided Russian literati into two
camps. Adherence to the old orthography became a mark of adherence to
pre-revolutionary values, and some émigré presses continued to employ the
pre-Soviet conventions until the 1970s.40 The famous émigré short story
writer, Ivan Bunin, exemplified this line of thinking:
An ignoramus and a ham proclaimed this vulgar orthography willy-nilly:
kneel down again, write this way! I answer: I cannot, I do not wish to – if
only because in these ten years [since the Russian Revolution] everything
low, base, evil, mendacious that exists on this earth has been written in it.41
An orthography only tenuously connected to the communist regime thus

came to symbolize the suppression of free thought and of pluralism that
was by then characteristic of the Soviet Union. This association in Russian
culture became strong enough that, in the post-communist period, certain of
the “lost letters” abandoned in the revolutionary reforms have made a
stealthy comeback in proper names and advertisements, harking back to an
age of greater probity and better quality (Priadko 2001).
5.5. Language ideology debates
One of the most fruitful ways to examine language ideologies is through

the study of the debates that surround them. Blommaert (1999a: 8–11)
characterizes them as “the point of entrance for civil society into policy
making”, and says they usually develop over “definitions of social realities:
various representations of reality which are pitted against each other – dis-
cursively – with the aim of gaining authority for one particular representa-
tion.” He suggests studying the social actors involved in these debates,
with an emphasis on the roles of what he calls power brokers: “categories
of actors, who, for reasons we set out to investigate, claim authority in the
field of debate.”
According to Blommaert, a comprehensive model of a language
ideology debate does not just identify competing ideologies and propose a
winning side. Instead, it traces the production and reproduction of
ideologies in various texts, and the way they are picked up, referenced, re-
used and altered in the course of the debate. By studying these patterns of
reproduction, we can identify instances of what he terms normalization, “a
hegemonic pattern in which the ideological claims are perceived as
‘normal’ ways of thinking and acting…” We thus study any particular
debate with reference to what he calls the stasis (i.e. the perceived “status
quo” that existed or comes into existence) prior to the debate or after its
conclusion.
This study will thus approach debates as processes that develop
ideology, rather than simply as clashes of opposing views. It will pay as
much attention to the context and dissemination of ideological points of
view as it does to explaining and elaborating the points of view themselves.
Looking forward 33
6. Looking forward
We now turn to the Czech language situation. Chapter 2 examines the so-
cial and linguistic background to it, while chapters 3 and 4 give the histori-
cal background; these three chapters taken together provide a picture of
both the contemporary distribution of the varieties of Czech and how they
developed over time, setting the stage for understanding how this strictly
regulated language community came to be, and what its maintenance has
created in the way of a national mindset about language.
Chapter 5 sketches the history of a recent spelling controversy in Czech.
The roles of various actors are then picked apart and described more fully
in chapter 6.
The following two chapters are largely taxonomic, tracing the existence
and structures of certain debates, myths and beliefs about language that
arose in this debate. Chapter 7 considers debates over authority, legitimacy
and linguistics. Chapter 8 operates on the level of language, and proposes
an examination of metaphor as a crucial component of understanding how
the various ideologies and arguments operated.
Finally, in chapter 9, I offer some conclusions about how we examine
and evaluate spelling reform.
Chapter 2
Standard Czech in its social and linguistic setting
They guarded and tended the border, for it divided their homeland from the
outside world, their native lore from foreign customs. This was where they
defended their rights and their law, their rituals and their language, which
stored the wisdom of ages and was their first law. He who could speak the
language learned from their mothers was heard in the council of elders. He
who had not mastered it was excluded from their deliberations; he was as if
mute, and had no right to interfere in the laws with which they ruled the
land inherited from their fathers.
Petr PiĢha42
This chapter begins with an overview of the Czech language situation in a
geographical and social perspective, followed by a summary of standard
Czech spelling. The third section explores the effect of the quasi-diglossic
language situation on language planning issues, and the chapter concludes
with a summary of issues in Czech language planning.
Readers interested primarily in the sociolinguistic aspect of spelling re-
form can read the first section and then move on to the next chapter, if they
are content not to delve into the specific issues surrounding Czech spelling.
1. The Czech Republic
The Czech Republic often markets itself as the “heart of Europe”.43 To the
northwest and southwest it borders Germany. Its southern border faces
Austria. To the north is Poland, and east lies Slovakia.
“Heart” makes good marketing-speak, but from a social and political
perspective the Czech Republic and its predecessor states have for much of
the last few hundred years lain at the edges of large political and social
blocs. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Czech lands consti-
tuted the northwestern limit of the Austrian empire. After World War II,
Czechoslovakia’s southern and south-western border came to mark the
outer limits of the Soviet bloc; in the 1990s, the state’s borders with Austria
and a newly reunited Germany became a new crossing point between the
European Union and the post-Soviet states.
The Czech Republic 35
Culturally, geographically, and linguistically, the Czech-speaking lands

divide into three unequal slices. Silesia (Slezsko), the smallest region, is in
the northeast corner of the republic; its largest city is Ostrava (pop.
316,744), and the area’s population is 1,269,467 or around 12.5 percent of
the entire republic (population 10,230,060 in 2001). Moravia (Morava)
covers most of the eastern third of the country and centres on Brno, the
republic’s second-largest city (pop. 376,172). There were 2,881,308
residents of Moravia, or around 28 percent of the population. Another
6,079,825 Czechs, almost 60 percent of the population, live in the western
half of the country, called Bohemia (ýechy). Bohemia is the culturally
dominant area; the capital, Prague (pop. 1,169,106) is here, making the
central Bohemian region the economic powerhouse of the nation and a
source of in-migration from the remainder of the Czech lands.44
Figure 2. Schematic map of the Czech Republic

36 Standard Czech in its social and linguistic setting
There is debate as to whether Bohemians, Moravians, and Silesians con-

stitute distinct ethnicities. The regions share a history and use the same
standard language. Ordinary spoken Czech differs from place to place, but
is mutually intelligible, with dialects part of a single continuum.45 While
the Czech census now offers the option of a “Moravian” and “Silesian”
ethnicity (národnost), in 2001 very few ticked these boxes. An over-
whelming majority of Moravians and Silesians described themselves as
“ethnically” Czech.
If we accept this description, then the Czech Republic is an ethnically
homogeneous state. The 2001 census data show over 94 percent of the
population describing themselves as Czech/Bohemian,46 Moravian or Sile-
sian. The only substantial declared minorities are Slovaks (just under 2 per-
cent), Poles, and Germans (under half a percent each). These results
apparently substantially underreport the number of Romany, who may
show up as Slovak, Czech or “none of the above”, and the minuscule
populations of Vietnamese and Ukrainians attested are probably also far
short of the real figures.47 Even allowing for this, the picture is of a state
where certainly over 85 percent of the population identifies with a
dominant culture linked to a single national standard language.48
1.1. Economic, social, and cultural state of the nation
Forty years of the particular form of social engineering practiced by the

communist state left the Czechs with a social and industrial profile common
to many countries in the region.
At the fall of communism in 1989, employment in Czechoslovakia was
heavily dominated by manufacturing and mining, with unskilled and semi-
skilled workers in state-run enterprises receiving higher wages than those in
highly skilled professions. Income distribution was flat compared to those
in western societies, with the difference between the highest- and lowest-
paid workers being far less than in the West (Veþerník 1999: 407–411;
Whitefield and Evans 1999: 134; Wolchik 1991: 171–175). In a society
gripped by chronic shortages of consumer goods and services, it was access
that determined one’s purchasing power, rather than income. Persistent
housing shortages restrained the population’s mobility, as did the
importance of long-standing, informal social networks in ensuring a good
standard of living.
Under communism, full employment was an accepted fact of life, as
were comprehensive, although not generous, retirement, education, and
leisure opportunities.49 Advancement at work in any large organization

tends to come fastest with some acquiescence to the priorities of its leaders,
and in the pervasive state apparatus of communist Czechoslovakia, this
usually took the form of Party membership or willingness to perform tasks
that advanced the Party’s aims. The heavy-handedness of this system and
its apparent lack of reference to qualifications offended many, and the
feeling was widespread that those “at the top” of most organizations had
purchased their way there with a Party membership card or a willingness to
mouth official platitudes – or both. A cliché of Czech life became the
doctors, professors and other members of the intelligentsia who worked as
street cleaners, coat-check attendants, brewery labourers, and stokers, while
politicians and factory directors seemed unable to put together a coherent
sentence.50
Czech schools were traditional in their methods and views. A patina of
communist rhetoric had been heavily overlaid on a conservative syllabus. It
would be wrong to say that methods were preserved in aspic from before
the communist takeover, but nonetheless, the system favoured rote learning
and a “rightíwrong” approach to knowledge. The educational experiments
of the 1970s and 1980s in British and American education passed the
Czechs by. Native-language instruction continued to be dominated by a
focus on correct spelling and a taxonomic approach to the study of
grammar.51
Foreign language education became a particularly neglected area. Rus-
sian was required at all levels of education, but the almost universal revul-
sion for it among the populace effectively countered its ubiquity, meaning
that few achieved more than a passive competence. True specialists in
world languages other than Russian were comparatively few; instruction in
schools and non-specialist university courses often suffered from a lack of
decent pedagogical materials and the instructors often had only a passing
acquaintance with the relevant cultures.52 Lack of opportunities for travel,
for meeting foreigners, and even for finding reading material in most
languages gave language learning a somewhat theoretical cast. The Czechs
thus entered the 1990s a small nation with a severe foreign language deficit.
At the end of the communist interregnum, then, Czech society presented
an economic profile substantially different from those of Western European
countries, entrenched in a conservative institutional culture and protected
by its isolation. Society was oriented around the private rather than the
public sphere, and had grown unused to public debates or open discussion.
A deep, ingrained distrust of leaders at the top prevailed, although this did
not affect people’s reverence for some cultural institutions.
Anthropologist Ladislav Holy, in a largely anecdotal account of Czech

society in the late twentieth century, found in this dichotomy between the
personal and the institutional two stereotypes: the “little Czech and the
great Czech nation.” Czechs, he claimed, are highly suspicious of their
fellow countrymen as individuals. Although skilful, hard-working, and
possessed of a sense of humour, the Czech is also seen as envious, cunning,
conformist, lazy, and egotistical – characteristics which are attested in
surveys of public opinion and dominate the national discourse on character.
At the same time, Czechs profess admiration for more abstract qualities of
“Czechness”. These, in turn, are embodied in the institutions and
monuments of Czech culture, which are seen as superior to those of other
nations (Holy 1996: 72–78, 80–90). While Holy traces the roots of this
paradox back through the National Revival of the nineteenth century, there
is no doubt that the mix of isolation, endemic wariness and enforced public
conformity that was typical of communist society contributed to the
maintenance and further development of these stereotypes.
The end of 1989 brought a few dramatic changes to this state of affairs.
Freedom of information and freedom of travel meant that what Czech dissi-
dent author Zuzana Brabcová had called “my hermetically sealed
homeland” was suddenly open to non-Soviet ideas and people to a degree
unheard of for two generations. Liberalization of property laws brought a
resurgence of private shops and a trade in property. But the economic and
social fundamentals of the nation changed much more slowly.
1.2. The transition of the 1990s
The 1990s saw a gradual dismantling of the structures of state capitalism

and their replacement by quasi-free-market principles. This had a tremen-
dous effect on the living conditions of the Czechs and on the sort of world
they saw around them.
The press, television and radio were freed from state censorship and nu-
merous new publications sprang up. While many “fellow travelers” who
had held responsible posts under the former regime continued to play
important public roles, they were joined by dissidents and ordinary citizens
who had been kept from these jobs before by their lack of “socially useful
activity”.
A broad-based coalition of anti-communist groups took control after the
first free elections, which quickly gave way to a government led by the
nominally hard-line free-market Civic Democratic Party (Obþanská

demokratická strana). Among the numerous problems it confronted in the
first half of the 1990s were how to: restitute property seized by the commu-
nists to its rightful owners; return publicly-run enterprises and companies to
the private sector; reduce to a manageable level the costly system of
benefits and subsidies; resolve tensions with the increasingly strident
Slovak Council and the Slovak representatives in Parliament; stem endemic
corruption and graft; and restore public trust in institutions.
The early 1990s thus saw the launch of five major initiatives that would
reshape Czech society: restitution, privatization, lustration, integration, and
the division of the common Czechoslovak state.
1.3. Restitution
Restitution meant the return of properties confiscated by the state after

1948. Individuals were given the right to reclaim the homes and business
premises that they or their forebears had owned before communism.53
While restitution was generally acknowledged as a necessary step, it
brought considerable upheaval without necessarily entrusting property to
those with the funds or competence to maintain and manage it.
Crucially, restitution was initially linked to residency in the Czech
Republic, a condition only removed at the end of the 1990s (see paragraph
3 of the Law). Many émigrés protested bitterly at this condition, insisting
that the state had first stripped them of their property, then created the
intolerable conditions that led to their emigration, and was now punishing
them a third time. In instances where émigrés did return to claim their
properties, tensions inevitably arose between those who had “left” and
those who had “stayed behind”. Those dispossessed by returning émigrés
opined that the government was simply dumping a further reward on those
who had left and done well in the West, to the detriment of those who had
stayed.
1.4. Privatization
Many firms and properties were not restituted. Either there was no descen-
dant of the pre-1948 owner, or the enterprise had been substantially devel-
oped under communism, meaning there was effectively no original owner
to turn to. These enterprises began to be privatized in the early 1990s. This
privatization had three strands that need concern us: small-scale domestic
investment, large-scale direct outside investment, and collective distribu-
tion of assets (see Kotrba 1994: 3–4).
Many small businesses – especially shops and services – were sold di-
rectly to domestic investors. Individuals and small groups of this sort typi-
cally lacked the capital for larger investments, but this nonetheless quickly
created an entrepreneurial class.
Outside investment was seen as necessary because decades of underin-
vestment in technology, machinery, and management had left Czech
industry with no realistic prospects of catching up to competitors in the
West. The cash-strapped state decided to flog the most commercially viable
of these properties to foreign firms that would be able to raise the capital
for needed upgrading. Majority stakes in Czech firms like Škoda and
Pilsner Urquell were sold to foreign car manufacturers and brewers,
punching a hole in the Czechs’ already dented national pride.
Collective distribution of assets proceeded in a fashion similar to that
used elsewhere in the post-communist world. The population were offered
vouchers for a reasonable sum, entitling them to bid for shares in any of a
group of companies. The share price was determined by demand, i.e. the
total number of voucher points that were bid. The plan aimed to acknowl-
edge the populace’s share in the creation of this wealth, and to give them a
stake in newly privatized companies, helping thereby to determine the com-
panies’ worth. The entire process was called coupon privatization, and it
ran in successive rounds throughout the 1990s.54
Already in the early 1990s, though, there were accusations that wealthy
émigrés like Viktor Kožený and his misleadingly named Harvard
Investment Fund were manipulating the process to their own ends.
Furthermore, corruption scandals raised public suspicion that privatization
was simply a front operation to put as much capital into the hands of the
wealthy, powerful and well-connected as possible.55 Coupon privatization
proved to be less than a stellar success, but the scale of its problems did not
become apparent until the second half of the decade.56
1.5. Lustration
Lustration (lustrace), or the “shedding of light”, referred to the investiga-

tion of all highly-placed company and government officials with regard to
their conduct during the communist era. Its goal was to restore public trust
in institutions by removing those who were held to be most responsible for

the excesses of the previous regime. The lustration laws, passed by the
Czechoslovak parliament in 1991, decreed that certain posts were hence-
forth incompatible with: prior service in the State Security; some highly-
placed police posts; certain communist-era government and administrative
positions; positions of responsibility within the Communist Party hierarchy;
and co-operation with the repressive apparatus of the state as an informer.57
It is unclear whether the lustration laws had their desired effect.58 They
did prevent many a former apparatchik from transitioning smoothly into the
new system, but there were numerous well-publicized cases, the best
known of which involved Josef Škvorecký’s wife Zdena Salivarová and Jan
Kavan, eventually foreign minister under the Zeman government, where
prominent dissidents claimed that the State Security had listed them as
informants simply to split the dissident movement and put feathers in the
agents’ own caps. Lustration did shine a bright spotlight on the extent to
which the post-communist government and bureaucracy were permeated by
those who had co-operated willingly with the previous regime and profited
by it. In this sense, it probably only heightened the mistrust of the average
citizen.
1.6. Integration
In the first post-communist elections, the Civic Forum party ran under the
slogan “Back to Europe!” From the very first, then, post-communist
Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic had as its goal to re-integrate
into the community of Western European nations, and this meant member-
ship in common organizations, and eventually in NATO and the EU.
Negotiations started early and were protracted.
A constant theme in the Czech press of the 1990s was what constituted
Europe, and where the Czechs stood in relation to it (Sanders 2003). This
attempt to define their nation with respect to Europe, its standards, and its
values, was to find an echo in the language debate.
1.7. The division of Czechoslovakia
In retrospect the division of Czechoslovakia was a long time in the making,

and may have been on the cards ever since the state was formed in 1918. In
the late communist era, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic consisted for-
mally of two self-governing territories, the Czech Socialist Republic and
the Slovak Socialist Republic, each with its own National Council (národní
rada). The national councils were charged with matters of education, cul-
ture, and local development, although the federal government in Prague had
certain powers in these areas as well. The federal government of
Czechoslovakia retained exclusive responsibility for defence, international
relations, and overall economic planning.
In a “federation” of nations where one is twice the size of the other,
more economically prosperous than the other, and is home to the seat of
central government, tensions will inevitably arise. The Slovak list of
grievances came to the fore shortly after the Velvet Revolution and stayed
in the public eye for the next few years. Slovak leaders in the Federal
Assembly pushed their case resolutely and repeatedly, sometimes to the
detriment of more substantial issues. In 1992, two years after the end of
communist rule, the country still had not been able to agree on a new
constitution. The Slovak parliamentarians had demanded the devolution of
all powers to the national councils, including defence and foreign policy,
while retaining a vague “union” characterized primarily by common tax
collection and financial subsidies to Slovakia. The Czech parliamentarians
found this unacceptable, and the two leading parties decided on a radical
solution, dissolving the federal state altogether effective 1 January 1993.
The split was not a clean one. Issues of property division dragged on
through the coming years, leading to often nasty spats between Czech and
Slovak leaders. The establishment of border checkpoints between the two
countries was a painful process.59 There were seemingly endless
discussions of citizenship and residency. The division of the country made
headlines regularly throughout 1992 and 1993. It continually provoked
Czechs to re-evaluate the nature of “their” Czechoslovak state in the
previous period, and to pose new questions about the nature of Czech
identity. What was this new, rump nation of ten million souls that now
stopped at the Morava River?60 It is not surprising that one way they chose
to define themselves would have been as users of a particular standard
language.
1.8. Public attitudes
The 1990s saw an explosion of studies detailing the social and political atti-
tudes of the Czech nation.
Whitefield and Evans (1999), for example, observed significant differ-

ences between Czechs and Slovaks as to their belief in democracy and its
ability to solve their country’s pressing problems. Their study, conducted in
the spring of 1994, coincides exactly with the period that will concern us in
most detail.
According to their survey, Czechs showed an affinity for democracy,
free speech, democratic processes, and greater limitations on the scope of
government. However, Czechs also expressed strong reservations about the
power of representative democracy, and were sceptical that their wishes
and needs were respected in the process of governing.61
Their findings on the Czech Republic paint a picture of a country with a
belief in social and political liberalism. The Czechs held government
responsible for creating a strong economy and a functioning safety net, but
otherwise did not put much store by it. As Whitefield and Evans point out,
the Czech experience in the early 1990s differed from those in other post-
communist countries, in that the sudden collapse in employment found
elsewhere did not materialize, leaving people relatively optimistic about the
prospects of their new democracy.62 A clear warning sign, however, is the
discrepancy between the belief in liberal ideas and the lack of trust in the
institutions meant to uphold them.
Veþerník’s 1998 survey of attitudes among the middle class provides an
interesting counterpoint to Whitefield and Evans. Veþerník hows that the
traditional division of the middle classes into “new” (intellectual, profes-
sional) and “old” (entrepreneurial) was, by the late 1990s, firmly
entrenched as an attitudinal difference as well. The so-called “old” middle
classes had essentially been liquidated by the communist interregnum, and
their representatives in the 1990s were a completely different group of
people. The so-called “new” middle classes had been economically
demoted during that period, but remained intact. He notes a marked
difference between the hard-line liberal views and economic optimism of
the “old” middle classes, and the softer liberalism of the “new” middle
classes, who favoured more state intervention in the economic sphere and
were notably more pessimistic and suspicious about economic reform
(Veþerník 1999: 412).
1.9. Summary
The disparate processes affecting Czech society in the 1990s were not, of
course, primarily about language. Nonetheless, there were important

themes that ran through them which affected people’s view of language.
Distrust of authority, of government, and of individuals in positions of
power was intense in this period. Holy claims that the communist era deci-
sively decoupled the concept of Czechness from the existing Czech state.
This linkage, he says, had previously been integral in the Czech mind. Dur-
ing the First Republic (1918–1948) Czechs had seen the Czechoslovak state
as embodying their culture and values, and during the preceding three
centuries of Austrian rule, they had looked nostalgically back to the
medieval and renaissance Czech kingdom for this purpose (Holy 1996: 49–
54). We can posit that in the communist era, the Czech state came to be
seen as a collection of venal individuals, and thus assumed characteristics
of the “little Czech” rather than of the “great Czech nation”. In the 1990s,
faults in the privatization, restitution, and lustration processes reinforced
this distrust of the state and allowed Czechs to continue labeling it as
something “other”, unworthy of their respect.
A search for national values, for a new place for the Czech nation, was a
logical outcome of the 1993 division of the country and the need for Czechs
to position themselves with respect to their European neighbours. The
Czech language was the nation’s badge of uniqueness, but it was also what
divided them from the rest of Europe. It thus became both a source of pride
and frustration. In this way, the political and social situation in the early
1990s influenced a debate in the seemingly peripheral area of Czech
orthography.
2. The Czech language
Czech belongs to the Slavonic branch of the Indo-European family of lan-

guages.63 Within Slavonic, it is traditionally classified as part of the West
Slavonic group, which includes the 38 million speakers of Polish, and the
microlanguages Kashubian (3,000 to 100,000 speakers, depending on the
definition), Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian (30,000 to 75,000 speakers
for both, according to the Ethnologue database). Its closest relative is Slo-
vak, a language of approximately 4.5 million speakers. Czech and Slovak
together constitute a subgroup of West Slavonic, and have at periods in his-
tory been considered varieties of a single language (called variously Czech
or Czechoslovak), although this view is no longer widely held. The two
languages are mutually intelligible with a minimum of effort.64 The
traditional Czech-speaking language area shares a long, continuous border
The Czech language 45
with Slovak and a relatively short one with Polish.65 Czech has no border in
common with any further Slavonic languages.
One way to visualize the modern Czech language situation is as a stan-
dard variety, a series of super-regional spoken varieties applied in different
areas and situations, and a constellation of regional dialects.
In Moravia and Silesia, regional dialects still have a strong base, and
find application in many everyday communicative situations. Here,
however, there are also interdialects in larger towns and cities, which can
also be used by dialect speakers as a convenient way to “deregionalize”
their speech in conversation with speakers of other dialects. At least two
and possibly three or more interdialects can be identified on Moravian and
Silesian territory.
Regional dialects are said to be nearly moribund in Bohemia, having
given way to the expansive variety called Common Czech (CC), which
originates in Prague and the Central Bohemian region. Nowadays in
Bohemia, CC prevails as the primary mode of spoken communication, with
minor regional variations (isolated morphophonemic features and lexical
items).66 In comparison with the Moravian dialects, CC is used more widely
and appears more frequently in the media, being the dialect of the capital.
Whether more prestige and acceptability accrue to it as a result is a matter
of debate.
These non-standard varieties of Czech are not used in formal writing.
They exist more or less purely as spoken codes. Some dialects can be repre-
sented using standard orthography, and there are even widely used conven-
tions for doing so (this is the case for CC, for instance), but Czechs do not
usually accept these texts as normative written language. Written non-stan-
dard Czech is acceptable in a limited number of contexts, among them in-
formal e-mails, phone text messages, and representations of direct
discourse in fiction.67 A few dialects have phonological features not
adequately represented using the usual symbols of Czech orthography
(Silesian dialects are a case in point); without additional characters, the
closest one can get is a rough approximation that omits some of the more
distinctive features.
Standard Czech (SC) derives from a written tradition, and is predomi-
nantly used in written form. SC can be spoken, but the spoken version of
the standard contains numerous grammatical, phonological, lexical, and
syntactic differences from all the interdialects and regional dialects. These
differences cannot be explained away by common cross-linguistic differ-
ences between speech and writing. Crudely put, SC does not derive from or
correspond to any of the current varieties of the language spoken as native

dialects, and in its spoken form is easily distinguishable from the purely
spoken varieties of Czech. No Czechs grow up speaking SC; they learn a
dialect or interdialect in their families and language communities, and their
acquaintance with SC comes only later. They are exposed to it at least pas-
sively in books and the media at first, and then learn it actively at school.
In Bohemia, the use of spoken SC is largely confined to certain formal
settings and situations. It is used in schools and public addresses, and will
often be heard on television and radio broadcasts (although not always).
Bohemian speakers often mix features of the standard with those of CC.
Previously it had been suggested that this mixture was predictable and
stable, and it was given the aspirational name hovorová þeština, whose
infelicitous translation ‘colloquial Czech’ is as deceptive in English as is its
Czech original. In competition with this is the concept bČžnČ mluvená
þeština ‘ordinary spoken Czech’, which construes the use of both SC and
non-standard (usually CC) elements as a form of code switching or code
mixing. In any event, educated Bohemian Czechs will employ CC, SC or a
combination of the two in their speech, depending on the circumstance.
The situation differs in Moravia, where there is a greater variety of dia-
lects to begin with. There, different sorts of “spoken standards” that mix
interdialectal and spoken standard features enjoy popularity in
conversation, especially when participants represent different dialects or
sociolects (Davidová et al. 1997). There is also anecdotal evidence that
Moravians have more ordinary speech contexts in which they use SC,
especially when interacting with people outside their dialect area.
Some differences between SC and the major spoken varieties derive
from developments in the dialects at the time many of the features of SC
became fixed in the written code, or from subsequent developments. Other
differences come from the purists introducing pseudo-archaic forms into
SC and from the particular standardizing decisions taken over the past 200
years. For more details on the history of the standard language, see chapters
3 and 4.
3. Phonology and the orthographic system of Czech
Czech orthography is traditionally said to observe the principle “one pho-

neme (significant sound unit), one grapheme (letter).” In practice, it is fre-
quently morphophonemic; that is, it has a phonemic basis, but also makes
Phonology and the orthographic system of Czech 47
relationships between related forms and words apparent by maintaining a

single shape for each morpheme (see section 3.2 below). There are excep-
tions to this rule, which I discuss below, but this link between spelling and
pronunciation forms the cornerstone of a reformist ideology among
linguists and educators, and it is worth exploring in more detail.
Czech uses the Latin letter set plus a combination of diacritics. The
three diacritics in common use are the háþek (<ˇ> or <’>), þárka (<´>), and
kroužek <°>. Other diacritics, such as the umlaut or the diagonal bar used
on <l>, appear only in foreign names. The greater number of characters
made available by the use of the standard Czech diacritics by and large
obviates the need for digraphs (see section 3.2 below for exceptions) and
lends support to the “one phoneme, one grapheme” claim.
3.1. The Czech vowel inventory and its realization in spelling
Vowel length is phonemic in Czech, distinguishing minimal pairs such as

rada /¥rada/ ‘advice’ vs. ráda /¥raÖda/ ‘happily (f.)’
byt /b+t/ ‘apartment’ vs. být /biÖt/ ‘to be’
domĤ /¥domuÖ/ ‘homewards’ vs. domu /¥domu/ ‘to/of the house’
Czech has a system of five short and five long vowels. On average, a
long vowel is 1.5 to 2 times the length of a short vowel. The quality of
short vowels is very similar to that of long vowels; there can be a slight
height/closeness difference between short /+/ and long /iÖ/ (Dankoviþová
1999).68 In many languages, vowel length is strongly affected by the
position of word stress; Czech, however, has a relatively weak stress that
invariably occurs on the first syllable of the phonemic word, and this stress
has in most instances only a minimal impact on the length of the vowel.
In writing, the difference in vowel length is shown by the presence
(long) or absence (short) of an acute accent or circle over the vowel, with
long /[uÖ/, short /+/ and long /iÖ/ being represented by two different
graphemes each:69
Table 1. Short and long vowel letters in SC
Short vowels: <a e i o u y>
Long vowels: <á é í ó ú Ĥ ý>

In many morphemes the vowel can be either short or long, depending on

the word or form. As seen in Table 2, within a root, short vowels often
alternate with a long vowel of the same quality, although certain ones can
alternate with a different long vowel or a diphthong.
Furthermore, vowel length is not always reliable or stable. At the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, much of the debate around codification in-
volved determining which variants to codify in such situations. Gradually,
this issue has receded and been replaced by the issue of vowel length in
borrowed words, which are less stable (see section 5.1 below).
Table 2. Common vowel alternations in SC morphemes
a – aÖ pracovat ‘to work’ vs. práce ‘work (nom. sg.)’
' – 'Ö jméno ‘name (nom. sg.)’ vs. jmen ‘names (gen. pl.)’
' – iÖ lenost ‘laziness (nom. sg.)’ vs. líný ‘lazy (masc. nom. sg.)’
+ – iÖ bil ‘he hit’ vs. bít ‘to hit’
+ – iÖ pyšný ‘proud (masc. nom. sg.)’ vs. pýcha ‘pride (nom. sg.)’
o – uÖ doma ‘at home’ vs. dĤm ‘house, building (nom. sg.)’
u – uÖ uctít ‘to honour’ vs. úcta ‘honour (nom. sg.)’
u – ou kupovat ‘buy (imperfective)’ vs. koupit ‘buy (perfective)’
Spelling rules tell Czechs that, for example, after <c, þ, ž, š, Ĝ> they nor-
mally write <i, í> to indicate the clusters /VU+ V5+ <+ 5+ T+/ and
/VUKÖV5KÖ<KÖ5KÖ TKÖ/. Furthermore, Czechs are taught that in native words,
/+iÖ/ after a dental /t, d, n/ is spelled <ty, dy, ny, tý, dý, ný>, while with an
alveopalatal /c, Ì, Õ/ the cluster is written <ti, di, ni, tí, dí, ní>.
A further difficulty is how to spell /+iÖ/ in so-called ‘ambiguous’ envi-
ronments (i.e. after /l, s, z, v, b, f, m, p/, where the spelling makes no differ-
ence to the pronunciation; both syrup and sirup have the value /¥U+TWR/).
Here there are no decisive rules to hang on to, and thus Czechs from an
early age are made to memorize lists of so-called “specified words”
(vyjmenovaná slova) where <y, ý> are written. If a word does not appear on
the lists, then it is written with <i, í>. With the help of these memorized
lists, Czechs learn to distinguish the spelling of e.g.:
Phonology and the orthographic system of Czech 49
mít /miÖt/ ‘to have’ vs. mýt /miÖt/ ‘to wash’

bít /biÖt/ ‘to beat, hit’ vs. být /biÖt/ ‘to be’
vil /v+l/ ‘family homes’ (gen. pl.) vs. vyl /v+l/ ‘he howled’
The rehearsing, memorization, and testing of “specified words” and the
spelling of grammatical endings is said to consume an inordinate amount of
time in schools, making Czech a dry and unattractive subject for some and
inhibiting children’s spontaneity of expression (Sgall 1999; Sgall et al.
2001–2002). The problem is a trivial one compared with, say, the tasks
confronting the Anglophone child learning to read and write, but it consti-
tutes the most obvious place in which Czech orthography deviates from the
“one phoneme, one grapheme” principle and causes difficulty by doing so.
3.2. The Czech consonantal inventory and its realization in spelling
The inventory of Czech consonant letters is as follows (the IPA character is

given where the Czech letter’s phonetic value is not apparent):
Table 3. Consonantal letters in Czech
bare consonant letters:

b, c [ts], d, f, g, h [×], j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, z
consonant letters with diacritics:

þ [V5], ć [Ì], Ė [Õ], Ĝ [T], š [5], Ģ [E], ž [<]
digraphs indicating a single consonant:

ch [x]
digraphs indicating consonant (or cluster) + vowel:

di [Ì+], ti [E+], ni [Õ+]
dí [ÌKÖ], tí [EKÖ], ní [ÕKÖ]
dČ [Ì'], tČ [E'], nČ [Õ']
mČ [OÕ']
pČ [RL'], vČ [XL'], fČ [HL']
Left out of the chart are <q, w, x>, which appear only in a few borrow-
ings, and have the same value as <kv, v, ks>.
The so-called “morphophonemic” principle of Czech spelling is most
easily seen on examples involving voiced and voiceless consonants. In
Czech, as in German, Russian and many other languages, for a given
consonant where the vocal cords are not vibrating (called a voiceless
consonant), there is a often distinct phoneme similar in all respects except
that the vocal cords vibrate while it is being produced (called a voiced
consonant). Czech thus distinguishes pairs such as e.g. /p/ vs. /b/; /t/ vs. /d/;
/s/ vs. /z/ and alternation between members of a pair can be seen throughout
the forms of a word or by comparing different words formed on the same
roots.70
For example, this alternation can be seen in the regular rule of final de-
voicing, in which a form ending in a voiceless consonant
[N'V] ‘ice’ (nom. sg., acc. sg.)
may alternate in a paradigm with other forms where a voiced consonant is

followed by a vowel:
[¥N'FW¥N'Ì'¥N'F'O] ‘ice’ (gen. sg., loc. sg., instr. sg.)
The standard interpretation is that the underlying consonant is voiced,

but that voicing is neutralized in word-final position, where all paired
consonants are pronounced as if voiceless. The spelling assumes that only
one underlying consonant phoneme exists in all forms, i.e. [N'V] is simply
the way /N'F/ sounds when realized in speech, and we thus write <led> for
the base form and <ledu, ledČ, ledem> for the remaining ones.71
3.3. Summary of Czech orthography
To the foreign observer used to the caprices of orthographies like those of

English, French, or German, Czech spelling is remarkably straightforward.
However, the apparent simplicity of this system is the result of six hundred
years of tinkering with the language’s spelling conventions. The relative
paucity of exceptions means that those few that remain assume an impor-
tance out of proportion to their actual frequency in the language. What is
more, cultural and structural conditions promote the acceptance, or at least
the expectation, that linguists will intervene to remove these exceptions and
to improve and refine the “one phoneme, one grapheme” principle.
Notably, both reformers and conservatives assign high significance to these
troublesome words. The former group often paints exceptions as a
substantial barrier to literacy, while the latter group hails them as cultural
markers and as shibboleths of the properly trained elite.
Quasi-diglossia in Bohemia 51
4. Quasi-diglossia in Bohemia
The language situation in the Czech Republic is probably best described as

quasi-diglossic (see Bermel 2000).72 As we saw in section 2, three-fifths of
the Czech population lives in Bohemia, where the population speaks a
minimally differentiated variety (CC) but conducts formal spoken and
almost all written interaction in SC. These two codes taken together fulfill
all the functions of a national language. They have overlapping but by no
means identical phonological systems, morphological inventories,
inventories of syntactic structures, and lexica. In contrast to classic
diglossic systems, the high and low codes are mutually comprehensible (see
Ferguson 1959).
To understand the background to some of the orthography debates, we
will examine this gulf between the most widely used spoken varieties and
standard. The most fruitful way to do this is to use CC; as opposed to the
Moravian interdialects, CC has been studied in detail and is the most
influential spoken code.
The similarity of the phonemic inventories of CC and SC makes it easy
to render CC using SC orthography. There is in fact a more or less standard
way of transcribing CC, which Czechs meet in literary dialogue, stylized
newspaper discourse, and advertisements, and use with increasing fre-
quency in less formal modes of written communication, such as personal e-
mail and text messaging. Although it would be most accurate in this mono-
graph to render SC consistently in its own orthography and CC using the
International Phonetic Alphabet, such an approach would make it difficult
for the reader to compare the two varieties. I have therefore adopted this
widespread morphophonemic transcription of CC for use below.
4.1. Phonology of the varieties
SC and CC share a phonemic inventory, although the distribution of vocalic

phonemes and diphthongs is different. A complete inventory of vocalic
phonemes and glide diphthongs would include those in Table 4.
Some of these, such as /oÖ/, /au/, /oj/, /'u/ are found primarily in bor-
rowings in both SC and CC. Others, like /'Ö/, occur primarily in borrowings
for CC but are common in native words as well for SC, and still others, like
/'j/, have restricted distribution in SC but occur more frequently throughout
the lexicon in CC.

Table 4. Vowels and diphthongs (IPA)
short vowels: C'+QW

long vowels: CÖ'ÖKÖQÖWÖ
glide diphthongs: CL'L+LQLWLCW'WQW
This distributional difference is realized in various ways. To take just

one example: many word stems occur with two vocalic variants, one a short
vowel and the other a long vowel or diphthong. In SC the letter <y>, repre-
senting the high short vowel /+/, often alternates with letter <ý>,
representing the long high vowel /iÖ/, in the same stem. In CC the same
short vowel +alternates instead with 'L in many of those contexts, e.g.
SC vymluvit–výmluva ‘to excuse–an excuse’, pohybovat–hýbat ‘move’ vs.
CC vymluvit–vejmluva, pohybovat–hejbat.
By contrast, in SC the diphthong 'Lis more restricted. It occurs
primarily as an imperative ending (hádej ‘guess!’) and in the nominative
singular ending of some nouns (trofej ‘trophy’, kolej ‘dormitory/track’,
etc.), contexts where it is also found in CC.
The consonantal inventory of the two varieties is identical, except that
CC has some constraints on consonant clusters that are missing in SC. For
example, CC lacks initial consonant clusters like X<F /LF/, /LO/; the corre-
sponding forms in CC begin with /F/, /O/:
SC vždycky, jdu, jméno /¥X<F+VUM+LFW¥LO'ÖPQ/ vs.
CC dycky, du, méno /¥F+VUM+FW¥O'ÖPQ/
4.2. Morphological systems of the varieties
Czech, like other Slavonic languages, is highly inflected, giving plenty of

scope for variation across the forms of a given word. Although the majority
of forms are shared by SC and CC, there are numerous points in the system
where the varieties diverge. Here, one form is said to be SC, the other CC.
These differences are pervasive and occur in both common and periph-
eral parts of the inflectional system. They are most frequent in adjectives
and certain verb paradigms. However, noun declensions are largely uniform
for both varieties.
In canonical diglossic systems, we expect to see an elaborate grammar
for the “high” variety and a simpler one for the “low” variety. The “low”
Quasi-diglossia in Bohemia 53
one is called a “reduced” system, as the assumption is that the more

elaborate system represents the same language at an earlier state of
development. There are commonly reductions in the number of central
grammatical categories, e.g. the loss of case systems altogether or a
reduction in the number of cases; or a loss of tense or person markers in
verbal morphology.
These sorts of major, central reductions are absent from Czech “diglos-
sia.” The reduction we do see tends to be around the periphery of the
system. In this category we could place differences such as the lack of a full
complement of active and passive participles in CC; or the CC loss of
functional distinctions between short and long adjectives and between the
predicative instrumental and the predicative nominative case.
We do, however, see a systematic reduction in the number of paradigms
in each category. For example, two of the major SC verb conjugations have
collapsed into one in CC, and there has been a reduction in the number of
common noun declensions through the merger of similar classes and the
elimination of some consistent markings of gender in noun declensions.
Adjectives show significant variation, with a majority of forms differing
between the two varieties. Verbal morphology diverges most notably in the
first person (singular and plural) and third person plural forms.
CC and SC have significant differences in the agreement of the past
participle. Normally, this agrees in grammatical gender and number with
the subject. SC provides four plural forms, e.g.: vedli (masc. animate),
vedly (masc. inanimate and all fem.), vedla (neut.). CC has only one form:
/¥X'FN+/, often transcribed vedli.
For the morphology of nouns, variation between CC and SC is largely
confined to the instrumental plural form.
We could repeat this type of analysis with the Czech lexicon and syntax,
with similar results (although they would be less surprising; most languages
show a marked difference between spoken and written syntax, and many
have substantial vocabulary differences, albeit perhaps not as extensive as
that found in Czech). To take an example from the vocabulary of the two
varieties: diglossic systems usually show substantial variation in the core
vocabulary of a language, and Czech is no exception here. Compare the
occurrence of these core words in the two varieties in Table 5.
The CC words are not at all “slangy”; they would be used by any edu-
cated native speaker of CC in a variety of ordinary contexts. The SC lex-
emes run the gamut from relatively neutral (bratr, sestra, dívat se) to book-
ish (dívka, hoch, otec, matka).
By looking more closely at the evidence for written and spoken Czech,
we can establish how significant the difference between these codes is for
the language’s native speakers. In literary texts, checking thousand-word
samples of direct dialogue yielded between 113 and 167 words containing
one or more features that could be marked as belonging to one variety (SC
or CC) but not the other (Bermel 2000). This means that in this particular
context, allegiance to a variety is signalled in approximately one out of
every six or eight written words.
Table 5. Core vocabulary
gloss CC SC
brother brácha bratr
sister ségra sestra
mother maminka matka
father tatínek otec
house barák dĤm
girl holka dívka
boy kluk hoch
to look koukat (se) dívat se
For the spoken language, evidence comes from Šonková (1995). A

count of her 40,000-word corpus yielded the distribution of forms in Table
6.
Table 6. Token types in recorded speech (Šonková 1995)
unmarked 57.8%
non-standard 37.4%
standard 4.4%
bookish 0.3%
vulgar 0.04%
Although the orthographic system of Czech presents fewer obstacles

than that of other languages, the substantial phonological and morphologi-
cal differences between SC and the spoken codes pose significant hurdles
for all learners and users of the language. Pupils mastering the basics of
writing must simultaneously come to grips with a noticeably different
grammar and phonology and learn that many everyday words are not ac-
ceptable in the standard. It is no wonder that the concepts of correct spel-
Phonology and Czech language regulation 55
ling, correct punctuation, and correct grammar are fused in the mind of the
average Czech.
With no one single interdialect prevalent across the Czech lands, this
gulf between the written and spoken codes is likely to persist. Codifying the
forms of one particular spoken variety would privilege it over the remain-
ing spoken varieties, a fact which is politically and culturally unpalatable,
and will continue to be so for as long as substantial regional variations exist
and no one spoken variety predominates.74 For examples of how this situa-
tion has influenced the evolution of the written standard, see chapter 4.
Historically, the debate over Czech spelling has concerned the places
where Czech orthography poses difficulty for language users, either
because of some inconsistency in the formulation of its rules, or because
those rules serve at the same time to differentiate standard Czech from the
spoken varieties. These are summarized in sections 5 and 6 below.
5. Phonology and Czech language regulation
Much of the spelling debate has centered on the “one phoneme, one graph-
eme” ideology, and the extent to which it is realizable in Czech. There are
what we can call “limited interpretations” of the ideology, as well as
“sweeping interpretations.”
5.1. Limited interpretations
The limited interpretations of the ideology accept that Czech orthography

instantiates it imperfectly, and recommend tinkering around the edges of
the system to eliminate some of the more minor irregularities. For the most
part, these “limited interpreters” confine the discussion to the spelling of
borrowed words. Their scope of activity is described in sections 5.2–5.6.
If the source language of a borrowed word uses the Latin alphabet, then
the word usually enters Czech with its spelling preserved from that source
language. Often the initial pronunciation reflects the source language norms
as well (see chapter 4, section 1.4 on the development of loan word spell-
ings). Adaptation of the spelling to Czech pronunciation norms occurs
gradually and is often incomplete. In effect, then, the spelling of many of
these borrowed words contravenes the “one phoneme, one grapheme”
principle by introducing unpredictable correspondences between phonemes
and graphemes. There may be multiple ways of realizing a grapheme (e.g.
 can be realized as /u/ in native words, but /+/ in French borrowings), or
multiple ways of representing a phoneme (e.g. /ks/ can be represented by
<ks> or <x>, /kv/ by <kv> or <qu>, /v/ by <v> or <w>, and so forth).
Complicating the issue is the fact that foreign words undergo differing
degrees of domestication once they are borrowed into Czech. Sometimes
the degree of domestication is clear, in which case reformers argue that
Czech has traditionally tended to adapt the spellings of fully domesticated
foreign borrowings to their Czech pronunciation. Sometimes, however, the
degree of domestication varies from speaker to speaker or is not easily
measurable. In these instances, the acceptability of various pronunciations
becomes a further sticking point.
5.2. Borrowed words with intervocalic <s>
The most common divergence between inherited spelling and Czech pro-
nunciation is the tendency to pronounce borrowed intervocalic <s> as /z/:
original praesident, universita are inevitably pronounced with a /z/.75
In many places Czech simply reflects the state of affairs in the source
language or the intermediary language (most frequently German or Eng-
lish). But this trend is pervasive in Czech, and for some speakers extends
even to instances of original intervocalic <ss>: we often hear the pronun-
ciation /¥F+UMW\'/ for the Czech borrowing of Latin discussio. Accepting the
spelling diskuze implies acceptance of a hitherto non-standard pronuncia-
tion.
5.3. Borrowed words with <th>, <ph>, <ae>
Another clear example of domestication involves words adopted with

consonant clusters in the spelling, e.g. <th>, <ph>. Czech unambiguously
renders such clusters as e.g. /V/, /H/. Foreign vowel clusters fare similarly;
<ae>, for instance, is rendered as /'/.
5.4. Borrowed words with , <y>
The use of <i, í, y, ý> in borrowings poses several linked problems. In most
words of foreign origin, the choice of letter depends on the spelling in the
source language, regardless of the pronunciation. For example, the word
/¥HQP'V+MC/ ‘phonetics’ should, according to the principles given in sections

3.1 and 3.2, be spelled fonetyka. Instead, it is written fonetika, according to
the etymological spelling, and the normal rule that tells us to pronounce it
[¥HQP'E+MC] is ignored.
Confusingly, the situation differs for the long vowel letters <í, ý>. For
instance, for /¥NQMQOQVKÖXC/ ‘locomotive’, the spelling lokomotíva is ruled
out, because traditionally <tí> is always pronounced /ciÖ/. The two remain-
ing choices are to alter the etymological spelling and write lokomotýva, or
to preserve the original borrowed by writing lokomotiva, but in doing
so fail to indicate the vowel’s length. The latter has become the recognized
solution in Czech.
In all of these instances, reformers have argued for rigorously following
the principles devised for native words, typically arguing that foreign items,
which constitute such a small portion of the lexicon, should not present so
many exceptions to the “one phoneme, one grapheme” principle.
5.5. Greater divergences between spelling and pronunciation
Less clear is what happens where Czech mimics a foreign pronunciation to

a greater extent. This is the case with many French borrowings and the
more recent loans from English. To take two well-established examples: the
words bulletin, revue have a standard pronunciation [¥D+NV'ÖP¥T'XKÖ]. Inter-
preting as /+/ or /KÖ/ is a clear approximation of French pronunciation,
as is the zero value for <e> in bulletin. French ultimate stress is conveyed
by lengthening the final vowel, while Czech word stress is still given to the
first syllable. Because the grapheme-phoneme correspondence in these
items is not predictable, calls for revision are made on a word-by-word ba-
sis.
5.6. Vowel length
The length of vowels in borrowed words is a place where the pronunciation

itself has been difficult to measure. There is a strong tendency in Czech to
lengthen the final vowel of the stem of many borrowed words, and spelling
reforms have tried to address how this lengthened vowel should be written.
Originally, length was not marked, as these words partially retained the
shape of their original spelling, and had been borrowed from languages that
did not mark length by way of an acute accent.76 In the 1950s, the
consensus among linguists was that these vowels were long, and the 1957
reform decreed that length would be marked on many of them. Subsequent
studies suggested that the research that underpinned this decision had not
been reliable, that the length of these vowels was variable, and that they
probably were not on average as long as native long vowels. The 1993
reform thus removed length markings from the spellings of many words. In
the vast majority of cases, this simply meant returning to the pre-1957
spelling.
However, it is possible to have an entirely different argument here,
namely: should length ever be marked on foreign borrowings? One school
of thought says that it should not: that the failure of these words to adapt
their spelling to the conventions used for native words is an essential
marker of their innate “foreignness.”
5.7. Sweeping interpretations
Those who espouse a sweeping interpretation of the slogan “one phoneme,

one grapheme” aim not only at the spelling of foreign words, but also at the
problems presented by native words and spellings. There are three places
where large-scale reformers have concentrated their efforts: the letters <ú,
Ĥ>; the letters <i, í, y, ý>; and the letters <s, z>.
5.8. The letters <ú, Ĥ>
The letters <ú, Ĥ> both represent the phoneme /WÖ/. The letter <ú> is the
historical reflex of Old Czech /uÖ/ and now appears only at the beginnings
of words or stems (e.g. úþet ‘account’, súþtovat ‘reckon up’ with the prefix
s-). The letter <Ĥ> is the historical reflex of Old Czech /oÖ/ and occurs only
word- or root-internally (e.g. sĤl ‘salt’). Reformers have repeatedly argued
for the elimination of <Ĥ> in favour of <ú>.
5.9. The letters <i, í, y, ý>
Other reformers have sought to rationalize how <i, í, y, ý> are used.77 There
are many possible permutations for such a reform, including:
– replacing <ly> in past participles with <li> (i.e. doing away with
the purely graphic distinction between masculine animate parti-

ciples and masculine inanimate or feminine participles);
– spelling all “specified words” with <i, í> instead of <y, ý> while
leaving all other instances of <y, ý> alone;
– retaining <y, ý> in only a handful of very common “specified
words”, and where it is phonologically meaningful;
– eliminating <y, ý> in both “specified words” and borrowings, but
leaving it alone where it is phonologically meaningful; or
– abolishing <y, ý> altogether.
Some of these proposals do introduce new homonyms into the written

form of the language, but proponents of sweeping reform argue that they
present no barrier to comprehension.
5.10. The letters <s, z>
The relationship between the letters <s> and <z>, the prepositions s, z and
the prefixes s-, z- has been a perennial matter of discussion. If a voiced or
voiceless paired consonant follows, the underlying phonemes /s/ and /z/ are
realized identically, a fact which causes native speakers difficulty in de-
ciding which should be written in any particular situation. Various
“sweeping” proposals have come forth on this count. Most involve the
wholesale replacement of the marginal preposition s ‘down from’ with z
‘out of’.78 The prefixes s- and z- can, under a sweeping interpretation, be
replaced by either one, or spelled the way that pronunciation dictates (e.g.
<s> before voiceless consonants, <z> before voiced).
5.11. Other proposed reforms
There are occasionally more radical calls for a thorough overhaul of Czech
spelling, either to eliminate diacritics or to create a writing system that
claims to be phonetic (as distinct from the morphophonemic principles de-
scribed in section 3.2), but these represent a tiny if determined minority of
reformers, and their suggestions do not seem to be taken seriously by lin-
guists or the public at large.
6. Morphology and Czech language regulation
In many language communities, it would be hard to justify including all of

morphology under the heading orthographic reform. In the Czech context,
however, changes to the language’s morphology are routinely proposed as
part of “orthographic” change. There are two primary reasons for this.
First, as seen in section 4, the association between standard spelling and
standard grammar is a strong one in Czech, as both are learned at the same
time. This link is strengthened by the fact that orthographic manuals written
for the public also give grammatical information. The public consequently
tends to treat matters of “correctness” in language as matters of “orthogra-
phy”. The Czech word for orthography is a native calque with a transparent
structure – pravo-pis ‘correct writing’ – which reinforces this association.
Second, there are well-known places where grammar and orthography
collide, with orthography covertly encoding important grammatical infor-
mation. The best-known one is the agreement of past-tense forms (see be-
low).
6.1. Planned morphological change
Changes to verb endings in the non-past tense and changes to the infinitive
are examples of planned morphological change in SC that the public has
perceived as “orthographic” in nature. In both instances, the new forms in-
troduced to SC resulted in the simplification of complex patterns, but did
not reflect patterns observed in any of the most widely used spoken varie-
ties.
6.2. The non-past third-person plural
A recent change involved the conjugations of verbs that form Class III
(sázet, trpČt) in the traditional Czech classification system.
As can be seen from Table 7, the 3 pl. non-past ending in SC is not pre-
dictable from the infinitive for verbs in -<et>,-<Čt>. It must be memorized
for each verb. Dialects have levelled this distinction out of the language.
CC generalizes the class III ending to all verbs, while Moravian dialects
add a single uniform desinence (pattern A), or retain the theme vowel from
the infinitive and add a common 3 pl. marker borrowed from classes I and
Morphology and Czech language regulation 61
V (pattern B). However, all these solutions are specific to particular dialects
or varieties and thus carry a strong regional flavour. Historically, the users
and guardians of SC have resisted incorporating features of the spoken lan-
guage identified with a particular region, and thus attempts to codify e.g.
the CC reflexes have consistently foundered.
Table 7. Solutions to the 3 pl. problem from dialects79
infinitive (class) prosit (IV) trpČt (III) sázet (III) -et, -Čt = class III
‘ask’ ‘suffer’ ‘sow, bet’ -it = class IV
Standard Czech prosí trpí sázejí class III verbs have
3 pl. 3 pl. -ejí, -Čjí or -í
class IV verbs have
3 pl. -í
Common Czech prosej trpČj sázej 3 pl. -ej, -Čj
3 pl.
Moravian 3 pl. prosijó, trpijó, sázijó, 3 pl.always -ijó or
(pattern A) prosijú trpijú sázijú -ijú
Moravian 3 pl. prosijó, trpČjó, sázejó, theme vowel from
(pattern B) prosijú trpČjú sázejú inf. + 3 pl. -jó or -jú
Hypercorrection prosí trpí sází 3 pl. always -í
In the mid-1980s, however, normative grammars began to recommend a
different solution: they admitted class IV endings for all verbs in class III.
This solution is found sporadically in southern and western Bohemian dia-
lects (Balhar 2002: 450–455) and sporadically on the Bohemian–Moravian
border, but is not characteristic of any of the major dialect groups. Up until
this point, it had been found in educated speech and writing primarily as a
hypercorrection among Bohemians and Moravians alike, as seen in Table 8.
Table 8. Anatomy of a hypercorrection for a CC speaker
If I wrote as I spoke, I would write: prosej, trpČj, sázej in the 3 pl.

But I know that it is correct to write: prosí, trpí in the 3 pl.
Analogy: PROSIT, TRPċT are to PROSÍ, TRPÍ
as SÁZET is to.... SÁZÍ.
This change was controversial among linguists. Although it made

writing “easier”, it did so not by bringing it closer to the spoken language,
but by giving the stamp of approval to a form that had arisen primarily in
the context of over-careful speech (similar to English between he and I). In
the public mind, however, this form does not seem to be closely associated
with a particular dialect. Acceptability surveys among teachers confirm that

codifying this form has not raised many hackles with the public.80
6.3. The infinitive
The infinitive has been another area of cautious, ongoing revision. Until the
1950s, the SC infinitive ended in . This contrasted with the situation in
Czech dialects, where the infinitive ends in a consonant, usually /t/.81
The first change was made in the 1950s, and is attested in the 1957–
1958 Rules of Czech Orthography. It permitted infinitives ending in <t> for
all common verb types.82
For the vast majority of verbs, exemplified in Table 9 (p. 63) by dČlati
‘do’, it meant that the CC and SC infinitives were now identical, or at least
(as in the case of jeti) the SC form now corresponded to one acceptable CC
variant. For a smaller number of verbs, exemplified above by býti ‘be’ and
nésti ‘carry’, the new form created was actually a neologism, as dialects
had forms that could be transcribed bejt, byt, byĢ, bét, bet and nýst, nest,
nesĢ but almost never být or nést.
When a further revision was made in the 1980s affecting the much
smaller group of infinitives ending in <ci>, a similar situation arose. Some
infinitives, such as moci ‘be able’, now had a SC form moct that
corresponded exactly to the CC form. Others, such as péci ‘bake’ now had
a SC form péct that did not correspond to the forms found in most dialects
(which if written would be spelled píct, pect). Jelínek, writing in the
newspaper Lidové noviny on 10 June 1993, says of this trend:
While admitting the success of forms in -ct… we must of course add that
even forms like péct, téct, vléct are to a certain extent artificial. In Com-
mon Czech we hear variants with narrowing of the vowel -é- to -í-: píct,
týct (the ý here is only an orthographic device), vlíct; in Moravian dialects
forms with short -e- (pect…) dominate. In short, the doublets like péct that
have been introduced are in fact the result of a compromise between the
state of affairs in ordinary spoken Czech and the previous codifications of
the standard language. But there is nothing wrong, after all, with making
useful compromises in codifying the standard language.
In both examples above, regulation of SC morphology produced a system
that was simpler and closer to spoken varieties, but in doing so created arti-
ficial forms not found in any widely spoken variety. These forms are again
a by-product of the desire to maintain the superdialectal status of SC while
Morphology and Czech language regulation 63
making it easier to learn on the basis of a native spoken code.

Table 9. Changes in the SC infinitive from 1957
verb to 1957 1957 1980s CC83 description
‘do’ dČlati dČlat – dČlat -i > Ø; SC><CC
‘go’ jeti jet – je(c)t -i > Ø; SCCC
‘be’ býti být – bejt -i > Ø; SCCC
‘carry’ nésti nést – nýst -i > Ø; SCCC
‘be able’ moci – moct moct -i > t; SC><CC
‘bake’ péci – péct píct -i > t; SCCC
In Jelínek’s summary, we can identify a further belief central to the ide-

ology of language reforms in the Czech lands. Since the standard is already
subject to manipulation, we can require that this manipulation be useful. To
be useful, it need not necessarily represent a convergence of the written
variety with the structures of the spoken variety. But it does need to be jus-
tifiable on the grounds of improving access to the standard through making
its structures more learnable.
6.4. The plural of the past participle
The best example of a collision of orthographic and morphosyntactic issues

is the plural form of the past participle. The Czech past tense is composed
of a past participle and, in the first and second persons, an auxiliary verb:
stálPART-MASC-SG jsemAUX-1SG ‘I stood’. In the third person, the auxiliary
does not appear. The participle is supposed to agree in number and gender
with the subject, so that a woman would not use the form above, but would
write: stálaPART-FEM-SG jsemAUX-1SG ‘I stood’.
In the plural, SC distinguishes three forms: masculine animate (muži
stáliPART-ANIM-MASC-PL ‘the men stood’), masculine inanimate or feminine
(poþítaþe stályPART-INAN-MASC-PL ‘the computers stood’, ženy stályPART-FEM-
PL ‘the women stood’) and neuter (mČsta stálaPART-NEUT-PL ‘the cities
stood’). Most dialects, including CC, have only one form: /¥UVCÖN+/ PART-PL,
which functions for all genders in the plural.
The past participle ending is one of the so-called “ambiguous” environ-
ments, as the <i/y> follows a stem in <l>, and the clusters <ly> and <li> are
pronounced identically. The choice of whether to write one or the other is
therefore made on the basis of grammatical information about the subject,
and is not a choice that occurs in speech. Furthermore, both forms exist for
all verbs, and a writer cannot rely on a visual sense of only one of two
forms “looking right”. It is therefore not surprising that this sort of
agreement is one of the most common places for educated Czechs to slip
up.
The most frequently proposed solution is to bring SC into line with the
vast majority of Czech dialects and admit only one past-tense plural form,
which would end in <li>. However, to date no such reforms have made it
past the planning stage.84
7. The 1993 Rules of Czech Orthography
The 1993 reforms, which form the main subject of this book, were
published in two different editions, as had become the practice beginning
with the 1957 Rules. Each edition was said to be aimed at a particular
market – odborná a laická veĜejnost ‘the specialist and lay public’ – and
consequently had different contents and information. Both editions contain:
– a brief foreword;
– a summary of the Czech writing system;
– excurses on indicating vowel length and the phoneme /z/ in borrow-
ings;
– an explanation of how to write and punctuate abbreviations;
– a summary of capitalization rules;
– an explanation of punctuation marks;
– an ‘orthographic dictionary’, which constitutes the bulk of the book;
– a ‘list of geographic terms’; and
– a ‘list of personal names’.
The academic edition, published by Academia, the imprint of the Acad-

emy of Sciences, was aimed at the specialist public. It omitted grammatical
information from the dictionary, but provided a larger number of special-
ized terms, especially foreign and more obscure words. These, it was felt,
were of interest to those who use such terms in their profession, or who in
the course of their work meet with such terms, such as journalists and edi-
tors. As such, it contains two sections not found in the school edition:
– detailed instructions and tables for transcribing words and names
from foreign languages, especially those using alphabets and
The 1993 Rules of Czech Orthography 65
spelling systems not based on the Latin script;

– a ‘list of classical names’, describing the esoteric spelling and
declension of many Greek and Latin words and proper names.85
The school edition was published in 1993 by Pansofia, a private house,

although later, unauthorized, editions were also brought out by the
Moravian house FIN. The primary audience of the school edition was, of
course, teachers and students, but it was also recommended for the “lay
public”: those who use the written language regularly, but might not need
the large number of technical and learned terms in the academic version.
In compensation for its somewhat reduced vocabulary, the school
edition has more grammatical information, including basic declension and
conjugation indicators for words whose pattern is not immediately clear
from the base form. It is safe to say that the school edition is the one most
favoured by the general population.
7.1. Spelling in the 1993 Rules
The 1993 Rules had several primary areas of innovation, and a number of
secondary ones. The primary spelling reforms concerned loan words and
the extent to which their spelling should be assimilated to their Czech
pronunciation. (For a fuller discussion, see section 5.) Many of the changes
suggested in the new Rules had been underway for some time, and attracted
virtually no attention. Two such examples are the simplification of doubled
consonant letters and the elimination of the cluster <th>.
In both examples, the 1941 Rules gave the traditional spelling reflecting
the word’s foreign origin. However, these spellings do not reflect the
phonemic reality of Czech, which lacks geminate (double or long) conso-
nants and always interprets <th> as /t/.
In the case of pudding, the 1957 Rules eliminated the double consonant
<dd>, and offered a choice of final <g> or <k>.86 The 1993 Rules further
simplify this to pudink, with [k] pronounced in all forms. In example 2, the
1957 Rules introduced the new spelling téma to reflect typical Czech pro-
nunciation of the word, but continued to allow the older spelling thema.
The older spelling survived the interim 1977 revision to appear again in the
1983 edition of the Rules, but was finally eliminated in the 1993 Rules.
Table 10. Evolution of spelling: <dd>, <th>
description 1941 1957/1983 1993 gloss

1. single C for pudding puding or pudink ‘pudding’
original double C pudink
2. /t/ for thema thema or téma ‘subject,
classical <th> téma theme’
7.2. Spelling of <s> vs. <z> in loan words in the 1993 Rules
The most controversial changes were in those numerous loan words in

Czech where <s> is traditionally written, but pronunciation favours /z/. The
evolving status of these words can be seen in Table 11 (p. 67).
Words like bazén ‘pool’ in (3) have long been the subject of phonetici-
zation, to the extent where the 1957 Rules, following the 1941 Rules, un-
controversially classify these words with only the <z> spelling, and this is
carried forward into the 1983 and 1993 Rules.
The 1957 Rules introduced this spelling to a further class of words –
those in (4), more learned borrowings like analysa ‘analysis’ – but left the
older spelling alongside it. Where the standard pronunciation is not deduci-
ble from the spelling, the Rules traditionally give the standard pronuncia-
tion in square brackets: analysa [-ýza].
A small group of words in this category – those in (5), including
filosofie, president, universita ‘philosophy, president, university’ – had
been left with only the older <s> spelling. This was supposedly at the be-
hest of Communist Party officials, who believed that the spelling with <z>
did not respect the dignity of these concepts.87 The 1983 Rules for the first
time permit (but do not require) <z> in (5). Not until the 1993 Rules does
<z> becomes the only recommended spelling for these words.
Example (6) involves words such as kurs ‘course’, puls ‘pulse’, where
the pronunciation situation is more complex. The citation form of these
words is the nominative singular which, as with most masculine nouns,
consists of the bare stem. All other forms are created by adding a gram-
matical ending that begins with a vowel. The citation form has always been
realized with a voiceless consonant, just as it is spelled: [kurs]. However,
the remaining forms have long been realized in standard pronunciation as
[¥kurzu], [¥kurz+], etc. The traditional analysis is that the ‘underlying’ form
is not /kurs/, but /kurz/. The [s] in the nominative singular form is simply
an example of final-consonant devoicing, as is applied for all Czech words.
The 1993 Rules therefore decreed that these words should be treated simi-
larly to analysa and president, and spelled henceforth with <z>.
Table 11. Evolution of spelling: <s> vs. <z>
feature 1957 1983 1993 gloss
3. medial /z/ bazén bazén bazén ‘pool’
4. medial /z/ analysa, analysa, analýza ‘analysis’
analýza analýza
5. medial /z/ universita universita, univerzita ‘university’
univerzita
6. ends in /z/ kurs kurs kurz ‘course’
7. medial /s/ diskuse diskuse diskuse, ‘discussion’
or /z/ diskuze
8. ends in socialismus socialismus socialismus, ‘socialism’
/zmus/ socializmus
Likewise: kursista/kurzista ‘course-taker’, universitní/univerzitní ‘university’,
presidium/prezídium ‘presidium’, diskusní/diskuzní ‘discussional’. Despite belief to
the contrary, socialistický ‘socialist’ had no variant spelling in <z>.
For one group of words in Czech, the pronunciation of borrowed
intervocalic <s> varies. These words, represented in (7) by diskuse ‘discus-
sion’ are traditionally said to be pronounced with /s/, and this pronunciation
is prescribed in the 1957 and 1983 editions of the Rules. The 1993 Rules
recognize that the pronunciation with /z/ is widespread although often con-
demned, and codify spellings with both <z> and <s>, as well as both pro-
nunciations.
The final group in (8) consists of words ending in <smus>, always pro-
nounced [zmus]. Intervention from the Communist Party had stopped the
phoneticization of these words in 1957 and 1983, but the 1993 Rules codi-
fied the spelling with <z> alongside the older <s> spelling.
The 1993 Rules thus simplified the principles behind the spelling of <s>
and <z> in foreign words. As opposed to the 1957 Rules and the partial
revisions in the 1977 and 1983 Rules, the 1993 Rules decreed that <z> is
always written where pronounced. The single exception is words in /zmus/,
where the 1993 Rules leave the traditional spelling alongside the new one.
7.3. Vowel length in loan words in the 1993 Rules
Another major area that has traditionally caused difficulties for the written
norm is the length of vowels in borrowed words.

Most borrowed words entered Czech from languages where vowel
length is either not phonemic (e.g. French, where vowel length is
positionally determined or varies along with vowel quality), is phonemic
but typically not marked in the written language (e.g. Latin), or is marked
in a fashion different from that used in Czech (e.g. German or English,
where vowel length is frequently indicated by the presence of a single or
double consonant letter after the vowel letter in question, and Classical
Greek, where different letters – for example, <Ș> vs. <İ> or <Ȧ> vs. <o> –
may be used to indicate respectively long and short vowels).
Regardless of the etymological vowel length, Czech pronunciation dis-
plays a strong tendency to lengthen predesinential vowels in these words, a
fact that was not reflected in official spelling handbooks until the 1957
Rules.88 Examples can be found in Table 12 (p. 69).
The 1957 Rules introduced regular marking of length on these predesi-
nential vowels, while leaving the etymological spelling as an alternative in
some, but not all, instances. By 1988, however, the commission was less
sure that it had been a wise decision to mark length consistently in these
words. As Martincová explained in an interview with the journal Rozhlas,
acoustical studies had shown that these vowels were often not in fact full
long vowels. This may have been connected with the words’ status as
“marked” for foreign origin, or in some instances with the fact that Czech
has weak word-initial stress, and consequently an unstressed (i.e. non-
initial) long vowel may not be as long one in the initial stressed syllable.
In any event, the 1993 Rules reversed some of these shortenings, recom-
mending balon, benzin, and archiv, while retaining length in margarín and
analýza, and continuing to allow both chlor and chlór. The rationale for
these changes was not entirely transparent. It had four major points:
1. Certain of the vowels that had been marked as long in the 1957 re-
forms were found in practice to vary in length from short to long, with a
half-long being quite frequent. These were returned to their etymological
spelling with a short vowel, as had been the practice before 1957.
2. For other words that had been spelled with a long vowel since 1957, it
was decided that the vowel was in fact consistently long, and the spelling
continued unaltered from the 1957 reforms.
3. For some words that had had two alternate spellings since 1957, the
authors decided that the vowel was reliably long, and they therefore elimi-
nated the etymological spelling with a short vowel.
4. Some borrowings generally have long vowels in pronunciation, but

scientists and scholars tend to prefer the traditional short spelling in line
with international terminology and established practice. These words were
either left with alternate spellings (chlór/chlor) or shortened (benzin).
Table 12. Evolution of spelling: long vs. short vowels

feature 1941 1957/1983 1993 gloss
9. /QÖP#/ balkon balkón balkon ‘balcony’
11. KÖX#/ archiv archiv/ archiv ‘archive’
archív
10. KÖ\C#/ analyse/ analysa/ analýza ‘analysis’
analysa analýza
12. /KÖP#/ margarin margarín margarín ‘margarine’
benzin benzín/ benzin ‘petrol’
benzin
13. /QÖT# / chlor chlor/chlór chlor/chlór ‘chlorine’
The 1993 Rules did attempt to accommodate spelling to phonetic reality

and the needs of specific fields. Whether they made the system simpler or
more learnable is doubtful. The new Rules did not reduce the number of
exceptions or of spelling rules devoted to the length of vowels in borrowed
words, and in reversing some relatively recent decisions, they created the
impression that rules could be “here today, gone tomorrow.”
How could the Rules, in trying to reflect pronunciation more accurately,
have failed to reduce the complexity of spelling? An instructive example is
the much-maligned suffix <izmus>. Here, although the <z> more closely
reflects standard pronunciation, it introduces variation such as:
socializmus ‘socialism’ but socialista, socialistický ‘socialist’
modernizmus ‘modernism’ but modernista, modernistický ‘modernist’
This was a frequent cause of complaints from correspondents, although
it can easily be explained by saying that <ist> is one suffix, used for
persons and adjectives, and <izm> is a separate one for nominalizations.
More problematic are examples like analýza ‘analysis’ but analyzovat
‘to analyse’, or téma ‘theme’ but tematický/tématický ‘thematic’. Here the
codification of written long vowels for nouns, in imitation of standard pro-
nunciation, introduced variation in spelling between closely related
words.89
7.4. Spelling issues not addressed in the 1993 Rules
There had been calls for the 1993 Rules to eliminate difficulties presented
by the fact that graphemic doublets <i, y> and <í, ý> can represent
respectively /+/ and /iÖ/, described in sections 3.1 and 5.9.
The issue of “i vs. y” is the elephant in the room of Czech orthography.
As opposed to tinkering with foreign words, which affects the graphic form
of perhaps one in a hundred tokens at most, a radical revision of where 
and <y> are written based on strict phonemic principles would affect the
look of every one out of every 4–10 words.90 In 1993, as in 1957 and
earlier, the committee decided that such a change would be far too radical
for the population, and would represent too great a break with tradition.
A second issue left out of the 1993 reform was the existence of two let-
ters, <ú> and <Ĥ>, representing the vowel /WÖ/ (see section 5.8). This would
have been a simpler reform than one involving and <y>, as it involves
lower-frequency letters and its visual impact is thus smaller.
A further problem centres on the pronunciation of voiced and voiceless
consonants, primarily <s> and <z> but also occasionally <k> and <g> (see
section 5.10). This issue affects far fewer words, but the commission de-
cided to leave it alone and concentrate on other issues.
The last major “evergreen” of Czech orthography is regularity of vowel
length within word formation, especially for native words. This is deter-
mined by a combination of historical phonological rules, analogy, and sub-
sequent regulatory activity. The 1993 Rules brought no major changes here.
Although the 1993 edition was billed as the first new Rules in a genera-
tion, the absence of these far-reaching changes shows its fundamentally
cautious approach to reform.
7.5. Capitalization in the 1993 Rules
The rules of capitalization received an overhaul for the 1993 Rules. In

Czech, as in many European languages, the general rule was and remains
“capitalize the first word in a name, put all others in lower case.” As Czech
does not have definite or indefinite articles to complicate this rule, this
would seem to be a simple proposition. However, there were problematic
areas.
Street names constituted a particular problem. In Czech, many street
names (and pub names as well) consist of a prepositional phrase that de-
scribes their relationship to a nearby feature of the landscape. Street signs

in the Czech Republic are printed entirely in capital letters, so the passer-by
could well see one reading
NA ZELENÝCH LOUKÁCH
which might be translated as
‘ON (THE) GREEN MEADOWS’.
Under the old Rules, to write down this name, it was necessary to know
whether ZELENÉ LOUKY was a description or a proper name. In the for-
mer instance, you would write Na zelených loukách, while in the latter you
would opt for Na Zelených loukách. Which spelling was correct was
usually a matter of local tradition and could not be accurately guessed or
predicted.
The new Rules decreed that the preposition would be capitalized along
with the first word following it. In other words, regardless of whether
GREEN MEADOWS is a description of lush pastures or the traditional
name of an area that probably at one time had such fields, the spelling is:
Na Zelených loukách
Another problem was the capitalization of organizations. According to
the 1957 Rules (1983: 73), many formally constituted organizations were
capitalized. A complex series of exceptions followed:
A small letter is written: (a) for names of institutions that, by their very
nature and their general meaning (or the meaning of some of their compo-
nents), almost certainly indicate only one item, whose uniqueness it is
therefore not necessary to highlight graphically as well through an initial
capital letter…; (b) for names of institutions which are not the only one of
their kind, and are repeated in individual administrative units, like schools
(except for higher education, see par. 143), courts, notaries, lawyers’ of-
fices, etc. ….; [and] (c) names of components and organs of individual in-
stitutions, as these are unambiguous, as a rule, in that they contain in their
name a specification of their affiliation to this institution.
For academic institutions, Czechs were thus enjoined to write:
Akademie vČd
‘the Academy of Sciences’
Ústav jazykĤ a literatur Akademie vČd
‘the Languages and Literatures Institute of the Academy of Sciences’
but beyond that it would be only
ústavní rada Ústavu jazykĤ a literatur Akademie vČd
‘the Institutional Council of the Languages and Literatures Institute of the
Academy of Sciences’
following exception (c) in the list.
Exceptions (a) and (b) meant that, despite capitalizing Akademie vČd,
Czechs were not to capitalize ministries (too specific to need capitals):
ministerstvo zemČdČlství ýSSR
‘the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic’
or names of university departments and faculties, which were
traditionally differentiated from institutes:
katedra matematiky elektrotechnické fakulty ýVUT
‘the Mathematics Department of the Electronics Faculty of Czech Technical
University’
or names of schools that seemed generic:
stĜední prĤmyslová škola elektrotechnická v Praze
‘Technical High School of Electronics in Prague’
The 1993 Rules made capitalization of sub-organizations, commissions,
committees, and so forth a routine matter:
DČkanát PĜírodovČdecké fakulty Univerzity Karlovy
‘the Dean’s Office of the Natural Sciences Faculty of Charles University’
StĜední prĤmyslová škola stavební Praha 1
‘Prague District 1 Technical High School of Construction’
They also removed the restriction on capitalizing the names of ministries:
Ministerstvo financí ýeské republiky
‘Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic’
However, below faculty or institute level capitalization was not
indicated:
katedra slavistiky Filozofické fakulty Univerzity Karlovy
‘the Slavonic Studies Department of the Philosophy and Arts Faculty of
Charles University’
jazyková poradna Ústavu pro jazyk þeský Akademie vČd ýeské republiky
‘the Language Service of the Czech Language Institute, Academy of Sci-
ences of the Czech Republic’
Finally, capitalization could distinguish a proper name from an idea:
Pardubický kraj or pardubický kraj
‘Pardubice Region or the Pardubice region’
The 1993 Rules thus removed some complex rules that depended more
on historical tradition than on any clearly formulated principles. In other re-
spects, they simply removed the problem further on down the line, to the
level of the administrative subunit.91
7.6. Grammar in the 1993 Rules
The commission that wrote the 1993 Rules did not invent any new rules for
the grammar of Czech, although they did cement in place some previously
suggested changes. Between 1957 and 1985, the Czech Language Institute
had published several works which reclassified some previously non-
standard forms as standard. Reference works published by large, influential
houses (such as the state publishing house for educational literature, SPN)
also took this route. Sometimes the new work had recommended a stylistic
restriction on the new form, and sometimes it had not. The number of such
forms was not large, but it left the authors of the Rules with a question:
which of these forms should be included in the school edition of the Rules?
In some instances, the authors of the Rules decided that the general di-
rection of change was clear: certain forms traditionally characteristic of SC
were, they felt, already bookish in professional writing and discourse, and
they therefore reached for a previously colloquial form, which had estab-
lished itself in the norm as the neutral form.
For example, a few high-frequency verbs are from small, unproductive
conjugation types. In the standard code, the verbs umĜít(i) ‘die’ and
péci/péct ‘bake’ traditionally had unusual consonant alternations through-
out the non-past tense paradigm: the stem ended in one consonant for the
first-person singular and third-person plural, and another consonant else-
where:
umĜíti: umru ‘I die’, umĜeš ‘you (informal sg.) die’, umĜe ‘s/he dies’,
umĜeme ‘we die’, umĜete ‘you (formal/pl.) die’, umrou ‘they die’
péci: peku ‘I bake’, peþeš ‘you (informal sg.) bake’, peþe ‘s/he bakes’,
peþeme ‘we bake’, peþete ‘you (formal/pl.) bake’, pekou ‘they bake’
In common spoken Czech these have been levelled92 so that the stem
ends in the same consonant throughout the paradigm. An example from CC
(transcribed using standard orthography):
umĜít: umĜu ‘I die’, umĜou ‘they die’
píct: peþu ‘I bake’, peþou ‘they bake’93
In other places, the commission checked the direction and speed of

change by circulating proposals to the “specialist public” (see chapter 5,
section 1). The features in their questionnaire concerned places where the
standard form diverges from the spoken codes of educated native speakers.
For many (but not all) of them, the SC form is bookish even in conversa-
tions on formal topics. These have appeared in numerous articles and
monographs on the varieties of Czech, although Martincová cites three in
particular that focus on the possibilities of codifying these forms. In Table
13 (p. 75), the forms are listed with the commission’s eventual decision.
In the first three instances, the commission accepted a new form into the
Rules alongside the existing form. Notably, in one instance the consultants
had found the new forms to be stylistically differentiated from the
traditional ones, but this was not listed in the Rules. In category 4, within a
single verb class sometimes the two variants were more or less equal, and
sometimes one was felt to be more colloquial. The result was that different
verbs in the same class end up with different recommended past tense
forms in the Rules.
A more controversial codification is found in category 5: the addition of
third-person plural non-past forms like umí, sází ‘they know, they bet’
alongside historically standard umČjí, sázejí. This change was made without
any stylistic recommendations. These newly codified forms did not have
their source in any widely spoken dialects (they are found in a few regional
dialects, including those of south and west Bohemia), but more importantly,
they are found in the speech of those with high-school and university edu-
cation as a hypercorrection.94 Martincová (1993–1994) emphasizes that the
questionnaire respondents overwhelmingly agreed that these forms were
acceptable. Presumably this was to fend off the accusations of scholars like
Sgall, who have claimed that by codifying hypercorrections, the Czech
linguistic establishment is contributing to the widening of the divide
between ordinary and “correct” speech (see Sgall 1990a, 1990b, 1998).95
In category 6, respondents made a stylistic difference between the stan-
dard and spoken forms; the result, in contrast to category 3, was that the
spoken forms were not codified. The sheer number of the forms involved
played a role in this decision; hundreds of words fall into this category,
while there are only two in category 3. Alternatively, it might have been a
difference in the proportion of reactions, or the depth of the perceived sty-
listic differences; the reasoning behind it is not recorded.
Category 7 shows a similar result; here, the respondents rejected the
non-standard forms outright, and they therefore are not admitted to the
Rules.
Table 13. Morphological features studied for the school Rules

feature existing proposed survey result decision for
description standard based on school edition
form spoken forms of Rules
1 nom. sg. of obþané, obþani, accept both accept both
masc. anim. houslisté houslisti
nouns
2 gen. sg. of komína, komína/ accept both accept both
some masc. sýra komínu,
nouns sýra/sýru
3 gen. case of tĜí, þtyĜ tĜech, þtyĜech stylistic accept both
some difference
numbers
4 past bodl, mrzl, bodnul, sometimes bodl/bodnul,
participle of dojal, tiskl mrznul, stylistic mrzl/mrznul,
verbs ending dojmul, tisknul difference but only dojal,
in -/nout/ tiskl
5 3 pl. of verbs sázejí, sází, umí, trpí 80%+ accept sázejí/sází,
with umČjí but (hypercorrect, hyper- umČjí/umí, but
infinitive in - trpí (two but also in S. correction only trpí
-/'V/ classes, no Bohemia)
rules)
6 loc. pl. of o vlacích, o vlakách, stylistic stick to old
masc. nouns o kolezích o kolegách difference standard form
with stem in
-/k, g, ch, h/
7 dat. and loc. k pracím, o k pracem, reject non- stick to old
pl. of fem. pracích o pracech standard standard form
nouns in -/'/ (hypercorrect) form
8 1 sg. and 3 kryji-kryjí, kryju-kryjou, stylistic list both for
pl. of verbs kupuji- kupuju- variation krýt-type
in -/j/ kupují, kupujou, verb by verb verbs, rest are
absolvuji- absolvuju- simply left out
absolvují absolvujou
Category 8 seems similar to category 4, but it is resolved differently. In-
stead of listing the forms for each word, the commission divided them into
three groups (see Table 14, p. 76). Only the few verbs that conjugate like
krýt ‘shelter’ get a full treatment in the school Rules. For the enormous
number of derived and borrowed words where <ovat> in the infinitive al-
ternates with <uj> in the non-past tense, the Rules give no indication of
whether <i/í> or <u/ou> should be used. Most of these words are left out of
the Rules altogether; they appear only if another feature that makes them
problematic, such as an odd-looking spelling or pronunciation.
Table 14. Differing resolutions for the 1 sg. and 3 pl.

school Rules class description analysis
krýt 1. sg. Native verb, Traditional Relatively small class
kryji and monosyllabic stem; form given of verbs; can be
kryju, 3. pl. infinitive has long alongside CC described completely
kryjí and vowel-, non-past tense form, which is without real effect on
kryjou…. has short vowel + <j> thus codified size of Rules
(kupovat) Native or borrowed No entry Very large class of

verb, infinitive has verbs; would inflate
<ovat>, non-past tense size of Rules and
has <uj>. require decisions on
each and every verb.
konstruovat 3. Borrowed verb, Entry shows Small number of
sg. konstruuje infinitive has <ovat>, conjugation of verbs; conjugation
non-past tense has 3 sg. only shown because of
<uj>, creating an unusual double
unusual <uu> in vowel, but 1 sg. and
conjugation. 3 pl. not mentioned.
When asked about this decision, Martincová (personal interview) said:
…it is a class represented by a large number of words with foreign roots

and there are not many domestic words in it. So from a compiler’s point of
view, it would not have been very feasible to give a complete description of
forms for each word – to state, for example, that with absolvovat ‘gradu-
ate’, the first person singular form absolvuju is appropriate for informal
expression, but the variant absolvuji is stylistically neutral, perhaps higher.
This simply is not possible in the space of the single line that we have at
our disposal in the Rules. That’s how it is in our tradition, at least. If we
took the same approach as the Poles, who publish an orthographic diction-
ary where they indicate meanings and also give orthographic and stylistic
information as well, then we could proceed differently. But in our [tradi-
tion] such dictionaries are not published. Even when I’ve seen attempts at
orthographic dictionaries of this sort, they still have only partial informa-
tion. […] What’s more, a principle has been established that the only forms
given are those where mistakes are constantly made, that are problematic,
and so forth – which is not the case for verbs like kupovat ‘buy’ the way it
is for verbs like sázet ‘plant, bet’. Of course, the degree of morphological
information elicits differing reactions. Teachers would most probably insist
on having everything, in the greatest possible detail. Morphologists say it’s

their business and that this or that doesn’t belong there. Ever since Ge-
bauer’s day we have been looking for some middle way…
Left barely alluded to by Martincová is one practical point; a dictionary

including comprehensive morphological information would need consulta-
tion on a huge number of words and consume far more space than the 390
pages found in the 1993 edition.
7.7. Pronunciation in the 1993 Rules
The Rules are not meant to serve primarily as a pronunciation dictionary,

but they can fulfil this function. In general, the Rules indicate standard pro-
nunciation only where it cannot be derived from the spelling, as in the bor-
rowed word bulletin ‘bulletin, newsletter’:
bulletin [byltén], m.
Most of the forms newly introduced in 1993 made spelling more closely
reflective of pronunciation, and therefore reduced the need for such annota-
tions in the dictionary section of the Rules. Some of the new spellings,
however, indicate a new accepted pronunciation, usually one that in previ-
ous editions had not been cited, as in the case of the word for ‘director’:
režisér i režizér m.
As there is no notation, we are enjoined to pronounce this word in either of
the two ways indicated by the spelling, i.e. [¥T'<+U'ÖT] or [¥T'<+\'ÖT]. In pre-
vious editions of the Rules, the pronunciation with [z] had not been codi-
fied; the 1983 edition pointedly notes:
režisér [-sér] m.
By explicitly indicating [s] even though this pronunciation derives natu-
rally from the spelling, the manual makes the point that [z] is not a standard
pronunciation. Similar examples occur with words like diskuse/diskuze.
In a few places, the new Rules codify a different pronunciation, which
may not be any closer to common usage than the one it replaces. In words
like balon, archiv, for example, the final vowel was first lengthened in the
1957 reform, and in many instances then shortened again in the 1993
reform. In neither edition does the dictionary in the Rules make allowances
for the possibility of both short and long pronunciations (let alone the idea
of a half-long vowel).
Despite the allegations levelled at them, the 1993 Rules do not always
permit common pronunciations that are traditionally regarded as non-
standard. For ‘democracy’ and its derivatives, we find:
demokracie [-kra-] ž.
demokrat [-kra-] m.
and so forth. This indicates that we are not to pronounce /F'OQITCVU+L'/, as
many Czechs do; this pronunciation remains stigmatized.
8. The Addendum to the 1993 Rules
The Addendum to the 1993 Rules is a short document that modifies many
of the positions taken in the original schools edition. All the changes
concerned the spelling of borrowed words; the Addendum did not address
less controversial issues surrounding capitalization, punctuation, or
grammar. It gives examples, but is not exhaustive, citing only a few words
from each category. It is meant to be used in combination with editions of
the 1993 Rules.
The purpose of the Addendum was to reintroduce spellings that had
been left out of the 1993 Rules. So the Addendum added traditional
variants:
kurs back alongside kurz
universita back alongside univerzita
filosofie back alongside filozofie.
It also reinstated non-traditional “phonetic” spellings introduced in 1957
that had been revoked in the 1993 Rules:
balón back alongside balon

archív back alongside archiv.
Table 15 shows the forms and their announced stylistic values. The
Addendum consistently returned to the etymologically original spelling as
the basic one, with the exception of words such as univerzita, where the
newer spelling was decreed to be basic, and kurz, said to have “no stylistic
differentiation.” Forms like balón were not specified for style, but the
discussion makes it clear that they were to be considered as marked.
The Addendum to the 1993 Rules 79
Table 15. Borrowed words in the Addendum
description “etymological” spelling “phonetic” spelling

final /z/ in nom. sg. +kurs +kurz
word-internal /z/ %universita +univerzita
word-internal /s/ or /z/ +diskuse %diskuze
suffix /zmus/ +kapitalismus %kapitalizmus
predesinential /o/ or /oÖ/ +balon %balón
predesinential /+/ or /iÖ/ +archiv %archív
+ decreed to be stylistically basic % decreed to be stylistically marked
bold face indicates spellings that had been (re-)introduced in 1993
The terms basic and marked are common in structuralist linguistics, but
to non-linguists are not particularly meaningful, and the Addendum
provided no definitions. Furthermore, a marked form can be either formal
(filosofie) or colloquial (diskuze); there is nothing tying them together as a
category, casting doubt on the term’s pedagogical usefulness. Presumably
the intention was to signal which form was appropriate for general usage.
However, the Addendum also explicitly reminds writers to be careful
that their stylistic markings match, especially when two features appear
within a single word. Take the word that appeared in the original 1993
Rules as vízum ‘visa’. If we examine the examples given and lay them out
in tabular format, we get the arrangement in Table 16:
Table 16. The possibilities for mismatched styles
<z> (basic) <s> (marked)
<í> (marked) vízum *vísum
 (basic) *vizum visum
*disallowed combination of styles
Out of four possible combinations, only two are allowed, and their
distribution does not logically fall out from the use of the terms basic and
marked. We might expect that basic features would always match with
other basic features, and marked with other marked, but this is not the case.
The use of <z>, basic in the middle of a word, is disallowed in combination
with predesinential basic , and likewise the use of <s>, marked in the
middle of a word, is disallowed with predesinential marked <í>.
Further, we might expect that, even if marked features could not be
combined, there would be some neutral register in between them where
basic features would be possible (see Table 17). In other words, the com-
bination *vizum should be possible, but according to the Rules, it is not.
What this suggests is that the terms basic and marked actually have a
different sense, with one actually meaning ‘markedly high or low’ and the
other meaning ‘unmarkedly high or low’. Which particular ground it occu-
pies depends on the particular feature (see Table 18).
Table 17. An incorrect interpretation of “marked” and “basic”
<í> marked basic <s> marked <z> basic
marked high vi- -sum
basic vi- -zum
marked low ví- -zum
Table 18. Revised interpretation of “marked” and “basic”
<í> marked basic <s> marked <z> basic
marked (highest) vi- -sum
basic (higher) vi-
basic (lower) -zum
marked (lowest) ví- -zum
The designation of higher vs. lower style actually makes more differ-
ence to the combinability of features than does the designation of basic or
marked. However, the Addendum gives no guidelines as to whether fea-
tures fall into a higher or lower style bracket. The student or teacher must
rely on his own knowledge to determine how forms match. This may have
seemed acceptable in 1993, when many of the forms were new and visible
in the public consciousness, but is not of much help to the younger reader
ten years later who is trying to make sense of the varied forms he finds in
print.
The Rules only warn against this mixing within a single word, but one
could also ask whether writers should also take care not to mix styles
within a phrase (e.g. archiv Ústavu filosofie or archív Ústavu filozofie, per-
haps archiv Ústavu filozofie but not *archív Ústavu filosofie ‘the archive of
the Institute of Philosophy’), or even within sentences or longer units of
text.
The original 1993 Rules would have contained only one option for this
word: vízum. The amended 1994 Rules admit two stylistically differentiated
options and specifically rule out two more.96 As a result, the Addendum
starts to look inadequate in terms of the description it provides, and unfor-
Conclusions 81
nate in that it introduces a welter of possible and impossible forms that the
writer must wade through.97
9. Conclusions
The Czechs are a monolingual, geographically compact, ethnically

homogeneous nation with a shared history. Their language possesses a
writing system that is relatively transparent in terms of the relationship
between its phonemes and graphemes. It thus represents a very different
social and linguistic context for orthographic regulation than that seen for
its Western European neighbors. Nevertheless, the issues raised in Czech
spelling reform were no less compelling than those that arose two years
later in Germany, as amply and fascinatingly documented in S. Johnson
(2000, 2002, 2005).
The specifics of Czech history both in recent and more distant times –
which will be explored in greater depth in the next chapter – have made na-
tional identity a distinct sore spot in the Czech consciousness, and placed a
heavy burden on the language as bearer and symbol of this identity. The
early 1990s, with the economic and social clashes of the transition to
democracy and capitalism, heightened fears of corruption in high places
and social disintegration. These issues spilled over into the language
debate.
The Czech language situation, and specifically the distance between the
standard variety and the spoken varieties, has created an atmosphere condu-
cive to regulation (some would say overregulation) of the standard.
Although the domain of the proposed changes to Czech spelling is a small
one, the battles fought over it have been no less fierce and the rhetoric no
less vehement for that fact.
Chapter 3
Spelling reform in Czech, 1400–1900
Happy are you, o my homeland! For you are but an insignificant country in
Europe, and yet messiahs of all the tiny dots and accent marks of this world
spring forth from you; should you continue this way, you will attain the
most orthographical orthography among nations – that is, if you survive to
see it.
Karel Havlíþek Borovský98
The sweep of history looks quite different for Czech from that of so-called
“world” languages. The textbook story of English, French, German, Span-
ish, or Russian describes their ascension from a regional base to the heights
of a unifying national language and beyond. The tale of Czech is more typi-
cal for “small” languages: it details the nation’s emergence, oppression, and
finally liberation from the heavy hand of foreign domination.
From the days of the Holy Roman Empire until 1993, Czech was just
one language within a multilingual polity. Before 1918, the dominant
standard language of the larger state was frequently not Czech but Latin or
German. Much of the history of Czech has consisted of efforts to maintain
the language’s written tradition in the face of its vigorous and expansive
German neighbours. The advocates of Czech strove to provide the tools and
forms writers needed to use the language effectively, defended its merits as
a worthy medium of communication, and devised stratagems to avoid
absorption into a larger, primarily German-speaking community.
The history of successful intervention in written Czech is thus nearly as
old as the written language itself. From the first major reform in the
fifteenth century, Czech has undergone periodic bouts of “purification” and
“correction”, which intensified in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. In English, the most radical of these puristic and reformist
activities are nowadays regarded as curiosities, relegated to the status of
historical footnotes. In Czech, however, they were far more successful: they
form the main narrative in any history of the standard language.
This chapter passes briefly over the first five centuries of Czech, and
first focuses on the National Revival of the nineteenth century. First it
considers early attempts at spelling reform and the contexts in which they
To 1620: Early Czech 83
arose. Later, it looks at the problem of Baroque Czech, highlighting the

way Czechs have associated a perceived loosening of the standard with the
loss of status and spheres of usage that occurred in this period. Finally it
examines the trends that prevailed during the National Revival, giving
Czech a purist heritage focused on an archaic version of the standard.
A constant theme is how planned spelling change evoked responses dif-
ferent from planned language change at large. Although the two processes
proceeded in parallel and were undertaken by the same people, a purist ap-
proach to tinkering with the grammar, syntax, and the lexicon was not in-
consistent with an innovating approach to tinkering with spelling. What tied
the approaches together was a desire to promote authority and unity. This
connection was broken only in the second half of the twentieth century,
when the main points of linguistic ideology in the Czech lands coalesced
into schools of traditionalist or conservative vs. innovationist regulation.
Even in the reforms of 1957 and 1993, however, we can discern the
authoritarian heritage of the early spelling reforms.
Furthermore, orthographic planning often forestalled the implementa-
tion of other sorts of language planning, embroiling society in discussions
not about the desirability or acceptability of certain linguistic features, but
about the written representation of already codified forms. Time and time
again the refrain in the Czech lands has been: discussions of orthography
preclude other sorts of language planning instead of complementing them
1. To 1620: Early Czech
Through most of the early period of writing in Czech, the Kingdom of Bo-
hemia and the Margravate of Moravia were part of the Holy Roman Em-
pire. Although nominally a single entity, this “empire” was in fact a collec-
tion of individual states with a titular head. The majority of these states, and
especially those closest to the Kingdom, were German-speaking, although
numerous other nationalities numbered among the Empire’s subjects at
various points. During the height of Czech power and influence in the mid-
fourteenth century, the Czech king also served as Holy Roman Emperor.
The history of Czech in this period is one of expansion. The role of the
standard language extended into new spheres. Czech began to be used for
education, administration, literature, and poetry; it made ever deeper in-
roads into the religious sphere as well. These developments were partially
organic, and partially a matter of conscious development. With the growth
84 Spelling reform in Czech, 1400–1900
of functions came a widening of the stylistic differences between these

newly emerging spheres of Czech: the language of administration was quite
distinct from that used in ribald popular poems like The Groom and the
Scholar.
Published histories of the language, however, tend to focus on the
growth of Czech. It is easy to ignore the fact that there were at least two
other languages in everyday use in the Czech lands:99 Latin and German.
The advance of Czech came largely at the expense of Latin, which was
gradually but surely retreating as a scholarly, administrative, and official
language on all fronts. The interaction with German, however, was a differ-
ent story. Even on nominally Czech territory, a considerable amount of
German writing went on, and we find frequent warnings that the Czech lan-
guage is under threat. Early texts such as the Dalimil Chronicle already
highlight the need for Czechs to be vigilant about their language in view of
the encroaching Germans. At the turn of the fifteenth century, religious re-
former Jan Hus decried the rampant use of Germanisms, admonishing his
countrymen to use, for example the native šiška instead of knedlík
‘dumpling’ (cf. German Knödel) and ubrusec instead of hantuch ‘towel’
(cf. German Handtuch).100 The competition between the two languages and
their speakers was a leitmotif for Czech linguists and scholars in this period
and beyond.
1.1. The beginnings of written Czech (to 1419)
Although early kingdoms such as Great Moravia flourished on Czech soil,

the history of the modern kingdom began with the unification of Czech ter-
ritory under the Premyslide dynasty. The political power of the Czech king-
dom reached its zenith under Karel IV, who became Holy Roman Emperor
and stamped his mark on the architecture, geography, and institutions of his
capital city, Prague.
With the growing prosperity of the Czech state came a rise in the use of
Czech as a written language. Hymns, glosses, and translations of short reli-
gious texts in Czech are found sporadically throughout the 13th century.
These earliest texts were written in what Auty (1980: 165) calls a “primi-
tive” orthography that made use of the Latin alphabet without diacritics.101
The character set and conventions inherited from Latin did not unambigu-
ously convey the whole range of Czech phonemes. It did not distinguish
consistently, for example, between short and long vowels, between /s/ and
/5/, /z/ and /</, and other pairs of distinct phonemes that we reconstruct for
Old Czech. Histories of the language view these early writings through the
prism of the “one phoneme, one grapheme” slogan, and thus usually label
their orthography as inadequate.
The first longer secular texts that we have in Czech date to the end of
the 13th century, and both Auty (1976, 1980) and Havránek (1979b) put the
beginnings of a Czech vernacular literary tradition at the start of the four-
teenth century, by which point numerous works are in evidence.102 This
early vernacular literature is not written in the simple orthography of earlier
texts, but instead uses digraphs (spĜežky): combinations of letters represent-
ing single phonemes, as in English, where <sh> represents not /sh/ but
/5/.103
The particular set of digraphs each author used varied from text to text,
but within each text we see attempts to differentiate, for example, /ts/ from
/V5/ by spelling the former as <c> or <cc> and the latter as <cz>, <ci>, <ch>
or <cs>, or /T/ from /T/ by spelling the former as <r> or <rr> and the latter
as <rz> or <rs>. Digraphic writing systems thus distinguished between the
phonemes of Czech more consistently than earlier orthographies had.104
1.2. Hussite Czech (1419–1436)
The Hussite period at the beginning of the fifteenth century marked the de-
velopment of a native, reformist brand of Christianity and saw a further
flowering of Czech literature and culture. It also plunged the Czech lands
into a lengthy, intermittent civil conflict that, historians say, weakened the
governing class and led to its eventual defeat at the hands of the Habsburgs.
In his spare time, when not spreading his proto-Protestant gospel, fight-
ing the Catholic Church, or fulminating against Germanisms in the Czech
language, Jan Hus also aimed to reform and improve the orthography of
Czech. The idea of applying diacritics to Latin letters in order to represent
Czech phonemes, instead of using combinations of letters, is traditionally
said to have originated with Hus. If this is true, he was thus the first of a
long line of Czechs to marry language purism with orthographic revisions,
pursuing a conservative, in places reactionary agenda in the first instance
and a radical, anti-traditionalist agenda in the second.105
Hus is said to have proposed using a dot (his term was nabodeníþko)
over consonants to modify their quality and an acute accent over vowels to
modify their length. The character <z> was thus distinct from <Ī>, the first
representing /z/ and the second /</. Likewise, the character <a>, which rep-
resented /C/, was to be distinct from <á>, which represented /CÖ/.
These suggestions were not taken up immediately, and indeed were not
thoroughly implemented in Hus’s own work or that of his followers. Vowel
length especially is not consistently marked in many works. Gradually,
though, this new system began to be applied more consistently. The dot
was replaced by the modern-day hook (háþek) soon after Hus’s time.
Table 19 gives a brief overview of the system. It is compared to two in-
stantiations of the digraphic writing systems common at the time.
Table 19. The new diacritics and earlier writing systems106
IPA digraph I digraph II new IPA digraph I digraph II new

C a a a O m m m
CÖ a a a, á P n n n
D b b b Õ n n Ė
VU cz cz c Q o o o
V5 chz cz þ QÖ o o o, ó
F d d d R p p p
Ì d d ć T r r r
' e e e T rs rz Ĝ
'Ö e e e, é U zz Ǖ, s s
H f f f 5 Ǖ, ǕǕ ǕǕ ǕǕ
I g g g V t t t
× h h h E tchz, t t Ģ
Z ch ch ch W u u u
+ i, y i, y i WÖ u u u, ú
KÖ i, y, í i, y i, í X w w w
L g g, y g y, y y y
M k k k Ö y, y y y, ý
N l l l \ z z z
NÏ l l á < s z ž
The fundamental differences between the early diacritic system and that
of the modern language are easy to summarize.107
The early diacritic system continued to use <g> for /j/ and <w> for /v/,
where the modern language uses <j> and <v> (see 3.4 for why). It lacked a
diacritic to distinguish /s/ and /5/, employing a digraph <ǕǕ> for the latter. It
also included different letters for so-called ‘light’ and ‘dark’ /l/, a
distinction probably redundant for most speakers of Czech even at the time
(today it is maintained only in a few Czech dialects, and has no reflection in
the modern writing system).108
1.3. Humanist Czech (1436–1620)
The period from the end of the Hussite Wars to the end of the independent
Czech monarchy in 1620 was a time of political, religious, and social insta-
bility. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation brought further waves of
religious conflict and upheaval. The last native Czech monarch, JiĜí of
PodČbrady, died in 1471. The crown passed first to the Jagellonian kings of
Poland, and eventually into the hands of the Habsburgs.
As the Czech state lost some of its political independence, paradoxi-
cally, the cultural life of the nation flourished. The reign of Rudolf II, a
Habsburg, brought an unparalleled flowering of science and art in his capi-
tal, Prague. The philosophy of humanism was reflected in the writings of
Chelþický, Blahoslav, Veleslavín, and Comenius, among many others. Co-
inciding with the period of the Reformation were new Czech translations of
the Bible, one of which – the so-called Kralice Bible of the Moravian
Brethren – is proclaimed a work of unsurpassed linguistic beauty and sub-
tlety, its status in the language as assured as that of the King James Bible in
English.109
Linguistically, the works of the Humanist epoch ran the gamut from the
conservative to the innovative. From what we know of Czech dialects at the
time, more conservative works produced in this period appear to hark back
to an older state of the language preserved in literary texts. They do not
mirror the full range of changes that were occurring in the spoken language,
especially those involving phonetic changes.
At the time, the Czech spoken language was undergoing a major reor-
ganization of its vowel system, albeit one incompletely realized in the texts
of the period. These changes encompassed all of Bohemia and parts of Mo-
ravia, although their effects in Moravia are mostly obscured by subsequent
developments. Table 20 (p. 88) shows the evolution of some phonemes
from the Hussite period through the end of the sixteenth century and their
representation in texts of that era.
In the Humanist period, then, the orthography regularly reflected certain
sound changes in the language, such as /QÖ/ > /uo/ > /uÖ/, /'Ö/ > /Ö/ and, out-
side of initial position, /WÖ/ > /ou/. Other changes, such as /o/ > /vo/ at the
beginning of a word or word root, the conflation of /l/ and /á/, and /Ö/ > /'j/,
appear in some texts but not in others.
The changing morphology of the spoken language, on the other hand,
appears more regularly in Humanist texts. While these texts make use of ar-
chaic categories and forms no longer found in the spoken language, there
are also innovative forms, apparently from contemporary spoken Czech.
Table 20. Dialect change and orthographic evolution – I
early 15 c. Hussite 16 c. 16 c. modern
feature spelling dialects spelling spelling
QÖ ó uo, then uÖ uo, then Ĥ Ĥ
WÖ ú ou au ou
#WÖ ú #ou ú ú
+L' ie iÖ í í
Ö ý 'j ý, ej ý
'Ö é Ö é, ý é
#Q o #vo o, vo o
á (l?) l, á l l, á l
For over two hundred years now, Czech scholars have asserted that the
Humanist period represented the golden age of Czech letters. Humanist
Czech was a language employed across a wide range of functions. It drew
on a centuries-old tradition and displayed wide variations in style,
vocabulary, and syntax to reflect its spectrum of uses. As we will see, the
heights of Czech Humanism provided an exquisite backdrop against which
to highlight the supposed inadequacies of the subsequent Baroque period.
2. 1620–1790: Baroque Czech
The year 1620 is a fateful one, known to every Czech and firmly linked
with one of the nation’s great national catastrophes, the Battle of White
Mountain (Bitva na Bílé hoĜe). Here on a hill outside Prague, the remnants
of the Czech Protestant aristocracy were decisively crushed, delivering the
country once and for all into the grip of an increasingly centralized
Habsburg monarchy whose seat was in Vienna. Auty (1980: 172) writes:
The execution or exile of the leading Protestant noblemen meant the effec-
tive abolition of the social class that was the chief bearer of the cultivate
1620–1790: Baroque Czech 89
standard language; and the Unitas fratrum, which had played the chief part
in cultivating the Czech vernacular in its written form, was proscribed and
many of its members forced into exile.
In the cultural script of the National Revival, the Humanist period had
been a Czech Arcadia; the Baroque was to be its despoliation.
2.1. History of the Baroque
In the years after 1620, the Habsburgs took steps to weld the disparate
kingdoms of their realm into a single, centralized entity. The Czech
language saw its range of official functions narrowed, and was subject to
unofficial social pressures. Havránek (1979b: 72) paints a gloomy picture
of Baroque Czech:
Czech ceased to be an instrument of contemporary scientific development:
science’s language, if at the time it did intrude into our land, was Latin,
German, or later French as well. Czech was gradually squeezed out of gov-
ernment offices and public life; it stopped being the conversational language
of the noble class and the ministry; it even declined in the merchant classes
[…]. The standard Czech language was limited to evangelical religious
literature intended for simple folk […]. After a good start in the middle of
the seventeenth century, the language of poetry was also with the passage of
time limited to educational and popularized poems and dramas.
State-encouraged Germanization was part of the reason for its decline in
usage, but as the Czechs were gradually absorbed into a German-run state,
the natural ascendance of German may have been inevitable. In 1627 Ger-
man became the language of transaction across the Empire, and as a conse-
quence, Czech, although it retained its official status alongside German,
gradually vanished from the major urban registers (desky) between 1730
and 1774 (Havránek 1979b: 72). Early on in the Habsburg period, Czech
ceased to be used in higher education, and there were moves to restrict
primary-school language teaching to German as well, although this was
never fully implemented (Gammelgaard 1996: 23; Auty 1956: 243).
Literary activity in Czech never ceased entirely, but it was pushed to the
margins of what was increasingly a Germanophone society, in which native
speakers of Czech would use German in most written transactions.
2.2. The language of the Baroque
Language writing at the time was filled with injunctions against the Ger-
manization of Czech, especially decrying the invasion of German lexical

items. The efforts of grammarians like Rosa show that Czech nonetheless
continued to be used in some contexts even during the Habsburg era. Rosa
attempted to introduce a plethora of neologisms into Czech to show its full
functionality across fields such as linguistics (Jelínek 1971: 18–20 and
Rosa 1991: 304–337).110
Features of spoken Bohemian dialects continued to penetrate written
texts. The features of spoken Czech described in 1.3 became more
prominent in the writing of the Baroque era:
Table 21. Dialect change and orthographic evolution – II
early 15 c. Hussite 16 c. Humanist Baroque 19–20 c.
feature spelling dialects spelling spelling spelling
(15 c.) (16 c.) (17–18 c.)
QÖ ó uo, then uÖ uo, then Ĥ Ĥ Ĥ
WÖ ú ou au au ou
#WÖ ú #ou ú au ú
+L' ie iÖ í i í
Ö ý 'j ý, ej ej, ý ý
'Ö é Ö é, ý ý, é é
#o o #vo o, vo o, vo o
á (l?) á l l, á l, á l
As seen in Table 21 (based on Havránek 1979b: 73–74), in the Baroque,
the phonemic representation of written Czech drew closer to the actual
sounds of spoken Bohemian dialects. Non-traditional spellings such as <ej>
for etymological /Ö/, spelled <ý> by Hus, grew in popularity, in some in-
stances overtaking the etymological spelling. When root-initial /WÖ/
developed into /ou/ in speech, Humanist writers maintained a more
conservative spelling, while Baroque authors preferred the newer form.
At the same time, the morphology of written Czech came to reflect more
closely the spoken language of the time; conservative grammatical endings
were replaced by those from the contemporary spoken language.
2.3. The “Baroque decline”
Did Czech fall into disuse and out of favour in the Baroque period? The
dominant ideology since the early nineteenth century has seen the Baroque
in terms of loss: of spheres of functionality, of connection to a native
1620–1790: Baroque Czech 91
religious tradition, of numerous features that set different written codes

apart from each other and from the spoken language. It views the Czech
Baroque as a “rump language”, functional only for routine and unimportant
administrative tasks (for which it was duplicated in German anyway), with
little social structure to support it, and whose craftsmen lacked the
linguistic refinement to distinguish features appropriate to one or another
type of discourse.111
In recent years, philologist Alexandr Stich led the way in reclaiming a
distinct place for the Baroque in the history of Czech. He and his
colleagues focused on its achievements, rather than its lacunae. They re-
examined the narrowing of cultural functions and found that in certain
fields, Czech actually seemed to expand its sphere of dominance. They also
reassessed the Baroque tendency to replace high-style written features with
items from the common spoken language. Stich saw this as a move to
eliminate the excessive stylization of the Humanist era and initiate a
rapprochement between the spoken and written codes. In his view, the
Baroque was not just a time of decline, but also one of linguistic and
cultural innovation (Stich 1987: 121).
Whether or not Baroque decline is a misinterpretation, the myth of Ba-
roque decay is a fact visible in many a textbook on Czech language and
literature. ZdenČk Starý, in a study of the Czech standard language, outlines
what he terms a “national destiny syndrome” (syndrom národního údČlu),112
in which linguists see the Baroque as a time of sharp decline (úpadek) that
undermines the position of Czech as a modern standard language.
According to Starý, the national destiny syndrome is characterized by
the belief that during the Baroque, the movement begun in the Renaissance
towards an organic national standard was stopped in its tracks. Instead, a
“dark age” descended on the Czech language. A flood of Germanisms and
words and forms from dialects entered its written texts, and the stylistic
sophistication of the previous era was lost. At the end of this “national ca-
tastrophe” Czech was ripe for a revival – but this revival depended on re-
storing what was lost between the “golden age” of the Renaissance and the
Romantic era (1995: 61–62). Those who believe in the national destiny
syndrome, Starý says, end up supporting frequent and pervasive language
regulation as a way of counteracting the language’s “interrupted” develop-
ment.
Starý argues that the essential falseness of this myth is irrelevant. From
the late eighteenth century until the 1990s, he says, it dominated linguistic
thinking in the Czech lands and shaped the debate over regulation of the
standard language (1995: 63, 80–81).113
3. 1780–1900: The National Revival
The turn of the nineteenth century brought a resurgence of interest across

Europe in nationhood and national languages, and Czech was no exception
to this trend.114 Renewing their focus on their language’s history, linguists
produced descriptions of Czech that drew heavily on the refined language
of the Renaissance. The growing nationalist sentiment saw one such work
acclaimed as the basis for a new standard, setting the scene for a century of
hard work rebuilding the Czech language as a suitable medium for educa-
tion, commerce, and finally government.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Czech was a provincial lan-
guage with shrinking status in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Marginalized
in official and government proceedings, as we saw in the last section, it was
even losing its foothold in schools, where German was ascendant. Although
the university in Prague had a post in Czech language and literature from
1791, and from somewhat earlier a chair in Czech pastoral theology – to
teach German-speaking priests to communicate with their flock (Sayer
1998: 68–69) – this apparently did not mean that Czech was a suitable
language of instruction. It required an imperial decree in 1816 to enable
teaching in Czech to return, in some measure, to high schools and
universities.115
There were no official language institutions, and very few publishers of
Czech books. Despite (or perhaps because of) the relatively small number
of publications in the language, fundamental texts in botany and other sub-
jects could easily founder and sell fewer than 100 copies to a Czech-
speaking population of over 5 million (Jelínek 1962: 314). Jelínek com-
mented further:
It might seem that especially starting in the 1820s, the battle for the revival
of standard Czech was opened on a much wider front than the current social
and cultural state of the Czech nation demanded. If we look at Revival-era
magazines and publications, we cannot banish the impression that the
subjective efforts of Revivalist authors notably exceeded societal needs, as
if they were expending their energy in areas and fields where there was no
hope of timely application. This is apparently confirmed in the forewords to
Revival-era publications and personal correspondence of individual authors
where they often express disappointment in the lack of interest in one or
another book produced with tremendous expenditure of strength and
tremendous financial sacrifice.
According to Jelínek, people mostly did not buy grammars, dictionaries,
or reference works in the early years of the Revival, perhaps due to the
1780–1900: The National Revival 93
straitened financial circumstances of much of the Czech population, or the

general low level of interest in language and education in the populace at
the time. Instead they bought primers, novels, general-interest periodicals,
and technical manuals, and learned from those.116 Only later did reference
works specifically devoted to language gain in popularity (Jelínek 1962:
314–315).
This hypothesis is borne out by publication statistics for one of the most
successful works of the period. Hanka’s brochure Pravopis þeský ‘Czech
Orthography’, was published in 1817 and, by the time of its twelfth edition
in 1849, reached a print run of 12,000 – a significant number in a country
of that size (Bílý 1904: 100). By the time demand appeared among the
Czech populace for a fully-fledged written culture in the mid-nineteenth
century, they found one had already been elaborated for them by a self-ap-
pointed cultural elite. The beginnings of the National Revival among
groups of enthusiasts set a pattern that was repeated throughout the century,
even as the new Czech standard language grew in prestige and functional-
ity.
3.1. Dobrovský, Tomsa, and Pelcl
In the 1780s and 1790s, a generation of philologists trained their sights on

Czech. Tomsa (1782), Dobrovský (1791, 1809, 1819), and Pelcl (1795)
produced descriptions and histories of the Czech language which sparked
interest among the intellectual elite.
Today, when a linguist writes a popular grammar of Czech (and for
many other language communities as well), s/he tries to describe the lan-
guage people should use for cultivated written and spoken communication.
People do not need to learn how to speak to family and friends, so the lin-
guist advises them how to write according to established conventions, or
how to speak in more formal situations (at work, important social events,
etc.).
Dobrovský, Tomsa, and Pelcl had a different agenda. All three of them
wrote initially in German, thus addressing a community that was more
comfortable reading and writing in a different language,117 and they de-
scribed an idealized, archaic Czech that where possible harked back to the
Humanist language of the late sixteenth century. These facts suggest that
they were teaching a nation only loosely connected to its own written tradi-
tion, and that they were not bound to a current written norm. They felt free
to reintroduce various archaic spellings, forms and words if, in their opin-
ion, these were worthier than the forms in current circulation.
In this respect Pelcl was most dismissive of Baroque norms, while
Tomsa was the most permissive towards them. Dobrovský, whose work
was the most philologically thorough, hewed a middle path, acknowledging
the existence of many forms used in the spoken language and Baroque
writing, but tending not to admit them as part of his canonical written
paradigms and inventories (Havránek 1979b: 88–90). Table 22 gives an
overview of some crucial forms, according to Havránek and ýuĜín (1985).
(Spoken forms from early and contemporary Czech are given in IPA for the
sake of comparison to earlier charts.)
Table 22. Linguistic features in Tomsa, Dobrovský, and Pelcl
feature spoken Tomsa Dobrovský Pelcl modern modern

Czech SC CC
c. 1800
instr. pl. (a)m+ -y/-i or -y/-i -y/-i -y/-i (a)ma

masc. & -(a)mi
neut.
infinitive t -t or -ti -ti -ti -t (since t

ending c. 1950)
3 pl. of 'j -ejí or -í, -ejí or -í, -ejí or -ejí or -í, 'j
verbs in also for verb by -í, verb verb by
-/'t(+)/ all verbs verb by verb verb
in -it(i)
l, á l only l only l l vs. á only l l
#o, #vo vo o, vo118 o (vo in o o vo

speech)
Ö, 'j 'j -ej-, -ý- -ý- (-ej- -ý-, or -ý- 'j
in -ej- in
speech) roots
#WÖ, #ou ou ou ú ou ú WÖ, ou

The forms recommended by these turn-of-the-century linguists were

thus substantially different from what prevailed in the spoken and written
language of the day. Written standard Czech was offered to its learners
essentially as a “classical” language, based on a standard over 200 years
distant.
In the end, Dobrovský’s codification prevailed over that of other gram-
marians. It did not have the force of a national academy or educational es-
tablishment behind it. After all, there was no such infrastructure at the time.
Instead, its success resulted from its adoption by language popularizers like
Josef Jungmann and Václav Hanka. They used Dobrovský’s principles in
their dictionaries and brochures, and proclaimed the superiority of his ap-
proach in polemical tracts.
3.2. Modern purism I: Jungmann and the early Revival
If Dobrovský laid the theoretical groundwork for a revival of Czech, then

Jungmann was its practical initiator. His monumental Czech–German
dictionary was intended to establish that the Czech lexicon was broad and
nuanced enough to serve as a national language, and in this it succeeded.
Jungmann’s approach to Czech was far more programmatic than
Dobrovský’s. In common with other early nineteenth-century purists, he
aimed to prove the worth of Czech as a fully-fledged written language of
international standard. One of the ways in which he did this was through a
program of lexical nativization, replacing words of foreign origin wherever
possible with neologisms from Czech roots. Frequently these neologisms
were calqued on Latin or German models. ZemČpis ‘geography’ was mod-
elled on geographia; slovozpyt ‘linguistics’ was based on Wortforschung.
Other times they were adapted from other Slavonic languages. Záliv ‘gulf’
and náĜeþí ‘dialect’ came from Russian zaliv and narechie; zámČr
‘intention’ and úvaha ‘musing’ from Polish zamiar and uwaga (Jelínek
1971: 23–24).119
Dobrovský and Jungmann thus exemplify two common puristic strands
in the evolution of Czech: the first was conservative, based on the
reactivation of native words from the Renaissance, while the second was
proactive in its calquing of words from other sources and borrowing from
related languages that lack the politico-historical baggage of German.120
This combination, uneasy as it may seem to modern sensibilities,
characterized Czech language activism in the first half of the nineteenth

century and was reflective of general trends across Europe in that period.
Thomas (1996b) sees this as the meeting of two puristic trends that he
calls archaizing purism and elitist purism; Ševþík (1974) termed them
historically motivated purism (historicky motivovaný purismus) and pres-
tige purism (prestižní purismus), but the thrust is similar. Historically moti-
vated purism was of use in reconstituting the grammar, phonology, and
syntax of Humanist Czech and, to a more limited extent, the lexical stock.
Prestige purism primarily served to enrich the lexicon, improving the lan-
guage’s functionality through the creation of large numbers of words for
concepts lacking in Humanist Czech. In Fishman’s corpus planning dimen-
sions (see chapter 1, section 4), the Czech of this period scores highly for
purism, classicism, and Einbau, focused as it is on removing certain foreign
influences and replacing them with a mixture of native equivalents, revived
lexical and grammatical items from an earlier age, and borrowings from
related languages.
From 1820, then, the revival of Czech took a new direction. Its goal was
no longer just to describe the Humanist era and its language. It was to pro-
duce a resurgent standard variety, distinct from the current spoken varieties
as well as from older versions of the language, and capable of competing
with the dominant German language in various spheres. As the redefinition
of the standard became fused with the revival of the nation, it became a
matter of course to insist that the standard was not just a written code. It
could be – even should be – used in speech, even if strictly hewing to the
phonology of the standard made it considerably different from the native
dialects of Bohemia and Moravia. In the early years of the revival, adhering
to the newly developing standard was more than just good linguistic
practice. It was a sign of patriotism and identification with the goals of
reviving the Czech nation.
3.3. The founding of the Matice þeská121
From the mid-eighteenth century there were attempts to start a Czech Soci-
ety (ýeská spoleþnost) that would focus on Czech language and literary
culture. Tieftrunk documents efforts first by Pelcl, then Jungmann, to found
such an organization. Jungmann evidently hoped that it would at least sup-
port the publication of some books and take over the publishing of Hlasatel
þeský ‘The Czech Herald’, a quarterly put out by Jan Nejedlý until 1809.122
At the time, any non-Germanophone activity was regarded with suspicion
in Vienna, and the cautious enquiries and requests made by Jungmann’s
allies went nowhere.
The founding of the National Museum (originally called the Homeland
Museum, or Vlastenské museum in the Czech of the time) in Prague in 1818
gave the linguistic patriots unexpected and at first unjustified hope. The
Museum was to provide a home for scientific study of the Bohemian lands,
and Jungmann quickly tried to attach the Czech language movement to
their goals. This had not really figured in the original plans, which called
for only a small amount of popular religious and scientific material to be
published in Czech. The remainder would be published in German (as
Dobrovský himself and many other linguists had seen fit to do with their
scientific work). Jungmann’s efforts to attach his proposed Society to the
Museum were at first firmly but politely rebuffed, and the linguists were
told to go away and come back when they had a proper plan for funding
their activities.
Several years later, with the involvement of František Palacký, the long-
awaited opening appeared. Palacký secured permission to start a Czech
journal alongside the planned German one. The Czech journal would have
a populist leaning and cover a variety of subjects found under the auspices
of the Museum. However, when publication started, it declared its goal as:
…to connect the preciseness of the Old Czech language with the scientific
thoroughness of the new age; to lead writers away from sterile debates over
words and towards attempts to educate the nation in a practical fashion.
(Tieftrunk 1881)
Here we can note the connection between the superiority of the existing
standard, an educational mission, and scientific progress – the same combi-
nation that will characterize the ideology behind functionalism, the
dominant linguistic paradigm in the Czech lands throughout the mid-
twentieth century.
With the existence of a Czech journal secured, the linguists began to
agitate for the creation of an institute attached to the Museum that would
answer for the quality of the Czech in the journal (which, they now
admitted, needed some work) and could take on the task of writing a
dictionary that would aid authors writing in Czech. The dream of a full-
fledged scientific institute was not realized, but a Committee for Czech
Language and Literature (Sbor pro Ĝeþ a literaturu þeskou) was finally
approved at the end of 1830, and in 1831 a subscription fund, the Matice
þeská, was begun, whose goal was to collect funds in support of the
dictionary project and other endeavours. Despite tremendous problems
recruiting enough donors and teetering on the brink of insolvency for much
of the nineteenth century, it managed to support the publication of
Jungmann’s monumental Czech–German dictionary and ŠafaĜík’s Slavonic
Antiquities in its first decade.123
As the only official organization devoted to the cultivation of Czech lan-
guage and literature, the Matice exerted a strong normative influence, at
least partially because of the presence on its board of numerous influential
and well-respected members of the cultural elite. But Sayer notes that in the
first half of the nineteenth century, this elite was
…small enough for the same few men and their sons – and occasional
women – to be writing dictionaries, translating, editing magazines, boosting
Czech theatre; small enough for many of them to be patronized by the same
enlightened band of patriotic nobles; small enough for most of them to
know one another personally. (1998: 80)
In the next fifty years, the mass urbanization of the Czech population
and rising literacy would change this situation dramatically. As the
language prospered and its elite became larger and more diffuse, calls for
regulation institutionalized in a dedicated, government-backed institute
became louder. The Matice, whose authority derived from the standing of
its directors and from its position among the language community’s
predominant publishers of cultural material, would not be suited to this
very specific purpose.
3.4. The spelling reforms of 1820–1850
Although the philologists of the National Revival largely returned standard

Czech to the grammar and phonology of the sixteenth century, today’s lan-
guage looks substantially different from its Renaissance predecessor. This
is primarily due to the typographic and orthographic reforms that took hold
in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The typographic reform was a shift away from the German printing
style known as Fraktur to the so-called “antique” typeface favoured
elsewhere in Europe (see Figure 3, p. 99). This move began in 1801 with
the publication of Nejedlý’s grammar of Czech, and Jungmann’s (1820)
work Slovesnost ‘Literary Culture’ was the first significant scholarly work
to be printed in the “antique” typeface. However, this shift was a gradual
one. Authors and publishers clung to Fraktur for many years afterwards,
and Mácha’s poem Máj was first published in the Fraktur type in 1836
(Flajšhans 1924: 318–319).
Figure 3. Examples of Fraktur and antique type (Filzig’s 1827 Pravidla

dobropísemnosti þeské and Dobrovský and Hanka’s 1822 Mluvnice þili
soustava þeského jazyka)
The first successful spelling reform of the National Revival was

proposed by Dobrovský in 1809. Although he believed in grammatical and
lexical faithfulness to the language of the sixteenth century, Dobrovský
decided that the orthographic practice of writing <y>, <ý> after <c>, <z>,
and <s>, inherited from the Moravian Brethren, was illogical,
etymologically unfounded, and caused confusion for language learners, as
it created extra classes of exceptions in written paradigms. He thus began to
write , <í> after <c> and sometimes after <s> and <z> where he felt it
made declension, conjugation and agreement patterns simpler and more

logical.124
The success of Dobrovský’s reform, however, is often credited to
Hanka, an enthusiastic linguist with a passion for orthographic change.125
He included the principles in his widely-used spelling manual of 1817 (see
section 3) and personally convinced Jungmann to adopt the new style of
writing.126
The next two revisions are often together called the synthetic reform
(skladná oprava). The first took place in 1842, and the second in 1850.
Examples of the synthetic reform are given in Table 23. These reforms
altered the look of the language on the page substantially. Nowadays, when
texts from the early 1800s are reprinted, they are inevitably modernized as
a convenience to the lay reader. An example is Mácha’s Máj, undoubtedly
the most famous poem in the Czech language, which had been published in
1836 in the traditional orthography (the first couplet is reproduced below):
Original: Byl pozdnj weþer - prwnj mág – / Weþernj mág - byl lásky þas
Modern: Byl pozdní veþer - první máj - / Veþerní máj - byl lásky þas
‘It was late evening - the first of May - / Evening May - the time of love’127
Table 23. Spelling reform between 1810 and 1850
IPA old spelling new spelling change date
VU+\KÖ cyzj, cyzý cizí ‘foreign’ y, ý > i, í after c & some z, s 1819
L'UV gest jest ‘is’ g>j 1842
DKÖV bjt bít ‘to hit’ j>í 1842
ITWPV ÷runt grunt ‘basis’ ÷>g 1842
F'L dey dej ‘give!’ ey > ej 1842
VQW×C tauha touha ‘desire’ au > ou 1850
X+ÌGN widČl vidČl ‘saw’ w>v 1850
What did it mean to conduct an orthographic “reform” in the Revival
period? There was no legal authority over the language vested in any
institution, and as we saw above, the community of literate Czechs was, at
least in the first half of the nineteenth century, very small. To a certain
extent, the first arguments over orthography were conducted among this
tiny, self-appointed literary elite, and what mattered was which of them
took up the reforms at what point.
Dobrovský’s “ypsilon” or “analogical” reform met stiff opposition from
many notable linguists of the period, including Hanka’s erstwhile mentor
Josef Nejedlý, who favoured maintaining the traditional spellings. Once it
had been adopted by prestigious journals, such as the Journal of the Bohe-
mian Homeland Museum Society (ýasopis spoleþnosti vlastenského
Museum v ýechách) in 1827 and the Catholic Clergy Journal (ýasopis pro
katolické duchovenstvo) in 1828, it was well on its way to consolidating its
position (Flajšhans 1924: 321–322). However, the Matice, which decided
which orthographic conventions would be used in the Museum’s publica-
tions, was wracked by bitter arguments over Hanka’s synthetic reforms of
1842. Eventually the Matice accepted a few of them and rejected two –
<ou> for <au> and <w> for <v>. Virulent public debates followed, includ-
ing a public split between Hanka and Palacký, but finally in 1850, the
Matice accepted the proposed changes. The wangling over these reforms –
colourfully described in Tešnar (2000) – was widely mocked and the
reforms were said to have crowded out more pressing linguistic and cultural
issues facing the Matice. In effect, they put a brake on any more substantial
changes of this sort (Tieftrunk 1881).128
3.5. Modern purism II: The whetstones of Czech
The national consciousness of the Czechs continued to rise through the

course of the nineteenth century. Sayer notes that education was fundamen-
tal to this shift; on the brink of the National Revival in the 1770s, “perhaps
four-fifths of Bohemia’s servile population could not read or write in any
language. A century later, we are dealing with an almost wholly literate
public…” The proportion literate in Czech was at first very low, but by the
end of the 1800s far more pupils in the Czech lands were schooled in Czech
than in German (see Newerkla 2003 for an example of one such shift).
Publication in Czech rose inexorably throughout the latter half of the nine-
teenth century, with a wealth of newspapers and periodicals appearing in
various fields (Sayer 1998: 89–93).
Back in the early days of the Revival, every Czech publication had to be
cherished. Infelicities of style and grammar had been tolerated in a popu-
lace still unsure of their linguistic abilities.129 Gradually, however, the mood
shifted. Simply getting Czechs to read and write in their native language
was no longer enough. As the number of publications and competent lan-
guage users grew, there were more and more attempts to correct and refine
usage, providing people with models for cultivated language use while
wagging a finger at their inadequate abilities.
In 1845, the Matice entertained a motion from Jungmann, who was:
…convinced that authors were deviating further and further from the stan-
dard language and using words formed and declined contrary to customary
practice, heeding neither private nor public rebuke. And he added: “What is
saddest about this is that in schools these mistakes are already being pre-
sented as rules.” And he repeated the suggestion above, promising an
honorarium or reward to anyone who would compile such a Whetstone of
the Czech Language such that, once confirmed by common consent from
the Matice, it could in future be held up as a canon of the language.
Jungmann’s suggestion was approved […]. But this challenge had no effect;
no one came forth to take on this difficult task.130
Why appeal to the curious image of a whetstone (brus)? Thomas traces
it to Konstanc’s 1674 work Lima linguae bohemicae/Brus jazyka þeského,
which attempted to systematize and correct the language. The imagery of
the whetstone is peculiarly Czech, and is not found in other purism
movements (1991: 21–22). This set of conceptual metaphors (see chapter 8,
section 8) treats the language as a tool, in this case a knife; used over time it
dulls and becomes ineffectual. But the language user (the knife grinder) can
hone it, to make it fit for its purpose again. To do this, he needs a book to
teach him about the effective, correct, and aesthetically appealing use of
language; it becomes his whetstone, the instrument with which he hones his
tool.131
Eventually the Matice convened a commission to write this whetstone,
comprising many of the leading lights of Czech literature and linguistics:
Václav Svoboda, Jan Gebauer, Václav Hylmar, František Kott, František
Patoþka, Otakar Slavík, and Karel Tieftrunk.132 The Matice’s Whetstone of
the Czech Language was published in 1877.
As it turned out, the Matice was in good company; the 1870s was to be
the Decade of the Whetstone. In these years, a clutch of linguists, more and
less competent by turns, churned out books that hectored, implored, and
ordered Czechs to observe the author’s vision of what constituted good
Czech. Thomas (1996) characterizes the ideology of these works as tar-
geted xenophobic purism, while in Ševþík’s terminology (1974) it consti-
tutes defensive purism (obranný purismus).
These tracts differed from the grammars of the early nineteenth century.
They were not meant to teach people the basics of writing. The role of the
whetstone was to improve poor writers, who were ignorant of tradition and
their nation’s literary heritage and, of course, prone to overuse German-
isms. It introduced them to the words, constructions, and factual back-
ground that they needed to overcome these failings.
A glance through one example – Martin Hattala’s (1877) Brus jazyka
þeského: pĜíspČvek k dČjinám osvČty vĤbec a slovanské i þeské zvláštČ

(Whetstone of the Czech Language: A Contribution to the History of Cul-
ture Overall and Especially Slavonic and Czech) – gives a good idea what
these manuals were about.
Hattala devotes the first half of his manual (“On Matters Overall Most
Necessary for the Honing of Language”) to general historical and philoso-
phical background, with chapter titles like “The Difference between Man
and Animal”, “By the Language of a Nation we can Recognize the Natural
Character of its Soul and its Level of Education”, “On the Power of Habit
over Language”. Again we see the overt connections between correct lan-
guage use, education and science that provide an ideological foundation to
regulatory activity. Arguments over etymology occupy several chapters, in
which Hattala tries to convince his readers that although they must avoid
words and phrases borrowed or calqued from modern German, they should
not take too seriously injunctions against using any word ever borrowed
from German at any stage of history.133
The second half (“On Matters Especially Necessary for the Honing of
Czech”) gives advice on a number of tricky syntactic and lexical matters:
enclitic particles, relative clauses, and particular grammatical forms, as well
as lengthy descriptions of puristic conflicts over the past fifty years.
Like the other purists, Hattala often ranged into matters quite far from
everyday usage. They frequently bandied about authentic (and spurious)
etymologies to promote or exclude particular words and phrases from the
Czech lexicon. How these items were actually used in the language of the
time was not a decisive factor; more important was the word or phrase’s
provenance and what the leading lights of Czech linguistics had said about
it. When current usage did appear in their debates, it was primarily as a
negative example, to show how much improvement was needed.134
The purists developed their etymological arguments into principled
rules. Ševþík (1974: 53 [emphasis original]) notes, for example, the syn-
onymic criterion:
…if in standard Czech there existed synonymic expressions, of which some
had a semantic structure congruent with German, only those different from
German were recommended for use. Those with a congruent semantic
structure were labelled G er ma n is ms or at least as being of suspected Ger-
man origin, and users of the standard language were advised to avoid them.
And yet these were not for the most part complete synonyms, but only
partial ones, so the result of this primitive purification of standard Czech
was the enfeebling of the language’s expressive capabilities. Since German
had been exposed to strong Latin and French influences, many of the
expressive items cleansed from Czech for being Germanisms were in truth
Europeanisms, i.e. elements common to European languages as a result of
the common cultural heritage of Europe.
The notion of a language spirit was central to the xenophobic purist
ethic of the late nineteenth century, and can be allied to Fishman’s unique-
ness dimension in corpus planning, a feature that increased in importance
as the century went on. In this particular ideology, foreignisms contravened
the spirit of Czech and should, therefore be rooted out. These linguistic
fifth columns could supposedly be felt by someone with proper language
sense (jazykový cit). Thomas (1996: 409) proposes that the appeal to this
highly subjective authority further robbed Czechs of their sense of owner-
ship of their standard language:
…many intellectuals never felt quite at home in SCz [Standard Czech]. This
was especially true of everyday spoken discourse, where full use of SCz
was never achieved. How, then, could they rely on their Sprachgefühl when
they questioned themselves whether such and such an element was in
keeping with the ‘spirit of the language’?135
While defensive purism predominated in the syntax and the lexicon of

Czech, a strain of historical-prestige purism continued to operate on the
grammar of the language. In the second half of the nineteenth century, fur-
ther efforts were made to cleanse grammar of its Baroque colloquialisms.
Even where early Revivalists like Dobrovský might have permitted two or
more forms, the new grammarians successfully argued for the elimination
of any that seemed dialectal – in other words, that bore a resemblance to the
spoken language of the time.136 By the end of the century, then, the standard
language was paradoxically even further removed from the spoken codes of
the time than it had been in the early years of the National Revival.
The puristic movements of the late nineteenth century thus served two
functions. First, they reinforced and, where possible, increased the distanc-
ing of the standard language from contemporary spoken dialects. Despite
their rhetoric, the direction of their movement was not necessarily back to-
wards a previously existing model. The xenophobic or defensive purists
were creating a standard that followed no precedent. Instead, it simply tried
to avoid the bad example of current usage.
Second, they further undermined the link between native intuition and
standard usage. They issued conflicting messages about the purity of one or
another expression, based on sometime suspect etymologies and appeals to
Conclusions 105
a language sense that everyone seemed prone to violate. In doing so, they
promoted a belief that native intuition was to be distrusted, and promoted
an acquiescent attitude towards language authority.
4. Conclusions
One of the most salient features of written Czech turns out to be the discon-
tinuity of its tradition. Regardless of the extent to which the Baroque actu-
ally saw a functional decline in the use of Czech, we can still note the dra-
matic change in written Czech during the course of the nineteenth century.
The developments of the Baroque are systematically weeded out in favour
of a consciously archaic-looking standard that appeals to the Romantic
notions of historical purity and national pride. The spread and maintenance
of this new standard become closely entwined with the nationalist
movement. Czechness is equated with a mastery of this variety of written
Czech, and correct usage is a political act.
Purism in Czech is in part an outgrowth of a search for traditional legiti-
macy. The preference for etymological Czechness amplifies and extends
previous trends, in which the language of a pre-Austrian era was favoured.
If purism in fact introduced insecurity and promoted deferentiality to lin-
guistic authority among native speakers, it was perhaps only a logical out-
come of the trends that undergirded the National Revival in the Czech
lands.
The authority of the newly-minted nineteenth-century standard rested on
a combination of charismatic legitimacy and traditional legitimacy (see
chapter 1, section 3.6). Its propagators were those renowned for their
scholarship, like Dobrovský and Jungmann, or for their tireless activity,
like Hanka. They, in turn, relied on the high prestige of the Humanist
Czech which they drew on in order to justify many of their choices. On the
other hand, their attempts to introduce innovations based on what they
considered sound linguistic principles resulted in bitterly fought battles,
some of which they won, and some of which they lost.
The nineteenth century marks the end of this period and foreshadows
the rise of rational legitimacy as the underpinning of linguistic authority.
The writing of an “approved” whetstone in the 1870s preceded the
establishment of other institutions in the twentieth century that took control
of the direction and content of language reform. Their founders hoped that
doing so would create a clearer, more consistent path for reforms of
spelling and grammar, and thus a strengthening of the national language

and Czech nationhood. Whether it in fact served this purpose will be seen
in the next chapter.
Chapter 4
Spelling reform in Czech, 1900–1980
It’s been a long time since we had an aristocracy; snobs, however, we have
aplenty.
JiĜina Fikejzová in Právo lidu, 26 July 1990
At the turn of the twentieth century, Czech language cultivation entered a
new phase. A hundred years after the Revival began, there were now
enough published sources to make a new approach both feasible and ac-
cepted: using the body of existing literature to determine usage.137 This new
spirit can be seen in the founding of two Czech institutions: The Rules of
Czech Orthography and the Czech Dictionary Office. These institutions
aimed to focus on real usage, combining it with principles of contemporary
language planning while avoiding what they considered to be the excessive
subjectivity of purism. In time, these same elements would manifest them-
selves in a new linguistic movement in the Czech lands: Prague School
functionalism.
The prosperity of Czech did not, however, mean an end to linguistic
purism. If anything, the cries for a firmer line against poor usage only grew
louder, and were eventually institutionalized in the journal Naše Ĝeþ (‘Our
Language’). Puristic attitudes and plans were by no means absent even
from the more reformist functionalist movement.
1. 1900–1945: Standardization and purism
Shifts in regulatory activity accompanied significant, major changes in the

status of Czech. Until 1918, Czech was a minority language that defined
one of two large ethnic groups in a medium-sized north Austrian province.
When the Great War ended, Czech became the official language of the new
Czechoslovak state, “first among equals” in a country recognizing at least
five linguistically-based ethnicities (Czech, German, Slovak, Hungarian,
and Ruthenian). Overnight the roles of Czech and German were reversed:
Czech, along with Slovak, was decreed to be the state language, while
German was named as a protected minority language. In the space of a few
years, there appeared numerous state and quasi-state structures that used
Czech as the primary means of communication. As the language’s func-

tional sphere grew, so did the perceived need for some sort of official stan-
dardizing body to replace the previous free-for-all of competing purists.
1.1. The first Rules
In 1902, Czech society got its first officially approved spelling manual. Al-
though there had been unofficial works aplenty, the Ministry of Culture and
Schooling (Ministerstvo kultu a vyuþování) finally felt the need to commis-
sion a single standard for use in schools. According to ministerial decree,
from the 1903–1904 school year Czech orthography was to be taught in
conformity with the rules proposed in this book (Sedláþek 1992–1993: 1).
The publication, titled Pravidla hledící k þeskému pravopisu a
tvarosloví s abecedním seznamem slov a tvarĤ (‘Rules Regarding Czech
Orthography and Morphology with an Alphabetical List of Words and
Forms’), was, like the modern version, divided into two parts. Commission
head and noted philologist Jan Gebauer was responsible for the description
of the rules themselves. The spelling dictionary was the work of a larger
group, and was based in large part on earlier manuals, especially on an
1886 Orthographic Index (Pravopisný ukazatel).
At the time, despite a century of instructing and hectoring, Czech spell-
ing still showed a tremendous degree of variation. Today the areas that
concern Czech language planners consist of a handful of native words and
most arguments revolve around borrowed (often scholarly) lexemes, but a
hundred years ago there was far more variation across the spectrum of
frequently used native words. In his study of the 1902 Rules, Sedláþek
pointed to the difficulties that a lack of fixed norms caused for schools:
One teacher sighed: “Our orthography needs stabilizing once and for all,
especially so that school books can be written in the same orthography; for
a child who in one book reads jméno, nalézati, vedlé, prácí, posílati ‘name,
to find, next to, work (instr.), to send’ etc. and in another jmeno, nalezati,
vedle, prací, posýlati flounders in doubts, loses faith in the authority of the
book and his teacher…” The 1902 Rules tried, under Gebauer’s influence,
at least to lessen uncertainty in this matter (1992–1993: 2–3).138
Gebauer was a pragmatist and a moderate who opposed knee-jerk pur-
ism. His nomination to the head of the orthographic commission ensured
that its work would not be based on invented principles, false etymologiz-
ing, or anti-German sentiment. In writing the 1902 Rules, he aimed for
1900–1945: Standardization and purism 109
compromise between a variety of reformist principles: while anchoring the

principles of the Rules in real usage, he let himself be guided by the need
for consistency and ease of learning. Sedláþek (1992–1993: 7) notes that
the large number of doublets in the Rules probably reflected Gebauer’s de-
sire not to impose a standard arbitrarily, but to let a consensus develop.
Nonetheless, because the Rules were destined for school use, Gebauer often
ruled in favour of one or another form where he felt a decision was possible
and warranted. A selection of Gebauer’s decisions is given in Table 24.
Table 24. The 1902 Rules and variation (according to Sedláþek 1992–1993)
problem variants (underlined resolution
if in 1902 Rules)
Stem vowel can be long or chléb vs. chleb offer both
short in native words
Stem vowel can be long or vypíti vs. vypiti offer both
short in prefixed verbs
Stem vowel can be long or váhatel vs. vahatel both, or just short
short before the prefix -tel (word by word)
Suffix -dle can be long or vedlé vs. vedle short only
short
Suffix of foreign words can balón vs. balon short only
be long or short
Both -n- and -nn- written kominník vs. kominík, only one, but with
with suffixes -ík and -ník denník vs. deník exceptions
Both -i- and -y- written in posýlati vs. posílati, either one or the
certain words syþeti vs. siþeti other, word by word
The “rules” section of the manual also contained morphological infor-
mation, which was supposedly repeated in the dictionary (although
Sedláþek demonstrates that this was not always the case; sometimes the
dictionary authors took a different decision than Gebauer had recom-
mended). In the light of modern Czech, Gebauer’s decisions look rather
conservative. Many forms now accepted in the standard he rejected as not
belonging to it.
Sedláþek notes that the Rules were not generally well received. Despite
Gebauer’s efforts at decisiveness, teachers felt the new manual was too per-
missive in allowing multiple variants. Sedláþek (1992–1993: 6) offers the
following criticism from a contemporary reviewer and teacher:
“It is a long time since I have been as impatient as in the run-up to the
publication of this long-promised ‘official’ orthography. We already have a

fair number of these Whetstones and Whetpebbles, and they contradict each
other as blatantly as if they considered our orthography to be a stomping
ground for the most varied of convictions and their own ideas. So I thought
that with these new Rules we would finally get a definitive resolution of all
doubts in the area of orthography. I convinced myself that a society of
experts such as were invited onto the commission would surely sweep all
uncertainty from our orthography and introduce an exemplary uniformity.
Now the book lies in front of me… In reading it, I searched for instruction
on various points that have disturbed my orthographic certainty. Instead of
certainty, I found variation and even new uncertainties where I had never
been confused before… I am almost of the opinion that holding to the new
orthography means writing as your own convictions please you for the
foreseeable future, ‘until usage settles down’.”
Ideologically, as we have seen, reforms were said to create clarity,
which was also perceived to be a trait inherited from the Czech classical
tradition. Clarity was in turn linked to the elimination of variation. In this
way, the regulator’s authority to reduce variation was seen as a positive
sign, proof of its ability to return order to the language.
Sedláþek speculates that the other members of the commission, who
were all schoolteachers, foresaw that the large number of doublets would
not sit well with the Rules’ potential audience. Apparently they were
quicker than Gebauer to hint – after the publication of the Rules – that
some doublets might be eliminated in subsequent editions if the teachers
objected. In fact, a shortened version in 1903 intended for primary schools
did substantially reduce the number of doublets in native words (while ex-
panding it in favour of “Czechified” forms for words of foreign origin).139
Three significant revisions to the 1902 Rules were published: in 1913,
1922, and 1941, all undertaken under the supervision of the education min-
istry of the day (see Sedláþek 1992–1993: 1–2, 7–8).140
1.2. The beginnings of the Czech Dictionary Office
For Czech patriots, a full-scale native-language dictionary had been an elu-

sive dream for a hundred years. The founding principles of the Matice
þeská even explicitly mention it as a goal. However, none of the existing
organizations had the funds or infrastructure to take on a task of this
scope.141
Finally, in 1911 the Emperor Franz Josef Czech Academy for Sciences,
Literature, and Art obtained funding from the Hlávka Foundation and the
Ministry of Culture in Vienna to support a Czech Dictionary Office
(KanceláĜ slovníku jazyka þeského). The linguists at its head set out to col-
lect raw material – excerpts from literature – for a dictionary by commis-
sioning external researchers to collect it.142 It was a lengthy and expensive
process; funding was required for the coordinators as well as the external
workers, who were paid by the excerpt.
The idea of an authoritative national dictionary attracted both purists
and a growing band of linguistic “progressives,” who wanted to accommo-
date the standard more closely to current spoken and written usage. Purists
and conservatives, like co-founder Josef Zubatý, saw the dictionary as a
monumental whetstone, useful for correcting slipshod linguistic practice.
Accommodators, like Miloš Weingart, saw a usage-based dictionary as a
necessary corrective to the growing stridency of the purists.
The dictionary project was a long-running and financially draining en-
deavour; the first volume was not published until 1935. After Czechoslovak
independence in 1918, the office was supported by subventions from the
Hlávka Foundation, the Ministry of Education, and the Third Division of
the Czech Academy, of which it was a constituent department (Machaþ
1971: 193–194). There were frequent calls for the state to take over the
direct financing of the Dictionary Office, so that it could be expanded into a
full-fledged language institute. Under a financial regime where funding
depended on the benevolence of charitable foundations and the vagaries of
the education budget, such expansion was not a possibility. This aspiration
was in the end realized, but not until after the Second World War.
1.3. Modern purism III: Our Language
In 1916, just before the founding of the new Republic in 1918, a new jour-
nal, Naše Ĝeþ (‘Our Language’), was founded. Its first issue, in 1917, began
with the programmatic article “What We Want” (Co chceme):
This great, exceptional era of ours calls for cleansing: for a cleansing both
internal and external, for a return to naturalness and individuality, to the
unsullied original sources, for self-sufficiency of knowledge and art – it
calls in a far more audible voice for an unbroken means of communication:
for a c l e a n , h o n e d l a n g u a g e .
Naše Ĝeþ was to uphold and promulgate strict standards of usage. Its ori-
entation was decidedly purist, and the early issues of the journal mixed la-
ments for the detestable state of usage among the educated and in the media
with didactic explanations of what was proper and good. A third type of
article consisted of the ongoing polemic between various puristic factions
and, increasingly, between the purists and the non-purists.
It would be wrong, however, to stylize the early Naše Ĝeþ as a publica-
tion from purism’s lunatic fringe. It tried to play a mediating role, much as
the Matice’s Whetstone had done in the late nineteenth century. The editors
castigated and hectored those who introduced new words and forms, which
they viewed as the result of carelessness or misguided good intentions.
However, they were equally hard on some purists, especially those who
were ignorant of the structure and history of Czech or the basic principles
of linguistics.143 Its editors included Josef Zubatý, Emil Smetánka, and
Václav Ertl, all eminent linguists of their day, who brought a variety of
viewpoints, from puristic to reformist, to the pages of the journal.
1.4. 1922: The second revision of the Rules
In 1919, according to Naše Ĝeþ (Redakce Naší Ĝeþi 1921: 306),

…the Third Division of the Czech Academy of Sciences assumed responsi-
bility for the reform of Czech orthography and entrusted this work to a five-
member commission headed by Professor J. Zubatý. The commission set as
the goal of its reforms to introduce into Czech orthography as great a
uniformity as possible of orthographic principles, as long, of course, as they
do not conflict with true, correct pronunciation and as long as they do not
disrupt the overall existing shape of Czech orthography.144
The 1922 reform aimed to fix inconsistencies arising from the previous
two reforms (1902 and 1913). Its primary focus was on foreign borrowings,
a topic that was to occupy centre stage in discussions of orthographic
reform for the remainder of the century.
Modern loan words (see chapter 2, sections 5.2 through 5.4) are mostly
internationalisms of Greek or Latin descent, or later words constructed
from Greek and Latin roots. A smaller number are borrowings from a sin-
gle language; of these, French and English loan words have traditionally
prompted the greatest debates over spelling.
These loans are, relatively speaking, a peripheral feature of the lan-
guage. Their frequency compared to that of native words is very low, so the
“overall shape of Czech orthography” is not greatly affected by any
changes to their spelling. Among the features that were finally phased out
was the use of <th>, which was by that point inconsistent. The reform was
justified as follows:
The commission thus favours a principle that it is minded to keep constantly
in its sights during reforms of Czech orthography: that Czech orthography is
drawing closer to the orthography of other Slavs… and especially of
Slovak… (Redakce Naší Ĝeþi 1921: 307)
The greatest break with tradition in the 1922 reform was eliminating
doubled consonants in loan words. Czech pronunciation does not distin-
guish between single and double consonants in these positions (cf. English
unnatural vs. unalterable), so this reform met the stated criteria.
Instead of kommisse ‘commission’, then, the new spelling was to be
komise. However, this brought with it another problem. Traditionally, sin-
gle <s> was pronounced [z] in loan words, while double <ss> was pro-
nounced [s]. Getting rid of the doubled letters meant that some <s> were to
be pronounced [s], others [z]. The reformers were not particularly afraid
that people would pronounce [z] everywhere; instead, they were worried
that people would be tempted towards spelling pronunciation, consistently
rendering <s> as [s] even where it should be [z].145
The commission therefore suggested that <z> be written consistently
where it was pronounced. This had already been implemented for a few
words, but now they wanted to extend its remit to all foreign words where
[z] was the standard realization of <s>.146
This suggestion, however, finally did not form part of the 1922 reform.
The effect of the reform, then, was to resolve one major discrepancy be-
tween spelling and pronunciation while creating another.
The 1922 Rules undertook to fix vowel length for native words where
possible and to undertake a gradual nativization of foreign words. Linguists
like Zubatý and Gebauer, who were noted for their conservative, cautious
approach to language reform,147 were open to reform of spelling. In some
instances they even invented new forms, allowing them to crystallize gen-
eral tendencies into iron-clad rules that would be easier to learn.
The functionalists (see section 2) were critical of the early editions of
the Rules and the seemingly arbitrary way that the Rules seemed to favour
consistency of form over actual usage. Mathesius (1932: 18–22), the guid-
ing founder of the Prague School (see section 2), dissected what he termed
the principles of historical purity of the language (historická þistota jazyka)
and strict regularity of linguistic features (pĜísná pravidelnost jazykových
jevĤ) that underlay much work in language regulation at the time. The first
assumes that historically correct forms should be maintained or reintro-

duced regardless of their status in the contemporary language; the second
strives to achieve regularity or predictability across all forms of a word or
derivational pattern, even if current usage dictates otherwise (emphasis
original):
A graphic proof of how both principles I have just sketched d i s r u p t t h e
d e s i r e d s t a b i l i t y of our standard language is provided by t h e
R u l e s o f C z e c h O r t h o g r a p h y . It is quite surprising how little
attention members of the public (and even the specialists among them) pay
to the development and activities of this institution, which is invested with
official authority. In the United States President Roosevelt had to back
down in the face of enraged public opinion when he tried to use his official
power to introduce practical simplifications of the graphic form of English
words in perhaps a dozen places. Yet here, people look on silently when one
or two reformers – these days anonymous ones – dictate drastic changes
both in form and usage from their desks with official effect, not only in the
established graphic form of Czech words, but in their pronunciation as well.
And they do not introduce these new written forms, new pronunciations,
and new forms of corrected words all at once, so that these changes might,
after a single shock, become firmly established; instead this reforming ten-
dency grows ever stronger in new editions of the Rules and gradually brings
with it more and more innovations. For example, not until 1913 did the
form zviĜátko enter the Rules to replace the earlier zvíĜátko, or srdeþko to
replace the previously admissible [doublet] srdeþko and srdéþko; in the
most recent Rules of Czech Orthography we even find koupadlo in the in-
troduction on page XIX but kupadlo as the only correct form in the alpha-
betical listing. The surface of our standard language is thus constantly,
pointlessly rippling and our linguistic intuition is undermined. The uncer-
tainty that arises this way is all the greater for the fact that nowhere does
any new edition of the Rules say how it differs from the previous edition.
The results are distressing. While years ago, as I myself remember well, it
was not difficult for an educated Czech to write in correct orthography,
nowadays it is hard to find anyone who can manage it. People blame it on
the decline in education, but they often forget that the main reason is that
the Rules of Czech Orthography undermine linguistic usage. It could hardly
be otherwise when even professional experts on the Czech language must
turn to the Rules if they want to write correctly according to the officially
acknowledged orthography of the day.148
Mathesius was disturbed that authority (in the guise of the Rules) had failed
to yield predictability, decisiveness and stability. The functionalists were to
try their hand at spelling reform soon enough, and would learn just how
intractable these problems were.
1.5. Proposals for a national language institute
Why did linguists think a state-supported language institute was such an

important goal? Václav Ertl’s (1922) article “Ústav pro jazyk þesko-
slovenský“ (“A Czecho-Slovak Language Institute”) gives some clues, and
touches on several issues that were to echo down into the 1990s.
Ertl’s first and foremost argument concerned continuity (1922: 98–99).
An institute, he said, would ensure that scientific principles of linguistic
examination and regulation (as opposed to idiosyncratic, individually cher-
ished language bugbears) were observed and handed down:
This scientific working method is a very valuable commodity, which it is
necessary to cherish, maintain, expand and perfect; for this we need a per-
manent institution, in which this tradition can live and be immersed from
generation to generation – not merely a representative committee or com-
mission, which can disband today or tomorrow, never to meet again.
Only an institute, he claimed, could attain the authority necessary to
make its pronouncements generally acceptable, and at that, it would need to
be headed by a suitably well-respected figure:
Given our national character, which inclines towards individualism come
what may, towards stubbornness to the point of small-mindedness, towards
the personal right of veto wherever possible, and given our view that in lin-
guistic matters everyone who has learned to speak Czech can judge and de-
cide at least for himself, an authority that merely impresses will not suffice.
We need an authority that imposes – that is, one which, being founded on a
firm scientific base and firm principles, will nonetheless have enough power
to halt vulgar despoiling of the language, whether it comes from flightiness
and lack of respect for one’s mother tongue, or from lack of knowledge and
ignorance in the very places where knowledge of the language should be a
significant component of qualification and education.
The first example Ertl brings of this is, not surprisingly, orthography:
Orthography is certainly a matter on which there can be very different
opinions, but we all know that, in the end, at any given moment, it makes no
difference whether we write this way or that. It is true that orthography can
be harder or easier, and that it can be simplified in various ways, but we
also know that the main requirement for any orthographic system is not
quality, but unity – the consciousness that orthographic principles of this or

that sort only make sense if we all, to a person, obey them.
He then goes on to lambaste those who rejected the 1913 Rules:
If there is any place for voluntarily submitting to authority, then it is surely
in the matter of orthography. And yet with the last edition of the ortho-
graphic Rules (1913) we witnessed one part of our scientific community
turning the matter on its head and failing to recognize this amendment (for
it was not a thorough renovation) of orthography. This [occurred] despite
the fact that the 1913 Rules changed nothing substantial in orthography,
merely stabilizing those points where the 1904 Orthography had already
indicated a preference according to the demands of the time, and despite the
fact that they were based on an authority surely more qualified than any
other: that of the Professor of Czech Language at the Czech university.
A national language institute, Ertl argued, would have many desirable

effects. It would take responsibility for ensuring that “practical, cheap, and
easily understood manuals” were available, so that people could be sure of
writing correctly; it could undertake work in dialectology and historical lin-
guistics; it could produce, alongside a comprehensive dictionary, smaller
ones for the general public.
When the Czech Language Institute (CLI)149 finally did come into exis-
tence in 1946, it fulfilled most of the desiderata Ertl laid out. Certainly, at
least, it functioned in all the spheres he foresaw. However, Ertl signalled
two problems that would dog the CLI in later years.
First, Ertl, although accommodationist in some areas, was a product of
his times. An editor of the puristic Naše Ĝeþ, he strongly believed in the
need to educate the populace to use language correctly and without exces-
sive Germanisms. An institute produced along Ertl’s lines would be prone
to the centralizing, “one-right-answer” mentality that characterized much
language regulation of the day. In essence, the very existence of such an
institute compels belief that it has certain rights and responsibilities, re-
gardless of which rights and responsibilities we then choose to confer on it.
In direct contrast to this, Ertl also foresaw that authority would be a
sticking point for any new institute. Given his predilections, he believed it
should have legally binding powers. It would need authority to create
unambiguousness (unity) and thereby clarity in the language. This wish, as
we will later see, was never really fulfilled, although it came close to ful-
fillment during totalitarian rule. The CLI was thus in some respects a
hybrid whose weakness was only revealed after the restoration of democ-
1918–1945: The beginnings of functionalism 117
racy in 1989. The product of a nationalistic age that believed in simple an-
swers to complex linguistic questions, the Institute had never been granted
the persuasive force and compulsive powers to push through its agenda, for
which it was dependent on external bodies and organs.
2. 1918–1945: The beginnings of functionalism
The interwar period saw the birth of a major linguistic movement in

Czechoslovakia. It goes by a number of names, which are worth disentan-
gling here.
Founded in the capital city of Czechoslovakia, it is often called the Pra-
gue School. It evolved from the regular meetings of a group of like-minded
linguists and their colleagues, known as the Prague Linguistic Circle
(Pražský lingvistický kroužek, henceforth PLC), although not all the mem-
bers of that group are adherents of the School. Its original fundamental ten-
ets – that “language is a system of purposeful means of expression”, and
that the goal of analysis is “to uncover the structural laws of linguistic sys-
tems and their development”150 – eventually led to two distinct angles of
investigation, functionalism and structuralism. While the latter was for
some years suppressed in Czechoslovakia and enjoyed its greatest success
in the United States and Scandinavia (witness the rise of American struc-
turalism and Danish glossematics), the former remained closely tied to its
country of origin.151 Historically, functionalism’s emphasis has been on
uncovering the various functions for which language is used, and how those
correlate with the linguistic devices available in one language or across
languages.152
2.1. Functionalism and language cultivation
Unlike some linguistic schools, the Prague School had an international

character from the first. Two of its founders (Vilém Mathesius and
Bohumil Trnka) were Anglicists, as was its chronicler best known in the
West, Josef Vachek. Others, like Bohuslav Havránek and Miloš Weingart,
were Slavists by training, and the movement was enriched by the flood of
Russian refugees who streamed into Czechoslovakia in the 1920s: Roman
Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetskoi were two of the most prominent, but by
no means the only ones. The Prague School was thus never a narrow, na-
tional school: its intentions and arguments were directed at the way lan-
guage was studied and described in general.153 However, the daily lives of
its members played out in a language community greatly concerned with
language correctness, and thus its members naturally took an interest in
language standardization. This interest is evident in the 1929 Theses and is
more fully elaborated in the 1932 volume Spisovná þeština a jazyková
kultura (‘Standard Czech and Language Culture’).
The functionalists pointed out that the language standards debate in
interwar Czechoslovakia was being conducted without reference to func-
tion; it was based entirely on evaluation of form. When purists argued
about whether one or another lexical item or expression should be excluded
from the standard as a “Germanism”, for example, this was formalism par
excellence: the utility of an item was being determined by factors that had
nothing to do with how it was used. In the 1920s and 1930s, then, some
PLC members followed a programme to sketch out the particular functions
for which we use language, and then describe how various linguistic
devices (jazykové prostĜedky) and particular functional languages (funkþní
Ĝeþi) were or could be harnessed to serve these functions.
Purism was based on the aesthetic reaction of the listener or reader to
linguistic items. Functionalists explicitly rejected this stance and insisted
that they proceeded first from the point of view of the language producer.154
In other words, the most important concern was: which language functions
did the speaker or the writer need to perform (Mathesius 1929 [1972]: 28)?
As Havránek wrote in 1969, looking back on the early goals of
functionalism:
For contemporary standard language to become a fully fledged subject for
scholarly research, it was necessary to change the basic methodological
principles of linguistic research. It was necessary to move to a functional
perspective, to a perspective on what tasks a language has, both in general
and in concrete linguistic utterances, and with what goals and in what situa-
tions we use a standard language.
The idea of a standard variety as distinct from non-standard varieties
played a key role in their thinking, in keeping with the prominent position
of the standard vs. non-standard dichotomy in Czech society. According to
the functionalists, the standard had certain functions that implied specific
needs. The 1929 Theses describe the standard as having “greater demands
placed on it than on popular speech (Ĝeþ lidová)”, among which were its
various governmental and scholarly functions. These led to a need for an
expanded vocabulary for abstract concepts, complex ways of expressing
interrelatedness and the control or censure of emotionality. “This more

normed and normative cast of the standard language is connected with a
more careful and demanding attitude to language,” continue the Theses
(1929: 45–46, underscoring original).
Language culture, then, was in the functionalist view restricted to culti-
vation of this standard variety. The Theses define it as “cultivation so that
in t h e s t a n d a r d l a n g u a g e – both literary and conversational – the
characteristics required by the special functions of the standard language
might be strengthened” (1929: 57–58, spacing and underscoring original).
This definition circumscribed the excesses of purism. It did not purport
to lecture people on how they used language in the home or with friends.
But it did leave open a wide field for the regulation of all aspects of the
standard, including pronunciation and orthography:
As concerns pronunciation: it must follow from the basic requirements
described that pronunciation should be stabilized, even in places where up
until now variants have been permitted (e.g. in Standard Czech the written
group sh- is pronounced sch- and zh-, shoda etc.)…155
Orthography, as a purely conventional and practical matter, should be easy
and clear, so far as its function of visual distinction permits. Changing or-
thographic conventions, especially if it does not contribute to their simplifi-
cation, goes against the need for stability. Contradictions between the or-
thography of native words and the orthography of foreign words should be
removed at least where they lead to confusion in pronunciation (e.g. in
Czech orthography s in foreign words has the value s and z). (1929: 58)
Functionalism thus did not spell the end of language cultivation, ortho-
graphic reform, or the push for national bodies and binding conventions to
institutionalize these changes. It did not remove the ideological presupposi-
tion that regulation must lead to unity and clarity. Instead, it simply
changed the principles on which regulatory activities would be conducted.
2.2. Similarities between functionalism and purism
Despite differences between functionalism and purism, there are com-

monalities between the two approaches to language. This general point has
been made several times with different emphases, most notably by Starý
(1992, 1993, 1995) and Thomas (1996a, 1996b).
Some similarities seem perfunctory. For instance, functionalism does al-
low for an aesthetic perspective when dealing with the standard language;
this is laid out clearly in the “General Principles for Language Culture”
(Pražský lingvistický kroužek 1932: 249). But this aesthetic dimension is
dormant for most of the early years of functionalism, re-emerging only in
the 1980s as an explanation for some phenomena of language culture that
could not otherwise be explained.
Both purists and functionalists believed clearly in the necessity of lan-
guage regulation and active language cultivation. The purists called for a
return to an original, pure state of the language; the functionalists strove for
the stabilization of the standard language, bringing it to a state they called
flexible stability (pružná stabilita), in which only carefully planned, neces-
sary changes were implemented (see, for example, Mathesius 1932: 17 and
Havránek 1932: 32).
In other words, functionalist linguists had a duty not only to map lin-
guistic functions onto linguistic forms, but then to actively promote these
findings and make sure that language reform reflects them. Although the
functionalists wanted to topple the purists, they had different ideas for the
linguistic institutions the purists controlled. They would install themselves
in the purists’ place, from where they could shape a standard language gov-
erned by rational, objective criteria. Mathesius wrote (1932: 25):
It would be quite possible to rely solely on the refining influence of author-
ial practice and on the language commentary of non-linguists gifted with a
delicate sensibility for semantic nuance and rhythm and the melody of
speech. These forces sufficed to form and refine the majority of standard
languages that arose before the nineteenth century, and these are the most
refined languages in the world. But the current state of linguistic theory en-
ables us to accelerate the process of refinement a bit through scholarly in-
tervention – and anyway, the current position of standard Czech is rather
different from that of the great cultural languages at the time of their refin-
ing.
Functionalism thus included elements of applied linguistics as well as

being a tool of pure linguistic analysis. This inclusion presupposes a
progression from observation of function to description and
recommendation. The creation of functionalist policy-making was a master
stroke of word-play, an inversion of functionalist principles disguised as an
extension of them. In effect, the functionalists claimed that scholars could
observe usage and deduce the functions of linguistic elements from it, but
they could also rule on linguistic points and determine the fate of linguistic
elements, as long as their judgment was based on functional-
ist principles. These decisions would then find their way into the language
system and become part of it.
In other words, instead of merely observing a system and describing it,
functionalists were invited to imagine or project an ideal system of func-
tions and create the conditions for it to exist. Here we come across a nota-
ble and perhaps not so coincidental parallel between functionalism and so-
cialism. In light of general sympathy for socialist ideals in the 1930s, this
development was not surprising, and could not have been gone unnoticed in
the period after the Communist coup in 1948.156
2.3. 1941: The third revision of the Rules
In 1938, Czechoslovakia was dismembered by the Third Reich and the

Czech lands reconstituted as the (German) Protectorate of Bohemia and
Moravia. Perhaps surprisingly, some ordinary language cultivation activity
continued in this period, notably with the issuance of a new version of the
Rules of Czech Orthography in 1941.
The 1941 Rules in some respects undid previous revisions. For some do-
mesticated borrowings, the spelling reverted to the original form. The au-
thors explicitly mention a feature that does not figure in earlier or subse-
quent discussions (Šmilauer 1943: 27 [emphasis original]):
The format of foreign words, which differ from native ones in their spelling
of the nominative case form and in declension, is a notably complex matter.
There is a clash here between dual tendencies: (1) the natural attempt to
adapt foreign words towards native ones in both writing and declension…
(2) the opposite attempt not to disrupt any connections with foreign
languages with changes.
Prior to this, Czech linguists had not typically promoted this idea – that
the language itself should reflect connections with foreign languages in the
way it treats borrowings – as a way of defending conservative spellings. It
introduced an internationalizing dimension (Fishman 2004: 85) to Czech
corpus planning. Up to that point, connections with foreign languages had
been part of the arsenal of the pan-Slavists. The pan-Slavists had wanted
spelling to have a more phonetic cast and cited the close relations between
Czech and Slovak, Polish and Russian as a reason for adopting a more pho-
netic transcription of loan words.157
The revisions undone by the 1941 Rules included: <th> to <t>; <x> to
<ks>; some instances of <s> to <z>; many, but not all places where long
vowels had been introduced; and many, but not all, replacements of double
consonants by single consonants (Šmilauer 1943: 28–30).
There is a political subtext to this debate as well. There was speculation
that this deliberate insertion in the 1941 Rules was designed specifically to
bring Czech spelling closer to German, although in any event the number
and frequency of words affected was not significant.
The primary stated goal of the 1941 Rules was “to lessen the difference
between the written and spoken language, especially in quantity (length of
vowels)” (Šmilauer 1943: 5). This covered a multitude of changes, includ-
ing numerous tweaks to the declension and conjugation patterns of native
words. Šmilauer’s 1943 brochure describing these changes runs itself to 51
pages of closely set type. As opposed to its somewhat more conservative
spelling, its morphological information is decidedly innovative. It incorpo-
rated many forms that had previously been considered “non-standard”, but
were by the same token not characteristic of any one particular dialect
area.158
3. 1945–1957: The first years of communism
The resurrection of independent Czechoslovakia after the Second World

War and the communist coup soon after brought significant changes to
Czech linguistics and language planning. The Czech Language Institute
was founded, and with the coalescing of an authoritarian government in
Prague and the establishment of a totalitarian state, the stage was set for a
period of tight control over the standard language.159
3.1. The Czech Language Institute
The founding of the CLI in 1946 was a victory both for the vision of a sin-
gle, central language authority and, more specifically, for the branch of
functionalism favouring a top-down approach to language cultivation. The
new institute was part of the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences (ýeská
akademie vČd a umČní),160 and incorporated the old Dictionary Office. The
director of the old Dictionary Office, Alois Získal, was assigned to be
“internal director”, while Havránek assumed the post of “academic co-
ordinator”.161
1945–1957: The first years of communism 123
The CLI’s remit was wider than that of its predecessor organization.
First and foremost, the new institute anticipated a greater presence in the
public arena. It was to advise the public on language use, and to this end, a
Language Service was set up to answer phone calls and letters. The CLI
established links with Czech Radio and began broadcasting the Language
Corner (Jazykový koutek), which continues to this day. The CLI also took
an interest in school curricula, helping to develop both syllabi and text-
books. It produced popular manuals about Czech, as well as reference
works for everyday use (Daneš and Dokulil 1971: 202–203, KuchaĜ 1971:
218). Other branches of the CLI would research the dialects and history of
Czech.
The CLI quickly acquired the two most important linguistic journals in
the country. Naše Ĝeþ became a CLI publication in 1949, and Slovo a
slovesnost followed two years later (Daneš and Dokulil 1971: 203). Slovo a
slovesnost had always been a functionalist journal, focusing attention on
general issues of concern to linguists and counterbalancing the sometimes
hectoring pronouncements of Naše Ĝeþ. Acquiring the latter, however, was
a real coup for the functionalists, and it signalled the demise of an organ-
ized puristic movement in the Czech lands.
Havránek took over as editor-in-chief of Naše Ĝeþ in place of the purist
JiĜí Haller, and most of the editorial board were replaced by functionalists
(like Daneš, who became managing editor), or others (like Trávníþek) cho-
sen primarily because they were congenial to the current political regime.162
This coup spelled an end to the strong puristic orientation of Naše Ĝeþ and
saw its reinvention as a journal devoted to the linguistic study of Czech.
The CLI quickly began to increase its authority by forming contacts out-
side the field of linguistics. It was the natural home for terminological com-
missions of individual fields, where its employees served as members and
advisors. The institute appointed “external members” at various publishing
houses, on editorial boards, and in administrative roles, who were charged
with looking after language affairs in their workplace (KuchaĜ 1971: 219).
With the communist coup of 1948 and the establishment of a totalitarian
state, the CLI acquired further tasks:
Especially in the first years of the Institute’s existence, much effort was de-
voted to assisting directly with the linguistic stylization and format of texts,
so over time this activity had to be limited to editing texts important from a
linguistic and society-wide perspective (party and government documents,
constitutions, certain laws, etc.). (KuchaĜ 1971: 217)
The fact that the CLI had a hand in the wording (although, of course, not
in the content) of highly visible politico-doctrinal texts would prove contro-

versial after 1989.
3.2. Linguistics and politics
Despite the seeming peripherality of linguistics as a discipline, it was sub-

ject to many of the same political pressures as other academic subjects, and
a certain political lability was a distinct professional asset for an ambitious
Czech linguist in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
With the imposition of Soviet-style totalitarianism, the previously inde-
pendent institutions of higher education in Czechoslovakia were forced to
accept a top-down organizational model, where their structures and curric-
ula were largely dictated by the political and practical needs of the state.
This period coincided with waves of purges, firings, imprisonments and
executions of the politically suspect.163 The effect on the universities is de-
scribed in convincing detail in Connelly (2000); suffice it to say that adher-
ence to the political currents of the moment often seemed to be a prerequi-
site for professional, and sometimes personal, survival.
Scholars’ mettle was tested almost immediately, when they were asked
to accept two linguistically suspect dogmas. In 1948 they were presented
with the dubious teachings of Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr and required to
endorse them. Two years later, an article signed by Stalin appeared in the
Soviet Communist Party daily Pravda, consigning Marr’s tenets and meth-
ods to the dustbin. This article and one of the amplifications to it were
translated into Czech and published in the prestigious Czechoslovak journal
Slovo a slovesnost.164 Czech journals of 1951 and 1952 teem with articles
praising Stalin’s wisdom and shaking their proverbial heads over their re-
cent delusion.165 Structuralism (see Trávníþek 1954) was roundly attacked
as bourgeois and “cosmopolitan” – Jakobson was a Jew, of course – and it
disappeared from the sight of Czech academia until the late 1950s, when it
made an officially-sanctioned comeback, complete with the partial reha-
bilitation of Jakobson’s position as a member of the Prague School.
Against this backdrop, functionalism consolidated its hold on Czech
academia. The robustness of the functionalist approach certainly had much
to do with its success, but politics played a role as well. Some of the func-
tionalists, most notably Havránek, had longstanding socialist sympathies,
and hitched functionalism to the new political order, ensuring its prosper-
ity.166 In addition, because it appealed to usage as a primary determinant,
functionalism had elements of vernacularism in it. These could be allied to
the new regime’s stated goals of democratizing society and widening

participation in decision-making. Purists, whose efforts in keeping Czech
linguistics alive during the war had strengthened their sense of moral
resolve, did not hesitate to use the language and structures of the new
totalitarianism to try to arrest the course of language liberalization.167 Old-
style Czech purism, however, was unabashedly elitist in its orientation and
thus less congenial for the purposes of the communist regime. The top
positions in language departments, institutes, and linguistic journals thus
gradually passed into the hands of the functionalists.168
One area of natural affinity between functionalism and socialism was in
the area of language and spelling reform. We have already seen that func-
tionalism, crucially, embraced the notion of a regulated and centralized
language bureaucracy, in line with the top-down models of control imposed
by the new communist government.
Functionalism continued to emphasize Havránek’s notion of “flexible
stability”, focusing on the need to maintain continuity in a linguistic system
without losing the prospect for change. The tension deliberately built into
this carefully balanced slogan soon became evident. Some of the tradition-
alists focused on “stability”, seeing “flexibility” as necessary only in abso-
lutely minor and occasional instances. Others focused on “flexibility”, pro-
posing relatively extensive admission of non-standard elements to the stan-
dard while declaring them to be functionally marked, thus preserving the
supposedly stable nature of the existing elements.
In the area of grammar, the traditionalists were to win out. Sgall’s early
proposals to introduce many features of Common Czech grammar into the
standard (Sgall 1960, 1962, 1963) were rejected in articles published in the
Russian journal Voprosy iazykoznaniia and in Slovo a slovesnost in the
early 1960s (BČliþ, Havránek, and Jedliþka 1962, Havránek 1963). Skaliþka
(1962), Karel Hausenblas (1962), Novák (1962) and others also contributed
to this debate. Despite these setbacks to the reformist agenda, as we will see
in section 4, some smaller reforms did succeed.
3.3. Compromised credibility
Functionalism thus settled into an uneasy coexistence with socialist

totalitarianism. This section will give a whistle-stop tour of some pro-com-
munist pronouncements of functionalists in the 1950s and 1960s. Its pur-
pose is not to discredit functionalist linguistics; after all, much of the rheto-
ric was incidental to the principles underlying functionalism and was

penned by those allied to it only loosely, while many leading functionalists
found their activities and influence curtailed under communism.169 Instead,
these examples hint at why functionalism’s authority in the public realm
suffered after the end of communism. The co-opting of functionalism to
serve totalitarian ends undermined its public image in later years, and
indirectly condemned the 1993 reforms to a long and difficult birth.
Stalin’s articles of 1950, which were loaded with vague and uncon-
troversial formulas about the development of language, provided a quick
and easy way for functionalists to show how in step they were with the
times. Havránek (1951–1952c: 81 [emphasis original]) wrote:
A M a r x i s t s c i e n c e o f l a n g u a g e , wonderfully illuminated in
recent articles by Stalin himself, gives us clearly for the first time an expla-
nation of why language changes in all these parameters.
Language is in Marxist science a s o c i e t a l p h e n o m e n o n . We can
say concisely in Stalin’s words that “there is no language outside society”,
and further consequently that without language society would cease to exist;
it would fall apart. All societal phenomena serve society, and language
serves it in a special way.
Long before there was a “Marxist science of language”, functionalists
had pointed out the need to consider the functions of language in society,
but Stalin’s articles gave some of them the chance to dress up their theory
in the politically acceptable fashions of the day.170 Stalinism was even used
to reintroduce structuralist ideas, which could be seen as relying on natural
“laws” and were thus “scientific” and inevitably “Marxist”, and to support
language cultivation activity based on structuralist linguistics, even when
that activity favoured the language of the educated elite:
It is necessary to look upon our contemporary standard language as the re-
sult of a long historical development. The creative efforts of our populace
and the constant cultivation of our great personalities are expressed in it.
The paths of this development conform with the inner developmental laws
of language. Therefore, today’s language cultivation must be founded on the
scientific discovery and confirmation of these laws; it must flow from them.
We thus reject a liberalistic position towards the language, which descends
at times into an almost nihilistic position: that directed cultivation of the
language and intervention in it on the part of linguists is impossible
(Jedliþka 1955: 149).
The rhetoric of socialism could also prove useful for silencing critics:
In this situation [during the German occupation of 1938–1945] a certain

number of language workers thought – incorrectly, and in contradiction to
the true needs of the language – that it would be appropriate to renew knife-
grinder purism, which positioned itself against true or often imagined for-
eign influences, even where it concerned items stable and ensconced in the
language; that it was right to revive a one-sided revulsion against foreign
words. And thus with the agreement of certain linguists, condemnations
have appeared of words of foreign origin such as kolektiv, aktiv, and even
realistický, which are closely linked with our new reality. (Jedliþka 1955:
147)
Although this reproach may seem mild to anyone unfamiliar with 1950s
Czechoslovakia, Jedliþka was essentially accusing the new purists of reject-
ing key means of expression borrowed directly from Soviet models.
Kolektiv ‘collective’ was used to describe the supposedly self-governing
groups of workers in an enterprise or office. Aktiv referred to an official
committee or group of people active in a particular cause, usually a political
one. Realistický meant of course ‘realistic’ and had existed in Czech before
the communists came to power, but was quickly adopted into a number of
communist clichés: realistické Ĝešení politických otázek ‘a realistic resolu-
tion of political matters’, where it meant ‘pragmatic, bowing to the reality
of changes since 1948’.
Aligning functionalism and Marxism involved an inevitable over-
simplification. Many of these tracts hailed functionalism’s suitability for
managing the coinage of new words to reflect the building of a socialist
society. Again, though, the connection between functionalism and social-
ism was only in the sphere of applied linguistics. Borrowing and calquing
would have occurred with or without the functionalists. What they offered
was a supposedly scientific way to optimize the acceptance of new words.
Not all socialist rhetoric was directed in favour of the functionalists. In
the early 1950s, young scholars like Sgall led an attempt to re-evaluate the
utility of functionalism, claiming that the “bourgeois” structuralist
principles that underpinned it compromised the school’s efficacy. While
valuing the contributions of many of leading functionalists, Sgall criticized
structuralism for its immanence, by which he meant its tendency to regard
language as a system unto itself. A true Marxist linguistics, Sgall said,
could incorporate elements of functionalism, but not all of it.171
The Prague School survived this and other objections by concerted de-
fences of their positions and tactical retreats where necessary. When the
form-centred description of structuralist approaches did fall out of official
favour for a number of years, the Prague School temporarily jettisoned

them to preserve the functionalist approach to language, which was
precisely the aspect on which the language planning elements of the Prague
School were based.172
When the political climate allowed, prominent functionalist-allied
scholars did dare to show their colours and criticize certain excesses of the
communists. For example, in an article published in 1968 on the eve of the
Prague Spring, the once-stalwart Jaromír BČliþ permitted himself to note:
The strict concentration of all journalism to such a great extent on the stan-
dardizing propagation of building socialism and its consolidation did, of
course, have unfavourable effects, especially in the 1950s: creative journal-
istic genres such as the opinion piece and the column were severely limited
in the daily press and elsewhere, thereby greatly weakening the stylistic
possibilities of journalistic writing, and the newspapers lost their appeal and
variety, acquiring the character of a tedious propagandistic gazette. (1968:
268)
With the end of the Prague Spring and the so-called “normalization” of
Czech society, stricter political control was reasserted over academia:
The appointment of an extreme hard-liner as minister of education brought
about the wholesale dismissal of academic and administrative staff who had
been active or shown sympathy with reform communism. The education
minister’s campaign even involved the circulation of questionnaires requir-
ing detailed information on the activities of both faculty and students in
1968 and 1969. The purges went beyond their immediate targets insofar as
they also touched the families of those directly affected. The normalized re-
gime did not regard dismissal from employment or notice to quit accommo-
dation as sufficient punishment but also exacted retribution from, for in-
stance, the children of targets, who were not infrequently barred from sec-
ondary and higher education. (Wheaton and Kavan 1992: 8)
Linguists from all schools of thought were affected by this crackdown,
with demotions and firings common. Consequently, the very style that
BČliþ had once criticized returned to dominate linguistic studies, and
leading functionalists retreated to a defensive position, reiterating the
school’s close links with communist ideology (see e.g. Havránek 1973).
Their defence was nowhere as strident or tendentious as some of the
rhetoric in the 1950s had been, but it nonetheless used the regime’s political
code words to bolster the position of functionalist linguistics:
This theory – whose notable contribution to general linguistics is inciden-
tally valued worldwide to this day – demonstrated its viability, its progres-
1957–1958: The first communist-era Rules 129
sive character, its practical utility, under new societal conditions as well.
We could even say that only with the new societal situation was it possible
for the theoretical knowledge consolidated earlier to be put into practice to
its full extent. (KuchaĜ 1971: 214)
Terms like progressive character (pokrokový charakter) and new societal
conditions (nové spoleþenské podmínky) were universally understood code
words respectively for pro-Marxist and Soviet-style socialism.
This reflexive use of boiler-plate Marxist slogans applied to institutions
as well as linguistic schools. Ten years later, in describing the primary tasks
of the CLI, its director placed first on the list “the study of the foundations
of Marxist linguistics, and criticism of bourgeois theories in linguistics”
(Petr 1981). This was, like most of these sorts of pronouncements, a risible
exaggeration. Petr himself had in fact published extensively on the lan-
guage of Marx, Engels, and Lenin (Redakce Naší Ĝeþi 1990: 103), and cer-
tainly members of the CLI did pen the occasional dutiful anniversary article
with paeans to the progress of Marxist linguistics and its superiority to
Western methods.173 Given the amount of time and attention that staff de-
voted to their other tasks, this politically oriented work hardly qualified as
their top priority; nonetheless, it would not have done to say otherwise at
the time.174 Political labels were often purely opportunistic, anyway. The
functionalists convened conferences on perfectly serious topics hidden
under tendentious names (Problems of Marxist Linguistics [Vácha 1962];
Contemporary Issues of Language Culture in Socialist Society [KuchaĜ
1979]), whose proceedings – when read beyond the tendentious keynote
articles – include numerous interesting scholarly contributions.
These few examples represent only the tip of the iceberg. By the 1960s,
then, a group of functionalists had succeeded in presenting aspects of the
Prague School programme as a leading Czechoslovak incarnation of
Marxist linguistics. In the short run, this allowed “real” functional
linguistics to prosper, as it was “protected” by the occasional dreary leading
article intoning its correct class perspective. In the long run, though, once
the communist system collapsed, this identification created problems for
functionalism and the institutions it helped to create.
4. 1957–1958: The first communist-era Rules
The 1957 and 1958 editions of the Rules of Czech Orthography represented
the last major spelling changes before the revision of 1993. Unlike the 1993
reforms, they came into effect with little public debate and passed quickly
into use. Examining the terrain of the 1957–1958 reforms, however, we can
see the hints of dissent that were to re-emerge almost forty years later.
4.1. Preparations for the reforms
From the late 1940s onwards there began to be talk of the need for another
spelling reform and a new edition of the Rules of Czech Orthography. As
we have seen, previous reforms had been somewhat of a mixed bag.175 The
1922 “simplifications” in the spelling of borrowed words with <ss> had
given rise to confusion, but in the opposite direction from what had been
expected (cf. section 1.4). Already in the 1920s, the functionalists noticed a
tendency for people to pronounce all intervocalic <s> in borrowed words as
[z].
While the 1941 reforms made numerous less controversial changes in
the spelling of native words, they failed to address this issue, and managed
to add to the confusion surrounding the spelling of borrowed words by re-
introducing many Latinate spellings previously abandoned (cf. section 2.3).
Table 25. Analogy and spelling pronunciation
‘crisis’ ‘discussion’
pre-1922 spelling krise diskusse
1922 spelling krise diskuse
orthoepic pronunciation [z] [s]
expected problem in 1922 by analogy with diskuse none
people will say [s]
actual problem none by analogy with krise
people say [z]
proposed resolution spell <z> instead of <s> vigorously correct and
in 1940s continue to spell <s>
Spelling reform was, of course, not exclusively a Czech preoccupation,
nor were the Czechs the only nation to take a top-down approach to the is-
sue. Similar reforms were taking place at this time across the new Soviet
bloc and were reported in the Czech scholarly press; these included, among
others, Romanian (HoĜejší 1954), Serbo-Croatian (Jelínek 1958), Slovak
(Šmilauer 1950b; on the modern situation see Blanár 1999), and Lower
Sorbian, a small Slavonic language spoken in the (then-) German Democ-
ratic Republic (Frinta 1948, 1951). The Czechs also reported on the pos-
sibility of orthographic reform elsewhere: in France (Buben 1956), Portugal

(Hampejs 1957) and the English-speaking world (Fried 1957).
A CLI commission was formed in 1951 to instigate a further ortho-
graphic reform. Its composition appears in books and articles as: Jaromír
BČliþ (“head of the collective”), Eduard ýech, František Daneš, Vladimír
Daníþek, Alois Jedliþka, Adolf Kamiš, Julie Olivová, Vladimír Šmilauer,
and František Váhala.176 Of these, Daneš, Jedliþka and Šmilauer are widely-
known and respected functionalist linguists. The commission had external
advisors representing various professions, including journalists (KuchaĜ
and Váhala 1960: 41). Váhala described the tasks of this new commission,
which would be: to continue the “domestication” of foreign words; to make
changes to the rules for capitalization; to simplify how the prepositions s
and z, and the prefixes s- and z- were used; to make changes in the princi-
ples of hyphenation and word division; and to explore areas where Czech
and Slovak orthography might be harmonized (1951–1952: 115–117).
There were two constituencies that needed to be appeased in planning a
new edition of the Rules: the Czech public and the communist apparatus.
Both potential audiences loom large in the documents that detail how the
reform was planned and carried out.
4.2. Consulting the public
From the very first, the revisers sensed that the public could react badly to
further changes. Daneš (1953: 124) warned:
Certainly none of us want orthographic rules and the spellings of individual
words to be constantly changing, but on the other hand, everyone knows full
well that the currently valid 1941 Rules are not completely satisfactory, as
they are in some places pointlessly complex or inconsistent [...] and for
writers, they impede reliable mastery of the standard language in its written
form, not to mention correct reading and correct pronunciation (see e.g. the
frequent errors in words like diskuse, kultura, etc.). The inadequate state of
our orthography is also clearly shown by the ceaseless seesawing in the way
individual words are written in various editions of the Rules. For example, it
has been determined that from the publication of the Orthographic Index
(1886) to the ninth edition of the Rules of Czech Orthography (1926),
approximately 1100 words and forms changed their orthographic form, and
in the alphabetical index of the 1941 Rules there are over 1200 instances of
changes from the 1926 edition.
This was a clear slap at what the revisers considered excessive interven-
tion, and the upcoming Rules were thus sold to the public in a different
guise. They were to be a partial revision that regularized details but avoided
wholesale changes in writing conventions.
Daneš 1953 also details efforts to open up the reform process to the
reading and writing public. He and his colleagues conceived of the
programme in four stages. In the first stage, the CLI convened a panel of its
own employees and other specialists to work out its fundamental principles.
In the second stage, this orthographic commission circulated its proposals
to a select group of teachers, authors, journalists, and editors, and convened
a consultative meeting to discuss the proposals. A new, revised proposal
was then produced. In the third stage, the commission produced a lengthy
questionnaire to circulate to the public, primarily through schools and other
workplaces. It contained numerous individual words and grammatical
forms where there was some question as to what spelling or form would be
most acceptable. In the fourth stage, the commission would assemble the
final version for publication.
The first consultation engendered, according to Daneš, a “lively and
substantial” discussion (1953: 126). As a result, some of the more radical
proposals were dropped. The meeting hit an impasse on the issue of how
permissive the Rules should be:
There was […] an interesting discussion on the extent to which ortho-
graphic rules should permit two ways of writing, especially where they re-
sult from two different views on a subject (e.g. capitalization, comma place-
ment, adverbial compounds, etc.). Those on the practical end in schools and
typography recommended that the Rules not permit such possibilities; in
such instances, pupils and the majority of the writing public supposedly
clamour for an unambiguous answer (this is right, that is wrong). In
contrast, the writers’ representatives, along with many other participants,
correctly pointed out that such excessively simplified rules would
impoverish the language and deprive authors of the possibility of expressing
themselves in a rich and nuanced manner. (1953: 127)
The commission then revised its recommendations and sent them to the
governing board of the Academy of Sciences for approval. Once this hurdle
was cleared, the commission prepared the questionnaire for public consul-
tation.
The questionnaire was an incredibly detailed document. Its fifty-plus
pages covered a vast range of words and features, where respondents were
asked to fill in a missing ending or word, say which form of two or three
they preferred, or state whether they agreed with a formulated rule. An ano-
nymous note in Slovo a slovesnost said the questionnaire was sent to
“leading active users of the standard language, foremost writers, translators,
and journalists” (Redakce Slova a slovesnosti 1955: 128). Unfortunately,
the return rate was very low, pointing up a fundamental problem: to be use-
ful, the questionnaire needed to be extremely long, but its length apparently
put people off.
Why limit the questionnaire to three select professions? There were
practical and ideological considerations.
On a practical level, it minimized potential problems with the data. The
questionnaire assumed a significant level of linguistic competence and self-
awareness. The commission needed to be sure that respondents had a reli-
able knowledge of the standard and were familiar with the various linguis-
tic conventions and shortcuts used in phrasing the questions.
But this choice of respondents hides an ideological presumption as well.
Despite rhetoric about making the standard language easier to master for
the average user, the functionalists continued to follow the principles set
out in 1932: that the standard is an instrument of greater refinement and
subtlety than the common spoken dialects, and that its regulation must re-
spect these higher-level functions. It therefore follows that only people
fully conversant with these special functions can be entrusted with the
regulation of the language. This presumption is not uncommon or unwar-
ranted, but it is fundamentally elitist.
While this was going on, the commission was busy publishing a string
of articles in Naše Ĝeþ, Slovo a slovesnost, and the popular press, informing
people of the upcoming changes.177
4.3. Placating the Party and government
The second audience that needed to be reassured about the nature of the
reforms was the Communist Party. Party membership, of course, was a re-
quirement for fulfilling most responsible administrative functions, down to
the level of individual departments at universities and scientific institutes.
Those entrusted with coordinating the reforms (Havránek, Trávníþek, BČliþ,
and Váhala) were Party members, but important decisions had to be re-
ferred up to the higher echelons of the Party. Orthography was a subject of
enough importance that what Váhala blandly termed “responsible political
places” participated in discussions of the reforms:
…it is necessary to realize that adaptations to orthography – which is, after

all, a matter of agreement between all users of the standard language – is
not a matter only for linguists. Thus it was necessary to allow all the highest
institutions, which bear responsibility for our cultural, economic, and
political development, to evaluate the original draft of the Rules, and they
also weighed the possibilities for implementation in the given situation.
(Váhala 1956: 214–215)
From the very first, reformers attached great importance to gaining the
Party’s confidence. In announcing the preparation of the new Rules, Váhala
(1951–1952: 115) put a socialist spin on the need to update them and to
continue earlier reforms nativizing the spelling of loan words:
What previously was specialized and rare has long since ceased to be so.
With the scientificization of working methods, with the penetration of spe-
cialist literature into the broadest masses of our workers, with the governing
of daily life according to the scientific laws of historical and dialectical
materialism, many words that were previously truly narrowly specialized
have now become the common property of the whole of socialist society.
The existing method of writing them has divided society clearly into two
groups: those who are college graduates, know several languages, and can
thus figure out how to write and pronounce each such word – and on the
other hand those who do not have such education. This, however, is an
untenable state of affairs. To the extent possible, it is necessary to render the
spelling of these foreign words independent of foreign orthographic
systems, and to write them according to the pronunciation that has crystal-
lized in standard Czech. This is what has been done wholesale for words
borrowed through Russian, e.g. dispeþer ‘dispatcher’, kombajn ‘combine
harvester’, šeping ‘shaping frame’.
Váhala (1951–1952: 116) also suggested that the reforms presented an
opportunity to bring Czech and Slovak orthography into closer alignment:
The harmonious coexistence of two fraternal nations in a common state has
shown that it would be an advantage for both if certain orthographic matters
were treated in the same manner and on the same principles.
This particular movement had a long and convoluted history. It can be
traced to the appearance of Czechoslovakism before the First World War.
This ideology considered Czech and Slovak to be two varieties of the same
language. It eventually became the guiding language ideology of the first
Czechoslovak state. However, as Slovak orthography had consistently
opted for more rapid convergence between spelling and pronunciation, the
desire to align Czech and Slovak orthography also came to be associated
with a more reformist approach towards spelling in the Czech lands. The
gloss of “socialist brotherhood” on Czech-Slovak convergence was merely
the latest incarnation of this trend.
Plaudits from officially approved authors Pavel Bojar and Marie
Pujmanová graced professional consultation sessions on the reforms. From
the quality of Pujmanová’s prose in her address (reprinted, for those who
missed it, in Naše Ĝeþ later that year), it was clear she was selected on mer-
its other than literary ones:
We love our mother tongue. We love Czech not only for patriotic reasons,
but because it is wonderful material for our work. The language is lovely,
with a flective, epic verb, vivid, concrete, three-dimensional, many-hued. It
is a joy to write in Czech. [...] Often I have noticed that a common reader,
when he comes upon a foreign word that he cannot read or understand, feels
ashamed, excluded, devalued. I therefore recommend that all foreign words
be written in Czech so that everyone can read them without errors in his
mother tongue. It is necessary to create a consistent, democratic order on
this point. (Pujmanová 1953: 128)
A series of poorly formulated recommendations followed, but they were

obviously not the point of her speech: she was put on the podium to parade
the commission’s official stamp of approval. It could not have hurt that,
after her address, anything proposed by the professional linguists conduct-
ing the reform would look eminently reasonable by comparison.
One would think, from the reformers’ rhetoric, that communist leaders
were favourably disposed to these changes and the so-called “demo-crati-
zation” of orthography that they brought. In fact, anecdotal evidence sug-
gests that the opposite is true: many communists, especially those higher in
the Party, admitted the changes only grudgingly. Stich claimed that when
the commission proposed the wholesale introduction of spellings with <z>
like prezident, komunizmus, filozofie, univerzita, and gymnázium, it was
Václav Kopeþný, the foremost communist ideologue and propagandist of
the era, who blocked this development and insisted that these words were
too noble to be spelled with <z>.178
Paradoxically, then, the use of socialist rhetoric to push through ortho-
graphic change seems to have been an end-run around the Communist
Party, rather than an attempt to appease it. By out-communisting the com-
munists, the reformers were able to implement a set of changes that had
only lukewarm reception within the Party itself.
4.4. The format and content of the reforms
The 1957 reforms brought a number of innovations. The entries and exam-
ples throughout the Rules were rewritten using socialist vocabulary and
clichés (see chapter 6, section 2.1) to reflect the new political reality. Miss-
ing from the new Rules were the lengthy summaries of Czech grammar
found in the introductions to all the previous editions. Even so, the intro-
duction grew substantially longer through the addition of numerous exam-
ples, transcription tables, and fuller explanations of the principles of Czech
orthography. The dictionary section ballooned in size, bringing the overall
length of the Rules to 477 pages – as against a scant 192 for the 1941
Rules.
The material that formed the basis for the spellings and grammatical
forms was also subtly different from that of previous reforms. Jedliþka
(1950) reported that the CLI had begun collecting a morphology excerpt
file to complement its long-existing lexical file. He stressed that in their ex-
cerpting work, they relied on popular texts; fiction and scholarly literature
were included sparingly or left to one side, because the excerpters wished
to focus on the “ordinary standard language” (jazyk bČžnČ spisovný). With
literature, Jedliþka stated, they only added excerpts after careful considera-
tion as to whether a form was used for effect rather than neutrally. This rep-
resented a significant shift from the approach that prevailed in the 1920s–
1940s, when the Czech of literary authors was considered to be the gold
standard.
The most obvious innovation, however, was that the Rules were pub-
lished in two editions, intended for differing audiences and with significant
differences in their content.
The first version, published in late 1957, was termed the “full” version.
It was brought out by Academia Publishers, the press of the Academy of
Sciences, hence its later nickname: the “academic” edition. Its large
dictionary contained a substantial number of technical terms. This edition
was aimed at the “professional” language user: academics, journalists,
translators, and editors. The large number of doublets in the dictionary ap-
peared twice each, in both their alphabetical locations, i.e. first esej i essay,
then later on essay i esej. This cumbersome solution was an attempt at neu-
trality on the matter of doublets: it left users to decide for themselves which
spelling they preferred. Now that the grammar overview had been cut, this
edition contained no grammatical information at all; it was simply a spell-
ing manual.
The second version appeared in 1958 with the State Pedagogical Pub-
lishing House (Státní pedagogické nakladatelství) and was dubbed the
“school” edition, as it carried the approval of the Ministry of Education and
Culture for use as an “ancillary book for general educational, pedagogical,
and technical schools”. At 389 pages, it was substantially slimmer than the
“full” version. Its introduction was shorter by half, with more simply for-
mulated explanations for pupils. It lacked “certain details which are mean-
ingful only for mature users, should they need at times to strive for a subtler
shade of meaning or style, etc.” (BČliþ 1958a: 103). The dictionary was also
shortened, with many technical terms left out. However, the grammatical
information in individual dictionary entries had been beefed up. This was a
response in part, at least, to the fact that general grammatical principles
were no longer available in the introduction. The authors also added to the
dictionary some very common words that were never misspelled, but had a
number of possible forms (BČliþ 1958: 104). Typically these were words
where the standard form was archaic in spoken communication, but older
editions of the Rules had refused to admit written equivalents of the spoken
forms.
Doublets were handled differently in the school Rules. Each pair was
listed only once, under the nativized spelling (esej i essay). BČliþ (1958a:
103) commented:
In this way, the second spelling is admitted as possible, although for use in
schools the first form is recommended. This is in the spirit of the develop-
mental tendencies of Czech to write domesticated foreign words with a na-
tivized spelling; and as in schools we are dealing with new users of the
standard language, who are not as encumbered by older orthographic tra-
dition, it was possible, in contrast to the academic edition, to select an ar-
rangement that supports the developmentally progressive form.
The division of the Rules into two versions thus attempted to accommo-
date those who wanted choice and those who wanted clear recommenda-
tions.
Changes to the content of the Rules were far less radical than changes to
the format. Váhala (1956) divides them into seven areas:
– Changes to the prepositions s and z and the prefixes s- and z-;
– Changes to vowel length in some native words formed from a
root plus infix;
– Changes to the spelling of loan words;
– Expansion of the use of capitalization for proper nouns;
– Expansion in the number of prepositional phrases written as a

single word: propĜíštČ for the older pro pĜíštČ ‘for next time’,
bezesporu ‘doubtless’ vs. older beze sporu, which was now to
be used only in the literal sense of ‘without an argument’;
– Reformulation of rules for comma use to allow more leeway;
– Word division (hyphenation).
In addition, there were changes to the morphological information given
in the school edition, although Váhala points out that these were based on
previous work by specialists in morphology; he did not regard codification
of morphology as within the purview of an orthographic handbook (1956:
223).
The spelling of loan words was the most controversial, and deserves
some closer attention, because it was the subject of clashes in 1993–1994.
As we saw earlier, linguists observed that when pronouncing borrowed
words, Czechs tended to lengthen certain vowels and adapt non-Czech con-
sonant clusters to a recognizable shape, although these tendencies were not
universally applied. The 1957 Rules continued the trend of accommodating
spelling to what scholars deemed to be the accepted Czech pronunciation of
these words. Exceptions were made for uncommon words and for
specialized technical vocabulary. In some cases the older forms were left
alongside the new ones, while in other cases the new, supposedly more
phonetic spelling replaced the old one entirely (see Table 26, p. 139).
These changes were clearly reformist, but were not a final solution. A
large number of words followed the analysa/analýza type, having two pos-
sible spellings. The innovative one was recommended but not prescribed.
The rules for introducing new phonetic spellings and allowing doublets
were vague, relying on a sense of when a term had entered “general usage”
and whether or not it still had a “specialist connotation”. They were, as
befits the functionalist credo, usage-led: in other words, they followed
observation of how words were (or should be) used, rather than looking for
abstract categories based on formal criteria that could be mechanically
applied to all words of a certain shape. The problem is that usage-led
criteria are in constant flux as usage changes, and the situation can look
substantially different from differing perspectives.
4.5. The reaction to the reforms
The vast majority of published reactions to the new Rules were positive.
KuchaĜ and Váhala (1960: 42) list enthusiastic reviews in the Communist
Party flagship organ Rudé právo, the cultural weekly Literární noviny and
the teachers’ journal Uþitelské noviny, as well as dailies Práce and Rovnost.
This uniformity was not surprising. News media and professional organs
were controlled by a system of party oversight. They would have found it
politically difficult to oppose a reform that had received clearance at the
highest levels.
Table 26. Changes in the spellings of foreign words
gloss older spelling 1957 spelling principle
‘anaemia’ anaemie anémie <ae/oe> Æ <e, é>
‘theory’ theorie teorie <th> Æ <t>
‘synthesis’ synthese, syntéza, <th> still optional for a few
synthesa synthese, words
synthesa
‘tennis’ tennis tenis <CC> Æ <C>
‘conserves’ konserva konzerva everyday vocabulary:
<s> Æ <z> as pronounced
‘analysis’ analysa analýza, abstract vocabulary:
analysa <s> Æ <z> optional but
recommended
‘president’ president president small no. of exceptions where
<s> remains
‘workshop’ atelier ateliér write long vowels where they
are pronounced
‘culture’ kultura kultura exception for [WÖ], still usually

If the lead articles and editorials took an overall positive tack, opinion
pieces and “man in the street” interviews revealed some decidedly negative
sentiments among the public. Summarizing the period in retrospect, KuchaĜ
and Váhala (1960: 45) admitted the depth of opposition quite candidly, al-
though they had sharp words for their detractors:
Critical voices also expressed themselves in our press, calling attention to
actual (in lesser numbers) and supposed inconsistencies and insufficiencies
in the Rules, certain principles, and individual changes. These were pri-
marily critical reactions of readers of the older generation, who were led
more by emotional impulses than by a true factual knowledge of the new
edition of the Rules, or even of the preceding [1941] version. Frequently the
new Rules were criticized for amendments they did not contain, occa-
sionally for changes which had already been made in earlier Rules. Both
general and concrete criticisms often lacked an adequate factual foundation.
[...] Sometimes – especially in the regional press, but also here and there in
central press organs – [...] it was evident how poorly informed the
newspaper journalists and correspondents were, and how irresponsible the
editorial board had been toward its readers. In these instances, orthography
was confused with language, its vocabulary and grammar (they would write,
for example about the Rules of the Czech Language) and the Rules were
made out to be a linguists’ fiat (in contradiction with reality – they had
forgotten about the public questionnaires preceding the publication of the
Rules).
They also dismissed the three lengthier review articles of the Rules that had
been most critical of them, saying they were “not meant as a serious critical
analysis”, “without sufficient factual analysis, despite the harshness of cer-
tain rebukes”, and that they contained “mistakes and errors of a
fundamental nature” (KuchaĜ and Váhala 1960: 46).
The only criticism that they acknowledged as being well founded was a
letter from the copy editors and proofreaders of Rudé právo, printed in
Tvorba (22 January 1959). These workers admitted that the large number of
doublets for loan words in the new Rules had probably been the only possi-
ble solution, but felt that it encouraged people to use either form more or
less randomly. They therefore asked that the number of doublets be
drastically reduced in future editions.
KuchaĜ and Váhala also looked at which changes had taken root most
easily and which had caused problems. Less problematic were reforms to
<s> and <z> as prefixes and prepositions, and sporadic adjustments to
vowel length in native Czech words. However, doublets for foreign words
of the sort fyzika vs. fysika ‘physics’, organizace vs. organisace ‘organiza-
tion’ took hold more slowly, with a large number of authors continuing to
prefer the older optional forms with <s>. Marking vowel length in foreign
words – which was not optional – was also controversial, not least because
it affected a significant number of personal names of foreign origin (e.g.
Ámos for original Amos, Emílie for original Emilie), and meant that the
form people were now encouraged to use would not be the one on their
birth certificates and identity documents (1960: 49–50).
Most publishers switched over to using the new Rules in the course of
1958 and 1959, although the initial results reflected a certain confusion.
KuchaĜ and Váhala also documented cases where the Rules were overzeal-
ously applied, with <z> written for <s> in places where the Rules did not
recommend it, e.g. kurz ‘course’, prezident ‘president’ and even

socializmus ‘socialism’ on a commemorative 30-heller stamp (1960: 51–
52). Newspapers were the first to convert. They encountered significant
problems implementing the new spellings consistently. Journals followed
more slowly, with many – especially in technical fields – adopting a mixed
style in which they retained older spellings for words specific to their
discipline.
One reason for this was that the principles behind nativized spelling of
borrowings brought the Rules into conflict with orthographic commissions
for particular technical fields. These specialized commissions were most
often run under the auspices of the CLI and had an official CLI representa-
tive on them. For the most part, they agreed on implementing some subset
of the Rules in their journals and publications, but often rejected nativized
spellings of specialist terms, preferring to follow the more international
spellings they had used to date.
KuchaĜ and Váhala found “isolated” instances of magazines and
journals that simply continued to follow the 1941 Rules, about which they
said:
This is an incorrect and unjustified approach. It is certainly possible that
even after some time traces of an older form of writing will continue to ap-
pear, but if such retention of old habits is deliberate, it is in no way possible
to approve of this (1960: 53)
This statement highlights a new feature of the 1957 Rules: their as-
sumed universal applicability. Earlier editions had been mandatory only in
schools, and this by virtue of the fact that the Ministry of Education would
commission the revision and/or participate in the process, before having
approval over the final product. Whether or not publishers adopted the
Rules had been a matter of their own judgment.
But in a totalitarian state, where the one ruling party had been involved
in commissioning, altering, and approving the Rules, the potential for ap-
plicability was much wider. The authors clearly saw universal conformity
to the Rules as a great benefit to society. In whose interest could it possibly
be, after all, for journals and newspapers to spell a word different ways?
Orthography was not, in their view, an integral part of language, but merely
a tool for rendering it. Imposing a certain set of spellings or options was,
they felt, hardly a reason to cry censorship or suppression.
Two facts about Czech society explained the near-universal implement-
tation of the Rules in the press.
The first was the scholarly authority of the CLI. In the late 1950s, the
CLI was at the height of its authority; its orthographic commission boasted
the country’s two most influential linguists (Havránek and Trávníþek) as its
patrons, and other distinguished linguists made up the ranks of the authors.
Consultation had been undertaken with the country’s educated elite from
the earliest stages. The authors of the Rules thus had every expectation that
their recommendations would be fully followed.
The second was that mechanisms for ensuring compliance were now
available in a way that they had never been in democratic Czechoslovakia.
The Party and government apparatus was well represented in every institu-
tion in the country, and Party discipline meant that a decision handed down
from above, questionable or otherwise, was to be implemented with a mini-
mum of fuss. The gradual but eventually almost universal implementation
of the new Rules after 1957 testify to the success that the orthographic
commission had in bringing the Communist Party on board and making
their acclamation and implementation a matter of Party policy.
4.6. Discussions in the 1960s and 1970s
Debates over orthography did not end with the publication of the 1957
Rules. Cvrþek (2006) has shown that, far from it, the introduction of partial
reforms encouraged many linguists to believe that a more comprehensive
and radical reform could be just around the corner. Scholars like BČliþ, who
had been an author of the 1957 reforms, and Vachek, an early member of
the Prague School, as well as up-and-coming younger linguists like Sgall
and Novák, argued in scholarly journals for varying degrees of simplifying
and rationalizing the principles of Czech orthography. In their views, and
those of other scholars at the time, Czech orthography contained many
traps and difficulties that were the result of historical accident. During this
period, linguists collected objective evidence that Czechs found their
spelling difficult to master. In Vachek’s view, inconsistencies in spelling
complicated the process of moving from the natural spoken domain to the
written one. These leftovers from a previous era lacked functionality and
should not be retained (Cvrþek 2006: 48–59).
A more moderate group agreed on the linguistic principles behind the
idea of reform, but doubted that they could be implemented. Cvrþek places
one of the Prague School founders, Bohumil Trnka, in this group, as well as
Lumír Klimeš, who argued:
Conclusions 143
Radical reform […] would come into conflict with the norm, for this new
codification would not be a reflection of the current norm, but the result of a
noticeably artificial construct, even if it is very well thought through and in
theory excellently designed. (cited in Cvrþek 2006: 52)
However, for other linguists, orthography was also portrayed as a cul-
tural artifact, with value unto itself. Kopeþný stood against the possibility
of any reforms, calling orthography part of the “heritage of the whole na-
tion” and deriding frequent reforms as “displays of disrespect” for the
nation’s common property (Cvrþek 2006: 52). These views set aesthetic
and historical criteria against the linguistic ones of the reformers and mod-
erates, seeing orthography as something far more significant than a mere
linguistic tool.
In the end, the sceptics and anti-reformers won out, and the issue of
radical reform was shelved. As a consequence, the 1957 Rules were to far
outlive their anticipated lifespan. Previously there had been substantial
revisions to the Rules every decade or two, but the 1957 Rules survived in
essentially unaltered form for 36 years. Minor revisions were undertaken at
approximately 5-year intervals, when the academic version was repub-
lished; these changes were then incorporated into the school version, which
was reprinted more or less every year. Frequent articles in the scholarly
press testify to the fact that linguists had not yet given up entirely on the
idea of further root-and-branch reform of the spelling system and continued
to explore both the problems of the existing spelling system and ways to
address them.179
5. Conclusions
The history of orthographic reform in the Czech lands shows the same con-
cerns arising again and again. The relationship of the language to that of its
foreign neighbours, the role of purism, and the influence of authoritarian
views of language are abiding concerns that appear in different guises in
different periods. We can also trace the rise and fall of particular structural
conditions for reform and changes in the societal background to them.
5.1. Motivations and spelling reform
In the history of Czech, we see clear shifts in the “status agendas” identi-
fied in Fishman (2004) (see chapter 1, section 5.3). The preoccupation with
purity, associated in the nineteenth century with the “revivers” of Czech
and its standardizers, has in the course of the twentieth century become the
province of those opposed to the regulators. The latter group has, beginning
in the 1920s, begun to incorporate elements of vernacularism into its
agenda, with the high point of this being in the 1950s, when the science of
linguistics promised to provide regulators with a planned path for the rap-
prochement of the standard code with the language’s spoken varieties.
Uniqueness has never played a strong role in Czech language planning,
but as the fashion for basing planning decisions on etymology waned
throughout the twentieth century, the opposing pole of internationalization
assumed increasing importance. However, internationalization itself did not
have a single, uniform direction. A pan-Slavist variant, strongest in the late
nineteenth century, the 1930s, and the 1950s through 1980s, looked to de-
velopments in Slovak, Russian and other languages in the Slavonic world,
while a Western-oriented variant, strongest during the Nazi occupation and
then again in the 1990s, emphasized the traditional cultural ties of the
Czechs with the Germanic and Latin world. The former pushed orthogra-
phy in the direction of reform and nativization of loan words, the latter to-
wards the preservation of spellings familiar from Western European lan-
guages.
Classicization emerges as a potent force in Czech during the National
Revival, with its express intention of resuscitating many elements of a pres-
tigious older variety of the language to invigorate the contemporary code.
Like purism, it reaches a peak of influence in the mid- to late nineteenth
century and then recedes as the developing contemporary standard becomes
more firmly rooted.
The particular history of the Czechs, with its traditional view of the
neighbouring German/Austrian language culture as its oppressors, has dis-
couraged any Sprachbund motives for spelling reform.
Einbau motivations appear at several points in Czech language and
spelling reform. Nineteenth-century borrowings from Russian and Polish,
two languages with more continuous literary traditions, can be seen as evi-
dence of an Einbau motive. In the interwar period, Czechslovakism pro-
vided an opportunity for spelling reformers to advocate the harmonization
of Czech and Slovak spelling – a cause that continued in the communist
period, long after the First Republic’s political movements had been bur-
ied.180
Conclusions 145
In terms of Ager’s motivations (see chapter 1, section 4), identity and

insecurity have been constant motives in attempts to regulate the look of
the Czech language. The promotion of German in the Czech lands as a state
language starting in the 1620s increases the ideological (in Ager’s defini-
tion) significance of Czech language regulation. Inequality in the Czech
context has traditionally focused on the subservient position of the Czech
language vis-à-vis German. With the rise of teachers’ organizations and an
education ministry, the inequality motive was extended to the social sphere.
It is here that we see the first strong pushes for simplification on the
grounds of social exclusion from the “writing classes.” And instrumentality
first appears as a motive in the seventeenth century, growing in importance
throughout the National Revival until it explicitly becomes part of the func-
tionalist language programme.
5.2. Spelling reform and language reform
We have seen that spelling reform does not follow the same course as lan-
guage reform in general. Some of the most enthusiastic purists as regards
the language’s grammar and vocabulary were its most avid spelling re-
formers. For these people, spelling is a means of transmission of linguistic
form – a sign pointing to a sign, if you like. Respect for the sign of the first
order (the language’s forms) is achieved by manipulating these signs of the
second order (the orthography) to make it yield a truer picture of them. One
trend that grew as the twentieth century wore on was the number of people
who raise the status of these second-order signs to the level of the first-
order ones, claiming that e.g. museum and muzeum (both pronounced with
[z]) are as different as, say, the choice of the old-fashioned infinitive dČlati
over the modern dČlat ‘to do’, or the more colloquial form kupuju ‘I buy’
over the traditional kupuji, where the different spellings reflects two distinct
morphological endings in pronunciation.
The general population has not usually shared the linguists’ eagerness to
make this distinction between orthography and language. As a result, public
rows over spelling rules have spilled over into the debate about the gulf be-
tween the standard and its spoken dialects. Proponents of spelling reform
are assumed automatically to favour drastic moves to adapt standard
grammar and vocabulary to that of the common spoken dialects, and vice
versa.
5.3. Purism and spelling reform
Can we still discern purism in the Czech language debate? The answer is
yes, but its legacy rests half with the conservatives and half with the inno-
vators. Following Blommaert (1999a, 1999b), we can divorce puristic
ideologies from their links with particular backers and notice how they are
reproduced in the arguments of various parties.
Those who object to reform in modern Czech are, unlike the resistors of
a previous era, not purists in the classical sense of the word. They are
conservatives or traditionalists, who object to change on the basis that it
disrupts cultural and practical continuity. Much of the conservative rhetoric
continues typical purist arguments about Czech values and metaphoric rep-
resentations of the language as an object, person, animal or plant to be
tended and cared for, but in the area of spelling, their agenda is devoted to
preserving a higher status and cachet for loan words – the very opposite of
purism. This testifies to a new role for the foreign borrowing in Czech after
the Second World War: with the growth of internationalisms, loan words
could become a sign of prestige and culture, rather than of cultural disinte-
gration.181
The other traditional strand of purism has striven to establish a mecha-
nism that would ensure greater regulation and prescription. This
mechanism was to a large extent embodied in the creation of the CLI in
1946. However, it has passed definitively into the hands of the innovators,
whose viewpoints on spelling, grammar, and pronunciation are more
relativistic and based on observation rather than a supposedly immutable
“right and wrong” based on intuition and feeling. While the philosophical
orientation of the “power brokers” of Czech orthography has changed, their
commitment to a system of orthographic regulation has continued.
5.4. Functionalism and spelling reform
The appearance of functionalism on the Czech linguistic scene marked a

sea-change in the way the nation’s language institutions conducted lan-
guage reform. Still, functionalism did not manage to solve all the problems
associated with the reform of Czech spelling.
Of all the changes functionalism underwent, the most striking was its
entanglement with the communist regime and its adoption of the socialist
slogans of the time. This was undoubtedly a rational gambit, given the po-
Conclusions 147
litical climate. However, further down the line, it seriously endangered the
first post-communist reforms. The Czech public of the 1990s, as any public
anywhere, proved to be fundamentally uninterested in matters of pure lin-
guistics. They could not evaluate the theoretical underpinnings of function-
alism or judge whether there had been any real linguistic consequences to
the debates that had gone on behind the façade of Marxist rhetoric. But it
did not require a doctorate in linguistics to see that many of the nation’s
leading linguists – including those responsible for instigating the reforms in
the 1950s and those who had headed the CLI at the beginning of the 1990s
– had in bygone days pledged their support to a now-discredited political
creed and emphasized the close connections between Marxism and
functionalism.
Regardless of whether this embrace of Marxism was genuine, tactical,
or misguided, the link itself was a matter of record. It was on plain view to
anyone opening Naše Ĝeþ, Slovo a slovesnost, or any of the various univer-
sity monograph series and edited volumes of the time.
Functionalism’s socialist pedigree led members of the public to conflate
the goals of spelling reform with those of the regime, even though they
were often opposed. Linguist Zdenka Rusínová, commenting in the cultural
weekly Respekt (November 1993) on language reform, says:
The way the former regime conceived of it was an ideologized and politi-
cized approach, through which the standard language was, as they said,
brought closer to the “broad masses.” Often it involved the illogical and
hasty nativizing of foreign words, as well as the artificial “popularizing” of
the language. The result was not the cultivation of the “people’s” language
– which is spontaneous and regulates itself – but rather a reduction in the
dimensionality of standard Czech, which could be seen in the near demise
of linguistic presentations of a higher and more cultivated nature, […] in the
degradation of public expression, in the flattening out of artistic language,
in the formalization of expression precisely where it should have been
relevant and precise, etc.
This pronouncement collapses issues promulgated by linguists (nativiz-
ing foreign words) with sins where responsibility more properly rested with
the Communist Party, such as the general degradation of public language,
and shows the extent to which the two groups had become one in the mind
not only of the general public, but even of those specialists who had been
“outside” the reforms.
There were other places where functionalism ran into conflict in
promoting spelling reform. Its leading scholars insisted that methods that
had proved successful for language description would be equally applicable
to language prescription. Working from actual usage meant that the recom-
mended rules had to mirror the messiness and inconsistency of a language
change captured at a point in time. As a result, the functionalists would cre-
ate lists of rules, exceptions to the rules, and exceptions to the exceptions.
Their critics would therefore ask why the word teorie should be written
with a <t> but synthese could be written with <th>. The authors responded
that these words were functionally different. One was in everyday use and
the other was a highly specialized term. In other places, they said that as
long as a word maintained a certain tinge of foreignness (nádech cizoty) it
had to retain its foreign spelling.
This is a functionalist perspective in that it focuses on actual usage in
the here and now and the reasons behind it, regardless of whether or not
that usage creates a system that seems consistent to learners and teachers. It
is a reasonable point of view, but one that is hard to sell to the average per-
son. The ordinary language user, after all, expects that if he gives up
something familiar – his facility with systems he learned at school – he will
be rewarded with something intrinsically better and easier, not just newer
or more accurate in some abstract linguistic sense.
We have seen that there is an aesthetic factor in spelling: the numerous
cultural associations bound up in a word’s form, which influence the writer
but also, and perhaps more importantly, the reader. To account for this aes-
thetic factor, functionalism developed lists of functions associated with
different styles and varieties of the language. This was a reaction to the
subjectivity of purism and its tendency to overstate the value of individual
aesthetic responses. The reaction, however, came with its own dangers. The
language varieties, and the functions assigned to these varieties, are not a
priori categories, but functionalism often treated them as such, investing
them with an objectivity that they lacked. The result was a prescription
based on asserted objectivity. It often brought the functionalists into
conflict with the country’s cultural elite, whose strong opinions about
certain spellings often clashed with the functionalist interpretation.
5.5. Ideological debates
Once regulation becomes a more consensual activity, we can look at the

actors and affected as participants in an institutional negotiation or what
Blommaert calls an ideological debate (see chapter 1, sections 5.1 and 5.5).
We can identify at least one consistently prosperous ideology in the
Czech context, which is the striving for the institutionalization of spelling
Conclusions 149
reform: the belief that authority is best lodged in a single institution. Al-
though purists from the country’s cultural elite were among the earliest and
most vocal proponents of it, their particular vision of institutionalization did
not triumph. Pressure from groups such as teachers and certain linguists
made the institutionalist agenda reformist rather than conservative. The
successes of the purists were embodied foremost in the unofficial sphere:
the journal Naše Ĝeþ in the interwar period. The vision of institutionaliza-
tion that ultimately triumphed was that of the functionalists, who managed
to ally it to a scientific ideology: the belief that data from “objective” stud-
ies of language could be applied to language planning.
Parallel to the debate over institutionalization was a debate over the in-
clusiveness of orthographic reform. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century,
we saw attempts to include various actors and interest groups in the process
of reform, but they were by no means broad-based. With the advent of “ap-
proved” manuals, the consultation process was formalized, but it nonethe-
less at each stage targeted some groups while explicitly or implicitly ex-
cluding others. Those who could speak the “language of linguistics” were,
under certain conditions, offered a voice in the reforms, while those who
did not were assumed to be only consumers of language reform. While the
formal structures correspond well to the sort of cost/benefit model proposed
by Cooper (1989: 80–83), the informal debates reveal a much messier
picture, where rational bean-counting is subordinated to individual aesthetic
reactions and beliefs.
5.6. Reactions to reform
The most consistent lesson we can draw from the history of Czech
orthography is that reforms have come and gone, but a growing and vocal
class of intellectuals has been generally reluctant to accept changes that
they feel are being foisted on them by politicians and teachers. Proposals
for reform may be welcomed in theory, but they are then fought tooth and
nail, and it has required tremendous personal charisma, prestige, and dog-
gedness on the part of the reformers to see them through. Successful lan-
guage reformers began with a workable idea, and cajoled the more au-
thoritative people and institutions around them into accepting their sugges-
tions. Unsuccessful reformers may have had a bad product – but then again,
it may just be that they failed to persuade enough of the great and the good
onto their side.

A continuing source of conflict is the fact that standard language
reformers are trying to strike a bargain that is to the detriment of many of
the language’s existing users. To smooth the way for the next generation,
the current generation must re-learn many of their habits. But people who
have already mastered the basics and some details of Czech spelling, al-
though they may report themselves as being in favour of reform, have a
“feel” for how things are spelled and in actual fact are loath to part with this
security. It is precisely this group that is in a position to make decisions and
to proclaim their views to the literate community. Consequently, they are
the ones who can do the most damage to a language reform. We see evi-
dence of this widespread public resistance throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, and in 1993 it exploded in its most virulent form yet.
Chapter 5
Czech orthographic reform, 1980–1994
We underestimated orthography. It’s not just the most trivial thing about
language. It’s also the most visible.
Karel Hausenblas182
Each revision of the official spelling manual of Czech, the Rules of Czech
Orthography, has proved highly controversial. The 1957 reform, despite its
extensive consultation period, was perceived by many as being a “top-
down” imposition, as were further reforms introducing elements of non-
standard Czech into the arena of the standard. Any discussion of reform
from thereon in had both a practical linguistic component and a socio-
political subtext. In this way, a relatively minor set of changes came to be
seen as a national scandal, prompting a widespread public outcry. This
chapter outlines the “where and when” of recent orthographic reforms in
Czech. The issues they raised are taken up in the following chapters.
1. The reforms from 1980–1989
An orthographic commission had existed since the 1930s, and was com-
posed of Czech linguists from a variety of backgrounds and departments.
At some times it was moribund, although there were periods of greater ac-
tivity. According to Sedláþek, this commission always consisted of 30 to 40
members drawn from the Czech academic community. It was convened
under the leadership of Bohuslav Havránek in the 1960s, Václav KĜístek in
the 1970s, and Jan Petr in the 1980s.183
Most documents relating to the planning of these reforms are not part of
the public record and many were pulped long ago. This applies as well to
documents tracing the relationships between the Communist Party and the
reforms. Still, there are occasional references to planned reforms in the
scholarly literature and the underground press. The need for further partial
reforms was signalled as far back as 1981, when Petr, in an article entitled
“Na okraji výroþí Ústavu pro jazyk þeský ýSAV” (“A footnote to the
Czech Language Institute’s anniversary”, Petr 1981: 6–7) wrote that,
152 Czech orthographic reform, 1980–1994
…the orthography commission now faces the pressing task of drafting

partial corrections to individual points, as per the intentions of the 1957
reforms, primarily to eliminate some inconsistencies and introduce uniform
resolutions for difficult cases (e.g. capitalization).
A personal interview with Petr Sgall, however, casts the situation in the
early 1980s in a slightly different light. According to Sgall, the existing
orthographic commission, of which he and his fellow revisionist JiĜí
Hronek were members, had by 1983 prepared a proposal for a far-reaching
spelling reform.184
The commission had been convened under the patronage of Education
Minister Milan Vondruška. According to Sgall, it was widely understood
among the membership that Vondruška had cleared the idea of radical re-
form with his higher-ups and that implementation was expected to move
smoothly forward. In the event, he said, the reform was blocked by Com-
munist Party chairman Gustav Husák and other influential Party members.
At this juncture the commission was disbanded, and it never met again in
this incarnation. The idea of radical spelling reform was abandoned and has
not received widespread mainstream support among linguists since that
time.
Evidence for the existence of a plan for radical reform is documented in
a letter to the editor (ýeský deník, 1 June 1993), which quotes extensively
from a 1988 essay by well-known cultural critic, author, and former dissi-
dent Ludvík Vaculík:
Four years ago [i.e. 1984 –NB], the Party offices carefully unleashed on the
public the idea that, for easier school instruction, for the economy and for
the progress of science, it was necessary to change Czech orthography: ba-
sically, to simplify it radically. And they set certain of their own people on
the task of preparing this reform. However, educated society reacted with
disgust, so the reform was withdrawn from the programme for the
meanwhile; I think the Party offices decided to wait until more people of the
old school die off and until their own new simpletons are greater in number.
Further evidence comes from an open letter published in 1987 by Char-
ter 77 (Charta 77), the well-known dissident organization. It was addressed
to various organs of the government and the Academy of Sciences:
Two years ago an announcement about changes being proposed to the rules
of Czech orthography elicited a broad response. One of the suggestions dis-
cussed, whose realization assumed a radical reform in which orthography
would be brought into line with pronunciation to the greatest extent possi-
ble, was negatively received by the public. Critical voices warned against
The reforms from 1980–1989 153
the negative results of such a reform, which would in a stroke have changed
the graphic shape of the language radically and alienated younger genera-
tions from all literary works printed under the current rules. Language users
protested as well against the artificiality of this swerve, which instead of the
promised simplification of orthography would have brought new ortho-
graphic difficulties.
The broad, spontaneous interest in linguistic questions meant that, contrary
to habit, public opinion found a voice in the mass media, a voice which
soon could not be repressed or hidden. The exchange of opinions soon
ceased and the state authorities confidentially instructed the appropriate
places to forbid any changes to the rules of Czech orthography.185
Petr’s (1981) article explicitly addresses orthographic reform, but makes

no mention of any more radical proposals. In this light, his call for moder-
ate, partial reform looks like either a strategic positioning against wide-
ranging changes or the careful posturing of an official unwilling to “spill
the beans” on what would have been a highly controversial and unpopular
move.186
Was it purely the will of these top Party functionaries that killed ortho-
graphic reform in the 1980s, as Sgall reports, or did the opinions of an af-
fronted public play a role? In any event, abandoning radical reform did not
remove the myriad other practical reasons for undertaking a revision of the
Rules of Czech Orthography. Spelling reform apparently had enough insti-
tutional inertia that within two years a further commission was being
formed, this time within the Czech Language Institute, to consider more
moderate and partial measures.
The Rules had, since 1957, been published in two editions, called “aca-
demic” and “school”.187 Following the practice of their predecessors, the
1986 commission began work first on the academic edition of the Rules,
but then were ordered to quickly prepare and release a new school version
of the Rules as well. According to commission member Olga Martincová
(personal interview), the Institute’s director, Professor Jan Petr, never gave
the commission a clear reason as to where this change in direction had
come from, but in retrospect there seems to have been pressure from the
Education Ministry and the State Pedagogical Publishing House, both of
which expressed a strong desire for a revised version of the Rules for
schools.
Whether there were further political pressures is perhaps beside the
point. As anyone who uses reference works knows, they go out of date with
surprising rapidity, and at a certain point must either be revised substan-
tially or removed from print (see chapter 6, section 2.1, for examples). Let-
ting the Rules go out of print was not even a consideration: their publica-
tion was seen as part of the CLI’s core remit. Once this revision had been
commissioned, the temptation to re-examine the principles on which the
Rules were based would be irresistible.
1.1. The Czech Language Institute
Who, then, exactly was charged with this reform? In the late 1980s and
early 1990s, the CLI was a small-to-medium sized institute of the
Czechoslovak (after 1992 the Czech) Academy of Sciences. Its work to this
day covers a variety of areas in Czech linguistics. Its most visible public
face is the Department of Grammar and Language Culture (oddČlení
gramatiky a jazykové kultury). This department publishes the popular-sci-
entific journal Naše Ĝeþ (‘Our Language’) and runs the Language Service
(jazyková poradna), which answers telephone calls, letters and e-mails
from the public about language usage.188 The Department of Lexicography
and Terminology (lexikograficko-terminologické oddČlení) publishes dic-
tionaries such as the well-known 1993 single-volume dictionary of Czech
that is now the standard in the field. A third department, Stylistics and Text
Linguistics (oddČlení stylistiky a lingvistiky textu) is internationally known
for its work on discourse analysis and the analysis of spoken language.
Other branches of the Institute are compiling the Dictionary of Old Czech
and the Dialectological Atlas, which are being published volume by vol-
ume.189
At its smallest point in 1993 the CLI had only thirty employees, but this
came on the back of a 50 percent reduction two years earlier (Lidové
noviny, 27 February 1993); the number has since grown again. The people
involved in the new orthographic commission after 1985 would always
have constituted a minority of the CLI’s employees and only a portion of
the work ongoing at the CLI.
The orthographic commission constituted in 1986 had nine members:
ZdenČk Hlavsa, ZdeĖka Hrušková, JiĜina HĤrková, JiĜí Kraus, Olga
Martincová, Alena Polívková, Miloslav Sedláþek, Ivana Svobodová, and
VČra Vlková. Martincová headed the school edition, and had responsibility
for relations with educational institutions; Hlavsa was responsible for the
academic edition, and was in charge of relations with the press and pub-
lishing industry. Kraus was recruited to work on the so-called PĜídavek ‘in-
sert’ that prescribed transcription systems for non-Latin alphabets.190

Sedláþek was on the committee specifically as a representative of the
schools. Several other linguists are listed in the forward to the academic
edition as contributing “through solutions to specific problems and consul-
tations (zpracováním dílþí problematiky a konzultacemi)”.191 The commis-
sion sat at the behest of the CLI’s director: first Jan Petr, then, after the
Revolution, František Daneš, followed by Kraus.
1.2. The commission’s work before 1989
The relatively small size of the commission suggests that it was convened
to effect a quick revision rather than to undertake a prolonged, consultative
exercise. A larger, more representative body would have given the reform
more authority in the eyes of the public, but would undoubtedly have
bogged down in the variety of different opinions. Furthermore, if it had re-
cruited widely from among the distinguished members of the Czech lin-
guistics community to bolster its authority, the threat of the committee
splitting publicly over its disagreements would have been greater. Using a
commission drawn largely from within a single institute had the advantage
of imposing workplace hierarchies onto the commission’s activities. Com-
mission member Sedláþek remarked in August 1994 that “it was lucky
there were only nine [members] – otherwise the new Rules would never
have seen the light of day” (Lidové noviny, 29 August 1994). In the eyes of
many members of the public, this would perhaps not have seemed a bad
thing.
The first draft of the Rules arose without any public consultation.
Martincová (personal interview) saw this as a necessary step:
When work began on the Rules, it wasn’t possible to walk around carrying a
banner saying “something’s under preparation” when we didn’t even know
what results all those ideas, considerations, and analyses of material would
yield.
In Martincová’s view, the decision to keep the commission’s work un-
der wraps was more practical than anti-democratic. They did not see the
sense in a public consultation until there was a proposal on the table to con-
sult. However, for anyone who identified the leading representatives of
Czech linguistics closely with the communist regime, it was tempting to
cast matters in a different light. The underground Czechoslovak human
rights organization Charter 77 wrote in 1987:
At the beginning of February 1987 Professor Jan Petr announced at a public

meeting of the Communist Party of the Czech Language Institute, Czech
Academy of Sciences, that a new edition of the rules of Czech orthography
was being prepared. This new codification of the orthographic norm is to be
published by the end of this year. It is being worked on by a commission
whose composition was not revealed. Institute Director Petr simply an-
nounced that his news was strictly confidential and must not get out to the
public.192
Was the failure to consult an act of omission, or a sin of commission? It
can legitimately be seen both ways. Linguistic and political motivations
seem to have coincided here. If the commission had gone public with a
half-formed proposal, it would instantly have been slated by the public.
However, it is impossible to rule out political pressures from on high to
keep the reform a quiet, minor affair.
Charter 77 expected the Rules to be published late in 1987, but this fore-
cast proved premature. In 1988, the commission published a so-called
“white book” (bílá kniha), a typescript bound between white covers. It con-
tained the core of what would later constitute the explanatory part of the
Rules. The white book included a full explanation of the proposed changes,
but without the spelling dictionary in which all the proposed changes were
to be instantiated. According to Martincová, the book was sent to approxi-
mately 30 institutions around the country, including publishing houses and
the Czech language departments at universities and schools. They were in-
structed to circulate it as they saw fit among their employees. The white
book also contained a questionnaire about morphology. Respondents in-
cluded well-known academics such as the Baroque Czech specialist
Alexandr Stich, and pedagogy experts Marie ýechová and Vladimír
Styblík.193
The white book’s questionnaire testified to the interest of the specialist
public in matters of codification. Although only thirty questionnaires were
sent out, between 600 and 700 came back, according to Martincová.194 The
original questionnaires were widely photocopied and distributed, reaching
far beyond their original target: into science departments and the ranks of
the reading and writing public.
Because this questionnaire concerned morphology, it was not destined
to influence the shape of spelling rules (although it was, in retrospect, a
clear harbinger of the high level of public interest to come). The statistics
the commission gathered informed their decisions about which morpho-
logical forms to put in the school edition of the Rules. Anyone wanting to
comment on spelling at this stage had to formulate a free-form response to
the proposals in the white book.

Students were also involved, although no information about this was
published. Martincová explained (personal interview) that this consultation
had taken the form of “soundings” (sondy), in which the students took short
written tests (písemþiþky) designed to check their level of knowledge of
various features. The commission then analyzed the results to see where
students had the most problems. These tests were done in Prague, Brno,
Hradec Králové and elsewhere, and were similar to tests conducted by edu-
cationalists like Styblík when authoring textbooks and setting curricula.
Although some copies of the white book did filter out beyond the lan-
guage departments that received them, there was no guarantee this would
happen. Many people remained outside the loop. This was true of scholars
in other arts and humanities departments, such as the historian Antonín
Kostlán (personal interview). It was also true for linguists working outside
traditional Czech language departments, such as the prominent linguist and
language planning specialist Petr Sgall in the Applied Linguistics Depart-
ment of the Mathematics and Physics Faculty (personal interview).195
Are there any further reasons why so many prominent specialists in the
field later claimed that their views had never been sought, or that the entire
process had been conducted in secret? Commission member JiĜí Kraus saw
the problem this way (personal interview):
It’s the same old bureaucratic experience. Not that I’m an old bureaucrat….
You take a weighty decision, you write to everyone that this will be hap-
pening and this is how it will look. And most of the time it just disappears;
the secretary puts it somewhere, or someone says: “Hey, something’s come
in, have a look,” but no one reads it.
The entire consultation thus relied to a great extent on the goodwill and
efficiency of individual department secretaries and chairs to disseminate the
small number of copies sent around. When this failed to happen, people
were effectively disenfranchised from the reforms.
In places the situation was more complicated. Josef Šimandl, now a staff
member at the CLI, was a lecturer in the Czech Language Department of
Charles University in the early 1990s, and authored articles that took a
critical view of the Rules. His story gives a different perspective on the
consultation process (personal interview):
Shortly after the new Rules came out [in 1993], a very stormy meeting took
place in the Friends of the Czech Language Club, where Martincová,
Hlavsa and – I’m not sure if anyone else, I think perhaps Ivana Svobodová
too – came on behalf of the Rules. Everyone jumped on them, writers and
we [at the University] as well, and I must admit I objected that there had
been no consultation in a university setting, etc. And Dr. Hlavsa protested
strongly that there had been. That evening I left with the sense that they
were trying to sweep something under the carpet.
But memories come back, and about half a year later I remembered how in
1990 I had been rehabilitated and rehired at the Faculty of Philosophy and
Arts, catching Professor Karel Hausenblas as he was retiring.196 I remem-
bered belatedly that he had run seminars for junior staff, and at one of these
seminars there had been extensive material from the Czech Language Insti-
tute where, for each of these tricky features, there was a comparison of: the
state of affairs before 1957; according to the 1957 Rules; then according to
the subsequent minor revisions and the new proposal. There were cases
such as, for example, “Three White Rams Wine Bar” [i.e. capitalization in
proper names]. I can remember that it discussed matters such as: if the word
mušelín ‘muslin’ is written with a long <í>, then how should [the diminu-
tive] mušelínek be written, and so forth. […] At the time Professor
Hausenblas closed the debate, saying that there were surely more important
things we could be doing these days than picking around in orthography.
And so we never reacted to it.
Three years then passed, and I managed to forget all about it, remembering
it only belatedly. But they [the CLI] had in fact sent it around. The return
rate they got was obviously less than 100 percent, because at the time the
Czech Language Department of the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts sent
nothing – this I know for sure. But later it counted itself among those who
had not been consulted.
So things are a bit complex. It’s also due in part to the fact that it was dis-
cussed at that doctoral seminar and then I don’t know what its fate was sub-
sequently. Shortly after that Professor Hausenblas [retired and] moved out
of Prague and that is why the request fell flat. So they are telling the truth;
they did announce it. I can confirm this in retrospect, and it bothers me that
I managed to forget it for a time.
Šimandl’s account goes some way towards explaining the puzzling fact
that the CLI’s consultation documents elicited no official response from the
Czech language department of the nation’s most prestigious university,
even though the two institutions are less than a ten-minute walk apart.
Even without these roadblocks, the 1988 consultation was evidently in-
tended to be a limited one. It targeted specialists in Czech linguistics, both
in the research and teaching sphere, and a couple of the largest publishing
houses, but did not attempt to reach outside this particular audience – not
even to those who had served on previous orthographic commissions
The commission after 1989 159
(Sgall, personal interview). No comprehensive results of the consultation

were ever published. The authors of the planned Rules, then, consulted with
the people who were to “administer” them: academics, schoolteachers, and
publishers. In the period before 1989, they did not consult with people who
would merely use them, except by accident.
2. The commission after 1989
The 1993 reforms would probably have been the 1990 reforms, had history
not thrown a wrench in the works in the form of the Velvet Revolution,
toppling the Communist regime at the end of 1989. By this point, plans
were already well advanced for the publication of the Rules. Final drafts
went to the publishers SPN and Academia in January 1989, with a view to
having the completed editions appear in 1990 (Martincová, personal inter-
view).
After the revolution, these plans were put on hold. Martincová cites the
general upheaval as one of the primary reasons. Many institutions, includ-
ing the publishing houses SPN and Academia, changed their entire top
management (personal interview).
In addition, the CLI had its own change in leadership. Director Jan Petr
died on 13 December 1989 in an alleged suicide, and was replaced by
František Daneš, who had also served as director from 1965 to 1970.
As the political situation developed, it became clear that the clichés of
Communist society so bountifully represented in the Rules’ copious exam-
ples would be an embarrassment in a new publication. This became a fur-
ther reason to revisit what had been thought to be a completed project.
After 1989, a distinct change in approach is noticeable. The commission
took a more inclusive approach to consultation. This included seeking for-
mal institutional support as well as wider publicity among language users.
On 30 March 1990 the Scholarly Council (vČdecká rada) of the CLI met
to discuss the latest version of the Rules. The documentation of that meet-
ing shows that
The Scholarly Council of the Czech Language Institute has considered the
principles behind the new academic Rules on 30 March 1990 and has taken
a basically affirmative position on them. For some features, however, it
recommends that a more active position be taken toward usage through the
medium of the Rules.197
The “basically affirmative position” did include recommendations for a
host of mostly minor changes. The oblique reference to “a more active po-
sition” on certain features was about the spelling of <s> and <z> in foreign
words. This document places the authority of the CLI behind the Rules, and
legitimizes the use of the Institute’s name in material relating to them.198
According to Tomáš NČmeþek (writing in Mladý svČt, 26 August 1994),
the changes were first unleashed upon the wider public the week after the
CLI’s council approved the draft. It mentions laconically that “the Institute
informed scholars of the planned changes” on 6 April 1990.
On 22 May 1990, the Writers’ Council (Obec spisovatelĤ)199 organized a
meeting with the CLI to discuss possible reforms in orthography. In a
“rather turbulent discussion” they took up the matter of capitalization. Or-
thography of foreign words was also discussed, as was subject-verb agree-
ment in the past tense.200 The only resolution reached was that orthography
should not be a “sword of Damocles” held over the less literate, but that
continuity and tradition needed to be respected (Lidové noviny, 7 June
1990). This platitude hides a stalemate; the first part is from the CLI’s
rationale for proposing a reform, while the second represents the conserva-
tive position that changes have by and large a negative effect. If the discus-
sion could get no further than this, then it had not gotten very far at all.
2.1. Final dissemination and consultation, 1991–1992
The commission then undertook a further consultation, which was to be far

more extensive than the 1988 white book. They drew up a booklet called
Co pĜinášejí nová Pravidla? ‘What Do the New Rules Bring?’ Published
by Teachers’ Union Press (Uþitelská unie), it had a press run of 2000, of
which, according to Martincová (personal interview), about 1000 were
eventually sent out. The booklet contained an outline of the proposed
changes, as well as essays by Kraus, Hlavsa, and Martincová on the history
and principles of orthographic reform in Czech. These essays attempted to
set the reform in context and to help readers understand its fundamental
principles and motivations. It also included a 5-page questionnaire focusing
on orthography, which readers were requested to fill out and return to the
CLI.
The questionnaire begins with an encouraging statement:
Dear Reader,
The staff of the Czech Language Institute would like to request you to take
part in a survey. We believe it is important to ascertain the public’s opin-
The commission after 1989 161
ions about orthography, changes to orthographic rules, and orthographic

manuals. We hope, with your assistance, to gain an understanding of this.
We are sure you will be amenable to our request and thank you for your
willingness to participate.
This encouragement is balanced against what appears in the booklet
itself:
Especially in the case of schools, it is useful for them [i.e. language users]
to be acquainted with where and in which orthographic features
development demands certain codificatory changes. Therefore, we
welcomed the initiative of Teachers’ Union Press to let the public
familiarize itself with the new codification of orthography before it becomes
binding, when the Rules are published in book form.
There are three possible conclusions that can be drawn from these
juxtaposed statements. One is that the responding public uniformly
supported the CLI’s proposals; the second is that the questionnaire was
window-dressing that came too late to effect substantive change; and the
third is that the questionnaire was meant to gauge public reaction to further
possible changes. Based on the cautious wording of the questionnaire and
the booklet’s constant emphasis on the partial, repetitive nature of
orthographic change, the third possibility seems the most likely. The
wording suggests that although the CLI was interested in gathering this
information, the Rules were by this point a finished product. It is hardly
surprising, then, that the rules finally published are virtually identical to
those proposed in Co pĜinášejí nová Pravidla?
In addition to these direct forms of contact, there were regular articles in
the press inviting commentary; I have registered articles from 1990 to early
1993 with explanations of the proposed changes and explicit appeals for
comments from the public. These appeared in such varied publications as
ýeský deník, Fórum, Lidová demokracie, Mladý svČt, Reportér, Tvorba,
and Vesmír. Of these, two are daily newspapers from the centre and right of
the political spectrum, three are journals of news and opinion, one is a life-
style and news magazine and one a popular science magazine.201
Teachers would find themselves on the front lines when the reform took
effect, and so informing them was a priority. Journals targeted at them
printed contributions from the authors of the Rules, particularly Martincová
and Sedláþek. A series of articles in ýeský jazyk a literatura, a journal for
school and college teachers of Czech language and literature, laid out the
history of spelling reform and the proposed changes (Hlavsa and Martin-
cová 1991–1992; Sedláþek 1992–1993), as did a brochure by Knop (1991).
Public meetings with teachers were also held. Martincová reports that she
did a lecture tour (pĜednáškové turné) of at least 40 schools where she
summarized the impending changes for teachers and collected suggestions
and impressions.202
Why, once newspaper articles began to appear, did prominent specialists
fail to request copies of the informational brochure or try to inform them-
selves in other ways? It seems inconceivable that to a person, they and
everyone they knew could have missed every single article on the subject in
the Czech Republic’s most widely read newspapers and magazines. I asked
Petr Sgall why he, for example, had not made an effort to learn more about
the proposed reforms. His exclusion from the commission, he responded,
had led him to conclude that his input was not wanted. In any event, he had
no interest in trying to fine-tune a minor, partial reform, which failed to
address the central problems of Czech orthography and went contrary to the
principles set out by the linguistic committee of the Academy of Sciences
in 1964.203 In essence, he and others like him foresaw the huge public
outcry over the Rules, and decided to steer clear of it.
The problem, then, was not that Sgall and other prominent linguists had
no avenue to learn about the proposed changes to the Rules. But once ex-
cluded from substantive contributions in the initial phases of the project,
they were reluctant to engage in the process and to attach their names to it.
In this way, the commission’s pre-Revolutionary beginnings and the lim-
ited nature of its early consultations compromised it later on. A relatively
quick reform was purchased at the cost of shallow support among members
of the profession.
2.2. The debate in Literární noviny
The debate in the cultural weekly Literární noviny (‘Literary News’)

showed the extent to which reforms had been trailed and publicized in ad-
vance. An initial article by Alexandr Stich in 1990 was followed by a lull of
two years, and then a further five articles by Michal Ajvaz, Petr Fidelius,
Dana Svobodová and Stich in late 1992 and early 1993, before the publica-
tion of the Rules. These articles did not debate the specifics of the forth-
coming reform. Instead, they discussed (in heated terms) the advisability of
conducting reform at all, and who should participate. Stich, a consultant to
the commission, was a strong proponent of spelling reform, and defended it
robustly. Fidelius and Ajvaz took, respectively, a political and poetic
The publication of the Rules and initial reactions 163
outlook on reform, opposing it on the grounds of democracy and freedom

of expression.
3. The publication of the Rules and initial reactions
On 22 April 1993, the first announcements appeared in newspapers of the

publication of the new Rules. As with the 1957 Rules, they were issued in
two editions: the school edition and the academic edition. However, in
contrast to the 1957 Rules, the 1993 Rules were issued first in the school
edition, published by the aforementioned Pansofia.
This change was more a matter of practical coincidences than of design.
As mentioned before, the pressure for a new edition of the Rules had come
primarily from schools. The academic edition, according to Martincová
(personal interview), hit several snags:
The top management of Academia Publishers changed about three times in
a row. And both editions of the Rules were supposed to come out at the
same time, which did not happen. Pansofia, which was publishing the
school Rules, published first. And we found out (and I don’t know how this
happened) that the diskettes for the academic edition had been lost at the
publisher’s. This could have been for a number of reasons. One possible
reason was that in all those changes it simply got misplaced. Academia
were in the process of selling off their reproduction outfit at that time. There
was a tremendous amount of movement in the editorial offices, so they
could have just been lying around somewhere.
The diskettes turned up half a year later. I think it was Tomský who was the
director [of Academia] at that point, but I’m not entirely sure. He had no
interest in publishing the academic Rules because he insisted they couldn’t
turn a profit on it. Then he said they’d print the introduction. So Prof. Kraus
and Dr. Hlavsa went to explain to him that people expected both parts – and
especially the dictionary part, where the spellings of individual words were.
Then the publisher said yes, and finally at the end of the year, the academic
Rules came out.
The fact that the school edition came out first had three noticeable
results. First, it prompted a great deal of speculation as to why the order of
publication had been changed from previous editions. Second, it made the
morphological changes in the school edition breaking news, and associated
them more strongly with the new spellings. Third, it meant that the school
edition was the one drawing fire and criticism from the start, which had an
effect on the behaviour of the Ministry of Education.
The initial reaction to the school edition of the Rules was mixed.204 Over
the course of the first month, articles and notices appeared in ýeský deník
(22 and 23 April), Respekt (26 April), Mladá fronta dnes (30 April), ZN
noviny (30 April), HospodáĜské noviny (30 April), Telegraf (17 May),
Svobodné slovo (20 May) and Lidové noviny (29 May and further articles).
The tone of these initial articles did not always reflect the newspaper or
magazine’s later stance. Early reporting in ýeský deník, one of the most
vocal opponents of the new Rules, made the changes out to be almost in-
significant, and Telegraf, which later also ran a strong campaign against
them, printed a quite civil question-and-answer piece explaining the ration-
ale behind the changes and reprinting some questions and answers from a
recent CLI press conference. Reporting in Mladá fronta dnes was more
skeptical, claiming that but for the mass protests of teachers, the Rules
would have contained more radical and unwanted changes.
These early moderate reactions gave way quickly to more emotionally
charged and generally negative pieces. While one newspaper, ZN noviny,
announced that it was going over to using the new Rules as of 10 May, two
– ýeský deník and Telegraf – announced on 13 May and 11 June respec-
tively that they would not accept them. Telegraf asked its readers to write
in with their reactions.
In many instances, a key article – usually presented as an opinion piece
– kicked off the wave of primarily negative responses. The earliest was
Martin Daneš’s “Terorizmus režizérských kanonĤ” (‘The terrorism of
directorial canons’), published in ýeský deník on 12 May. They ranged
from the cogent and incisive, such as Antonín Kostlán’s “Políþek þeské
kultuĜe a tradici” (‘A slap in the face of Czech culture and tradition’) pub-
lished in Telegraf on 11 June, to the hyperbolic, slapdash, and barely co-
herent, as in JiĜí Šváb’s “Všem lidem mocným slova” (‘To all people capa-
ble of speech’) appearing in Lidové noviny six days earlier.
Over the six weeks from 12 May to 25 June, ýeský deník published 25
letters and commentaries on the new Rules, of which only three defended
them. The wave of rebellion that swept through Telegraf occurred slightly
later, with 27 letters and essays published from 11 June to 14 August. On
16 June 1993, Telegraf reported having a huge backlog of letters on the
subject, and apologized for postponing their publication. Those published
reflected only a selection of what they had received.
The newspaper Lidové noviny, often regarded as the Czech Republic’s
paper of record, offered the most extensive long-term coverage, with some
27 letters and opinion pieces between June and December 1993. The news-
The publication of the Rules and initial reactions 165
paper had a regular page in its weekend supplement NedČlní LN (Sunday

LN) devoted to language, in which most of the discussion played out. In
addition, Lidové noviny alone of all the newspapers had a regular language
column, Jazykové zákampí ‘The Lee Side of Language’. The column was
written by linguist Milan Jelínek, who undertook in a series of ten articles
in the second half of 1993 to lay out the basics of the new reforms and what
he thought of them.
In retrospect, Martincová (personal interview) offered the following
view of the situation surrounding the publication of the Rules:
…there were signs that this journalistic storm was whipped up by a pub-
lisher who had wanted [to publish] the school version. There were probably
some personal relationships there in the background…. Our group of au-
thors was commercially inexperienced; what’s more, it never even occurred
to us that we should be attending to various publishing contracts and exam-
ining everything going on around them. For us the important thing was the
text of the Rules and the principles behind them – the very rules they in-
volved. We argued about where to write s and z. There were people in-
volved in these decisions from outside the Institute and we kept putting the
whole matter forward and voting on it again and again. With discussions in-
volving three different viewpoints across about fifteen people in whose
jurisdiction it lay, voting was the only way forward. At any rate, those were
our internal battles, and we were paying attention to them instead of to what
was happening outside. With hindsight I see that we should have leaned
harder on the press to present and lay out what was going to be in the Rules.
Although even now I’m not sure that it would have helped.205
With the controversy over the Rules, strangled noises started to waft
forth from the Ministry of Education. The school edition of the Rules had
been issued with the Ministry’s approval certificate (schvalovací doložka)
upon publication, but then the Ministry began to hedge over its validity.
Deputy Minister Pilip ventured that a wider consultation process was
needed before the Rules could be accepted as the only recommended or-
thography guide for schools (see chapter 6, section 3.1).
In October 1993, Academia announced the publication of the “aca-
demic” version of the Rules. This was an important milestone. In publish-
ing the academic version, the CLI fulfilled the last remaining condition that
the Ministry of Education had set for it in the certificate of approval. But
the prevailing negative reaction to the Rules had further impacts that would
be felt in the course of the coming months.
One reaction came from the Writers’ Council (Obec spisovatelĤ), which
met in DobĜíš on 25 November 1993. Newspaper reports say the comments

from its members were generally negative. The Council’s board (rada Obce
spisovatelĤ) met a few months later to continue the discussion, with a curi-
ous result. The chairman of the Council, noted author Karel Pecka, subse-
quently proclaimed in a scathing article in Lidové noviny that the Council
board had recommended to its membership that they ignore the new Rules
altogether („Nová pravidla chaosu“, 17 March 1994). This interpretation
was disputed by the deputy chairman, Petr KovaĜík, in a subsequent article.
KovaĜík said there had been no such resolution at the meeting, as the board
members had held differing opinions on the matter (Lidové noviny, 18
March 1994).
4. Official responses to the public reaction
In the winter of 1993–1994, the Ministry of Education began ex post facto

to gather a wider range of views on the new Rules. This effectively led to a
further series of hoops for the Rules before they could be certified for use
in schools.
4.1. The experts’ seminar
On 17 March 1994, the Ministry convened an experts’ seminar (expertní

semináĜ) to discuss the matter. One member of this committee, Jaroslav
Hubáþek, reported in an interview in Uþitelské noviny (29 March 1994), the
weekly magazine for teachers:
“Our task – we were a committee of roughly forty teachers of Czech from
scholarly institutes, and institutions of higher, secondary, and primary edu-
cation – was to formulate a position with respect to the Rules published in
1993. We conscientiously weighed all possible approaches from scholarly,
pedagogical, and developmental perspectives, as well as from the perspec-
tive of language culture. And last of all from an economic perspective. Fi-
nally we agreed that the Rules were acceptable and could be used in the
classroom. Subject, of course, to the publication of methodological instruc-
tions about features that had not been fully thought through or are not un-
ambiguous.”
This constructive and optimistic account of the meeting was gainsaid by
a ministry official, Miloslav Bartošek, who, defending his part in the affair
Official responses to the public reaction 167
later on, said of this meeting to the newspaper ýeský deník that “the con-
frontation that took place at the seminar was very pointed” (26 July 1994).
One participant, Josef Šimandl, gave a bemused account on 21 March in
Mladá fronta dnes:
At the seminar we heard criticism (concerning conceptual inconsistencies
and details of which the journalists leading the battle against the Rules have
no inkling), justification (primarily of that which no one had questioned),
demagoguery (teachers and bureaucrats: “just approve Something for us”;
the representative of the institution that issued the Rules: “so will they be in
force, or not?!”), and even many sensible voices (which often magnani-
mously passed over the concrete problems). When the clamour died down
(there is no more fitting expression), it turned out that this parliament of
specialists was not capable even of voting on whether it should vote on its
conclusions (of about 35 present, there were 13 for, 11 against, and the rest
abstained).
The views aired in Lidové noviny on 18 March 1994, the day after the
seminar, showed the depth of dissatisfaction among scholars. Some, like
Sgall, were unhappy with the extent to which the CLI had, in their view,
monopolized what should have been a widely consulted process among the
linguistic elite. They saw these meetings as a chance to rectify this situa-
tion:
The reason these discussions are taking place after the publication of the
rules is that after “normalization” [the tightening of political and social
controls after the Soviet invasion in 1968], the revision of the rules came to
be perceived as an internal matter and unfortunately, even after November
[1989] they continued to be perceived as the remit of a single institute.
Uliþný, speaking to Lidové noviny that same day, regretted that the
Rules had been drafted at all in these conditions and that the CLI had called
the public dissent “irrational”, but he then emphasized the issues on the
table:
In my opinion, the authors of the Rules did not stick to their own principles
at numerous individual points. And this is the subject of our discussion.
A third participant, Jelínek, reported that
The majority of contributions come to the conclusion that users of the stan-
dard language should in the end receive a codified product, even if it has
certain debatable points. Any problems should in future be discussed purely
as linguistic issues.
The final outcome of this seminar was a decision that the Rules were not
so severely flawed as to prevent their use in schools – subject to the rein-

statement of certain variants with <s> and long final vowels alongside the
“new” forms.
The seminar decided to prepare an addendum (dodatek)206 to the Rules,
and after its meetings were over, an eight-member committee, including
Hlavsa, Sgall, Krþmová, Uliþný and others, met in the Ministry building to
sketch out the text of it.
4.2. The results of the experts’ seminar
On 27 April 1994, Petr PiĢha resigned as Minister for Education, and his
portfolio passed to his deputy, Ivan Pilip. Miloslav Bartošek became Pilip’s
deputy minister.
The newspapers reported that the new addendum was due by 30 June
1994. It was to contain the suggested revisions and instructions for teachers
on how to teach the new Rules.207 The CLI delivered its Addendum to the
new Rules a week ahead of schedule, and it was sent out for three expert
reviews. The reviewers were: the immediate past education minister, Petr
PiĢha; the chair of the Linguistics Association, Professor Jarmila Panevová;
and Professor OldĜich Uliþný, the head of the Czech Language Department
of Charles University’s Philosophy and Arts Faculty.
There were obvious solid reasons for choosing all three of these review-
ers. PiĢha was to represent the schools, and Panevová and Uliþný repre-
sented linguistic expertise, she as the chair of the Republic’s foremost asso-
ciation of linguists, and he as the head of the country’s most prestigious
department for the teaching of Czech language and linguistics. However,
all three of them had criticized the new Rules from the start, and the CLI
later through the newspapers faulted the Ministry for not having included
anyone among the reviewers with practical experience in the primary or
secondary classroom or in teacher-training courses (such as a staff member
from a pedagogical faculty). It was therefore not entirely a surprise when
all three of the reviews of the Addendum came back with a negative recom-
mendation.
However, Sgall (personal communication) gave a different view of the
process from the inside. At the meeting where the Addendum was written,
Hlavsa took down the text we agreed on, with a view to making copies of it
at the CLI and sending it round, but this never happened. Only when the
Ministry demanded it several months later did they get the text of the Ad-
dendum from the CLI, and it had been changed such that it was not accept-
able – not even for Uliþný – and had to be altered further, or rather returned
to make it closer to what had been originally agreed.
Lidové noviny reported that the reviewers rejected the Addendum be-
cause it was overly complex (20 July 1994). In an interview with ZN noviny
later that year on 8 August, Panevová elaborated on this point, saying:
As the head of a scholarly organization – the Linguistic Association of the
Czech Republic – I was asked by the Ministry of Education to lend my ex-
pertise on the Addendum to the school edition of the Rules, which had been
developed by the Czech Language Institute of the Czech Academy of Sci-
ences. Particular matters of interest included whether the Addendum could
serve as a methodological tool for teachers and whether, with its help, one
could orient oneself as to where the new Rules apply and where they yield
to the old version of the Rules.
Why did my report recommend rejection? The Addendum was written in a
murky style; it lacked clear instructions. This led me to conclude that with-
out a fundamental revision, it could not serve its intended purpose.
Summer was well underway and the Minister of Education had already
begun his summer vacation when, on 15 July 1994, deputy education min-
ister Bartošek announced that the Ministry was rescinding its decision to
make the new Rules mandatory in schools from September. In effect, the
Ministry was revoking the Rules’ certificate of approval. Ministry secretary
Arnošt Kastner explained the decision in the newspaper ZN noviny on 20
July 1994:
The text [of the Addendum] did not respect the conclusions of the experts’
seminar of Czech and Moravian Bohemists held in March. It lacks meth-
odological instructions for teachers as to how to work with the Rules. As
regards borrowed words, it simply is not clear which written form is re-
commended and which is permitted for use. The new Rules are thus unus-
able for teachers in their individual work.
Deputy Minister Bartošek, looking back on the controversy in ýeský
deník on 26 July, said he felt his hands had been tied:
When the textbook Rules of Orthography came out, we were assured that
specialists had been consulted about it. Then objections from linguists ap-
peared, and the situation resulted in the March seminar on the contents of
the Rules. The conclusion was: Produce an Addendum to the Rules. This
[addendum] was then put forward, but according to the seminar’s partici-
pants it did not correspond to the agreement. The clash that took place at the
seminar had been very strident. And at the end of July, it was not at all ap-
parent whether there was the will to renegotiate the whole matter. The
Ministry of Schools, Youth, and Physical Education had, in addition, pro-
mised teachers that a final decision would come down by the middle of Au-
gust. The seminar had said: Yes to the new Rules, but with the Addendum.
Because the Addendum did not meet the requirements negotiated, what had
to follow was the removal of the Rules from the register of [approved] text-
books. […] At the time I took this decision, I did not see any possibility of
further agreements. Personally I’m curious whether the Addendum that has
come out of the last round of negotiations will be suitable, or whether it will
again become the subject of criticism from a significant group of linguists.
This change to a school curriculum only six weeks distant threw the
educational establishment into a state of panic. Over the past year, new
textbooks had been written and old ones revised on the basis of the new
Rules, with an eye on receiving their certificate of approval in time for use
in the autumn of 1994. Now these certificates were under threat; it began to
look as if, with the withdrawal of the new Rules from the curriculum, all
the new school textbooks that had adopted them would become unusable as
well.
On 18 July 1994 František Talián of Fortuna, the Czech Republic’s larg-
est textbook publishing house, asked the Ministry to compensate him for
losses incurred, as he had published textbooks based on the new Rules that
were about to lose their validity (Mladý svČt, 26 August 1994). This looked
to be the first of a potential raft of similar claims from publishers across the
country; a similar claim appeared in Mladá fronta dnes from the textbook
publisher Kvarta a few days later (21 July 1994). Meanwhile, schools all
over the country had begun preparing for the introduction of the Rules.
They had acquired copies for their staff, ordered new textbooks written in
conformity with the Rules, and commenced retraining their staff. Now
these plans were all threatened on short notice. The affair was widely re-
ported in newspapers across the Czech Republic. Suddenly orthography
had assumed the proportions of a national crisis.
Minister Pilip cut short his vacation and announced on 20 July 1994 that
he was suspending his deputy’s decision pending a meeting with officials
from the CLI and other linguists. Kraus, by that time director of the CLI,
described these meetings (personal interview):
It was an especially comic situation for me. Because the whole time I’d
been grumbling about them [the Rules], but then as assistant director [of the
CLI] I couldn’t distance myself from them. I was the only person who was
supposed to defend something I wasn’t convinced of myself, but I think that
that summer we reached an agreement with Dr. Cink at the Ministry and the
Addendum came out… It was thanks to a lot of people. Not that they
wanted to mess with the Rules, but they just wanted to see the situation re-
solved. [….] I tried to follow it through, because, as I said, so much work
had gone into it that we couldn’t just drop it. So I agreed this with the min-
istry and am very glad we did manage to reach an agreement.
Two days later, Pilip announced a compromise, by which the CLI would
rewrite the Addendum within two weeks, and the Ministry would see that it
was printed and distributed to schools before the end of August.
Figure 4. © ZdenČk Hofman in Telegraf, 28 July 1994. “I’m no Dumpster diver;

like an idiot, I tossed my old Rules of Czech Orthography in here!”
On 4 August 1994, the Ministry announced that the revised Addendum
had been reviewed and approved by the three original reviewers (oponenti)
and parties to the March agreement. Many newspapers printed the text of
the Addendum in full; a scant three pages in book format, it fit easily into a
half-page newspaper article if judiciously edited.
5. The endgame of the 1993 Rules
Once the Addendum had been approved, the Ministry undertook to see that
it was printed and distributed on time. Newspapers followed the story with
short bulletins for the next two weeks until, on 25 August 1994, just a week
before the start of the school year, the Ministry announced that the printing
was complete and the Addendum was on its way to the schools.
Figure 5. © Vladimír Jiránek in Mladá fronta dnes, 5 August 1994. A primary

school head says to a teacher: “Colleague! Come down from that tree
immediately! (Now, how do I spell that?)”
A few events along the way ensured that the controversy over the Rules
would continue for some time yet. In Svobodné slovo, an article on 11 Au-
gust detailed how ýeská tisková kanceláĜ (ýTK), the primary wire service
for the Czech Republic, planned to handle the new liberalization of spell-
ing. ýTK planned to go back in every instance to the pre-1993 spelling, and
to continue to respect the new Rules “in the remaining instances (capitali-
zation, hyphenation, etc.)”.208
This had a significant impact on the daily press, as much of the news
they printed was taken directly from ýTK. On 10 August 1994, several
The endgame of the 1993 Rules 173
newspapers (including local dailies in the medium-sized cities of Hradec

Králové and PlzeĖ, Hradecké noviny and PlzeĖský deník, announced that
they were returning to spelling words like kurs and puls with an <s> instead
of a <z>. PlzeĖský deník coyly reported that ýTK had taken the same deci-
sion as them, while Hradecké noviny admitted a few days later on 16 Au-
gust that ýTK’s decision had influenced theirs.
Despite resolving the issue of the Addendum, the Ministry and the CLI
continued to be at odds over the next steps. Reports varied from paper to
paper. Veþerník Praha and Moravský demokratický deník reported that the
Ministry was calling for the CLI to rewrite the dictionary section of future
editions of the Rules to conform with the Addendum (12 August and 9 Au-
gust 1994). ZN noviny reported that the CLI said they did not have the per-
sonnel to conduct a large-scale revision of this sort (13 August 1994). Rudé
právo reported that the Ministry believed a thorough revision was advisable
and intended to negotiate the terms of it, while the Institute said that it was
impossible and that no agreement on it had been reached (12 August 1994).
It is understandable why the Ministry wanted such a revision. It would
have simplified use of the Rules and greatly reduced the possibility of
misinterpretation or contradictions between the dictionary part of the Rules
and the Addendum. It is also understandable why the Institute demurred.
Multiple revisions were needed on every page of the Rules, meaning a
complete overhaul of all the typeset versions. There were also philosophical
objections to it, some of which were sketched by Kraus (personal inter-
view):
I had always shied away from lexicalizing the Addendum. I only wanted
general rules with a few examples; I definitely didn’t want to stretch as far
as having every word in the Addendum and showing whether it could be
written this way or that. I really think that each word is different. Each
communicative environment is different, each person is different. For a
chemist it is probably more important than for computer specialists, for
whom it’s all the same whether we write chip or þip; it would never occur
to them [to ask].
The greater freedom offered by a loosely formulated Addendum thus
clearly appealed to some, especially those with a strongly developed lin-
guistic sensitivity. Nonetheless, a sketchy Addendum that contradicted
many of the entries in the explanatory and dictionary sections of the Rules
was not a satisfactory expedient for everyone. It made for a frustrating ex-
perience for many users of the Rules, as amply documented in the daily
press.
Figure 6. © ZdenČk Hofman in ýeský deník, 8 August 1994. In the bookstore

window are two new books: the small Rules of Czech Orthography, and a
giant Addendum.
The standoff continues to this day. Authorized editions of the Rules
since 1993 have included the Addendum along with the introductory expla-
nations, but no systematic revision of the Rules’ dictionary has been un-
dertaken. Meanwhile, some unauthorized editions of the Rules have
amended the text of the dictionary and explanations, incorporating the prin-
ciples found in the Addendum. How adeptly this has been done and with
what consequence for the nuances Kraus mentions is a question for further
consideration.
The copyright issue continued to run through the summer and autumn of
1994. The authors of the Addendum stated that they had not copyrighted it,
so that it could be distributed as widely as possible, and because they did
not think such a small document had any commercial value that could be
exploited (Práce, 12 August 1994). Perhaps as a result of this, some news-
papers ran the text of the Addendum under their reporters’ by-lines, slightly
amended at the beginning or end, or possibly with a few cuts. Reporter
The endgame of the 1993 Rules 175
Daniela Prokopová at ýeský deník took her colleague Vlaćka Kuþerová of

Mladá fronta dnes to task in print for doing this.209
A more serious problem with copyright erupted shortly thereafter, when
the publishing house FIN brought out its own version of the Rules. Pan-
sofia, who had brought out their authorized edition the year before, charged
that the new FIN edition was identical to it, except that a few words had
been changed in various places and a new author listed. Moreover, FIN
claimed to have a certificate of approval from the Ministry as well, al-
though they had not gone through the process themselves, and appear to
have been relying on the certificate granted to the Pansofia edition.
The CLI was then caught in a tricky situation. The head of FIN was a
lawyer, who argued that the Rules were a legal document, and that all he
had done was to cite them at length within the context of his own work, as
was provided for under Czech law. The CLI claimed they did not have the
funds for a legal battle, and were worried that a suit would be seen as a
move to assure their own royalties from the authorized edition – royalties
they were frequently suspected of receiving, despite repeated testimony in
the press that they had received nothing besides their one-off honoraria.
The head of Pansofia nonetheless took FIN to court, claiming that the Rules
were not a legal document at all, and that her contract with the copyright
holders had been violated (Mladá fronta dnes, 24 October 1994).
The current situation is an uneasy compromise. The Addendum in effect
scaled back the scope of the 1993 reforms, but in doing so, it introduced a
whole new set of optional variations into the language. In decreeing them to
be stylistically different from each other, it has in effect complicated the
language further rather than simplifying it. Spell checkers and computers in
general are not yet capable of making these sorts of subtle distinctions, and
since a significant portion of the population now uses them for their every-
day work, they are having an effect on everyday written discourse whose
extent has yet to be studied and analyzed.210
The situation in publishing nowadays is equally confused. Some new
conventions have been adopted, while others have remained outside the
pale. A check of three online newspapers, however, revealed some
interesting findings, reported in Table 27 (p. 176). Lidové noviny is
traditionally held to be the Czech Republic’s paper of record. Mladá fronta
dnes is the nation’s largest circulation quality daily. Blesk is the nation’s
largest selling paper, a down-market mix of celebrity gossip, scandal, and
bits of news.
Several trends seem clear in these figures. First of all, eight years after
these changes were introduced, the new -izmus endings with a <z> had
made no headway at all in the two most influential papers in the country.
By and large, they seemed to have been rejected by the country’s elite. The
same seems true of the spelling diskuze, although here the occasional new
variant does sneak in.
Table 27. Usage in three online papers, March 2001
word lidovky.cz idnes.cz blesk.cz
(old) (Lidové noviny) (Mladá fronta dnes) (Blesk)
(new) tokens percent tokens percent tokens percent
kapitalismus 170 (100%) 52 (100%) 19* (90.5%)
kapitalizmus 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 2* (9.5%)
diskuse 1491 (99.4%) 725 (97.7%) 26 (100%)
diskuze 9 (0.6%) 17 (2.3%) 0 (0%)
kurs 810 (94.6%) 754 (83.0%) 22 (38.6%)
kurz 46 (5.4%) 154 (17%) 35 (61.4%)
universita 2 (1.0%) 8 (5.6%) 0 (0%)
univerzita 189 (99.0%) 135 (94.4%) 15 (100%)
balón 28 (27.7%) 57 (33.5%) 10 (100%)
balon 73 (72.3%) 113 (66.5%) 0 (0%)
archív 4 (2.7%) 11 (90.4%) 3 (33.3%)
archiv 142 (97.3%) 104 (9.6%) 6 (66.7%)
* = includes all words in -ismus/-izmus.
Kurz is more interesting. The old spelling with <s> predominated in
Lidové noviny and to a lesser extent in Mladá fronta dnes, but in Blesk by
2001 was outnumbered by examples of the new spelling with <z>. For
univerzita, the new spelling with <z> was dominant, with only occasional
examples of the old spelling with <s>.
The situation is different with vowel length, where the new spellings
with short vowels took root much more quickly. These spellings are, of
course, not really new; they represent a return to the pre-1957 status quo,
and are thus less politically tainted than the new spellings with <z>.
Interestingly enough, these papers seem to have failed to impose a uni-
form spelling guide for these words. Even in places where the Rules dis-
courage the pre-1993 variant, we still find it in a substantial minority of
examples. Newspapers clearly are not enforcing consistently the use of a
uniform style. The Czech press makes use of various sources (such as the
Czech Press Agency ýeská tisková kanceláĜ), each of which have their own
style guides. Sometimes the press neglects to adapt the texts to their own
Conclusions 177
style guides. Enforcement of the style guide may be lax in places where
spell-checkers, for example, permit both forms. At any rate, the recent
spelling reform apparently has not had the effect of reducing variation and
rationalizing Czech spelling in the popular press.
6. Conclusions
It would be easy to ascribe the difficulties in the 1993 reform to the

collapse of communist-era lines of command, but this is too simplistic a
view. After all, orthographic reform has been a constant theme in Czech
history since the early 1800s, and many of the centralized structures that
could have been used to implement these changes do still exist in the Czech
Republic, much as they do across the rest of Europe (England’s educational
bureaucracy being a fine example of a top-heavy, dictate-laden state
apparatus beholden to political and ideological whims).
More importantly, the collapse in these lines of command shattered
what had been at best a fragile consensus that reforms would happen from
time to time, and opened a series of frank, sometimes virulent debates. The
main question was: Did orthographic reform belong in the hands of any
institution at all, and who in any event was to be trusted with it? As the
debate progressed, many of the truths the reformers and public regarded as
self-evident came under scrutiny. What after all constituted a reform? Who
was bound by it? How was it implemented? Who oversaw the process?
Under these circumstances, it is easy to see how the early 1990s were
both the best and the worst of times to contemplate such a reform. They
were the best of times in that the reformers were able to seize a crucial
moment in history, reflect the rapidly changing circumstances around them,
and bring the Rules into the post-communist world. They were the worst of
times in that the endeavour required trust from the public and reliable gov-
ernment structures that could bolster the reforms’ legitimacy. The public,
however, buffeted by economic uncertainty, and provoked by the newly
free press that was now constantly exposing the seamier side of public life
for all to contemplate and comment on, was in a deeply suspicious mood,
and the paths to government approval were now constantly shifting as the
ministries adjusted to the realities of a democratic state.
This chapter has outlined the trajectory of the 1993 reforms. In the next
chapters, we will examine more closely the participants in the debates and
some of the issues raised in the course of the reforms.
Chapter 6
The actors in spelling reform: Issues and debates
The spelling rules are a mess.

Stefanka Mikešová, pensioner, interviewed
in the women’s magazine KvČty, 2 September 1994
The potted history of the 1993 reform in the last chapter focused on the
how of the reforms, when, of course, the most interesting question is: why
did matters unfold as they did? A partial answer lies in the motivations that
underlay the reforms and the reactions to them. In this chapter, we will con-
sider the different players in the orthographic debates and the way the de-
bates shaped perceptions of the players’ actions. A large portion of the ar-
gument is devoted to the role of linguists, and specifically reformers,
although I will also consider the role of the press at some length.
The debates explored in this chapter and the next explore the ideologies
behind and the opinions expressed in primarily “non-factual” articles: those
that have a motive other than the presentation of objective information.
However, as we will see below, journalistic objectivity may be limited by
context and preconceptions. The presentation of apparently factual material
can still, through its arrangement and selection, reflect ideologies about
language and reform.
The corpus that forms the basis for my analysis of public opinions con-
tains 549 articles from the Czech press. These articles were gathered in
three ways.
First, the CLI granted access to their clippings file. In 1993 and 1994,
the CLI had subscribed to a clippings service run by Pražská informaþní
služba (Prague Information Service). The service collected articles about
language from national and regional papers. A little more than half of the
articles came from a careful culling of this file.
Most of the remaining articles came from a thorough perusal of the
major Czech dailies. The corpus covers the following papers in the period
April 1993 – September 1994: ýeský deník, HospodáĜské noviny, Lidová
demokracie (folded 1993), Lidové noviny, Mladá fronta dnes, Práce, Rudé
právo, Svobodné slovo, Telegraf, ZN noviny/ZemČdČlské noviny.211
All of these are considered “quality dailies”.212 They represent a range of
Participants, beneficiaries, and victims of reform 179
political views, from strongly left-leaning to libertarian. Two of them have

somewhat specialized audiences: HospodáĜské noviny focuses on economic
news, while ZN/ZemČdČlské noviny traditionally concentrated on the agri-
cultural sector, although this specialization is not as marked.
I also made a thorough sweep of the following weekly, fortnightly, and
monthly periodicals: Literární noviny (‘Literary News’), Mladý svČt
(‘Young World’), Reflex (‘Reflex’), Respekt (‘Respect’), Rozhlas (‘Radio’),
Tvar (‘Form’), Uþitelské noviny (‘Teachers’ News’), Vesmír (‘Cosmos’).
These were partially chosen for their availability, and partially because
the clippings file had contained the occasional item from there, demon-
strating that the magazine did cover the orthography controversy. They rep-
resent a spectrum of different subjects. Weekly magazines like Mladý svČt
and Reflex cover general cultural news and trends; the papers Tvar and
Literární noviny are more closely focused on “high” culture. Rozhlas is a
magazine for radio listeners, aimed at a culturally literate audience. Vesmír
is a monthly popular science magazine that has traditionally had a column
on language. Respekt is a weekly newspaper of social and political analysis,
and Uþitelské noviny is a journal for teachers.
Finally, cross-references from articles in the corpus helped to fill in gaps
and to ensure that all the most influential articles were included. An
overview of the distribution and variety of articles in the various sources
can be found in section 3 below.
1. Participants, beneficiaries, and victims of reform
The content of any given reform may be incidental to the reactions it

evokes. People’s training and their societal roles, self-defined or otherwise,
in part shaped their reaction to reform proposals. A detailed scheme of ac-
tors that goes beyond the reformers themselves will thus be helpful. The
taxonomy proposed below includes four major groups, classified along the
lines of their backgrounds, their particular areas of concern, and the types
of responses they gave.
I. Linguists consisted of those with specialist linguistic knowledge or
training. The vast majority of them did not participate in the compilation of
any given reform. Their opinions influenced the debate to a greater or lesser
extent depending on how well-known they were in the field and by the
public. They – more than any others – were influenced in their responses by
prevailing linguistic schools and current or past linguistic theories. They
180 The actors in spelling reform: Issues and debates
may also have been swayed by personal considerations: linguists are likely
to have stronger feelings than the general public when it comes to who was
included in or excluded from the orthographic commission. Some linguists
preferred to stylize themselves as belonging to the “implementer” or “pro-
ficient user” groups, depending on their profession and point of view. This
reflects the fact that linguist was to some extent a dirty word during these
debates, and was often used as a synonym for “revisionist”.
Ia. Reformers constituted the primary architects of the reforms. They
propagated the reform in the press and responded to comments. Although
in training they were essentially indistinguishable from the main group of
linguists, their position as “insiders” meant that they were more favourably
disposed towards reform from the outset, and were likely to defend their
commission’s conclusions.
II. Implementers were those charged with executing spelling reform.
The bulk of this group consisted of teachers, copy editors, native-language
textbook authors, and proofreaders. Other members of the public (for in-
stance, parents of school-age children) stylized themselves as implemen-
ters, inasmuch as they saw themselves as executors of these new policies
(helping their children with homework and explaining grammar and spell-
ing to them).
IIa. Officials were mostly non-linguists who held responsibility for areas
in which the reform took effect, e.g. bureaucrats or ministers in the field of
education. Their responses differed from those of other implementers in
that they were concerned with issues of authority and precedence rather
than practical matters of spelling reform, of which they professed to know
little. Their incursions into the linguistic arena tended to muddy the waters
of reform, but were more easily understood and appreciated by the public
than those of linguists.
III. Proficient users employed the standard language as a matter of rou-
tine in their professional capacities, although its form was not normally a
central concern for them. Lawyers, secretaries, businessmen, government
officials, writers, and members of the intelligentsia fell into this category.
Those who contributed to these debates regarded it as natural that, as
members of the “writing classes”, their opinions ought to matter in any
consideration of spelling reform. Members of this group were quick to
stylize themselves as “implementers”, because a large majority of them
were also parents or had some responsibility for finished written products.
IIIa. Discipline-based specialists were prone to view spelling reform for
its impact on their field (e.g. economics, molecular biology, structural en-
gineering). Their primary concern was to advance the needs of users in

their discipline.
IIIb. The media occupied a peculiar position in this scheme. Reporters,
presenters, and their assigning editors had similar backgrounds to other pro-
ficient users, but had a disproportionate ability to influence the way the
public perceived the reform. Their contributions – deliberate and inadver-
tent – to the reforms will be considered at length.
IV. Non-proficient users – those who experience great difficulties in
utilizing the written standard language – were the least represented in these
discussions. Members of other interest groups claimed to speak on their
behalf or stylized themselves as peripheral members of this group, but core
non-proficient users were rarely consulted directly and did not engage in
the debate unless asked by the media. Nowhere in these debates were non-
native speakers mentioned in more than a peripheral fashion.
IVa. School pupils constitute a special sub-group, because they were the
primary target of this and previous reforms. Although non-proficient users
at the time, they were expected to graduate to proficient users. There was
only rare evidence of direct reaction from or consultation with this group,
although their needs were measured and assessed by others.
1.1. Affiliation and representation
In the public face of these debates, Czechs presented themselves as repre-

senting various factions or interest groups. Their affiliations can be either
explicit or implicit, and the way this is presented makes a difference to their
argument. A columnist or correspondent automatically acquires a certain
gravitas, whereas a letter writer has no particular claim to authority. How-
ever, even a letter writer can have his authority boosted by a sufficiently
weighty signature:
From a letter by Assoc. Prof. Milan Žemliþka, M.A., Department of Czech
Language and Literature, Pedagogical Faculty, College of Engineering and
Textile Design, Liberec213
Many letter-writers and columnists habitually referred to their professional
experience as well in their letters. However, others (including some well-
known linguists) preferred to write instead as ordinary citizens and lan-
guage users, without making any reference to their profession or knowledge
of the field. This is in itself a way of marking social affiliation, as it sepa-
rates a person’s private opinions from his professional ones.
2. The reformers
The linguists who wrote the Rules had motives that were linguistic, practi-
cal and politico-social.214 The linguistic motives, discussed below in chap-
ter 7, section 1, reflect underlying attitudes and beliefs about language that
derive from Prague School linguistics. The practical motives revolve
around the obsolescence of the existing manuals, and politico-social mo-
tives reflect the substantial upheaval in Czech politics and society in the
early 1990s. The reform’s final product – the Rules of Czech Orthography –
reflects this combination of motives.
The commission was not a monolithic entity. Despite their commonal-
ities, each member had an individual vision of what the Rules could or
should be, and his own reasons for participating. By the same token, the
beliefs and situations that influenced them were not unique to the members
of the commission. Most of the commission’s linguists were, if anything,
squarely in the mainstream for their field, generation, and country. If they
had blind spots and failures, these tell us less about them as individuals
than they do about the limitations of Czech functionalism as a language
planning tool and the state of knowledge at the time.
Many public responses specifically mentioned the reformers. They give
an important glimpse of how people perceived this group of actors and
what the public thought their role should be.
2.1. Practical motivations for spelling reform
Linguistic ideology does not fully explain why a new version of the Rules
was expected. There were practical reasons for a revision, many of which
had nothing to do with the theoretical concerns of language planning.
In any society, handbooks date rapidly. The updated editions to the 1957
Rules that appeared in 1961, 1966, 1969, 1974, 1977, and 1983215 had taken
care of the occasional anachronism that had arisen in the examples of the
“theory” section. For instance, the 1957 Rules (Pravidla þeského pravopisu
1957: 74) give these examples of commas used in appositives:
ýSR je státem dvou rovnoprávných národĤ, ýechĤ a SlovákĤ. ‘The
Czechoslovak Republic is a state of two nations, Czechs and Slovaks, equal
under the law.’
Antonín Zápotocký, president ýeskoslovenské republiky, byl i vynikajícím
spisovatelem. ‘Antonín Zápotocký, the president of the Czechoslovak
Republic, was also an outstanding writer.’
The reformers 183
The first of these sentences had dated factually; the second had dated
culturally. The Czechoslovak Republic had changed its name in 1960 to the
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and this was reflected in subsequent edi-
tions of the Rules. Zápotocký, a lifelong socialist and communist with liter-
ary pretensions (he published autobiographical novels) who presided over
some of the fiercest purges and repressions in the early 1950s, was to say
the least a controversial figure. His presence in the 1957 Rules is curious,
but fits with the political tenor of the times. This sentence was dropped
from later editions of the Rules and replaced with an example about com-
poser BedĜich Smetana (Pravidla þeského pravopisu 1983b: 88).
Such occasional problems would have been dealt with as a matter of
course in the 1993 Rules, but as it turned out, the level of revision required
was far more substantial. While later editions of the 1957 Rules had
changed only the odd entry here or there, the institutional and philosophical
changes after 1989 required a thorough re-editing of the Rules and a whole-
sale shift in priorities. No longer did the Rules have to fit a particular
dogma or political stance, and in fact when a minimally altered version of
the old Rules was reissued in 1990, it was subject to harsh criticism.216
In 1993, it was no longer enough to eliminate the occasional tenden-
tiously political sentence. The scale of the changes can be seen in the
spelling dictionary, where examples are supposed to show the reader how
common words are used in names and how the capitalization rules work.
Usage reflects the societal context, and is not surprising that pre-1989 edi-
tions of the Rules were steeped in communist-era terminology and exam-
ples.
The word dĤm ‘house, building, institution’, for instance, is still a rela-
tively lengthy example in the 1993 Rules. We are shown how to capitalize
it in a variety of instances. However, examples such as DĤm pionýrĤ a
mládeže Julia Fuþíka ‘Julius Fuþík House for Young Pioneers and Youth’,
which no longer exists (Fuþík was an early communist, martyred during the
Second World War), are replaced with more contemporary ones.
In the entry for strana ‘party/side’, the 1983 edition mentions only the
Communist Party, while the 1993 mentions the Greens and, of course, the
ruling Civic Democratic Party. The communists, although still a significant
political force in the country, are edited out.
The word únor ‘February’ was a politically important one before 1989.
The old Rules make the point that the word was not capitalized in ordinary
references to the month, but was always to be capitalized when referring to
the communist putsch of February 1948 (e.g. Únor). The only exception
was that if the phrase VítČzný únor ‘Victorious February’ was used for
these events, then the first word would then “hold” the capitalization for the
entire phrase. No further explanation of these terms was required; the au-
thors clearly considered them to be common knowledge. This orthographic
orthodoxy becomes irrelevant after 1989 and the change of government,
and in the 1993 Rules, the word is offered with no examples at all.217
These examples are not confined to the orthographic dictionary. Read-
ing the expository section of the 1983 Rules (Pravidla þeského pravopisu
1983: 87), we come across examples of comma usage and phrase structure
such as:
SovČtský svaz, usilující o svČtový mír, má vĜelé sympatie pracujících celého
svČta. ‘The Soviet Union, which strives for world peace, has the fervent
sympathies of workers the world over.’
Naše lidová armáda, budovaná péþí KSý, podporovaná vším lidem, je
nepĜemožitelnou záštitou míru. ‘Our people’s army, built under the care of
the Communist Party, supported by the entire nation, is an invincible
bulwark of peace.’
The 1993 reforms thus had a practical dimension as well. After 1989,
anyone using a pre-revolutionary handbook would become increasingly
frustrated at its lack of relevance to post-communist society. It did not
contain the examples and phrases people saw around them, and was chock
full of outdated (dĤm, únor) and possibly irritating ones (strana). Continu-
ing to publish and republish the 1957 manual would have made the CLI
look like a retrograde, hidebound institution.
This motivation arose only partway through the project, as the basic re-
visions were already in more or less final form by 1989. Ironically, how-
ever, it assumed a singular importance in the wake of the social and politi-
cal changes in transitional Czechoslovakia, and was widely cited in the
press both by authors of the reforms and reviewers as a feature of the new
Rules.
2.2. Political motivations for spelling reform
To what extent is orthographic reform a political matter? Certainly lan-

guage planning can have a political or strategic cast in many societies. A
frequent subject of study has been the politics of minority communities
within a larger political entity (see Schiffman [1996: 148–172] on the status
of languages in India and Ager [2003: 57–61] on the status of Scots,
English and Welsh in the British Isles) or the nation-building attempts of
The reformers 185
formerly colonized states and their reaction against a pervasive colonizing

language (see Druviete 1997 on Latvian, Wexler 1992 on Belarusian, and
Buyássyová and Ondrejoviþ 1997 on Slovak).
However, orthographic reform is easily politicized in a variety of con-
texts. French is an example of a majority language of a powerful state as-
suming a highly politicized role in national discourse, much as in the above
examples. The minority-majority and decolonization issues are not at all
irrelevant for French, as it turns out. It has been argued in several places –
most recently and clearly by Ager (1999) – that the French perceive their
nation and language to be under threat, especially from English. Sally
Johnson (2005) describes the legal battles over German language reform,
and other attempted reforms in e.g. the Netherlands, Norway, and Russia
(see e.g. Jacobs 1997 on Dutch, Bull 1993 and Hallaråker 2001 on
Norwegian, Lopatin 2001 on Russian) show that majority and dominant
languages are also prone to it, although one then needs to look for factors
within the dominant political and social culture.
Czech, the majority language of a state independent for almost 90 years,
falls clearly into this latter category. The politicization of spelling reform in
Czech owes much to its close historical ties with Czech nationalism and the
general politicization of linguistic theory, linguistic institutions, and lan-
guage culture that took place under the communist regime (see chapter 4,
section 3.3).218
The proliferation of political content in pre-1989 editions of the Rules is
an established fact, as we saw in the last section. Some of these examples
are essentially referential. A rulebook, after all, refers to the society where
it was written, and we would not expect it to ignore common names and
words just because they have some political content. Many examples are
gratuitously preachy and moralizing – but we can, if we wish, excuse these
as a simple and necessary political façade on an essentially non-political
structure, and this is how the CLI was in fact keen to portray them.
An apologia is offered by Daneš in a March 1993 article in the popular
science magazine Vesmír:
Critics sometimes come forward with the assertion that this Czechifica-
tion219 was the product of communist despotism and the primitivism of its
bearers. Was it truly thus? Of course, the Rules did not develop without this
force’s inclusion and intrusions, and linguists’ interaction with it was not
simple, but I know (if indirectly – I was not personally present) that the
communist elite did not have a (uniform) opinion on the matter; instead,
they brought chaos and inconsistency into the decision-making process. The
fundamental question “how to write foreign words?” is basically non-politi-

cal in nature (although it can often acquire a political aspect) and Czech or-
thography did not begin to deal with it until “under the communists”.220
Daneš casts linguists as keeping their own counsel, but “spinning” their
work so that it would be palatable for the communist overlords. In his view,
there is an objective, non-politicized spelling reform movement, reflecting
the traditions and values of the Prague School. The communist cant that at
times camouflaged it is, in Daneš’s eyes, insignificant. In fact, Daneš goes
so far as to say that non-politicized reform had not been possible in the pre-
communist era. This view was in sharp contrast with those expressed by
non-reformers.
2.3. Public views of the CLI under the previous regime
As we saw in chapter 4, the CLI and the functionalist school of linguistics

were to a certain extent compromised in the public mind by virtue of their
existence under the previous regime and the accommodations they had
made to its demands.221 Whether functionalists in the CLI had co-operated
with the Communist Party more readily than they needed to is at this point
a matter of second-guessing; the fact is that many of the goals of function-
alism accommodated reasonably well to the politics of the time, or could be
justified in a roundabout way using the populist-socialist slogans of the to-
talitarian regime. Naturally, many a correspondent in the early 1990s
picked up on this connection, and used it to discredit the reforms.222
Sometimes the mere association sufficed to cast doubt. In 1994 in ýeský
deník, Antonín Kostlán devoted most of an article to showing that, “[i]n the
1950s the Rules of Czech Orthography arose on the direct order of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and under
its supervision.” This fact was easy enough to prove: the involvement of the
Party is not difficult to trace through available scholarly journals. Any re-
form arising under such circumstances, Kostlán concludes, must be suspect,
and needs close examination.
By later in the controversy, the connection between the CLI and the
Communist Party had been made so often that an ironic hint would suffice:
The authors at the Czech Language Institute justified the new orthography
of the words kurz, konkurz, pulz, impulz and Alojz in their manual What the
New Rules Bring, published in 1991, by saying that “expressions written
with z were already appearing frequently” (in the records of [Communist
The reformers 187
Party] Central Committee meetings there frequently appeared “we’ll get to

the bottom of those dizzidents”)…223
Similarly, in Martin Daneš’s influential 1993 polemic on the reforms, there
is a subhead a quarter-way through the article:
VzhĤru k socializmu
‘Upwards to socializm’
Why choose the word socializmus, when many other words with this
suffix would do? By playing with a now-defunct cliché, the newspaper
highlights succinctly the author’s belief (expressed in numerous other
asides, although never directly) that the reforms reflect a totalitarian ap-
proach to language regulation linked directly with the traditions of the old
regime.
The academic Karel Oliva (writing in the weekly Literární noviny on 9
December 1993) saw totalitarian thinking in the commission’s desire to
avoid a wide public consultation:
The Czech Language Institute was working on the new Rules of Czech Or-
thography even before 17 November 1989. For the information of the less
knowledgeable: by order of the then-director of the Institute this work was
secret, to the extent that employees of the Institute were explicitly forbidden
to speak about it (even among themselves). Now the results of this work
have been revealed. What a shame: it would have been more useful for
Czech orthography (not to mention orthoepy, morphology, and stylistics) if
they had remained secret for good. After 1989 the Czech Language Institute
had a unique opportunity to remove from Czech orthography all that lin-
guistic rubbish that had collected there since 1957, through no fault of the
Czech language, its development, or the majority of Czech linguists. The
opportunity went unused; what was delivered into the public’s arms was the
posthumous child of totalitarian politicization and vulgarization of [our]
language.224
Others focused more explicitly on the social-engineering side of lan-

guage regulation, and spotted in spelling trends they believed were charac-
teristic of communist social policy:
I gazed with horror upon the frightful forms codified in the new rules as the
only acceptable ones. It’s simply the continuation of the work of communist
linguists, who in place of the exalted universita forced the degenerate
univerzita on us.225
Frequently, correspondents expressed the fear that ongoing orthographic
change was designed to cut off the younger generations from literature of a
previous era, which would become incomprehensible, or would at least
look old-fashioned.226 Others saw the pernicious hand of the Slovaks, who
had been well represented in the former Czechoslovak federal government:
After the rise of the Slovak federal government and Husákoid Czech “new
speak” [sic], the Czech language once again politically adjusted itself to the
image of the new powerfull lords. The announcers of the new fedderal or-
ders from the East not only thought in Cyrillic, but even used it for writing
phonetically in transcription into Latin letters.227
For many correspondents, the provenance of the changes was crucial in
evaluating them. Remnants or reminders of the previous regime were
tainted, suspect, and best rejected.
2.4. Public concern over financial arrangements
A second argument directed at the reform commission concerned the pub-

lishing arrangements for the school edition of the Rules, which was the first
to appear. As distinct from previous school editions, which had been pub-
lished by the State Pedagogical Publishing House (Státní pedagogické
nakladatelství), the 1993 Rules were published by Pansofia, which, as
Antonín Kostlán pointed out, was a private imprint. The authors received
an honorarium from the publisher which, according to Hlavsa, was under
30 percent of their annual salaries – a significant amount, but they were not
to receive royalties from the arrangement.228
In the context of Czech society of the early 1990s, the idea of academics
earning a partial salary from their outside activities was no odder than it is
in the West. If anything, such extra payments were more prevalent in post-
revolutionary Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. The basic salaries
paid by state institutions were hardly generous even in communist times.
Authors were thus regularly paid for contributions to journals (even if these
were nominal amounts) and frequently undertook paid outside work in the
form of translating, interpreting, broadcasting, and consulting. Furthermore,
in the early 1990s, price controls were removed, and high inflation ham-
mered the consumers of Central and Eastern Europe’s transitional econo-
mies. Extra income above and beyond one’s salary became an imperative.
Still, the honoraria gained by the authors of the Rules proved to be a
stumbling block in the debate. The ideology that underpinned this thinking
called on the image of the venal little Czech, and declared that if money
The reformers 189
was involved, it must be the driving factor, and thus threw the propriety of
this practice into question. It was often suggested that the authors had
written the Rules for their own personal gain or for that of their under-
funded institute, at the expense of the equally cash-strapped public who
would have to shell out for new reference manuals.
After the completion of the Addendum, the Ministry of Education re-
quired that it be bound into all future versions of the school edition. Pub-
lishing house Fortuna then insisted that the competition to publish this
“new” edition be reopened. They saw the matter quite differently from
members of the public, as publisher František Talián made clear in an inter-
view (ZN noviny, 10 August 1994):
Aside from the authors’ honoraria, we have offered royalties from the sale
of the book, which the publisher Pansofia certainly did not do when
publishing last year’s Rules. The authors created the Rules on work time,
and the funds which the state expended on publication would be returned to
it through our financial offer. If the director of the institute does not take
advantage of it, either he does not understand his job and therefore should
not be doing it, or he is pretending ignorance and is thus deliberately harm-
ing the organization he leads. Of course, he would have to have some rea-
son for doing this.
He then threatened to instigate a complaint leading to criminal pro-
ceedings on this basis.
Talián implied that for authors to accept payment while the CLI as an
institution received nothing was in essence a form of corruption, where in-
dividuals looked out for their own interests without safeguarding the finan-
cial interest of their employer and the state. His allegations raised a further
question: was the private sector often complicit in this game, in the interest
of keeping more profit for itself?
These suspicions were not confined to those in the publishing
industry.229 Intellectuals voiced their reservations as well. Vladimír Karfík,
writing in Literární noviny on 20 January 1994, opined:
A steady earner is the dream all authors dependent on their book royalties
either admit to or keep secret […]. I am not thinking of anything as
ephemeral as, say, Forever Amber, but of books that are far less
prepossessing, which nonetheless stay in print without much effort on the
part of their authors, like the Highway Code. Among such books is the
Rules of Czech Orthography; the last version from 1957 has now reached a
noteworthy nineteenth edition.
There is nothing strange about this; mandatory school texts are published
over and over – new classes enter the schools, the language changes, and we
must keep pace with it and update the rules, as long as we allow our
linguistic traffic to be regulated as well.
The motivations for creating the Rules are of course strong ones. Who
would not jump at the opportunity to author a book that has one new edition
after another, practically guaranteed by law? […]
What if we stopped paying the authors of the Rules? Maybe we would get
along fine with just a dictionary of Czech.
No one would ever have raised this argument against a scholarly work
or an ordinary textbook for which an author received royalties – but then,
the Rules were not an ordinary work: they were to be compulsory in the
school classroom. Editor František Kostlán, writing in Telegraf on 22 July
1993, put the problem succinctly:
The new Rules of Czech Orthography were, without forethought or
consultation, accepted and purchased by institutions, offices, schools,
editorial collectives (except ýeský deník and Telegraf), etc. This fact has
two aspects worthy of comment. In the first place, a defining one – the rules
by which the majority of the media and institutions are governed were
published by a private publisher, and the copyright to the school edition of
the rules (see the subtitle) is held by the head of the authorial collective,
Olga Martincová. Not, as could be expected, the Academy of Sciences of
the Czech Republic or the Czech Language Institute, which is listed on the
book cover as guarantor of the Rules of Czech Orthography. It is evidently
unnecessary to add specifically who made a nice little bundle of money off
this violation of the Czech language.
This accusation that new editions of the Rules were dreamt up to line
someone’s pockets became a refrain. It crops up regularly almost as an
aside in people’s articles, as just one further reason to despise the new
Rules. For example, in a polemic devoted primarily to the secrecy in which
the Rules were created, author Karel Pecka wrote:
One’s blood boils at the thought of the new Rules of Czech Orthography.
They are the creation of a group where, of nine authors, one is an associate
professor and five have doctorates. With a gigantic print run, that’s a decent
share of royalties per head.230
A slightly different, although still monetary point was made by Pavel
JĤza, writing in ýeský deník on 13 August 1994. He compares the Rules to
Gabþíkovo Dam, a giant hydroelectric project on the Danube that was the
subject of bitter disputes between Slovakia and its neighbour Hungary,
The press 191
which claimed the ecological consequences would be catastrophic. JĤza

takes a fatalistic attitude, saying good money always gets thrown after bad:
The new Rules will take effect, because much money has already been in-
vested in them. Gabþíkovo Dam stands, because by the time of the first
public protests, 10 billion had already been invested in it.
In the early 1990s, money as a driving force in public affairs was an un-
familiar concept in the Czech lands. Most people had little experience of
the interaction between the public sector and emerging private enterprises.
The public was thus susceptible to arguments that portrayed dealings with
the private sector as profiteering. On the one hand, an agreement had
openly been struck between the CLI and the Ministry of Education to man-
date the use of the Rules in schools. On the other hand, there was the pri-
vate nature of the publishing transaction – a deal between the authors and a
private publishing house. Once the authors had accepted a contract and
honoraria from a private publisher, there were bound to be accusations of
backroom deals and money changing hands. These spats diminished the
authority of the publication, regardless of whether the accusations were
justified or not.
3. The press
We now need to consider the role of the environment in which the debates
on orthography were played out: namely, the pages of the daily and weekly
newspapers and newsmagazines of the Czech Republic in 1993–1994. Be-
cause the vast majority of contributions were found in newspapers, our
analysis will focus on them.
The 1990s saw a massive change in the Czech media. From a strictly
controlled press with relatively few outlets, the press underwent a dramatic
expansion in the years following 1989. Eventually, the laws of the free
market began to bite and a gradual and lasting downward trend set in,
whereby the number of publications shrank and their ownership became
concentrated in fewer (and often foreign) hands.231
Before 1989, the national newspapers of note in the Czech lands were
tied to political parties or other official organizations. Rudé právo was the
organ of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Svobodné slovo and
Lidová demokracie were affiliated with two minor socialist-style parties
that were permitted to exist alongside the communists. Práce was a union
paper, and Mladá fronta was the paper of an officially-sponsored youth

movement. According to ýulík (2002b), the privatization of these newspa-
pers after 1989 allowed newspaper staff to continue to publish while
avoiding the need to “purchase” the papers from the state [emphasis origi-
nal]:
The leading Czech newspapers (Mladá fronta, Rudé právo, Veþerní Praha,
ZemČdČlské noviny and others), although owned by the state under commu-
nism, were confiscated by their respective members of staff. These people
set up private companies, abolished the state-owned newspapers and created
new ones – with a slightly changed name. This made it possible for them to
take over the established trademarks of the papers as well as their subscrib-
ers (both were worth large sums of money), claiming that from a legal point
of view, their newspapers were new ventures. Thus Mladá fronta became
Mladá fronta Dnes, Rudé právo became Právo, Veþerní Praha became
Veþerník Praha, ZemČdČlské noviny became Zemské noviny, etc.). The
editorial staff who thus stole the newspapers they worked on later sold their
newly acquired property to foreign owners, making considerable personal
profits.
In 1993–1994, this process was well underway, but still in progress. It is

worth noting that not all of the name changes were connected with the
change in ownership, and some may have in fact been a search for broader
markets – the dropping of the word rudé ‘crimson’, long associated with
the communists, from the name Právo ‘Right’, or the change from
ZemČdČlské noviny ‘Agricultural News’ to ZN noviny and then to Zemské
noviny ‘Country News’ may be cases in point.
Among the other national papers to survive from the Communist era
into the early post-communist period were Svobodné slovo (originally
Slovo) and HospodáĜské noviny, a business-oriented title.
The early 1990s saw the rise of many new publications alongside the
privatized state ones. Among the newspapers to start up in this period were
Lidové noviny, which was the direct inheritor of a small dissident samizdat
circular of the late communist era, and the dailies ýeský deník and Telegraf.
Of these, Lidové noviny has been sold to foreign owners and survived,
while the other two have folded. There were other papers with more hard-
line anti-communist views that arose in this period but did not survive past
the mid-1990s or have gone to electronic publication only.
These papers represent the so-called “quality” dailies, meaning that they
focused on news reporting. But the post-communist era also saw the rise of
The press 193
the mass-market tabloid, with minimal news content and a soft spot for ce-
lebrity gossip, human-interest stories, scandal, and the paranormal. Of
these, three – Blesk, Haló noviny, and Špígl – achieved respectable circula-
tion figures and the first two have survived until the present day, with Blesk
gaining market share to become the largest-circulation daily and the second
most widely-read paper in the country after Mladá fronta dnes.
Local news underwent a similar expansion and then consolidation, al-
though during the period under consideration the regional market was a
relatively varied one, with some larger towns and cities having at least
briefly two or more dailies.
Of the weeklies and newsmagazines, some, like Literární noviny and
Tvar, continued a pre-Revolutionary title or were run by collectives previ-
ously responsible for other publications. Others, like Respekt, were new
and, while they had an editorial line, contained a spectrum of political and
social views.
Before attaching political labels like “conservative” or “liberal” to the
Czech press, we need to define what these terms mean in a society in tran-
sition from Soviet-style totalitarianism to multinational capitalism. Such
terms are not immediately clear in the post-Soviet context. “Conservative”,
for example, can imply resisting change and thus a pro-communist, pro-
collectivist attitude, the very opposite of what it means in the American or
British environment. I will use the following terms as defined to refer to the
period from 1991–1995.
Left-wing papers are those that support much or at least parts of the so-
cial and political agenda of the previous communist regime. The moderate
left wing tends to favour the retention of the progressive communist social
agenda (comprehensive benefits, universal employment and education,
state planning) within a more democratic, pluralistic political system, while
the hard-line left wing favours restoring dismantled features of the previous
system (strict controls on social interaction and possibly even on freedom
of speech, restoration of state control over the economy and its redirection
back towards a collectivist, egalitarian model).
Right-wing papers are those that broadly support all or some of the so-
cial and political agenda of the post-communist government, led at the time
by the free-market-espousing, Thatcheresque Civic Democratic Party
(Obþanská demokratická strana) of Václav Klaus. The moderate right wing
agreed with the main points of the CDP programme: the gradual liberaliza-
tion of the economy, reintegration with Europe, the privatization of state
enterprises and a reduction in the scope of the state benefits system.232 The
hard-line right-wing argued for the principles espoused by the CDP, but in
a more drastic form than that actually undertaken by the CDP in govern-
ment, pushing for a more radically free-market economy, the removal of all
barriers to personal liberty, and the dismantling of the social safety net.
There were also publications on the “fringe” left- and right-wing that
espoused more extreme viewpoints, but none of the papers examined here
fall into that category.
Centrist papers stake a position between the two. Typically they might
generally back the government, while also voicing support for a more
egalitarian social agenda.
A rough ordering of national quality papers from “right” to “left” in the
early 1990s would see the newer publications followed by the transformed
pre-communist ones. On the hard-line right were Respekt, ýeský deník and
Telegraf, followed by Lidové noviny and HospodáĜské noviny on the mod-
erate right, then Mladá fronta dnes, Svobodné slovo, and Lidová
demokracie in the centre. On the moderate left were ZemČdČlské noviny
(later ZN noviny) and Práce, followed by Rudé právo and Haló noviny on
the hard-line left. Scandal sheets like Blesk and Špígl are more difficult to
classify, as their news coverage is spottier and tends to concentrate on the
sensational of any political stripe.
The number of national newspapers at this time is significant. The
Czech Republic was a nation of 10.5 million, and yet in 1993 it had at least
13 major national dailies, of which at least 10 could claim to be “quality”
dailies focusing primarily on news. Compared to the British market, which
has five quality dailies and six tabloids for a population six times the size,
the Czech market looked ripe for a severe shake-out. Indeed, a decade later
all of the national papers with the exception of Rudé právo (now just
Právo) and Haló noviny had either been bought by foreign concerns or
gone out of business (or sometimes one and then the other).233 In addition to
adapting quickly to new economic and political conditions, then, the Czech
Republic’s newspapers were rapidly hurled into a battle for commercial
survival.
3.1. Newspaper discourse in the early 1990s
ýulík (2002a, 2002b) describes the mentality of the Czech press as being
small-town and collectivist in ethos, saying that they tend to stake out a
The press 195
middle ground out of fear of offending social mores. However, he sees this
as a matter of character, not a commercial decision. According to ýulík,
Czech journalism is reflexively deferential to authority, wanting to follow
public opinion and the wishes of the great and the good rather than to lead
them. The centrist position, he argues, is a result of this ethos, and it is thus
not surprising that most papers take a centrist or moderate position.
It would be overly harsh and inaccurate to label these failings as specifi-
cally Czech ones, but nonetheless they do apply in many respects.234 Czech
journalism in the early 1990s suffered from a lack of continuity and experi-
ence. Many of the reporters were young, either chronologically or profes-
sionally; very few had worked in a free press before 1989. Compounded
with the exigencies of daily deadlines – the constant need to gather facts
rapidly and report on them in fields far removed from the journalist’s own
sphere of knowledge – these circumstances made for an uneven quality of
reporting. Errors in reporting were frequent, from the small but telling
(wrong names, dates, and facts given in passing) through the materially
significant (reliance on outdated information or faulty memory to make a
point) to considerable lapses in judgment (failure to substantiate serious
accusations of corruption or incompetence). In the orthography contro-
versy, fundamentals of journalistic practice were occasionally ignored,
even in the larger papers. Reporters took press releases from the CLI or
elsewhere and republished them under by-lines, altering them slightly.235
These insufficiencies in the media are reflected in the very different way
that Czech society at large in the early 1990s conceived of free debate.
Letter-writers to newspapers, for example, filled their communiqués with
ad hominem argumentation, unsubstantiated allegations presented as fact
and conspiracy theories. While newspapers everywhere receive such letters,
in the Czech Republic of the early 1990s, they frequently made it into print
without commentary or rebuttal (or occasionally even with an approving
comment from the editor).
In this context, it is worth briefly recapping the major themes in Czech
domestic news during 1993–1994, discussed earlier in chapter 2, section 1.
In early 1993, the foremost issue was the break-up of the Czech and
Slovak Federative Republic, which occurred on 1 January 1993. The newly
independent Czech Republic was engaged in protracted negotiations with
its eastern neighbour as to who owned what and who owed whom how
much. In addition, there was the issue of how – philosophically, ethnically,
politically – to define this new, smaller country in which the Czechs now
lived.
The privatization of state enterprises was an ongoing concern. As more

and more companies passed into public hands or were sold to foreign in-
vestors, the actual impact of forty years of nationalization and state control
became more and more evident, and worries increased that Czech industry
was being “swallowed” by foreign conglomerates whose motives were
primarily to pre-empt competition.
The “lustration” (lustrace) campaign (discussed at greater length in
chapter 2, section 1.5) meant that all government and state officials heading
a department or enterprise were vetted to ensure they had not held an offi-
cial post in the Communist Party, and had not served as an informant or
agent of the State Security (Státní bezpeþnost).236 It saw turnover at the tops
of organizations, and resulted in prominent figures – including those from
the ranks of former dissidents and anti-communists – being accused of col-
laboration. Many of them denied it vehemently, and the scandals sur-
rounding lustration continued to resound throughout the early 1990s.
All these issues have strands in common with the orthography debate.
They highlight questions of national identity, the public and private
spheres, and the totalitarian past. With these questions constantly in the air,
it is not surprising that Czechs applied them to the seemingly academic
matter of spelling, bringing the issue into the contemporary political and
social world.
3.2. Physical characteristics of Czech newspapers
Czech newspapers in the early 1990s were predominantly tabloid in size,

printed with monochrome or two-colour technology. A typical edition of a
smaller paper would be eight to sixteen pages; a few papers like Lidové
noviny and Mladá fronta dnes were longer than this, with substantial front
sections, ever-expanding style and financial supplements and special in-
serts.
Departments and sections were often clearly signalled by headers at the
top of the page of the sort: Ze zahraniþí ‘From Abroad’, Z domova ‘From
Home’,237 Názory ‘Opinions’ and the self-evident Finance, Ekonomika,
Kultura, and Sport. Within these areas there was often a mixture of factual
pieces and opinion pieces. The latter were usually marked out by a different
typeface (italics or bold), or other graphic design indicators (boxing, off-
setting of the author’s name, use of a column name). Editorials were usu-
ally printed on a special opinion page along with longer pieces by distin-
The press 197
guished or regular commentators. Larger papers often devoted some room

every day to letters. With smaller papers this was not always the case; they
often ran a letters section only once or twice a week.
Newspapers publish six days a week, with no Sunday edition; often the
Saturday edition is substantially longer, usually containing some sort of
cultural supplement for the weekend.
Czech newspapers are sometimes purchased by subscription, but a large
percentage are sold daily at newsstands. This fact (and the newspapers’
tabloid format) reflects a reality of Czech life: people pick up the paper at a
newsstand on the way to their bus, tram, or metro stop and read it on the
way to work. The heavy proportion of daily purchases makes the market
volatile and competitive, and means that distribution of a newspaper to a
network of newsstands is crucial for a paper’s prosperity and survival.
The Czech Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC ýR, www.abccr.cz) has
tracked sales of newspapers from 1996 to the present (see Table 28). Their
figures show a decline in the sales of quality papers, coinciding with the
rise in sales of Blesk and upstart competitors like Super. (The jump in the
circulation figures for Lidové noviny came from a revamp to increase
sales.)
Table 28. Sales of newspapers in 1996–2002
title 1/1996 1/1999 1/2002 change
copies sold copies sold copies sold
Blesk 165,251 255,156 331,516 +101%
HospodáĜské noviny 124,793 89,134 72,565 -42%
Lidové noviny 70,723 77,567 106,181 +50%
Mladá fronta dnes 335,100 349,789 324,159 -3%
Práce 82,266 0 0 -100%
Právo 263,964 229,269 210,989 -20%
Slovo 64,420 65,228 0 -100%
Sport 99,460 54,280 56,929 -43%
Zemské noviny 152,107 127,526 0 -100%
Super 0 0 129,746 –
total of these 1,358,084 1,247,949 1,232,085 -9%
We can also note the slow, year-on-year decline in sales of nationwide

daily papers, amounting to 9 percent over the period 1996–2002.238 It is
against this background of dwindling readership that the Czech orthography
controversy played itself out.
In 1993, the republic’s most-read daily was scandal sheet Blesk, with 14
percent of a survey reading it every day. Behind it were, in order: Mladá
fronta dnes, Rudé právo, Sport, Špígl, Práce, ZN noviny, ýeský deník,
Svobodné slovo, HospodáĜské noviny, Lidové noviny, and Lidová
demokracie.239 By 1994, the figure for Blesk had risen to 16 percent,
followed by Mladá fronta dnes (15 percent), Rudé právo (11 percent), ZN
noviny (6 percent), HospodáĜské noviny (5 percent), Svobodné slovo (4
percent), Práce (4 percent), Lidové noviny (3 percent), and Expres (2
percent).240
3.3. Material by source
The material in the corpus gives a revealing picture of differences in how

the press treated the stories. An overview of the corpus is given in Table
29.
Table 29. Contents of the corpus
articles by type viewpoint expressed
185 opinion pieces 221 negative
126 factual articles 100 positive
96 letters to the editor241 226 neutral (none or unclear)
66 brief notes
47 interviews
17 satirical pieces
6 book reviews
4 cartoons
The articles were not distributed evenly throughout the sources. Some
newspapers devoted significant space to the reforms, while others more or
less ignored it. Table 30 gives a picture of this distribution (keeping in
mind that certain periodicals like Lidová demokracie folded in the scanning
period, and other small papers had incomplete runs in the archives).
Lidové noviny, the paper of record in the early 1990s, had by far the
most substantial coverage of the orthography wars. It was closely followed
by the other new independent dailies, both of which were much smaller
papers physically as well as in circulation. Mladá fronta dnes, the largest
paper in physical terms as well as in circulation, had comparatively modest
coverage – certainly compared with the number and depth of articles found
in smaller papers.
The press 199
Table 30. Articles by source
no. source (description)

88 Lidové noviny (quality daily)*
57 ýeský deník (quality daily)*
44 Telegraf (quality daily)*
38 Mladá fronta dnes (quality daily)*
32 Literární noviny (cultural weekly)*
25 ZemČdČlské noviny/ZN noviny/Zemské noviny (quality daily)*
21 Rudé právo (quality daily)*
19 Svobodné slovo (quality daily)*
18 Práce (quality daily)*
15 Hradecké noviny (regional daily – Hradec Králové)
14 HospodáĜské noviny (quality daily)*
13 Moravoslezský den (regional daily – Ostrava)
13 PlzeĖský deník (regional daily – PlzeĖ)
12 Respekt (cultural weekly)*
12 Haló noviny (down-market national daily)
12 Moravský demokratický deník (regional daily – Brno)
12 Veþerník Praha (regional daily – Prague)
8 Lidová demokracie (quality daily)*
7 ýeskobudČjovické listy (regional daily – ýeské BudČjovice)
6 Mladý svČt (weekly popular cultural magazine)*
6 Svoboda (regional newspaper – Ostrava)
6 Uþitelské noviny (weekly newspaper for teachers)*
5 Severoþeský regionální deník (regional daily – North Bohemia)
4 Blesk (downmarket national daily)
4 BrnČnský veþerník (regional daily – Brno)
4 Expres (downmarket national daily)
4 Puls (monthly popular culture magazine)
4 Reflex (weekly popular news and culture magazine)*
4 Tvar (fortnightly, formerly weekly cultural newspaper)*
40 from sources with fewer than four articles each
* = surveyed in full to the extent that available archives permitted
The weeklies and biweeklies also showed considerable variation.

Literární noviny devoted substantial space to a series of discussions be-
tween prominent linguists and literary figures, and Respekt, which is more
news-focused, still managed a healthy 18 articles. By contrast, Tvar, a

weekly at the time, had only four articles over the period.
If we limit our scope to the national quality papers, there were substan-
tial differences between printed sources, both in the number of responses
they printed on the subject of orthography and in their content.
Table 31 shows the distribution of items by viewpoint (positive, nega-
tive, or neutral) in each paper, and then by article type in each newspaper.
Table 31. Comparison of viewpoints
newspaper positive negative neither total
Lidové noviny 32 31 25 88
ýeský deník 7 36 14 57
Telegraf 4 29 11 44
Mladá fronta dnes 7 12 19 38
Literární noviny 8 22 2 32
ZN noviny 2 11 12 25
Rudé právo 0 4 17 21
Svobodné slovo 5 9 5 19
Práce 5 3 10 18
HospodáĜské noviny 3 2 9 14
Respekt 1 4 7 12
The variety of opinions represented tips clearly towards the negative

side, with three exceptions. Lidové noviny was evenly balanced (for reasons
considered below), while Práce and HospodáĜské noviny each contained
several interviews with and articles by the authors of the Rules. Given the
relatively small total number of articles in these papers, these pieces tipped
the balance in favour of positively-slanted contributions. Otherwise, the
balance of opinion ran against the Rules across the political spectrum of the
papers – from ýeský deník all the way to Rudé právo. Despite the constant
and sometimes personally vituperative politicization of rhetoric in the or-
thography debates, views on orthography do not seem to have been firmly
linked to political orientation – at least inasmuch as the level of indignation
was not predictable from the newspaper’s place on the political spectrum.
We will see later, however, that the issue did figure in a secondary political
context.
We will also want to ask what sorts of articles were being written. Were
they intended foremost as informative or persuasive pieces? Did the news-
papers thus see themselves primarily as conveyers of information about the
The press 201
Rules, as fora for discussion, or as shapers of public opinion?

For the purpose of Table 32, “persuasive” items include opinion pieces,
satirical pieces, cartoons and interviews, all of which serve the primary
function of conveying opinion rather than fact. Letters are treated sepa-
rately from other persuasive texts because they also serve the function of
indicating solidarity between reader and paper – a fact that will become
important later. I have also distinguished between longer factual articles
(labelled “informative” below), and small, single-paragraph items of a fac-
tual nature.
Table 32. Comparison of article types
newspaper persuasive letter informative note total
Lidové noviny 51 24 9 4 88
ýeský deník 21 27 7 2 57
Telegraf 14 19 8 3 44
Mladá fronta dnes 17 2 18 1 38
Literární noviny 29 3 0 0 32
ZN noviny 8 4 11 2 25
Rudé právo 5 1 6 9 21
Svobodné slovo 7 3 5 4 19
Práce 10 1 5 2 18
HospodáĜské noviny 3 2 3 6 14
Respekt 7 2 2 1 12
Some newspapers, such as Rudé právo and HospodáĜské noviny, evi-
dently saw their mission as primarily informative. At the other end of the
scale was Literární noviny, which as a cultural review made room for a
large number of lengthy commentaries and opinions, but did not attempt to
simply inform. Interestingly enough, some of the ordinary newspapers
(Lidové noviny, ýeský deník, and Telegraf) also had coverage significantly
biased away from straight reporting and towards opinion and analysis.
3.4. The placement of orthographic reform
Numbers give only a partial picture of how newspapers treated ortho-

graphic reform. Any given piece expresses not only the opinion of its au-
thor, but also that of the editorial process. An article is assigned, and if it is
a running story, it often falls to a single reporter, whose background knowl-
edge may be shaky at first until he finds his feet with it.242 Opinion pieces
are chosen from those received, commissioned, or submitted by regular

columnists. Letters are chosen from an even larger pool of submissions, and
in their number and content can reflect an editorial decision to build a
social consensus around a story, display its various incompatible sides, or
bury it.
In these debates, authors are often rebuked for the headlines or pull
quotes chosen for their article, or for leaving out some crucial bit of back-
ground or necessary information, when in reality this has little to do with
them. Where an article is placed, what headline is written for it, whether it
is abridged or not, and so forth, are editorial decisions, designed to fit too
much copy into too little space, to stretch material on a thin day, or to pique
the reader’s interest. Editors can highlight or downplay submissions in
other ways as well. A lengthier letter might be drastically cut – or if well
written or particularly provocative, it might end up elevated to the status of
opinion piece. Such contributions elicited far livelier discussion and po-
lemics. Sometimes editorial notes or opinions were appended to the article,
which served to heighten its authority. And of course its placement in the
newspaper is of crucial import.
One distinctive approach was found in Lidové noviny. Shortly after the
publication of the Rules, this newspaper ran a series of positive articles in
its column The Lee Side of Language (Jazykové zákampí), mostly authored
by noted linguist Milan Jelínek. Letters and other contributions on this sub-
ject were published on this page, which appeared weekly in the so-called
Sunday supplement of the Saturday paper. In this way, the orthography de-
bate was deliberately confined to the sphere of culture, art, and philosophi-
cal interest – while in other newspapers these contributions were mostly
placed on pages devoted to political commentary or domestic news.
The dailies Svobodné slovo, Práce, Mladá Fronta, ZN noviny, Lidová
demokracie, Rudé právo, and HospodáĜské noviny each printed a few arti-
cles acquainting readers with the most important outlines of the new Rules,
and sometimes an interview with the Rules’ authors. Readers’ opinions
were represented in these pages, but not in large numbers. These newspa-
pers apparently took it as their task to explain to the public what the
changes were, but were not particularly interested in starting a dialogue
with their readers on this issue.
In the case of ZN noviny, this caused a significant rupture between the
paper and its readers. Right from the beginning, ZN noviny announced that
it would implement the new Rules, even though the responses it received
from readers and commentators on the reform were extremely negative.243
The press 203
Matters certainly were not helped by the fact that at first ZN noviny treated
the Rules as if they were newly approved laws. For example, in a short note
on 30 April 1993 we find:
THE NEW RULES of Czech Orthography, published by Pansofia, have now
come into force, but will not be introduced into schools until the school year
1993–1994.244
Here the term “come into force” has legal overtones. It is picked up in
an opinion piece by Š. Dostálová from 18 May 1993, where she writes:
The vast majority of the Czech population was rendered illiterate quickly
and easily once the new Rules of Czech Orthography came into force.
This categorical approach evidently strengthened its readers’ opposition.
Only on 20 May 1993 do we learn in ZN noviny that the Rules are not
obligatory, when the paper runs a short interview with Martincová reveal-
ingly entitled “The Rules of Czech Orthography Are Not a Law”.245
The most extensive discussion took place in the weekly cultural news-
paper Literární noviny. In part it featured an exchange of opinions among
linguists, but also among members of the public (albeit mostly representa-
tives of the cultural elite: professors from the Czech Republic and abroad,
journalists and authors). Longer letters tended to be printed as opinion
pieces, so it is slightly deceptive to speak here of a classical letter format,
of which there were only three. Among those who contributed to the debate
in Literární noviny were the linguist Alexandr Stich, the cultural com-
mentator Petr Fidelius, literary scholar JiĜí Holý, and poet and novelist
Michal Ajvaz.
An especially interesting discussion took place in Telegraf and ýeský
deník. Both dailies devoted considerably more space to the responses and
opinions of their readers than did other papers. ýeský deník even occasion-
ally gave over a full page to letters on the topic; other papers printed far
fewer letters, and those in edited form. In both these dailies the vast major-
ity of responses were highly critical, and the papers supported their readers
with proclamations that they would continue to operate using the old Rules.
In an open letter to readers on 13 May 1993, the editorial board of ýeský
deník wrote that:
…whether or not these changes that someone (in this instance the highest
linguistic organs – although we know many others from past experience) is
forcing on us from above do take effect depends on those of us who work
with the written word. We firmly believe that the era of blind subservience
to any and all directives, even the most senseless ones, is definitively past.
Because large portions of the recent orthographic changes in our opinion

violate linguistic norms of use instead of (as is common practice in coun-
tries where the language is held in respect) adapting themselves to its long-
term development, we refuse to submit to them in our paper.
Telegraf took a position on the new Rules in a short note appended to
Antonín Kostlán’s article “A Slap to Czech Culture and Tradition” (Políþek
þeské kultuĜe a tradici) on 11 June 1993:
The editorial board of TELEGRAF agrees with the conclusions of this arti-
cle and is minded not to be governed by the new Rules of Czech Orthogra-
phy. We therefore ask our readers to send us their opinions on this subject.
Ivan BednáĜ, Editor-in-Chief.
Further editorial notes on 26 June and 10 July testify to the paper’s deci-
sion not only to publicize the opinions of its readers, but also to wield them
actively in the hope of having the reforms rejected:
Editor’s note: Last week we publicized the opinions of several readers. We
thank you for all further opinions. In time we hope to compile them and
submit them to the Academy of Sciences.
Editor’s note: We are recording all opinions sent to us and thank you for
them. They will be of use in a more detailed treatment of the entire situa-
tion.
The readers’ opinions vented in ýeský deník and Telegraf were mostly
emotional: they called on the papers to continue their campaign, hailed
their courage, or chastised them for inconsistency in their rejection of the
new forms. But why specifically did these two papers make such a crusade
out of their objections to the Rules?
One possible answer lies in the fact that at the time, both Telegraf and
ýeský deník were fighting for survival. On the front pages of both papers
there were ongoing features in which editors and readers travelled around
the country, checking the availability of their papers at newsstands and
stores. Letters to the editor indignantly protested the unavailability of one
or the other paper at a particular newsstand, and hinted that the newsstand
owner or distributor might have ulterior political motivations (presumably
crypto-communist ones) for refusing to stock a right-wing paper. The pa-
pers’ owners and editors consciously or unconsciously used the orthogra-
phy controversy and other issues of the moment to strengthen the link be-
tween readers and the editors, showing in doing so that they could put
themselves on the side of their readers and defend their readers’ interests.
The contrast was indeed striking. Where many papers confined the dis-
Other actors 205
cussion to the “great and the good”, the give-and-take in ýeský deník and
Telegraf sounded lively, spontaneous, and – to judge by the amount of ab-
solute linguistic nonsense appearing in the letters columns – democratic in
opening the debate to all and sundry. This was to be the new right-wing
press: concerned, helpful, responsive, on the side of its readers.
By comparing various papers, I do not mean to imply that these differ-
ences were always motivated in full or in part by political reasons. The
structure of individual papers played a large role. The existence of a cul-
tural supplement with its own page devoted to language gave Lidové noviny
options lacking for smaller newspapers. In other newspapers, news about
language was printed on pages marked “domestic news”. It is not surpris-
ing, then, that many readers treated the debate as a political controversy. In
this way, a parallel arose between the publication of the new Rules and the
passage of laws, decisions of government bodies, and so forth. Of course,
the ubiquitous idea that the new Rules were obligatory for everyone was
also connected with the way previous reforms had been implemented. But
in 1993 the physical and linguistic context of reports on orthography clearly
influenced the public response to the reforms.
4. Other actors
The other actors in the orthography debates only occasionally became the
subjects of overt discussion. Educators sometimes singled themselves out
as an affected party, but most telling are the ways members of the public
characterized their fellow citizens. Their descriptions tended to be negative,
steeped in the stereotypes of Holy’s “little Czech” (see chapter 2, section
1.1). The language stands in for the “great Czech nation” as the transmitter
of cultural values. Its defence is a bulwark against a slide into barbarism.
4.1. Public concern over declining standards
Surely there is scarcely a society on earth where people do not bemoan to-
day’s slipping standards of written and verbal expression when measured
against the golden age of their youth (or, even better, some time before they
were born). Often it is hard to find consensus as to why this has happened;
rarely is it possible to identify it with a single event or factor. People cite
permissive mores, rigid educational testing, comprehensive high schools,
widened educational access, dumbing down, poor school funding, particu-

lar teaching methods in vogue, or a variety of other reasons.246
The reform of Czech spelling was a significant omen for linguistic
doomsayers. Spelling reform became the symbol, or sometimes the reason,
for a perceived decline in the level of linguistic culture and language
awareness.
A tendency to see Czech history as a series of interruptions (as per Holy
1996) only strengthened this view. It was easy to find exact dates on which
to pin changes. The communist putsch of 1948 brought a turn away from
the West and a change in institutional values. Totalitarianism, the argument
runs, had warped the nation and dumbed down its culture. The CLI had
been willing co-operators with the totalitarian regime, and thus their re-
forms must have served these invidious goals. The year 1989 and the Vel-
vet Revolution brought a second, equally rapid about-face. In 1993, mem-
bers of the public were divided as to whether it meant an abrupt return to
previously cherished cultural values, or a further sharp decline due to in-
creased permissiveness. Spelling reform offered an entry for all sorts of
musings on these themes.
The simplest expression of this belief is the formulation: “if we continue
in this way, in a couple of years we’ll be writing (x) for (y).” Most people
used it to express worst-case scenarios:
I shudder at the thought that in the future the text of our national anthem
might, in the spirit of the rules of orthography, begin with the words Wear
Iz My Hoamland!247
In a few instances, the scenarios were beyond the imaginable:
I warn you – if things continue in this fashion, soon we will abandon our
beautiful Czech language, and the mumbling and mooing of donkeys will
pour forth from our mouths.248
Many members of the public railed against a Pragocentric or Bohemian
bias in the reforms:
If the Czech Language Institute continues this way, in a few years we will
have to write in “Common Czech” and go to “coarses witch’d be ’bout
Common Czech.”249
In some cases, the writers perceived a linguistic innovation as being
“from Prague” when it was actually characteristic of language across the
republic. This tendency to blame “the capital” for all unwanted develop-
ments in the language is probably a universal one.250 Such detractors were
Other actors 207
frequently Moravians:
It [the new Rules] is not orthography, but a Prague dialect that the lord
linguists in Prague think must be obligatory for the whole republic. And so
they dictate that we should write e.g. kurz, diskuze, šanzon, pulz, rezort,
perzonální, renezance, režizér etc. As if they did not know that in fact here
in Moravia, in the Brno region, the very best Czech is spoken, which has
absolutely nothing in common with any dialect in Bohemia, let alone in
Prague.251
As a more recent (17 April 2000) article from Respekt shows, some out-
side Prague have come to believe that the reforms impose the capital’s
speech as standard:
Masaryk University sociologist Ivo Možný recalls Moravian reservations
about Prague and Bohemia: “It irritates me somewhat when orthography is
reformed supposedly according to the spoken form [of the language], by
which they automatically mean the way it is spoken in the capital.”
In one example, the criticism ran in the other direction. Written <sh> in
e.g. shora ‘from above’ and na shledanou ‘good bye’ is pronounced either
[sx] or [z×], depending on the dialect of the speaker (Bohemians tend to say
the first, Moravians the second). Yet Vlasta Kupková, in the 7 July 1994
issue of Mladý svČt, inveighed against the “debased” pronunciation [z×],
and asked why the CLI had not explicitly forbidden it in the new Rules. Not
only is this a matter of pronunciation and not orthography, but the pronun-
ciation this writer attacks is not regarded as non-standard.252
Many people were quick to draw the connection between a general de-
cline in standards and the CLI’s evident desire to “cater” to this decline.
Complaints about the language competence of students, teachers, and jour-
nalists were common. There were diatribes directed against the speech of
Czech intellectuals in television, and especially at the use of slang, informal
language, and CC dialect features:
When I switch on the television, our primary mass medium for information,
entertainment and culture, the rules and any problems with them go out the
window. […] Czech television has become the bearer of vulgarization of
the Czech language.253
Others had specific complaints about the sort of pronunciation they heard in
the mass media, typically features of Prague or Central Bohemian speech,
like the lowered vowels that one East Bohemian letter-writer commented
on:
Figure 7. Cartoon © Edmund Orián, 26 June 1993 in Telegraf. A teacher berates

her pupil, who has just written a dictation: “Those new rules of Czech
orthography were practically made for you, weren’t they? You’ve
always just written the way you hear things….”
Of course, the female presenters toy with me most of all; only through ret-
rospective reconstruction of context do I realize that the “Fellepens” they
mention are the Philippines. It would seem easy to decree that they must not
pronounce “i” as “e”, or even “e” as “a”; “navarthalass” it would be as dif-
ficult as insisting to our marvellous footballers in Hradec Králové that they
must not only shoot at the goalposts and the crossbeam.254
The language heard on television and radio was important, because ac-
cording to the CLI, standard pronunciation is determined in part by the
speech of public figures. Reformer ZdenČk Hlavsa, in what might not have
been a wise move, went so far as to give examples in the newsmagazine
Respekt on 24 May 1993:
Standard pronunciation is the sort used by people whose spoken presenta-
tions are otherwise practically exemplary… for example, such speakers as
the president or the prime minister.
This only fed the flames. Some people jumped on the pronunciation of
then-president Havel, finding individual numerous words to object to:255
Other actors 209
I am a lawyer and the Czech language, and often other languages, is the tool
of my trade. I suffer quite physically on an almost daily basis from errors in
pronunciation and written expression. […] In earlier days I could at least re-
assure myself that the “comrade” on the television was probably a decorated
party member, so that she’d been chosen even despite her incompetence –
but what should I think now? Dr. Hlavsa’s position was the last straw in this
regard! Although I greatly respect Václav Havel, during his speeches I have
to scream at him repeatedly – when he says “dizident” or “v chaozu”. Inter-
vocalic “s” can be read as “z”, but not dissident, or chaos, after all, the
genitive case is chaotis. I have had the urge a thousand times to write to the
president about this, but my letter would almost certainly never reach his
desk.256
Should politicians serve as models of standard pronunciation? Some
saw their inclusion as evidence of a connection between politics and lin-
guistics going back to communist times. Politicians from the Communist
period were often mocked for their inability to uphold the formal spoken
norms of their era:
In your periodical, I finally learned from the article “The New Rules of
Czech Orthography Are Published” (Respekt no. 20) that this revision had
been implemented based on standard pronunciation. This is used by, for ex-
ample, presidents. I fear that we have apparently chosen as our model for
the spelling of the words konkurz and kurz the “standard” pronunciation of
former president Antonín Novotný, who liked to speak of “interezted
agricultural workers” (not only did I hear this with my own ears, but it was
even remarked on quite unfavourably at the time).257
For the most part, those who railed most strongly against this decline in
language culture criticized the CLI either for leading the charge away from
strict standards or for meekly accepting the public’s growing indifference
to them. In their view, the CLI had failed in its task of preserving the purity
and usefulness of the nation’s language. Whether this was in fact the CLI’s
task was not open to question. It was poet and literary critic Václav Jamek,
a strong opponent of the reforms, who captured the elite’s sense of aggra-
vation most succinctly and wittily:
…since, my dear norm-creator, I have put myself to the trouble of learning
how to use the prepositions s and z correctly with the genitive case, it really
annoys me that you have deprived me of all profit from this ability, because,
for the sake of someone stupider than myself who could not manage to learn
it, you have simply abolished the entire distinction. As so often happens
now in our country, I was punished for the fact that I was better.258
Members of the public did on occasion turn against the aesthetic sensi-
bilities of their fellow citizens. Jan Hlaváþ, writing on 21 June 1993 in
ýeský deník, caricatured those who ask for various “exclusions” from the
language based on subjective likes and dislikes, and who then base their
calls for orthographic change on sentimental appeals to Czech history:
Mr. Benda asks despairingly why we do not eradicate “linguistic abuses”
from the language once and for all. He suggests erasing from the nation’s
subconscious (and presumably from the Dictionary of Standard Czech as
well) the word úplata ‘payment’. I’d suggest maybe forbidding the word
babiþka ‘grandmother’ – first I don’t like how long it is, then those two
“b’s” don’t sound harmonious (I often spray people as I pronounce them),
and in addition I have to remember if poor grandmother isn’t in the list of
specified words [spelled with <y> instead of ].
Concurrently I propose that Standard Czech immediately include the
[Cyrillic letters] hard and soft jer, this so as to honour the language of
[Czech national patron] St. Wenceslas.259
A final, pessimistic view of the public and their reactions to reform
came from linguists like Sgall, who had long championed a radical spelling
reform. Sgall was critical of the new Rules and their cautiousness:
It was thus confirmed […] that partial orthographic changes, which do not
bring any fundamental advantages, serve only to stir up the atmosphere in
our cultural life and elsewhere (the need for “re-education”) and are linked
with economic demands as well. It was not necessary right at this moment
to moderate the inconsistencies of the orthographic reform of 1957.260
Sgall viewed public opposition to reform as a given, which would have
to be dealt with in any situation and which is not necessarily proportional to
the changes made. In his view, smaller reforms pointlessly inflamed the
public and engendered resistance to the more substantial reform (resolving
the problem of <i, í> and <y, ý>) that he hoped would one day come.
4.2. Public views of educational effectiveness
While descriptions of the public tended to be used in the service of argu-

ments against reform, other actors actively promoted reform. A strangely
practical defence of orthographic reform came from several teachers and
educational experts. Citing the continual erosion of the number of class-
room hours devoted to Czech and the ever-growing deficit of qualified
Czech teachers, they said that it was necessary to reduce the number of
Other actors 211
hours spent on mastering spelling rules, and that orthographic simplifica-

tion was a good way to do this.261
Some teachers envisaged that the time freed up by studying a simplified
orthography would leave pupils with more time for their other specializa-
tions (chemistry, mathematics) or for increased foreign language study,
which was a special worry in the early 1990s.
Émigré Jan Vladislav, however, opined that these practical arguments
are a smokescreen:
These periodically recurring criticisms of orthography as a luxury or
privilege accessible only to the elite are not just about the eternal simplifiers
[of our language] and their attempts to rationalize what basically has never
been rational and never will be. It is also, and perhaps foremost, about
pushing into the background a thing that, along with its grammar and
orthography, is one of the primary, omnipresent sources of collective
memory, which at the same time has basically avoided ideological or
political control and manipulation – and is thus about making way for
something more easily controlled, more easily manipulated, and thus
ideologically more useful.262
A distinct minority opinion – but one seen several times in criticisms of
the Rules – was that they did not go far enough. Again, schoolchildren are
brought forward as the group poised to gain most from a simplified spell-
ing:
I am afraid, however, that Czech deserves a braver incursion into its ortho-
graphic conventions, which last saw deeper changes in 1957. It’s a shame
that schoolchildren won’t see their orthography made any easier. It would
mean more time for developing that slightly (or even much) neglected love
for one’s mother tongue.263
Some were more categorical in their view that children would lose out
in the current cautious, partial reforms:
The changes suggested for Czech orthography simply replace one system to
memorize with another. Before, children would bone up on the fact that we
write ulice Na poĜíþí, diskuse, ministerstvo zdravotnictví, and fašismus.
Now they must cram into their heads that the correct spelling is ulice Na
PoĜíþí, diskuze, Ministerstvo zdravotnictví, and fašizmus. Changes like these
are of course good for nothing. Czech orthography calls out not for a change
of facade, but for fundamental reform.264
Jan VymČtal, writing in HospodáĜské noviny, 29 June 1993, pointed out

that, as the Rules are obligatory in primary and secondary schools but not
in universities, students of chemistry will end up learning nativized spell-

ings (e.g. metan) at school, and then having to re-learn the spellings of
these words at university when they meet the internationalized forms
(methan) favoured by their professors and existing university textbooks.
The other option is, of course, to allow the Rules to dictate all Czech spell-
ing in academia, without any consultation with specialists.
The Rules’ authors responded to criticism of this sort by pointing out
that the Rules are intended for generalist, not specialist use. Specialists can
use whatever spellings they deem suitable, without having to inflict these
on the general population. However, VymČtal’s point still stands. Chemical
names are used primarily by specialists, but it would be a brave textbook
publisher who would forego the Rules and issue a school textbook with
different spellings. Once the chemistry commission is overruled in the
schools, the rest of the community must either go along with it or brace
itself for confusion higher up the educational ladder.
Other scientists were more worried about how the new spellings would
have an impact on Czech students’ ability to learn foreign languages. J.
Koryta wrote in a letter to Lidové noviny on 13 April 1994:
Our method of writing primarily borrowed words, especially from the
classical languages, grows more and more different from the method used
by the English, Germans, and French. It is precisely this method of writing
words like chromozóm, metan, diskuze, recenze, and so forth that will
seduce them into using such “simplifications” in foreign languages and will
mark them as half-literates.
4.3. The national character: Is spelling a national obsession?
Some correspondents, regardless of what they thought of the reforms, were

dismayed by the tone of debate, and put it down to what they said was the
Czechs’ national obsession with orthography: a fixation on the form of ex-
pression to the exclusion of its content. This view constructed the national
character in a particular way: the Czechs were on the one hand passionate
about their language, on the other hand sticklers for pointless detail. Play-
wright and cultural commentator Karel Steigerwald, writing in Lidové
noviny on 20 July 1994, opined that:
We are a nation of literati and every change in the rules of Czech orthogra-
phy excites us exceedingly. […] As if orthography were the main thing
Conclusions 213
about language. As if we literati should not primarily be paying attention to

precise thoughts, clear style, rich emotion, and vocabulary. For more than
forty years, teachers have been inventing trick questions on z and s or on i
and y for their dictations, but it disturbs no one that hardly anyone learns at
school to master his native language well enough to express his thoughts
clearly and to give a transparent picture of his intent or even the depth of his
feeling.
Jan Jirák, writing in Lidové noviny on 7 August 1993, went further than
Steigerwald, putting the Czech focus on orthography down to a school
system that takes the path of least resistance, teaching students about form
rather than content. In so doing, it rewards rote learning and elevates formal
signs of education, such as the ability to spell, above all others.
5. Conclusions
The particular changes recommended for Czech orthography were on the

one hand a storm in a teacup, a diversion from the pressing political and
social problems of a country in transition. The debate surrounding them, on
the other hand, was of considerable significance. It mirrored many of the
other issues that Czech society was facing, and became a way of addressing
them.
One major issue in a transitional society was the very nature of the roles
in the debate and how they were defined. In a totalitarian society there had
been scant opportunity to publicly debate the role that different institutions
and social groups had in planning linguistic reforms. Debates had occurred,
but always coded in the language of communist rhetoric and subject to
strict control. The 1993 reforms were the first opportunity in two genera-
tions for people to declare their allegiance and rally their fellow-thinkers
around a cause.
The very institution of the newspaper affected the debate as well. The
paper’s categories of news, reporting choices and level of desire for dia-
logue with the public all shaped the way the affair developed. Some news-
papers saw the issue as a chance to mobilize their readership, while others
tried for a more hands-off approach. The issue could be stylized as belong
ing to the cultural sphere or the sphere of hard news. The crusade against
the Rules in two of the right-wing papers and the general tendency to treat
the matter as a political issue raised the stakes, inflamed tempers and gave
the affair a greater public profile than it would otherwise have had.
Chapter 7
Debating linguistics, authority, and legitimacy
Co je psáno, to je dáno.
‘What is written is a given.’
Czech proverb
The issues and debates covered in the previous chapter concerned how the
participants in the spelling debates defined themselves and were defined by
others. In this chapter, we consider some of the larger issues raised by the
debates. We begin with the linguistic arguments for and against reform, as
promoted by both the reformers and those outside the reforms. Then we
will turn to the larger question of authority over language. We move on to
consider the allied matter of legitimacy and how it was constructed and de-
constructed during these debates.
1. Linguistic motives for spelling reform
One of the best summaries of the official motives for the reform comes
from the back cover of the first edition of the Rules:
More than a quarter century has passed since the publication of the 1957
Rules of Czech Orthography, which are still in force. Since then, a consid-
erable number of orthographic problems have accumulated, and the public
has expected, or even directly demanded solutions to them. The new Rules
of Czech Orthography eliminate extraneous exceptions, simplify certain
overcomplicated orthographic rules, and eliminate contradictions that exist
in the current rules or have arisen in daily language use. In recent years our
understanding of Czech pronunciation has deepened, and therefore its codi-
fication has changed in various points; this has also influenced decisions on
the graphic shape [of words], especially for words of foreign origin.
This cover copy probably dates from the very beginnings of the revision
project. Certainly a version of it appears in the informational pamphlet Co
pĜinášejí nová (Pravidla þeského pravopisu 1991: 23), which preceded the
publication of the Rules by two years. However, its mention of “more than
a quarter century” passing was more appropriate to 1985 than to 1993, by
Linguistic motives for spelling reform 215
which time 36 years had passed. It alludes correctly to the fact that the
1957 Rules had created or aggravated certain inconsistencies in the Czech
spelling system, and claims that these could be resolved by further minor
adjustments. The statement passes over the other pressing, if less lofty, rea-
sons for revising the Rules of Czech Orthography, which come up fre-
quently in the newspaper literature on the subject and are touched on
briefly below.
The rationale is offered purely in linguistic terms, with a strong
functionalist programme. Here we can begin to sketch the ideology
underlying functionalist language planning. A good starting point is the
obvious assumption that intervention is warranted. How do we know this is
so?
First, the authors of the Rules tell us that the public indirectly demands
intervention, to make the rules more logical and easier to use. Over and
over they cite the immense number of queries received at the Language
Service, alerting them to the fact that various features needed changing.
The Service keeps records of all queries, and these are eloquent testimony
to the general public’s desire for a strong authority.265
It would be logical – but false – to ascribe to the orthographic commis-
sion the belief that anyone who asks a question about a feature of Czech
grammar or orthography would welcome its simplification or modification.
Neither did the commission members believe that the Language Service’s
query records were representative of all users of the language. These re-
cords show that certain professions – for instance, secretaries, teachers, and
proofreaders – are overrepresented among the Service’s users, and this is
noted in the Language Service’s publications.
Functionalism, however, claims a privileged position for the linguist in
language regulation: he abides not by what the public says it wants, but by
what his observations and analyses show is both needed and feasible. His
ability to analyze allows him to be objective in creating a balanced picture
of linguistic trends.
Second, the authors suggest that advances in linguistics nudge them to-
wards intervention. Linguists now know more about pronunciation than
they did before. Their ability to measure and categorize has improved, and
there have been new findings about Czech and other languages. These facts
alter one’s view of one’s native language. The functionalist planner then
uses this knowledge to improve the effectiveness of his language by ma-
nipulating and guiding the standard into a closer approximation of his new
understanding.
216 Debating linguistics, authority, and legitimacy
Third, the authors presuppose that the very existence of problems in

orthography nudges linguists towards intervention. This can happen be-
cause the existing guidelines are too complex or self-contradictory, or be-
cause usage has moved on since the last codification took place and the
new state of affairs is not reflected in them. These discrepancies are seen as
“problems” which have “accumulated,” and at some point a critical mass is
reached. In a functionalist perspective, this is not a situation that we can
simply acknowledge as being troublesome and then ignore. Defects in the
system show up as functional gaps that impede effective usage, and greater
linguistic understanding leads linguists to make measured shifts in the stan-
dard language system.266 This is the spirit in which the CLI expected the
public to take the new Rules on board.
Let us summarize the ideological suppositions so far. There is a branch
of linguistics capable of objective, value-neutral description and assess-
ment of language. The language is a matter of concern for regulation to the
extent that a variety of it can be codified, or reduced to a series of rules and
notations. A better codification is one that is simpler: it contains fewer
rules, notations and ambiguities. That codification develops, just as linguis-
tics itself develops, and it is the task of regulators to balance our under-
standing of the language and our communicative needs in arriving at a
codification. Any change in these conditions can unbalance the system,
making the need for intervention more urgent.
The reliance on descriptive linguistics is a guiding principle of function-
alist language planning strategies. Functionalists, as we saw in chapter 4,
believed that language planning in the Czech lands had traditionally been
guided by the emotional, idiosyncratic, and pseudolinguistic prejudices of a
self-appointed elite, and they therefore sought a more objective basis for
their own activities as language regulators. Linguistics provided a way out:
instead of acting on opinion, language regulators could observe actual lan-
guage usage and formulate conclusions based on it. Observation is the bed-
rock on which the 1993 Rules were built, as Martincová noted in an inter-
view in the 5–11 July 1993 issue of the magazine Rozhlas. In it she tried to
explain why the commission had decided to reverse the 1957 decision to
lengthen many stem-final vowels in words of foreign origin:
The criterion is actually current usage, although the opinion of experts does
enter into the matter. When we were preparing the new version of the Rules,
for a year and a half leading up to the close of the project, we followed se-
lected dailies to see how certain words were written, mainly those where we
see variation. [....] Czech has no way of expressing a half-long vowel in
writing. And pronunciation is in this case somewhere between short and

long. In fact, we see a tendency towards shortness, because it is in the posi-
tion toward the end of a word. And we have attestations that in a number of
cases the o was actually written short – it’s enough to see the form citrony
[instead of citróny] on street stands. It crops up as well in written documents
that have not been proofread.
Functionalists thus did not rely on people’s perceptions of how they use
language, or would like to use language; they look for direct, unmediated
examples of usage. Expert opinion is then used to interpret the results: to
assess what the facts tell us and what the direction of linguistic change is.
They observe primarily production of language; the perception of language
is too closely bound up with the sorts of subjective, aesthetic judgments
that reformers had been trying to escape.
In the case above, linguists fell back on three time-tested methods of
fact collection. The first was excerption: they turned to common sources of
printed language, especially those which are not as thoroughly copy-edited
as quality books.267 The second was targeted research: they made use of
studies conducted to establish the language’s orthoepic norms (which
culminated in the two volumes of Výslovnost spisovné þeštiny [‘The Pro-
nunciation of Standard Czech’], published in 1955 and 1978).268 The third
was searching out “mistakes” or “errors” as indirect evidence of the true
state of the language, as opposed to the idealized state reflected in standard
orthography.
Using these three methods, linguists settled on a number of places
where difficulties occurred. They then proposed resolutions that would
more accurately reflect the state of language usage, minimize differences
between the spoken and written norms, and thereby lower barriers to writ-
ing that occur when these differences are significant.
We have already seen how this preference for objective, linguistic data
on production affected the consultation process. Let us stop a moment,
though, and consider the psychological effect that an approach like this has
on the educated reader. It is not uncommon in England to see signs outside
kebab shops and pubs reading:
LARGE PIZZA’S ONLY £4.99
ALL BEER’S HALF PRICE BEFORE 5 P.M. – ITS A SCREAM!
Nor is it unheard of to receive communications from the marketing
office of a higher education institution offering:
We will help with all forms of publicity including proofreading printing and
it’s distribution.
The only possible conclusion is that a significant portion of the English-
using population has no idea how to use apostrophes and sprinkles them
around either randomly or according to an idiosyncratic personal belief
system. However, it is a large step from there to abolishing the apostrophe
because certain pizza chefs, bar managers and marketing officers are unable
to master it or, for that matter, any other basic elements of punctuation or
grammar. Any such move would prompt an outpouring of indignation from
self-defined competent language users, who focus their discontent on these
obvious examples of “dumbing down”.
This is exactly the group that objected most vocally to the 1993 reforms
in the Czech Republic. These “competent” users came to feel that they were
somehow less linguistically “significant” for orthographic reform than
those with a shaky grasp of the standard. This feeling affected their
attitudes toward linguists and toward linguistics in general. A further
question will then be whether the linguistic methods used were in fact
adequate to the task of language regulation, given the deliberate way in
which they minimalized the aesthetic dimension of spelling reform.269
Functionalism thus shows us that there is space for reform in Czech or-
thography. What it assumes, but does not prove, is that such space auto-
matically creates a need for reform. Those favouring a more radical pro-
gramme of change, like Sgall, have long said that half-reforms are worse
than no reforms at all for purely social reasons: each change creates
antipathy between the public and linguists and raises barriers to further
alterations. To apply Ager’s definition of attitude (2001: 132–134), the
more generalized desire for language regulation among Czechs was not
accompanied by a strong desire for spelling reform.
1.1. The reaction to <z> replacing <s>
The replacement of <s> with <z> in foreign words drew the most barbed
criticism. Some critics used it as an example of how change simply alien-
ates people from the roots and origins of words, and professed a global dis-
like for the change. Others were more selective in their criticism. The re-
forms affected a variety of words of differing styles, familiarity and pro-
nunciation, and it was easy to fixate on a single decision to criticize. The
ideology behind these criticisms was one of degeneracy and decline in
culture, and its implicit acceptance (or encouragement) by its guardians.

The arguments were based on assertions about how readers perceive the
new forms, with production as only a secondary consideration.
The first reactions to <z> were often emotional ones:
We opened our new edition of the Rules of Czech Orthography and imme-
diately our hearts began to race. But no longer did our old familiar puls
quicken; in its place was a repulsive, buzzing pulz.270
Others – too many to list – cited its primitiveness, its degeneracy (a very
frequent word), its associations with the Cyrillic alphabet (see section 1.2),
and its lack of sophistication. Columnist Markéta Borská wrote in Telegraf:
A couple of years ago I used to see the legend “touch-typing kurz” on some
innovative posters by a “linguistic inventor”. At the time I found I had the
desire to take a thick red pen and correct the mistake. Today I would take a
red pen with equal relish to the new rules of Czech orthography, because
those linguists have legalized that “z”, a fact I can describe only with the
(obviously highly subjective) word “yuck”. It looks awful and sounds even
worse. […]
When every now and then I find myself with a Russian magazine, I freeze
motionless over the phonetic transcriptions of foreign words and names into
Cyrillic, where “popyoolar rok-an-role groop the Beetlz and Jon Lenon” are
playing, sometimes even with “Maikl Jekson singing and dancing”. We can
only hope that things here will never get that far. Perhaps.271
In some instances, by accepting the spelling with <z>, the new Rules ef-
fectively codified a pronunciation explicitly discouraged in previous
editions of the Rules. This was the case with words like diskuse/diskuze,
režisér/režizér. Objectors often saw this as the thin end of the wedge: once
this is permitted, they said, the next step will be demogracie for demokracie
(the former representing what is still a stigmatized pronunciation) and so
forth. This in their eyes discredited the entire effort, even although a
majority of changes concerned words where /z/ had long been the only
acceptable pronunciation.272
The words president/prezident, filosofie/filozofie, and universita/
univerzita were mentioned frequently. The spellings with <z> had actually
been sneaked in under the previous edition in 1983, but it was only with the
1993 edition that the <s> spelling disappeared from the Rules entirely (it
was reinstated in the Addendum in 1994). The fact that these words
represent exalted concepts made them a lightning rod for criticism. Writers
often contrasted the loftiness of the concepts with the vulgarity of the
unfamiliar <z> spelling, and cited this discrepancy between form and
meaning as a reason for retaining the old orthography.
1.2. Worries about Easternization vs. Westernisation
Many correspondents said the use of <z> represented a break with Western
European languages, and followed a Russian or Slovak model.
Russian does use the Cyrillic letter <ɡ> (pronounced /z/) in some
borrowings in place of original <s>,273 thus ɦɚɪɤɫɢɡɦ ‘Marxism’,
ɩɪɟɡɢɞɟɧɬ ‘president’. However, Russian has often borrowed the same
words that Czech has, and in many of them Russian retains or reinstates the
original <s> or <ss>, written in Cyrillic <ɫ> or <cc> and pronounced [s] or
[ss] in all varieties of the language. Examples are: ɭɧɢɜɟɪɫɢɬɟɬ ‘univer-
sity’, ɤɭɪɫ ‘course’, ɞɢɫɤɭɫɫɢɹ ‘discussion’, ɮɢɥɨɫɨɮɢɹ ‘philosophy’.274
The principle of consistently rendering Latin and Greek words according to
their pronunciation is more firmly established in Russian than in Czech, but
the Czechs cannot be accused of slavishly imitating Russian spelling. In
many specific examples, the new Czech spelling with <z> actually
distanced it from the Russian one.275
Those who argued that <z> was being imported from Slovak had more
ground to stand on. Slovak has long used <z> in exactly the places where it
was introduced in 1993 in Czech.276 The idea that the Czechs had copied
this idea from their neighbours was not simply a paranoid fantasy. During
the communist era, linguists consistently attempted to bring the Czechoslo-
vak state’s two official written codes closer together in their written forms.
Šmilauer wrote in 1950:
…we must make an effort to see that Czech and Slovak orthography do not
distance themselves needlessly from each other through the reform process.
For every reform of Slovak orthography we should ask ourselves whether
we could and should do something similar in Czech. (1950b: 37)
It continued throughout the communist era in almost unchanged form,
as we can see in Petr’s (1981: 6–7) report on the mission of the CLI:
…the orthography commission now faces the demanding task of compiling
a draft of partial corrections to individual points that continue the intentions
of the 1957 reforms, primarily to remove some inconsistencies and intro-
duce uniform resolutions to disputed cases (for example, the use of capital
letters). In these drafts it will also be necessary to look at the orthographic
composition of Slovak and the work of the Slovak orthography commission,
which has been conducting a detailed study of certain matters of punctua-

tion, capitalization, etc.
This is a twist on the pre-war notion of a “Czechoslovak language”
(þeskoslovenský jazyk), which formed a central plank of Masaryk’s
Czechoslovakism: the belief that the Czechs and Slovaks were one nation,
with one language that had two standard varieties. In the new, communist-
era thinking, they were to be considered two languages moving in step with
each other, and the Czechs would be able to learn from the work of the
Slovak academy, which was more interventionist in its spelling reforms.
This approach merely continued existing trends in Czech language
regulation. Proposals to replace <ismus> with <izmus> were found in
Czech in the 1920s; it was not originally a communist-era invention.277
Once again, linguists had successfully adapted totalitarian ideology to serve
what they believed was a greater non-political linguistic good.
Even in the communist era, the idea that Czech should take its lead from
Slovak was bound to raise hackles among the Czech intelligentsia. The
Czechs have often defined themselves in contrast to their Slovak
neighbours. In their own view, they have a longer cultural tradition,
whereas Slovakia was a poorer, agrarian nation whose achievements in
high culture were recent and limited (see Holy 1996 for a dissection of this
view). It was easy for opponents of spelling reform to equate the more
modest achievements of Slovak literature and written culture with its
spelling system. In their view, the primary excuse for harmonizing Czech
and Slovak spelling had been the existence of a common state, which was
now defunct.
Slovak and Russian were only two of the most obvious symbols for
Eastern Europe that many Czechs strenuously rejected in the early post-
communist years. While the idea of making commonalities with the East
bothered some Czechs, others were more worried by the implications of
giving up commonalities with the West, even if they were as apparently
insignificant as a shared (or, in most cases, an only partially shared) spell-
ing.
In the minds of many, the traditional spelling with <s> was associated
with Western European languages: German, French, English, and Latin.
Retaining the spelling with <s> symbolized the Czechs’ affinity for the
humanistic tradition of the West, and affirmed their traditional affiliation to
Western education, society, and ways of thought. It showed that they re-
spect (the Czech word is a borrowing, with the same double meaning as in
English: obey and value) the source word.278
A thoughtful version of this came from novelist and poet Michal Ajvaz,
writing in Literární noviny shortly before the new Rules were published (14
October 1992):
The auditory and graphic “body” of a word is not just an indifferent external
sign pointing to its meaning, or a scaffolding that carries its own lexical
meaning. Lexical meaning is embedded in the character of the signifier, it is
anchored in that soil with many delicate roots, and it is not possible to yank
the meaning out of it and transport it to a different foundation without
changing that meaning.
Less thoughtful, but no less influential, was a rant that appeared in
Lidové noviny when the new Rules were first trailed in 1990. JiĜí Tyl wrote:
Across the whole of Europe, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, there has de-
scended an iron curtain of transcription from the Greek and Latin languages,
that thesaurus… of European thinking. Western orthographies treat them
with deserved respect and it was a sign of our belonging to a great European
culture that, until the 1950s, we did so as well. In contrast, the Slavs, espe-
cially those writing in Cyrillic, do not respect European transcription [sic].
And so our orthography, as a sign of acceptance of Stalinist totalitarianism,
was Russified at the orders of [our] academicians.279
Tyl’s historical and linguistic inaccuracies are too numerous to be worth
unpacking here,280 but his mythology of western respect for classical civili-
zation and eastern totalitarianism’s indifference to it fit the mood of the
times perfectly. It is pleasingly symmetrical and Manichean. The east-west
divide combined fruitfully with metaphoric interpretations of spelling re-
form and language development as journeys (see chapter 8, section 6), and
fitted the overall myth of decline that underpinned these debates. Linguists,
such as JiĜí Marvan, were equally amenable to these sorts of interpreta-
tions.281
The duality also appears in beliefs about time (before and after a turning
point: the 1989 revolution) and geography (east and west). First, people
asserted that phonetic spelling was characteristic of the pre-1989 order, and
a rejection of it should thus be part of the new, post-Soviet society. They
also insisted that the Czech lands historically belong in Western, not East-
ern Europe, and thus their orthography should gravitate to Romance and
Germanic, not Slavonic, models:
Czechs belong to Latin culture in their historical development. Glagolitic
did not take off here – and given the later fate of Byzantine culture perhaps
it is just as well. Today’s reformers of Czech orthography, and of standard
Czech in general, have apparently never studied Latin… they lack a sense
of solidarity with western European languages. This is why they so light-
heartedly forsook the heritage of Jungmann and Gebauer.282
Members of the public thus associated the use of <z> in borrowed words
with the crude, politicized, utilitarian perspective of communism. Was a
society’s belief in democracy and justice embodied in whether it used <s>
or <z> in a handful of words? The idea was on the face of it ridiculous, but,
as we have seen, it had a historical kernel of truth.
1.3. Linguistics vs. common sense
Many members of the public refused to deal with the linguistic issues of
orthography on any level other than “simple common sense”. Common
sense meant, in most instances, an individual’s particular language “in-
stinct” – which was what the functionalists had originally been trying to get
away from. These correspondents contrasted their own “common sense”
points with the intricacies of the linguists’ arguments. Their refusal to en-
gage with the tools and terms of the linguistic trade testified to their skepti-
cism at the validity of a linguistic approach.
Many Czechs did not distinguish between the spelling system of a lan-
guage and the language itself – its grammar, vocabulary, and syntax. One
correspondent, for example, began as follows:
My letter will concern your battle against the new rules of the Czech lan-
guage.283
She not only equates orthography with the language at large, she even
manages to rename the Rules of Czech Orthography.284 This stance was not
uncommon. For many, the word pravopis ‘orthography’ meant anything
connected with correct or appropriate writing or speech; in other words,
jazyková kultura ‘language culture’. A classic example is a letter from
Michal Babka and Petr Chudoba, which appeared in ZN noviny on 20 May
1993, in which, referring to the Rules, they bemoaned the “loss of sense of
expression in such an illogical grammar (v takto nelogické gramatice)”.
Some journalists had naive or puristic beliefs about language and what
linguists do. For example, Richard Crha, assigned to a popular magazine
interview with Hlavsa, admitted frankly (Mladý svČt, 26 February 1993):
I learn what is for me an astounding new fact: that language for the most
part develops independent of linguists. Instead, they follow how cultivated
speakers express themselves in the standard, and depending on which

tendencies appear in their speech, they either support them or put the brake
on them.
Crha’s original belief that language changes at the behest of linguists
belongs to the puristic phase of Czech in the late nineteenth century. In one
exchange with Hlavsa, Crha draws on a further cliché about linguists:
“For example, yesterday on television,” Hlavsa said. “A plug to die for:
Sledujte Simpsonovi ‘Watch The Simpsons’ [nominative plural]. Except it
should have been Simpsonovy [in the accusative plural].”
“So the next day you phone up the station to tell them they’re dunces?”
“That too. But more often, we use these unsightly examples in our publica-
tions, for the language slot on the radio, and so forth.”
Crha entered the interview with the belief that linguists are purists,
whose job it is to correct mistakes and preserve the language, rather than to
analyze, educate and influence. This was not an uncommon belief; Crha
was simply one of the few journalists to admit it openly.
A number of writers simply refused to address the linguistic complexi-
ties embodied in orthographic reform. Most frequently criticized were
spellings like kurz. As we saw in chapter 2, section 5.2, intervocalic and
prevocalic <s> in Czech is pronounced [z] in many borrowings. But for
some such words, the pronunciation [z] can only occur in certain forms.
Standard pronunciation is:
[MWTU] ‘course’ nom. and acc. sg. but
=MWT\WMWT\'OMWT\[MWT\WÖMWT\WÖOMWT\'Z? ‘course’ oblique sg. and
all pl. cases.
Because the citation (dictionary) form is the nominative singular, people
found it incomprehensible that the 1993 Rules changed the spelling to kurz.
After all, they said, it is impossible to pronounce [z] there.285
As we saw in chapter 2, section 3.3, though, this mismatch between
spelling and pronunciation, called “final devoicing”, is a feature of the
Czech morphophonemic writing system. Objecting to the <z> on the basis
that we hear [s] in the citation form is, on linguistic grounds at least, spuri-
ous.286
However, it was also possible to overstate the importance of linguistic
function. Chemistry and mathematics teacher JiĜí VídeĖský wrote to ýeský
deník (25 June 1993) to complain is that the homographs created by spell-
ing reform lead to serious and inevitable misunderstandings. He cited ex-
amples from student papers to demonstrate what would happen if reforms

did away with the distinction between and <y>:
Amoniak je zdravý škodlivý. ‘Ammoniac is healthy harmful.’
PĜi vulkanizaci kauþuku se používá sýra. ‘In the vulcanization of India
rubber, some cheese is used.’
Here students had misspelled the words zdraví and síra, when they
meant to write:
Amoniak je zdraví škodlivý. ‘Ammoniac is harmful to health.’
PĜi vulkanizaci kauþuku se používá síra. ‘In the vulcanization of India
rubber, sulphur is used.’
VídeĖský takes to an extreme his own argument that “[c]orrect orthog-
raphy leads to unambiguousness in the written text”; he will not tolerate
any possible confusion, however improbable. However, language, as is well
known, tolerates a moderate degree of ambiguity, which is then disambigu-
ated in context. The occasional confusing sentence (and both examples can
easily be deciphered from context) need not be an iron-clad rationale for
maintaining a spelling distinction that can no longer be heard.
1.4. Using linguistics to challenge the Rules
Most lay contributors who mentioned linguistics either misapplied it, as in

section 1.3, or set up a dichotomy between linguistics (bad) and traditional
education or cultural tradition (good).
A few, however, were able to challenge the Rules using the language
and terminology of linguistics. Daniela Trávníþková, a student of Czech
literature, wrote to Telegraf, saying in effect that the authors of the Rules
had misunderstood the concept of linguistic norm. By codifying innovative
forms and excluding traditional ones, they had attempted to “push” the
norm onward, when in fact a spelling reform should reflect norms rather
than lead them.287
Several commented on the problems of making “current usage” a model
for the standard language. Vlasta Dufková, writing in Literární noviny on
14 July 1994, noted that:
What is interesting is that our orthography tries so stubbornly to hold – or so

they say – to a principle as highly slippery as phonetic usage. It thus relies
on what is historically and geographically the most changeable component

of language.
This argument was later echoed in evaluations of the German spelling
reform (Sally Johnson 2005: 60). What marks the linguistic naysayers out
from the rest of the crowd is their ability to speak the language of the
reformers, bringing the aesthetic and historical dimension back into the
linguistic discussions of spelling regulation.
1.5. Debates over details
A series of letter writers, mostly linguists and teachers, reproached the au-
thors of the Rules for not applying their own principles. They pointed to
dozens of situations where similar words are treated differently. These
problems sometimes led the correspondents to reject the reforms com-
pletely – but more often they served to support the view that the ortho-
graphic reform had been approved too quickly and had not been thoroughly
thought through.288
The operative word in this debate is nedĤslednost ‘inconsistency’, which
crops up in nearly every article. A major inconsistency was, in their eyes,
proof of the need for overhauling the theoretical principles of language
regulation that the commission had employed:
What’s more, the inconsistency is intolerable: either write consistently
“phonetically” as in Russian (including the names of classics like GjotČ
‘Goethe’, Gjegel ‘Hegel’), or uphold the classical standard, familiar from
German since the days of Luther and humanism.289
The orthographic commission had tried to instantiate in spelling what
they perceived to be the current written norm, but the problem is that con-
sensual norms are by their nature not consistent. Seeking consistency on a
theoretical point is perhaps a laudable goal, but it is a highly interventionist
approach to spelling, much more interventionist than what the orthographic
commission proposed.
Complaints over matters of consistency often resulted when readers dis-
agreed with the commission’s analysis. For example, in ZN noviny on 27
May 1993, an anonymous letter-writer asked indignantly why he should
write dizertace ‘dissertation’ but not dizkuze ‘discussion’.
Of course, [z] is the standard pronunciation for the former and [s] is
standard in the latter; indeed, under normal speech conditions Czechs never
realize [z] before a voiceless consonant. But this was not the point. The
authors of the Rules had tried to implement a more phonemic spelling sys-
tem for borrowed words, as opposed to the morphophonemic principle that
operates in Czech for native words. They thus essentially decreed: write
<diz> when the final consonant of the prefix is voiced; otherwise write
<dis>. The anonymous letter-writer wanted a single, consistent spelling of
the prefix <dis>, as happens with native prefixes, regardless of pronuncia-
tion.
A similar argument was made regarding the root /sof/ ~ /zof/ ‘wisdom’.
Critics said it should always be spelled <sof> to reveal the common origin
of the words derived from it (filosofie ‘philosophy’, sofistika ‘sophistry’).
The linguist Petr Sgall objected to this, saying that at the basis of the Czech
spelling system was a phonological principle that you spell it as you hear it.
In native words, Czechs frequently spell the same root different ways; he
brings to bear examples like dĤm ‘house (nom. sg.)’ vs. domu ‘house (gen.
sg.)’, and pĜítel ‘friend (nom. sg.)’ vs. pĜátelé ‘friends (nom. pl.)’.290
There are valid language-planning arguments for both approaches. A
consistent morphophonemic principle has its attractions. Against that one
could argue that non-native prefixes and suffixes are less readily analysable
to speakers, who tend to treat foreign borrowings as indivisible units. This
belief argues for a more strictly phonetic approach.
Other objectors contented themselves with listing individual words, as
Bohumil Pick in Lidové noviny, 28 August 1993:
It won’t just be a matter of correcting errors (anoxþní ‘anoxidant [for
anoxidní]’, beta radiation repeatedly with the German letter ß instead of
Greek ȕ, graphically incorrect highlighting of the entries nahlížet ‘take a
view’, odedávna ‘since long ago’, zášĢ (and záští) ‘spite’, [sic]) so much as
it will a thorough lexicological correction of the Orthographic Dictionary
section: (1) If the forms [with CC phonology] polívka ‘soup’, polívat ‘pour’
(see the entry under polé-), opíkat ‘bake’ (see under opé-), símČ ‘seed’ (see
sémČ), kvodlibet ‘academic dispute’ (see quodlibet) etc. are permitted, then
it is necessary to list these forms consistently in the appropriate place in the
Orthographic Dictionary (alphabetically), which has not happened. (2) The
format of doublets (e.g. (e.g. dvaapĤl and dva a pĤl ‘two and a half’,
beztvárný and beztvarý ‘shapeless’, francouzština and franština ‘French’,
garance and garancie ‘guarantee’) must be uniform, so therefore e.g. the
pairs rezavý and rezivý ‘rusty’, farizej and farizeus ‘Pharisee’, jeþmenný and
jeþný ‘barley’, orchidea and orchidej ‘orchid’, osvobozenecký and
osvobozenský ‘liberation’, vegetariánský and vegetáĜský ‘vegetarian’ etc.
should likewise always form a single entry, only when necessary with an
explanation of shades of meaning, as in entries like berla ‘crosier’ and berle

‘crutches’, linecký ‘Linz/Linzer’, etc.291
To judge by these responses, there were a fair number of printing errors
and disputable decisions in the first edition of the Rules. As one author
pointed out, this was not a brilliant start for a book designed to serve as a
standard spelling manual.
Many who read the rules closely enough to object to the details seemed
uninterested in the hobgoblins of the reform, <s> and <z>. For example,
Šajtar, writing in Reflex, provided a list of issues thrown up by the way the
Rules implement capitalization of street names, institutional names, and the
transcription of East Asian and Slavonic languages. The oft-reviled <s> and
<z> did not rate a mention from him.
Moving with the times, the new Rules listed words like orgazmus ‘or-
gasm’, pyj ‘penis’, prezervativ ‘condom’, vagina, sperma ‘sperm’ that had
not appeared in previous versions. Several articles mention protests about
the inclusion of these words in the school edition – were people not
ashamed to admit that they looked for the naughty words first? – although
others (such as Jaromír Slomek, writing on 11 May 1993 in Lidové noviny)
had no problem with the “sexual (r)evolution conquering new territory”.
Evidently, for some the exalted character of the “great Czech nation” and
its language was profaned by the appearance of these words in norm-creat-
ing manuals.
A special subcategory involving consistency concerns the Addendum.
The Addendum made optional most of the systematic spelling changes
found in the Rules and established a complex hierarchy of differences (see
chapter 2, section 8). However, it was only a few pages long and had at best
a partial list of examples; the changes it wrought were not instantiated in
the dictionary section of the Rules, which remained unchanged from the
original version. Some people simply threw up their hands at this latest U-
turn:
The Rules of 1958 permitted certain forms and alternates; the Rules of 1993
permitted other forms and doublets. The Addendum permits (in the part on
words borrowed from other languages) basically both groups. The Adden-
dum is a compromise of compromises. […] In Czech teachers’ slang you
can sometimes hear instead of “doublet” the phrase “both are possible (obČ
možné).” I think a new term might now come into use: “anything’s possible
(všechno možné).”292
1.6. Debating the need for simplicity
A common theme – backed by contributions from teachers and educators –

was the difficulties that pupils had at school. Correspondents recalled their
feelings of inadequacy and inferiority from their school days.293
I belong to that part of the population for whom orthographic rules do create
problems, and I welcome any simplifications. […] Don’t you think it is
more important to understand what a poet meant than whether we continue
to write “s” where a majority has long pronounced “z” (and so forth) out of
a desire to preserve a former “beauty”?294
Characteristic for this school of thought is the opposition between
meaning and form: a surfeit of niggling rules prevents people from ex-
pressing themselves adequately; attention to form thus blocks attention to
meaning. Pedagogues like Milan Žemliþka were most sympathetic to these
problems:
Have you ever met people who converse regularly and do it well, thus ful-
filling the functions of language as a means of interpersonal communica-
tion, but who have not mastered the written form of it without errors – so
that they are automatically discriminated against as a result of this “gap” in
their educational skills? Isn’t there something unsettling in this fact that the
written language has appropriated an autonomous standing for itself and
acts according to its own laws?295
Others saw a more sinister motivation in the maintenance of what they
thought was a needlessly complex orthography:
Our schools still stop at the verbalization of learning materials, at norma-
tive, prescriptive methods, at a developed process of classification and
sanctions. The Rules of Czech Orthography are a powerful weapon in the
hands of teachers as they do battle with pupils. […] A special value is as-
signed to orthographic rules, and in practice the whole problem moves to a
different plane: a small mistake – half a grade; a big one – one grade off. An
ideal recipe in a system where the teacher waits for a pupil’s mistake, where
the grade (an evaluation in points) opens (or closes off) the path to the next
school year or to higher types of schools, etc.296
These contributors hoped that simplifications would eliminate ortho-
graphic errors, or at least reduce this gap between intention and product.
Like the functionalist reformers, they focused exclusively on the production
of written language and the norms of language producers, choosing not to
engage with aesthetic questions or the issue of cultural heritage.
2. Authority and the 1993 reforms
A common accusation against the new Rules once they were published was
that they had been planned and executed before the events of 1989, and
they thus derived their legitimacy from a defunct social and political order.
In this view, there were secretive, unaccountable mechanisms that under-
pinned the Rules’ development and smoothed their path to the necessary
permissions for publication and use. These were to be regarded by any true
democrat as deeply suspect. To evaluate the legitimacy of the spelling re-
forms, we will need to consider what it meant to say that “the CLI” under-
took these reforms, and consider where the Rules’ authority derived from.
2.1. Private research vs. public institutions
In pre-revolutionary days, work carried out at the CLI by its employees

would have been viewed as an institutional effort, and any work carrying
the CLI’s imprint would have borne its authority. In the years after the
revolution, this nostrum disappeared, along with many of the other small
certainties of pre-revolutionary life. It was now possible that individuals
working within an institution had certain rights, and their individual rights
and actions weakened the perception that the institution spoke with one
voice.
In chapter 5, section 2, I outlined the method by which the institutional
weight of the CLI was thrown behind the Rules to bolster their rational le-
gitimacy. How then was this institutional approval reflected in the Rules?
The academic edition contains the following hints of it:
Facing the title page: “Prepared by an employees’ collective at the
Czech Language Institute ASCR”,297 with the names of the nine authors.
In the forward: “The authorial collective that prepared the Rules of
Czech Orthography in the Czech Language Institute took all these circum-
stances into account.”298
The final page, which in Czech books contains publication information
(the edition page):
The Rules of Czech Orthography
Prepared by an employees’ collective
at the Czech Language Institute
of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic299
Signals of institutional authority are more evident in the school edition.
The cover has only:
Authority and the 1993 reforms 231
The Rules of Czech Orthography

Czech Language Institute ASCR
Pansofia300
The same text is repeated on the title page, with the added line:
School edition301
The page opposite the contents contains a brief introduction, with the
following statements: “The Rules of Czech Orthography (school edition)
are closely connected with the new version of the Rules of Czech Orthog-
raphy, which was prepared in the Czech Language Institute ASCR. […]
The Rules of Czech Orthography (school edition) were prepared by an em-
ployees’ collective at the Czech Language Institute ASCR as follows (in
alphabetical order):…”
On the final page:
THE RULES OF CZECH ORTHOGRAPHY
SCHOOL EDITION
Prepared by an employees’ collective
at the Czech Language Institute of the Academy of Sciences
of the Czech Republic302
The authority of the CLI and, by extension, the Academy of Sciences, is
prominently invoked. The authors obtained the approval of the CLI through
accepted channels, but there was some question as to whether the Academy
of Sciences should have had input into the matter as well.
In 1992 the Presidium of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences con-
sidered whether the Academy should take a view on the proposed reforms.
Antonín Kostlán said they were told “repeatedly” by CLI director Daneš
that the reform amounted to a small group of reformers working on an “in-
terim handbook” in their capacity as private persons. As a result, the Pre-
sidium did not proceed with a more substantive discussion, and Kostlán
later felt tricked when the CLI attached its imprimatur to the new Rules.303
Evidently, the CLI name and that of the Academy, of which the CLI
was an integral part, were in fact later attached to the new handbook, even
though the Academy as an institution had not had the chance to discuss the
matter. This in itself was a source of grievance to Kostlán, but just as trou-
bling for him was the fact that the copyright for the academic edition rested
in the names of the authorial collective. Kostlán saw this discrepancy as
evidence that the commission wanted to have its cake and eat it too. They
claimed the authority of the Institute and the Academy when it suited them
but stressed the private nature of the work the moment institutional road-
blocks appeared.
This interpretation of the nature of copyright was understandable in a
country where property and copyright law were in flux and had until re-
cently been far from the public eye. Prior to 1989, editions of the Rules had
in fact been copyrighted to the publisher, rather than to individual authors.
This state of affairs was reflected in the school edition, which, bewilder-
ingly, is copyrighted twice: once to “Olga Martincová representing the au-
thors” and once to the publisher Pansofia. However, works emanating from
the CLI in the early 1990s were copyrighted to individual authors, as is the
norm in academic publishing worldwide.
Few western academics have trouble accepting at some abstract level
the contradictory notions that their research and publication is simultane-
ously their own and their employer’s. Kostlán’s argument bears considera-
tion, though, as the Rules were not an ordinary academic work; they were
to be used nationwide and would be mandatory in schools. Assigning the
copyright to individuals could remove responsibility from the CLI and thus
weaken the Rules’ claim to authoritativeness.
Should the CLI have allowed a fuller discussion of the Rules by the
Academy of Sciences?
The Czech Language Institute exists as part of the Academy of Sciences
of the Czech Republic (ASCR). The Academy is a unitary body, funded
partially by direct government grant, which carries out its research through
institutes in particular fields. The ASCR can set up or dissolve institutes
through its supreme body, the Assembly, and also sets the budgets for indi-
vidual institutes. It has several overlapping mechanisms for reviewing the
work of its institutes; these come under the purview of the Council for Sci-
ence (vČdecká rada) in matters of research policy, or in the case of more
practical matters, the Academy’s governing body, the Academy Council
and its Presidium.304 The Presidium in particular has members charged with
responsibilities in various subject areas; the humanities, for instance, have a
member “responsible for conceptual and scientific-organizational issues”,
and a member “responsible for coordination of cooperation with institutions
in the cultural sphere”.305
The ASCR therefore does have mechanisms through which it can con-
sider issues like spelling reform if it believes that a project is controversial
or groundbreaking. Because the ASCR’s founding act and rules accord sub-
stantial scholarly freedom to its individual institutes, much would hinge on
how these words are interpreted.
Even if the Presidium or the Council of Science had intervened in the
Authority and the 1993 reforms 233
Rules, they almost certainly could not have stopped the commission from
pursing the project; orthography is a well-established part of the CLI’s
bailiwick and its historical role in shaping standards was unquestionable.
However, they might have recommended additional consultation or further
research, or they could have required approval from the ASCR before the
Academy’s name could be used, thus slowing down the project further.
The answer to our question is thus a resounding “perhaps.” The Acad-
emy, like the rest of Czech society, was in a state of post-communist flux,
and procedures that would earlier have been dictated politically were now
up for grabs. A scholar who believed in the maximum freedom of his team
or institute under the terms of the Academy’s charter would have denied
the right of higher-ups or non-specialists to meddle in linguistic affairs, and
this was exactly the position Daneš took.306 Others, who mistrusted the
closed nature of the reforms and were worried that the Academy’s name
would be attached to them, believed that a degree of outside oversight was
warranted. Early in the process, the former view triumphed, but with the
public outcry the latter view came to the fore again.
These two competing views of authority derive from different types of
legitimacy, as identified in chapter 1. In one, authority derives from rational
legitimacy: it is hierarchical and cascades down through layers of institu-
tions by established channels. In another, authority derives from charis-
matic legitimacy: it is independent, and accrues to groups by virtue of the
excellence of their ideas. Proponents of the 1993 spelling reform, however,
seemed to make use now of the first view, now of the second.
2.2. Public perceptions of linguistic authority
The controversy surrounding the Rules highlighted how little people knew
about the Czech Language Institute. The CLI had a high public profile
compared to many other institutes of the Academy of Sciences; in addition
to having their name on dictionaries and spelling manuals, they published a
range of other instructional books, as well as appearing on radio and televi-
sion shows about language. However, it became clear in the case of the de-
bate that most people did not know what this highly visible institution’s
mission was, other than to employ linguists. Even journalists like Vlaćka
Kuþerová, who covered the orthography controversy regularly for the
newspaper Mladá fronta, ascribed more direct power and authority to the
CLI than it actually possessed:
People want to know how to write Czech correctly. And as long as two in-
stitutions here – the Ministry and the Academy of Sciences – continue to ar-
gue over which of them has the last word, the situation will not improve.
There can only be one orthography in the country and one specialist office
should be responsible for it – the Czech Language Institute of the Academy
of Sciences.307
This desire for authority was amply reflected in the public conscious-
ness, where the idea of variation was simply rejected and people looked for
a source of linguistic security:
People can pronounce words in Prague or anywhere else however they like;
nevertheless, we must write the same way everywhere.308
Some people thought the CLI had the power to ban words or construc-
tions from public usage and to decree that others must be used. Others did
not go this far, but believed that the CLI’s main purpose should be to cru-
sade for the purity of Czech or some other conservative linguistic agenda:
Recently, [non-standard] forms like bysem instead of bych ‘I would’ and
bysme instead of bychom ‘we would’ have been multiplying greatly. Should
we not legalize them as well, since we can now write tĜech and þtyĜech in
the genitive case alongside the correct forms tĜí ‘three’ and þtyĜ ‘four’, and
we hear on television v pracech instead of v pracích ‘in the works of…’ on
a daily basis? This is precisely what the Czech Language Institute should be
fighting. They should be instructing television and radio announcers and
daily paper editors on correct orthography and correct pronunciation, be-
cause their bad example has a widespread effect. But that is quite exhaust-
ing work; it is much easier to give way to vulgarisms.309
People believed that the CLI should be discouraging change rather than
accepting (giving way to or permitting) popular non-standard usage (which
people often labelled as degeneracy). The use of terms like legalize and re-
sponsible betray a belief that the CLI had wider powers than it actually pos-
sessed: that it could actually forbid certain usages or somehow force those
editors and broadcasters to heed its reprimands.
The nature of the CLI’s authority in the language community was not
uniform. Some accepted it based on the prestige of its members, others on
purely hierarchical grounds, while a third group took the pragmatic stance
that simply someone had to be in charge, and it might as well be the CLI.
A number of those outside the commission accepted the Rules in a be-
lief that linguists were a better judge of these matters than the public. For
example, linguist Jan Balhar, writing in Lidové noviny on 25 September
Obligation or recommendation? 235
1993, said that “Linguists accept the new Rules (if they are silent, then they
certainly agree with them); let us therefore trust them.” Others were more
explicit in attributing authority to the CLI in particular:
The specialists of the Czech Language Institute of the Czechoslovak Acad-
emy of Sciences worked on the new rules for several years before arriving
at the current version. The CLI is our foremost workplace for Czech lan-
guage matters, and has the final word in these matters.310
Mudra and numerous others simply saw a single, national authority in
charge of orthography as a necessity to ensure uniformity in schools and
some way of rationalizing its development. Their belief in the authority of
the CLI was closely linked to the status of its proclamations: did they repre-
sent an obligation or a recommendation, and for whom?
3. Obligation or recommendation?
As the controversy surrounding the Rules wore on, its authors gradually
modified their views on the place the Rules should occupy in society. Nu-
merous interviews that the four primary figures in the commission –
Hlavsa, Martincová, Kraus, and Sedláþek – gave to newspapers, and their
own occasional contributions, allow us to chart the progress of this shift
from harbinger of orthographic change to optional recommendation.311
This change may not represent a fundamental ideological shift, but it
does signal a substantial change in emphasis – possibly a normalization of
sceptical views of language regulation and a new, emerging stasis in which
the presumption will be against orthographic reform rather than for it. In-
tersecting with this shift are variations in the format of articles, the report-
ers’ evolving knowledge of the issues, and the changing situation at the
CLI.
Different article formats conveyed substantially different information to
the reader about the new reforms. For newspapers, the favoured format was
a summary written by a reporter, or an interview with the commission.
Only occasionally did the commission members themselves author articles
for the newspapers, and these were rarely of a factual nature. Giving inter-
views had advantages for both sides; it allowed the papers to obtain infor-
mation in the form and style they required, demanded less work from the
commission members, and put them in the position of authorities who were
being consulted for their expertise.
The disadvantage was that the discussion was shaped by the inter-
viewer’s questions rather than the interviewee’s knowledge of the subject

area, and the interviewee’s words were filtered through an extra medium. If
the reporter found an answer about language norms or the precise legal
status of orthographic handbooks boring, irrelevant, or incomprehensible,
he could simply omit it from his story. The sometimes simplistic views that
come across in interviews do not always match the more nuanced positions
that appear when the commission’s members published their own articles in
the popular press.
As the controversy over the Rules deepened and journalists became
more aware of the issues involved, they began to ask more pertinent ques-
tions and shape the interviews in ways that brought out these points. An
early interview by Jan Hrubý of the magazine Tvorba (5 September 1990)
starts with the apparently self-evident statement that “The written face of
the language undergoes modifications from time to time”312 and never man-
ages to question why or how this should be. Later on, a 3 June 1993 inter-
view by Agáta Pilátová begins more perceptively by asking, “What in fact
are ‘Rules’ and what is the motivation behind their emergence?” More so-
phisticated questioning elicits answers that are less comprehensible and
entertaining for the lay reader, but more accurate and less inflammatory to
public opinion.
During this period, the leadership of the CLI changed. JiĜí Kraus
became first assistant director and then director of the CLI, bringing him to
a prominence within the orthographic commission that he had not earlier
enjoyed. As earlier noted, Kraus had not been a willing member of the
commission, while his predecessor as director, František Daneš, had played
a major role in the earlier 1957 reforms and took a generally positive view
of the process, if not of every decision taken by the new commission. Kraus
proffered a more skeptical analysis of the reform than Daneš had, and
emphasized that the new Rules represented one of a range of possibilities.
As a scholar of rhetoric and language culture, he focused less on the par-
ticular spelling and grammatical points encapsulated in the Rules and more
on the social context in which they were embedded.
Despite these other factors influencing the presentation, the commission
evidently felt an increasing need to rebut allegations that they were forcing
changes on the populace. They therefore began to downplay the creative,
norm-changing aspect of the Rules, and to emphasize the role of historical
forces in language and the status of the linguist as observer and counselor
rather than decision-maker.
Early interviews with the commission reflected a generally optimistic
perception that the changes would be widely accepted. In a 5 September

1990 interview, Hlavsa described the changes as having evolved from long-
running discussions on how to spell foreign words:
As a result of them we will wait until 1992 to make public the orthographic
revisions we have been preparing for some time […] There will be changes
in how sounds are marked by letters, in the spelling of foreign words, in
when s and z are written, in how capital letters are written and the use of
dashes with nouns and compound adjectives.
Hlavsa is quoted using formulations like: “When writing s and z the fol-
lowing principle has been accepted…” and “According to the new rules a
long vowel will only be written if it is also pronounced noticeably as long.”
Hlavsa – or his interviewer – gives no indication that these reforms are op-
tional for individuals. It is taken as a given that Czechs will write the way
the CLI recommends.
Similarly, Sedláþek in an interview later that month in Reportér was
asked, “Is the simplification of orthography under consideration? What
about our feared i and y?”, to which he responded simply that “Some small-
scale partial changes are in preparation – in connection with the new edi-
tion of the Rules of Czech Orthography.”
In early 1993, before the Rules were released, Hlavsa was asked:
The Rules represent an obligatory language norm that the next generation of
schoolchildren will learn by. How did the new Rules come about, and what
new things will they bring us?
He responded as follows:
…it is self-evident that after a certain period of time it is necessary to flesh
out, change, or update certain generally accepted norms. […] By no means
do we want the new Rules to become a whip, of course. They will be
obligatory in schools, it’s true, but for adults they should serve more as a set
of instructions on how behave oneself in a linguistically cultured fashion.
What a person chooses from them is then his own matter. In schools, strict
adherence is necessary, because that is where children are taught cultured
expression (ýeský deník, 30 January 1993).
The Rules, therefore, are not required, but they will be the arbiter of
cultured expression. A similar viewpoint heads the foreword to the aca-
demic edition of the Rules (1993: 5):313
The extraordinary attention paid to obeying those rules governing the usage
of the language in its written form is a notable component of the Czech
cultural tradition. A significant part of our society judges knowledge of or-
thography as a visible sign of a person’s education; people see in this con-

sistent, overall respect for orthographic principles one of the main precon-
ditions for preserving the values that the language provides to the nation.
They therefore expect that orthographic rules will create the conditions nec-
essary for attaining and consolidating this state of affairs. As a result of this,
we sometimes hear the opinion that orthographic prescription should be
straightforward and should not admit multiple possibilities. However, the
development and differentiation of forms of written communication, espe-
cially scholarly and artistic ones, leads unavoidably to the conclusion that
orthography too should play a role in the stylistic differentiation of written
texts. For this reason, we treat orthographic rules as a set of recommenda-
tions for sophisticated written expression, from which it is permissible to
deviate in special instances, should the writer deem it necessary and justi-
fied.
The emphasis in Hlavsa’s own statement follows this closely:314 the
Rules represent merely a recommendation, but one that appropriates for
itself values like sophistication and refinement (vytĜíbenost), and therefore
deviation from the Rules is not encouraged. The forward stresses the value
that the Czech cultural tradition attaches to orthographic uniformity. While
it is permissible to disregard this uniformity, the authors opine that writers
should do so only in certain instances.315
CLI director Daneš backed this line in a slightly softer form in an
interview with the weekly news journal Respekt (24 May 1993):
“We start with the fact that every sensible person recognizes that it is good
to have a single way of writing,” explains Professor Ladislav [sic] Daneš,
director of the Czech Language Institute ASCR. It has become an unwritten
tradition that the Academy publishes the Rules and that people are guided
by them. According to Professor Daneš, the Rules are foremost an aid for
language users and it is a matter for each individual whether he is guided by
them or not. “There is no language police; no one can be tried for not re-
specting the rules. He can, however, be ‘condemned’ by society.” A definite
requirement is only set for schools – when the ministry of education deter-
mines what they will use to teach.
The original viewpoint, then, assumes that changes recommended and

publicized in a certain way automatically accrue authority and command
obedience. If the changes are well designed, the public will accept them
and shun those who reject them.
In May, after the Rules had already appeared and controversy had
erupted, Martincová put forth the following view:
The new Rules of Czech Orthography are not a law; they merely represent a
recommendation from the Czech Language Institute as to how to write more
simply. (ZN noviny, 20 May 1993)
This is a clear shift to a more defensive position, which gives no cultural
weight to the spellings in the new Rules and instead emphasizes the lack of
legal status for the Rules outside the educational sphere. In the first of a
series of three articles published in June 1993, entitled Proþ se mČní
Pravidla ‘Why the Rules are Changing,’ Martincová and Kraus elaborated
on this statement, saying [emphasis original]:
No less fundamental a question is how authoritative the new Rules are. In
opposition to the view that the Rules must be mechanically obeyed and
that they simply give orders in an authoritative fashion is the explana-
tion that the Rules are a recommendation – and it is in this sense that
they should be understood.
Hlavsa echoed this in a letter to Lidové noviny on 3 July of that year:
The opinion has now been heard in educated society that Czech language
culture has had enough of orders and prohibitions (the new Rules therefore
only make recommendations), and that we must regard as standard anything
that is in the real language norm, which is governed by the way educated
speakers express themselves. The Prague Linguistic School, whose contri-
bution is still highly regarded the world over, took a similar position toward
purism (now in its new, anti-Bolshevik garb). What we should be discussing
instead today is the relationship between that norm and the extent to which
interventions in it are justified.
Always somewhat less conciliatory than Martincová and Kraus, Hlavsa
here picked up their theme of optionality, while still insisting on the cor-
rectness of his approach and labeling his opponents as purists (a matter we
will take up in section 5.3).
By 1994, when the controversy had been running for nearly a year and a
half, Kraus formulated the position as follows in Mladý svČt on 26 August:
One notably new aspect to the Rules has escaped many people: an attempt
at tolerance. In the introduction we wrote that we recommend a certain
norm, but if someone feels it is warranted, he can write according to older
usage. When, for example, I am publishing the papers of Professor Patoþka,
then – even as a supporter of the new Rules and the new way of writing – I
would probably write filosofie [and not filozofie]. As a linguist, I am at the
same time interested to see which forms of borrowed words convention will
eventually favour.316
Kraus bases his interpretation on the same text as Hlavsa – the forward
to the academic edition of the Rules – but he emphasizes entirely different
points. It is true, as Kraus states, that the Rules claimed to be a set of
recommendations, but this sentence in the forward is hedged around with
warnings and suggestions that the Rules really should be obeyed by most
writers in most circumstances. Hlavsa’s vision of a virtually mandatory
new norm was giving way, under the pressure of public opinion and the
scepticism of the CLI’s new head, to an interpretation that downplayed pre-
scriptivism and highlighted the Rules’ optional nature. At the same time,
the criterion of unity for the written norm, which formed an integral part of
the debate earlier, became restricted to the discussion over schools. For the
rest of the population, the decision of what to write where had landed
firmly in the hands of the writer.
3.1. The Ministry and the certificate of approval
Much of the authority ascribed to the Rules derives from the fact that one
edition is used compulsorily in schools. Orthographic manuals have special
weight in the Czech context, where the formal side of language instruction
has historically dominated. Knowing where to capitalize and how to spell
and punctuate properly was traditionally the focus of much of the instruc-
tion in Czech language and literature, and this was reflected in the subject
matter and grading of school work and university entrance exams. Previous
editions of the school version of the Rules had always been accompanied
by a notice of the Ministry of Education’s schvalovací doložka ‘certificate
of approval’, which stated that the book had been approved for use in
schools. This certificate could be obtained prior to publication and adver-
tised on the cover, which was the case with the 1993 Rules.
The very existence of the certificate attached to the school edition be-
came an impulse for the constant revision of the Rules. Petr, writing in
1981 in his capacity as director of the CLI, said that a new edition was im-
perative precisely because of the certificate (1981: 7):
…it is necessary for certain differences between the Dictionary of Standard
Czech for Schools and the Public (1978) and the school edition of the Rules
(1958 and following) to be eliminated, especially in matters of morphology.
Because the dictionary does not have the certificate of approval of the
Ministry of Education of the Czech Socialist Republic, in cases where mor-
phological information differs (and from the point of view of codifying the
standard norm), what is given in the school edition of the Rules is consid-
ered to be “correct”. This fact is especially important for the situation in
schools, where in this connection we find unclear points and doubts as to
how to proceed in disputed cases.
For the information of our readers, we must add that the Dictionary of
Standard Czech (1978) was discussed and approved by the orthography
commission of the scholarly board for linguistics of the Czechoslovak
Academy of Sciences. The commission ruled that all new morphological
features in the Dictionary (as opposed to the Rules) would be included in
the next edition of the school Rules of Czech Orthography. It thus
understood partial reforms of individual points as a further step to realizing
the intentions of the 1957 reform. For various reasons, however, no such
edition of the school Rules so amended has yet been published. In this way
a discrepancy has arisen in various individual places between these two
codificatory handbooks. The differences, as we have already mentioned,
almost exclusively concern the morphological norm and do not touch on
orthography in the strictest sense.
A handbook like the Rules of Czech Orthography, which is the only

work of its sort to have the approval certificate, is thus pushed into a state
of permanent revision. As other books come out which are not, strictly
speaking, textbooks but represent the “latest thinking” of the linguistic elite
on orthographic, orthoepic and grammatical practice, the educational
establishment is left in an uncomfortable situation. Procedurally, it must be
led instead by the older, out-of-date Rules, even while the CLI itself may be
trumpeting the virtues of the newer work. This resolves itself into
increasing pressure from the Ministry of Education and other organs on the
CLI to produce a new version of the Rules incorporating these
developments.
The generally negative reaction to the 1993 school Rules left the
Ministry of Education with egg on its face and a feeling that damage
control was needed. An early sign of this was an interview with Ivan Pilip,
then deputy minister for education, that appeared in Telegraf on 22 July
1993. The interview, conducted by the paper’s editor, František Kostlán,317
hinted that the Ministry was re-evaluating its previous commitment to the
Rules.
Pilip pointed out that the certification system was a leftover from the
communist era, when it had served as a de facto censorship mechanism for
school texts. In the post-communist period, Pilip noted, obtaining a certifi-
cate had become relatively simple. All a publisher had to do was submit
two letters of recommendation from scholars in the field along with the
work itself, and approval was more or less automatic.318 Only egregiously
unsuitable books, he claimed, were weeded out by this process, and that the
existence of a certificate for a book was no proof that it was mandated for
school use (Rudé právo, 23 July 1993 and Telegraf, 22 July 1993). He
therefore suggested re-evaluating the status of approved textbooks [empha-
sis original]:
In the first place, during the approval process there should be more expert
evaluations to hand, and in some cases there should be broader discussion
of individual issues. In the second place, this approval should be two-tiered.
The basic tier would be for approved textbooks; this means that they would
be able to be used as a matter of course in schools, because they do not veer
off into extreme or unfounded positions, and linguistically and editorially
they stay within the norm. A further type of textbook would be recom-
mended. In conformity with existing standards, the Ministry would recom-
mend such a book for a particular instructional subject at a particular level,
noting that although it is not strictly required to be used, its contents have
met educational standards in advance and can also serve indirectly as an
orientation point for further texts in this subject. If I were to relate this sys-
tem to the new Rules of Czech Orthography under discussion, then (al-
though I do not wish to anticipate any possible directives) I would assume
they would fall into the first group – approved teaching aids.319
In proposing an overhaul of the current system, Pilip cast aspersions on

it and set the stage for the negotiations that eventually produced the Ad-
dendum. Only after society at large had discussed the general direction in
which the language was moving, said Pilip, could it reach a consensus and
regard the Rules as properly recommended for school use. In the mean-
while, he said, the Ministry would issue a statement formalizing its view
that the Rules were not obligatory for use in schools.
This explanation, while ingenious, was an attempt to escape from a plan
the Ministry now found uncomfortable. The Ministry had in fact certified
the new Rules for use from the fall of 1993, with the provision that they
would coexist for a year with the old Rules. In the intervening year, text-
books written or revised according to the new Rules would receive their
certificates, and from the fall of 1994 the certificate for the old Rules would
be superseded. The new Rules and books based on them would then be the
only approved works in schools. This view is attested in many of the early
articles on the Rules, in the words of both the Rules’ authors and those of
Ministry spokesmen.
Saying that certified works were merely options was, in the case of the
Rules, splitting hairs. True, an approved maths or chemistry textbook might
be only one of several available. But schools were not authorized to use
books unless they had the schvalovací doložka, and if only one manual of
orthography was approved, then it was de facto a mandatory book. Given
the strict criteria for grading orthographic errors adhered to for all written
work in Czech schools, teachers’ representatives naturally pushed for a sin-
gle standard text for this area.
Why did the Ministry react in such varied ways over the course of the
entire affair? It would be too simplistic to say that this was a power strug-
gle. While the Ministry clearly wanted to influence the direction of discus-
sion later on, its functionaries never attempted to set the content of the
Rules themselves, and they seemed content to let a greater linguistic au-
thority handle matters. Even Deputy Minister Bartošek, speaking deep in
the midst of the crisis of the summer of 1994, when distrust of the CLI was
at its height, was still able to say: “I think that it is up to linguists to decide
as to how orthography develops” (ýeský deník, 26 July 1994).
The order of publication contributed to the Ministry’s woes. Due to
hitches at Academia, the school Rules appeared in print six months before
the academic Rules, whereas during the previous major reform in 1957–
1958, the academic Rules had appeared substantially in advance of the
school version. The situation in 1993 meant that the Ministry’s name and
authority became inextricably linked with the controversial new Rules,
leaving ministers with little room for manoeuvre as the public furore
mounted. Much of the Ministry’s subsequent conduct stems from the fact
that they were conducting in public the sort of backstage negotiations that
would normally have occurred before publication.
3.2. Authority, obligation, and grammar
As we saw in the previous section, parallel to revisions in the language’s

spelling conventions have been revisions to the status of particular forms
and grammatical endings. These may first see the light of day in places
other than authorized spelling handbooks (see chapter 2, section 6). For
most reference works – grammars, for example – their only real legitimacy
comes from the names attached to them: authors, publishing house, review-
ers, and publications where the reviews appear.
Standard Czech has long made do with a limited number of published
grammars. With the Havránek-Jedliþka and the Styblík grammars, which

reigned throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the authors were held in general
high esteem, the publisher was the nation’s foremost educational house, the
reviews acclaimed the manuals’ contribution, and the books were approved
for school use. This winning combination trumped any possible competi-
tors.320 The situation grew more complex in the 1980s as more works ap-
peared, including the unwieldy but detailed three-volume Mluvnice þeštiny,
widely known as the “Academy Grammar”.321 Still, in the 1980s the market
was artificially suppressed by the limited number of prestigious publishing
houses and restrictions on publication and authorship,322 and any increase in
choice pales in comparison with the explosion of new books after 1989.
As regards grammar, the CLI itself does not see the Rules as more au-
thoritative than certain other works, but does recognize that the public takes
precisely this view. Martincová, when asked about the codification process
for morphology, offered the following explanation (personal interview):
Individual linguistic handbooks have varying normative or even codifica-
tory force. When a descriptive grammar comes out – such as Havránek and
Jedliþka’s Concise Grammar – schools teach according to it. The problem is
that word forms here are in a different context from orthography. Even if a
grammar captures developments in morphology, it’s not seen the same way
as when it is presented in an orthographic manual. The 1958 Rules did not
correspond to the current morphological norm of the language.
In dictionaries – specifically the Dictionary of Standard Czech for Schools
and the Public, which came out in 1978 – there was an attempt to interpret,
or “codify”, morphological shifts observed over a longer period of time. In
the meantime more handbooks, like Styblík’s, were coming out, where they
tried to depict shifts in codification or what was happening in Czech mor-
phology – but once again, not across the entire range of features. Later the
three-volume Grammar of Czech came out, which gives detailed descrip-
tions. Developments are depicted there with a large number of examples,
but since the authors were afraid a nationwide discussion would ensue, they
proclaimed incessantly that it was not a codificatory grammar, and that it
was just a grammar describing the norm of standard Czech. But if the
grammar is perceived by users as a prescription, what’s the difference?
The paradox of the Czech linguistic situation is that the public has a
strong desire for definitive, codificatory works, but particularly conserva-
tive ones that enshrine differences between Standard Czech and their spo-
ken codes. Such manuals fully reflect the forms found in older literary
works and taught at an earlier period and give clear, unambiguous advice.
The peculiar provenance of SC strengthens the hand of those who would
resist change to it. Because it did not arise from an organic, spoken dialect,
it is less susceptible to arguments promoting change on the basis of evolu-
tion in the spoken language. The users of the standard language seem to
accept that a conservative description will coexist with much looser actual
norms in written discourse; the conservative grammar book legitimizes the
values of heritage and continuity and need not necessarily be accepted as a
model.323 In Czech, conservative works often therefore claim to be
normative and codificatory, while accommodationist works more often
claim to be non-prescriptive. When an accommodationist work claims
codificatory force, as happened with the Rules, it overturns these
expectations of continuity and tradition.
3.3. Rejecting linguistic regulation
Even if they disagreed with the reforms or how they had been formulated,
most correspondents accepted the existence of a language regulator. How-
ever, some rejected the idea that language should be formally regulated.324
I admit that I belong to the younger generation, which does not remember
the spellings filosofie ‘philosophy’ and these ‘thesis’, and since my school
days I have written filozofie and teze. However, when I began to notice lin-
guistic differences more, I understood the reason that leads many educated
people to retain the original form of the language. […] [T]he public, and
especially those who work with the language, do not feel any great need
for new alternatives and radical changes like renezance ‘renaissance’,
režizér ‘director’, or pluralizmus ‘pluralism’. The public know what will
happen if the new rules are accepted. It would therefore be useful, before
any new negotiations about the language begin again, to explain to the
public what will happen if no new rules come into effect. Maybe the Czech
language would suffer no more from this than from bringing in the spelling
režizér.325
Their opposition to formal regulation was often strengthened by the (in-

correct) assumption that the new Rules were obligatory for all citizens. As
we saw in chapter 6, section 3, this assumption was often suggested by the
way the newspapers themselves reacted to the Rules.
I really don’t know why one dark morning I should start to write (and also
pronounce) diskuze ‘discussion’ or renezance ‘renaissance’ instead of the
traditional forms of these words. Maybe so that it will be more familiar to
the majority of viewers of idiotic action films?326
Even commentators like Petr Fidelius, who knew the new Rules had no
legal force, saw the recommendations as an attempt to impose a new norm:
At the current time, there exists a contradiction in the area of foreign words:
an official institution (the Rules of Czech Orthography) has tried to pre-
scribe a single spelling where in reality a dual spelling prevails, in other
words, where usage varies. It is a damaging approach (it introduces needless
tension into the practice of writing) and a pointless one (there is at present
no chance that it will be accepted voluntarily by the whole linguistic collec-
tive, and the possibilities for coercion are in today’s climate weaker than
ever before).327
Some milder protests against linguistic regulation pointed to the con-
stant orthographic change affecting certain words. For a majority of people,
the protesters said, language regulation complicated writing rather than
simplifying it.
This constant alteration of norms, sometimes of the sort “here and then
there” (from galerie to galérie and back) is most often justified by the
dogma of simplification. The Czech language is too demanding; back in the
nineteenth century we evidently bit off more than we could chew. Thus the
specialists fret over how to simplify our language, so the people will make
fewer mistakes. And it is simplified, but the people continue to make mis-
takes […]. So, through gradual simplification further and further complica-
tions are created, and forsooth, nothing is made simpler: instead of leaving
our good old complication alone and getting to grips with it somehow, we
have to constantly relearn from complication to complication, sometimes
several times in the course of our lives.328
These protestations cast doubt on the entire process of reform and the
way it was implemented.
3.4. Stressing optionality
The fact that the Rules were optional outside the school classroom was of-
ten used as a foil by their authors, but others took up this argument as well,
both for and against the Rules. As Milan Žemliþka, who generally favoured
them, pointed out in a column in Severoþeský regionální deník (17 Decem-
ber 1994):
The key to understanding the point of this book [the Rules] are words in the
forward to the academic (hardcover) edition on p. 5: “…we understand or-
thographic rules to be a set of recommendations for sophisticated written
expression, from which it is permissible to deviate in special instances,

should the writer deem it necessary and justified.” It is thus evident that dif-
ferent stylistic needs permit us varied forms of expression. And this is a
good thing.329
Žemliþka focused on the permission explicitly granted in the Rules
themselves to deviate from them, but others (especially opponents of the
reforms) saw the Rules as harmless simply because the CLI had no author-
ity to promulgate them outside of primary and secondary education. Jan
Skoumal, writing in Lidové noviny on 17 July 1993, claimed he was not
averse to seeing the new Rules as mandatory for schools, but in every other
sphere, people were perfectly entitled to ask the question, “but is it re-
quired?”:
A reasonable teacher should tell her schoolchildren: “If you obey these
rules, you will get A’s, but most of all, your writing won’t bother a majority
of people, and that’s the main thing. In time, of course, you’ll realize that
many books, and not only older ones, deviate from these rules, and that
even today, many people write slightly differently than we teach you. Or-
thographic rules, after all, are not laws, and are not obligatory outside
school. Count also on the fact that before you graduate, these rules will
nonetheless change.”
Those who led the charge against the Rules frequently pointed to soci-
ety’s acquiescent view of the Rules. Antonín Kostlán (personal interview)
described it as a deferential outlook that should, but has not, been ade-
quately challenged:
… [T]his great authority is a development that took root, I would say, in the
end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties. At that time, everyone in this
country knew what the Rules were, because they met them in the course of
their school career. […] The obligatory nature of that entire handbook was
unquestionable. For the ordinary person, what was in those Rules was a
given.
I would say that this particular form of graphic fabrication is the greatest
authority in society. It only pretends to be scholarly. It has the authority of
being a single solitary manual, whoever prepares it and wherever they do it.
It has often occurred to me how interesting it is that here, in these circum-
stances, no other group of authors has published Rules which would be
graphically identical… Because anyone has the right to do so.
The authors of the Rules were conscious of this as well. Martincová re-
called (personal interview):
I used to teach at the social science faculty, so I had journalists in my

classes. I always had to explain to them that there is a difference between a
legal statute and a communicative norm of linguistic behaviour, and there-
fore between the norms that linguistic handbooks create. And they had
never met this [idea] before. All they knew was that in school they’d
learned that this is the only correct way to do it and this is how it has to be.
This was why they equated orthographical manuals with legal statutes. For
example, to explain the difference between observing an orthographic norm
and observing legal statutes, I used to point out to them that they won’t go
to prison for writing babiþka with y instead of i. (I should add here that ex-
plaining to all users of the language, and not just to students, that the Rules
of Czech Orthography are not a description of the entirety of Czech, is also
a superhuman task.)
The Rules that had achieved this stupendous level of authority in the
public mind were those editions descended from the 1957 revisions, which
were the product of a centralized, totalitarian society. As we have seen,
some people automatically accepted the 1993 Rules as the inheritor of that
mantle, while others clung to the authority of the previous version and re-
fused, for a variety of reasons, to allow the older version to be superseded.
4. Consultation, dissemination, and legitimacy
What role did the consultation and dissemination exercises play in shaping
the Rules and the public reactions to them? Outside consultation made only
a limited contribution to the shaping of the Rule; its primary purpose was
apparently to build consensus around the existing proposals. The consulta-
tion exercises with the most direct effect on the Rules were those conducted
closer to home among linguists; consultation with non-linguists played at
best a peripheral role. Non-linguists, on the other hand, were the primary
targets of dissemination exercises, where members of the CLI explained the
new Rules to them through newspaper articles, interviews, and meetings.
The 1988 white book and its morphological questionnaire represented a
serious attempt at consultation. However, as it was sent only to around 30
respondents, it was evidently viewed strictly as a consultation with experts
at particular institutions:
Given the seriousness [of the task], research into the opinions of the
professional public (staff of Czech language departments in arts and
education faculties, teachers of Czech in high schools and primary schools,
specialists from educational research institutes) was conducted as to the
Consultation, dissemination, and legitimacy 249
state of current morphological codification and of possible or necessary

developments. (Martincová 1993–1994: 146)
This comes through quite clearly in the reports of the responses.
Martincová’s article reported that 11 universities and 10 schools had re-
sponded. When asked if this meant that a total of 21 responses had been
received, she replied (personal interview):
No, there were many more, probably 600 or 700 sheets or forms that came
back. What’s more, I didn’t include in that number any persons who were
not from schools. I said before that they had photocopied it and sent it back
to us, for instance, from natural sciences departments and so forth. And
those weren’t included in that figure either.
Why did Martincová not cite the larger number in her article? The value
of the survey’s responses came not from their collective bulk, but from
their affiliation. In other words, any given individual’s contribution had
weight not because he deigned to respond as a person, but because he rep-
resented an institution that had authority in these matters, and whose par-
ticipation had been deemed crucial for the creation of an elite consensus.
Including answers from non-Bohemists in the figures would have
opened up the commission to charges of selectivity. Only certain other
teachers and professors had had the opportunity to respond, and this was
doubly true of those completely outside a school or academic environment.
After all, to receive responses from 21 Czech language departments was
significant, given that only 30 questionnaires had gone out in total to all
publishers and educational institutions. But a total of several hundred re-
sponses was not particularly meaningful measured against the whole of
educated Czech society, most of which had not had the opportunity to con-
tribute. The survey was thus played as a show of solidarity by the Czech-
language teaching establishment, rather than as a mass consultation.
This approach fits with the character of the school edition of the Rules.
Although it is the edition that members of the public are most likely to buy
and use, its primary purpose is as a textbook, and the contributions of au-
thority figures are thus valued over those of members of the public.
Furthermore, much of the 1988 questionnaire was about morphology,
and morphology is not central to spelling reform. Of the two published ver-
sions of the Rules, the academic edition is the more “prestigious” and “de-
finitive”, and it contains very little morphological information at all. It is
only the school edition that gives regular information on conjugation and
declension. What the CLI was really seeking information on here was the
extent to which reforms introduced in existing grammar handbooks should

be reflected in the Rules.330
Later communications from the CLI, such as the 1991 publication of Co
pĜinášejí nová Pravidla (‘What the New Rules Bring’), were primarily
there to explain why the changes were taking place and how they had been
drawn up. In all probability, they were not actually asking for feedback for
the upcoming reforms; the orthographic questionnaire might possibly have
been of use in future revisions, but seemed to have little or no impact on the
final version of the 1993 Rules, which were essentially identical to the ones
in the brochure. In this sense, the consultations were more like the infor-
mational lectures given by members of the CLI; they were meant to per-
suade people to a reform whose shape was already more or less fixed.
Other attempts at taking the public pulse had an indirect, linguistic char-
acter. School pupils and university students were included, as reported in
Martincová (1993–1994), but as mentioned in chapter 5, section 1.2, they
were not actually asked for their opinions. Martincová recalled (personal
interview):
We prepared to take a sounding among pupils. We asked teachers to do it
for us – of course only in the upper grades. And we also did research into
knowledge of orthographic and morphological features by having students
take a test. We did this research in Brno, Hradec Králové, Prague and I
can’t remember if we did it in PlzeĖ as well. We drew our inspiration in this
matter from Styblík’s research in the 1970s. We checked whether any atti-
tudes towards or knowledge about particular features had changed since
then. And it turned out that it was the same old problematic features: the re-
sults were not very different from Styblík’s.
An article about this test appeared in Mladá fronta dnes on 22 July
1994. It consisted of a lengthy dictation and a gap-filling exercise, which
together covered exhaustively many of the difficult points mentioned in
chapter 2. Students were asked to take down sentences like the following,
which primarily tests the spelling of foreign words (difficult points are un-
derlined):
Kybernetika se zabývá teorií Ĝízení a sdČlování i v živých organismech.
‘Cybernetics is concerned with the theory of control and conveyance in
living organisms as well.’
The gap-filling exercise contained sentences like the one below, which
tests the writing of <s> and <z> in foreign words:
Dnes nastala rene…ance jízdních kol.
‘Today a renaissance of bicycles has come about.’
Students were then asked to justify the spellings they had chosen to fill
the gaps. The vast majority of sentences, however, only tested traditional
bugbears of Czech orthography that were not affected by the upcoming re-
forms, such as where to write vs. <y> or <s> vs. <z> in native words:
Plaval jsem s vypČtím sil, aby mČ vítr nestáhl do hlubin.
‘I swam with all my strength, so that the wind would not pull me into the
depths.’331
According to the article’s author, Vlaćka Kuþerová, the outcome did
not encourage complacency:
It showed unambiguously that children have not mastered orthography both
because it is complicated and because teachers do not have enough time to
practice it in lessons due to the large amount of other material. […] More
than 500 pupils in Year 8 primary-school classes did so poorly on a trick-
filled dictation that they would have received a fail for it. Even a majority of
future teachers of Czech were not sure of the correct spellings. Schoolchil-
dren most frequently made mistakes in deciding where to write “y” in speci-
fied words.332
She also notes that a majority of schoolchildren spelled the word kurzu
(‘course’ gen. sg.) with a <z>, even though at the time the only acceptable
spelling was with <s>.
Still, it is notable that the CLI bothered to conduct such an extensive test
when so much of it fell outside the realm of the planned reform.
What was the effect of using tests of this sort to direct spelling reform?
Once again, the linguists made pure linguistic results the focus of their at-
tention. There was no opportunity for students to reflect consciously on
their own attitudes. As with the street vendors and unedited authors, con-
clusions leading to orthographic reform were drawn from the students’ ac-
tions rather than their beliefs. From a linguistic point of view, this is a valid
way to achieve an objective analysis of the situation. From a language cul-
ture standpoint, however, it ignores the non-linguistic dimension of reform.
Of the dissemination activities, Antonín Kostlán (personal interview)
said the following:
They took the teachers with them to those discussions, so that they’d make
passionate speeches about how they’d wanted it to be just as the Czech
Language Institute planned it. But that’s just showing off your own posi-
tion.
Consultation and dissemination had thus followed traditional lines in the
run-up to the 1993 reforms. True consultation had been limited to a group
of professional linguists and pedagogues. Attempts at informing the public

were generally well received in the media, but did not convince people that
these reforms were necessary or desirable.
Why did the orthographic commission believe that the public would
simply swallow a reform of this sort without the opportunity to register
their views and influence the outcome? The answer to this lies partially in
differing perceptions of what the publication of the Rules represented.
From the commission’s point of view, previous reforms had always
been partial and tentative, and the publication of a codificatory handbook
had merely been the first step towards reform. All their publicity informa-
tion about the reform seems to have assumed that a first published version
could not hope to anticipate every possible problem. Once the Rules had
been published and worked their way into common use, any issues arising
would hopefully be referred to the CLI, examined, resolved and the solu-
tions incorporated into future “tweaks” to the Rules over the next twenty to
thirty years as these problems were ironed out.
For instance, the <z> in -izmus words was given as one of two variants.
This is not a definitive-looking resolution. It is more of a temporary com-
promise, an expedient way station on a longer journey of linguistic change
and evolution. In a sense, then, the first edition of the new Rules was a so-
ciety-wide “beta test”, a large-scale consultation ex post facto.
The commission underestimated the public’s belief in the old Czech
saying Co je psáno, to je dáno ‘What is written is a given’. Many members
of the public had evidently expected the new manuals to resolve old prob-
lems without creating new ones. They dismissed excuses to the effect that
no reform will satisfactorily eliminate all inconsistency and unclarity, and
that the financial resources needed to achieve even incremental improve-
ments on the solutions recorded in the 1993 Rules would have been im-
mense. This fundamental clash of views led many members of the public to
reject the new Rules as imperfect, and in part explains why the reaction to
them was so hostile.
4.1. Dreaming up the Rules
Given the limited opportunities for consultation, it is not surprising that

members of the public felt they had been insufficiently included in the
process of reform. They did not understand when, where and under what
conditions the reforms arose, and how they could have been implemented
without extensive public consultation, especially among specialists.333 The

operative verb is vymyslet si ‘think up, dream up, invent’, which many au-
thors use to describe how the Rules were created. People attributed this to a
communist-era mindset focused on hierarchy and secrecy, as we saw in the
previous section:
Whose fault is it? Historically that of the specialists from the Czech Lan-
guage Institute, who dreamt up “corrections” and, in the spirit of the old
days, did not consult about them with the public – and today that of the
Ministry of Education, which one day acknowledges the new Rules, only to
repudiate them the next.334
Others simply wanted the process opened up, regardless of why it had
been closed in the past. Writing in ZN noviny on 25 July 1994, Alena
Hromádková, chair of the Democratic Union political party, opined:
Our celebrated structuralists are only concerned with the frequency of
appearance of pronunciations, but there are historical and comparative per-
spectives, which are more demanding to research – and this they overlook.
So they dreamt up the Rules without wider discussion or acceptance. It is
scandalous for one group to force through its particular protected interests…
they have contempt for the particular experience of those strata [of society]
that are more educated, value the language more and have a greater feeling
for it.
Detractors pointed to instances where the new Rules flew in the face of
established consultation processes, often in particular fields.335 For exam-
ple, an article by Jan VymČtal in HospodáĜské noviny, 29 June 1993,
pointed out that that there is a commission for organic chemistry nomen-
clature, which convenes under one of the institutes of the Academy of Sci-
ences. It has issued recommendations on the standard spelling of terms in
the field since 1968 in accordance with guidelines laid down by the Inter-
national Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The commission recom-
mended a return to etymological spellings for many chemical terms, which
was gradually implemented in subsequent years. However, the 1993 Rules
unilaterally recommended the more accommodationist spellings of the
1957 reforms:
And now the new Rules come out, which do not respect extant rules for the
writing of chemical names, with far-reaching consequences in this particular
instance. In this matter, they represent a step backwards.
VymČtal regarded the Rules as unsanctioned meddling in his field that
would have a deleterious impact on education. Others, like émigré linguist
JiĜí Marvan, writing in Literární noviny on 21 October 1993, generalized

this to a view of all of society:
A second, far more serious mistake is the premise of irrevocability: that
loads of damage was done; that we cannot return the murdered to life or
property to the robbed; that Bolshevism is a fait accompli that we must now
meekly and humbly tolerate, or even see through to completion (e.g. the
spellings of kurz or marazmus from 1993). A nationwide conference of Bo-
hemists that took place in August in Olomouc did not even hint in its pro-
gramme that anything could be done about it.
Towards the end of the controversy, there were moves to look forward
to the next reforms with an eye to making them more inclusive. According
to OldĜich Uliþný, head of the Czech language department at Charles
University,
…the Linguistic Association of the Czech Republic has begun assembling a
codificatory commission or board, which would enable all language and
linguistic professionals, including writers, newspapermen, lawyers, politi-
cians, specialist journalists and other educated cultural activists interested in
the standard language, to voice their views on proposed projects. However,
even its own codificatory activity must be entrusted to a team of linguistic
Bohemists representing workplaces from across the republic. We must keep
in mind that the codification of standard Czech affects collective values,
awareness, sentiments and value orientations of all Czech speakers in Bo-
hemia, Moravia, Silesia, and abroad.336
Uliþný’s proposal included many of the groups whose members had
protested vehemently against the new Rules. It is thus unclear whether a
commission with such diverse representation could fulfil any function other
than vetoing proposed changes.
4.2. Promoting ease of adoption
A number of articles relied on the phrase þasem si na to zvykneme ‘in time

we’ll get used to it’ to justify a more tolerant approach to the new Rules.
Proponents of reforms pointed to the relatively low frequency of words af-
fected by them, and to what they perceived of as the harmlessness of the
1957 reform. No one these days, they contended, would think to write these
instead of the current spelling teze ‘thesis’, proving that nativized spellings
do catch on after a while.
At the time [in 1957] we grumbled a lot, of course in private, but finally we
got used to it. Even my colleague [JiĜí] Marvan got used to it, and today he
uncomplainingly writes lingvista instead of linguista, teorie and teze instead
of theorie and these, fantazie and demokratizace instead of fantasie and
demokratisace; the only things he cannot make his peace with are kurz,
krize and prezident. […] The author Karel Pecka certainly has the right, at
his age, to write as he is accustomed and feels to be correct, but he may well
end up like Václav Vladivoj Tomek with his w’s.337
Nineteenth-century Czech historian Tomek makes at least three appear-
ances in the debates as a symbol of unreconstructed linguistic conservatism.
After the spelling reforms of the 1840s (see chapter 3, section 3.4), in
which the spellings of <w> for /v/ and <au> for /ou/ were replaced respec-
tively by <v> and <ou>, Tomek refused to accept them, and until his death
in 1905 he continued to use the old spellings, signing himself W. W. Tomek.
In doing so, he became a famous symbol of refusal to “move with the
times”.
4.3. Putting matters in historical context
More than one correspondent took opponents of the reform to task for their
short historical perspective. Orthographic rules had been under constant
revision, they reminded the critics, and what people were objecting to was
more often than not simply the fact that something was new. The
“European cultural tradition” argument outlined in section 1.2 came under
the most sustained attack. As many pointed out, these same writers objected
only to the latest changes; they almost never called for a return to forms
dropped in the 1957 or 1941 Rules:
On the day when I planned to send this note off to the editors of TVAR, I
read in Respekt no. 29 that the daily Telegraf “was ceasing to observe the
rules of Czech orthography.” In for a penny, in for a pound – I advise
Telegraf to have its editors write šplýchat, aesthetika, okeán and Žaponsko
[instead of the modern forms šplíchat ‘splatter’, estetika ‘aesthetics’, oceán
‘ocean’, and Japonsko ‘Japan’].338
Others asked critics to remember that orthographic reform had a 600-
year history in Czech, citing the introduction of accent marks in the early
fifteenth century, and nineteenth-century reforms that changed the way
Czechs wrote /j/, KÖand /'L/ from <g>, <j> and <ey> to <j>, <í> and <ej>
(see chapter 3, sections 1.2 and 3.4):
Where did the fall begin? With the use of diacritic accents instead of letter
combinations? With the synthetic reform of 1842? With the debut of the
Prague Linguistic Circle in 1929? […] Fundamentally, Czech orthography
is unusually stable today. When I see the hue and cry caused by the recent
Rules, I cannot imagine at all what kind of earthquake and apoplectic fits
would have been caused by a reform of the sort that Danish survived quite
healthily in 1948 (eliminating capital letters with nouns and introducing the
letter å). Implicit demands for the complete inalterability of orthography run
contrary to the spirit of the language, and short equations like “every change
means a further decline” (the age-old cry of all eulogists for times gone by)
betray a certain – shall we say – limitation in one’s historical perspective.339
Such criticisms rarely came from the lay public. They required more of
a sense of perspective on orthographic reform than the average non-spe-
cialist could be expected to have, and thus they tended to be the product of
teachers and specialists in language and literature.
5. Conclusions
The climate in which the new Rules appeared was not an auspicious one.
Old authorities were suspect, and new ones were not firmly established. No
one was sure what it meant to say that “the CLI” had produced a work, or
how to evaluate that claim. Issues surrounding copyright and honoraria for
authors muddied the water even further. The Ministry’s approval certifi-
cate, formerly a clear stamp of recommendation, was now questioned by
none other than Ministry officials. As the bureaucratic and autocratic
structures of communism disappeared, the sources of control and legiti-
macy they had represented disappeared as well.
Were the Rules then the product of a legitimate, considered process in
an authoritative institution? Or were they the product of a small group of
individuals, using outdated linguistic theories to pursue their own agendas,
and lacking both legitimacy and authority?
In one perspective, the changes that occurred after the Velvet Revolu-
tion – copyright issues, publishers, and technicalities at the Ministry – were
superficial phenomena that do not affect the underlying legitimacy and au-
thority of the CLI, which remains more or less unchanged from pre-revolu-
tionary days. No special steps therefore needed to be taken to shore up or
bolster the rational legitimacy of the reforms.
In another perspective, any inheritance from communist rule was now
irrelevant. Legitimacy needed to be earned from the ground up. The authors
of the Rules would have to build consensus, turning specifically to those
Conclusions 257
professions – journalists, writers, teachers, politicians, university faculty –

who work with words for a living, as well as to those in the wider language
community who are interested, to seek their opinions, and put suggestions
to them. This approach would build consensus for the Rules’ traditional
legitimacy and develop the charismatic legitimacy of their propagators. We
can see aspects of both these views in the actions of the Rules’ authors and
the responses of the public to the reforms.
5.1. Arguments against reform
Those who objected to the Rules did so for a variety of reasons and with
varying degrees of intensity.
First, some authors were categorically opposed to the specific changes
proposed. They used words like prznČní ‘violation’ to express their disgust
with the new reforms, and advanced arguments about literary tradition and
the heritage of the Czech language, not to mention linguistic and etymo-
logical claims of varying reputability. Their objections stemmed from the
apparently accommodationist, lenient direction of the reforms.
Second, there were those who disagreed with some particular decision
or point in the new Rules. Sometimes they took that point as emblematic of
the entire reform.340
A third group thought the reforms did not go far enough. They won-
dered whether it was worth the bother of a reform if it did not remove what
they considered to be crucial stumbling blocks in Czech orthography.341
Fourth were those whose primary complaint was not the substance of
the Rules, but rather the way in which they were drawn up and imple-
mented. Some people cast doubts on the motives of the Institute, others
criticized the consultation process that produced them, and still others re-
joiced in the bureaucratic snafu of the summer of 1994, when the Ministry
of Education suddenly reversed its decision to start using the new Rules in
schools that autumn.
5.2. Arguments in favour of reform
Many of the articles presenting a positive view of the reforms were inter-
views with the members of the orthographic commission, pieces by them or
articles by other linguists closely connected with the CLI. Still, a fair num-
ber of citizens were happy to see some sort of simplification of the ortho-
graphic system no matter what the details were, or believed that the princi-
ple of accepting whatever the CLI had decided was far better than the
alternative of having no linguistic authority at all.
If many of the opponents of the reform stylized their contributions as
“calls to arms” in response to the new Rules, the defenders were in turn
primarily responding to the critics, not directly to the Rules. They had a
variety of motives, but most of them were practical in orientation. They
pointed to the problems people had learning the current orthography as well
as to current pressures in education. Sometimes they asked readers to step
back from the details of the reforms to get a broader perspective. Such
contributions frequently focused on how few words were actually affected
by the reform or on the place of these reforms in the Czech historical con-
text. Some cited the authority of the CLI as a reason for simply accepting
the reforms, but more often than not, those who favoured the new Rules
avoided defending how they had been compiled, publicized, or consulted.
More than one writer noted that complaining about orthography seemed
to be a sort of displacement activity for the other ills of society. In a letter
to Lidové noviny on 29 August 1990, Pavel Sántay had already written:
Rather than having erudite debates over our piety towards the classical lan-
guages of European education, surely it is more important to strive to ensure
that the prezident is always a president, a worthy figure and the head of a
sovereign state, not a puppet in the hands of foreign powers; that poezie is
always poetry, not a palette of soulless one-dimensional ditties; that filozofie
is philosophy, not a degraded and abused ideological weapon; that the
univerzita is a university producing truly educated men, who will respect
classical European culture and will lead the rest to respect it as well. Then
arguments over “s” and “z” will be groundless and we will no longer have
to fear demogracy, because we will already have democracy.342
5.3. Linguistic purism and Czech society
Accusations of purism and knife-grinding were rife in these debates, but

were the reactions to Czech spelling reform really puristic interventions?
Certainly they had much in common with linguistic purism. They used
many of the metaphors associated with puristic thought and described in
Thomas (1991); they appealed to the same notions of threat and defence
noted in purism and detailed in studies of other languages, such as Ager
(1999) and Schiffman (1996). On another level, though, the debate was
Conclusions 259
conducted on decidedly non-purist grounds. The “purists” were primarily

defenders of foreign-looking words and of cultural connections to the West,
rather than “Czech-first” nationalists.
A public outcry, however, was not the only effect. Part of the conserva-
tive backlash against the Rules consisted of denying the right of any insti-
tution or person to regulate the language. This is a reversal on the Czech
puristic position at the beginning of the twentieth century, when conserving
the standard language frequently went hand in hand with agitating for
greater central regulation of it (by suitably learned and conservative lin-
guists, it was assumed).
We are looking, then, at a fundamental shift in Czech purism. Early in
the twentieth century, it was propagandistic, future-oriented, activist, and
collectivist, attempting to create a more perfect instrument for the nation.
Late twentieth-century Czech purism turned nostalgic, conservative, pas-
sive, and individualistic. It looked back to a (possibly non-existent) time
during the interwar republic when connections with the past were truer and
language represented values more clearly, and it regarded the transmission
of this tradition as an inheritance that individuals need to defend actively.
Schiffman (1996: 62) identifies this nostalgia for a mythical time when
the language was unblemished as a common feature of the belief system
associated with purism. This nostalgia had, of course, been well represented
in Czech purism, but always with the focus on the more distant Humanist
Czech of the sixteenth century, with modern Czechs being exhorted to re-
turn to this state of purity through reformist activism. Replacing the six-
teenth century with the interwar republic shifted the emphasis from inno-
vation to conservatism: this new Arcadia was close enough that in order to
effect a return to it, all that was needed was to clamp down and forbid any
further deformations to the standard.
In this context, we can also note the changing targets of purism. In the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, foreignisms (particularly from
German) were perceived as the greatest threat to purity. However, by the
late twentieth century, we find purists actually defending the original for-
eign spellings of borrowed words against “nativization”. The shift we might
have expected to see – from a campaign against Germanisms to one against
Russianisms – never came to pass.
Why did this campaign fail to materialize? Before 1989, the ubiquitous
repressive apparatus of the pro-Soviet regime, which was highly sensitized
to anti-Russian sentiment, undoubtedly played a role. However, this does
not explain the absence of a campaign against Russianisms even after 1989.
In fact, the answer is much simpler: Russian had only limited impact on the
Czech language during the communist interregnum. Despite the close ties
with the Soviet Union in communist times, there was not much contact be-
tween speakers of the two languages. The Russians and Czechs share no
linguistic borders. Travel between the two states was expensive and ad-
ministratively complex, and thus not all that common. Although there were
Russian military bases in Czechoslovakia, the local population had only
limited contact with their inhabitants. All students studied Russian at
school, but the language had no official status and once out of school, no
one had much occasion to use it.
The Czech attitude towards Russian after 1989 was thus different from
its attitude towards German before World War II (see chapter 3) and is re-
flected in the relatively low number of Russian loan words entering the
language. Of far more concern were the communist clichés and bureauc-
ratese, which were the subject of much recrimination, and were perceived
to be Soviet impositions on the Czech language.
Purism thus turned from criticizing “overt” Russianisms to warning
against what we can call “covert” Russianisms, discerning in the trend to
nativize foreign spellings the hidden hand of Soviet-style linguistic ma-
nipulation. I characterize this as a sort of linguistic “allergic reaction”. A
language community over-sensitized to the presence of foreign elements
essentially went into attack mode against long-established native processes,
perceiving them in its supersensitive state as an intruder that must be re-
jected.
5.4. Summary
The debates over linguistics, authority, and legitimacy reflect many of the
more general issues confronting Czech society at the beginning of the
1990s. The Czechs were just coming out of a long period of totalitarianism,
and it is not surprising to see them grappling with this legacy in many areas
of national life. The orthography controversy was part of a larger societal
debate on which of the surviving structures of the communist era could be
of service, and which needed to be scrapped and rethought from the ground
up.
Social change also made its way into the debate. Czechs were coming
out of a period of isolation from the west, and were being exposed to forty
years of development at once. Calls for change and reform at all levels of
Conclusions 261
society, not least the educational system, were countered by warnings of

disruption and anarchy. Many of the contributions reflect people’s anxieties
over changes in the educational system and societal mores.
The issue of the Czechs’ place in Europe was neatly symbolized in the
debate over nativization of foreign words, said to be characteristic of the
east, and preservation of Latinate spellings, said to be characteristic of the
west.343 This argument served for some as a proxy for larger questions:
should the Czechs identify with Europe and claim its goals and needs as
their own, or remain apart from the Europe of Germany, France, and Brit-
ain?344
The year 1993 also saw the dissolution of the Czechoslovak state into
the independent Czech and Slovak republics, and the papers were full of
musings about nationhood and Czech identity. This goes some way toward
explaining the underlying strain of patriotism in many of the contributions.
Czechs identify their nationhood strongly with their language; it was the
revival of Czech in the nineteenth century that defined them, and this link
persists. Orthography came to symbolize the care taken over the language
and its special status as bearer of national identity. “Care” was interpreted
either as “preservation” – the rejection of change as a sign of the timeless-
ness of cultural values – or as “moulding and shaping” – the careful,
planned alteration of the language by sympathetic, knowledgeable masters.
In both cases, the underlying question stems from what Milan Kundera
(1968) and Václav Havel (2003 [1969]) referred to almost forty years ago
as “the fate of the Czechs” (þeský údČl): what is the purpose and destiny of
a small nation amidst giants?
The roots of the controversy ran deep into the history of the spelling re-
form and choices made by the orthography commission at the turn of the
1990s. They began the reform in a top-down, non-consultative manner, and
expected it to result in a nationwide shift to the new spellings. As history
brought one era to a close and opened another, the commission’s expecta-
tions and principles shifted, but not far or fast enough to forestall the in-
evitable collision with a far less obedient and passive public.
Arguing over spelling did not resolve any of these questions. However,
as an exercise in public democracy and self-expression, the orthography
controversy was a success. People were able to vent their opinions on a
matter both close to their hearts and symbolic of larger problems in society,
and, gratifyingly to many of them, found their concerns were listened to
and at least partially addressed in the end.
Chapter 8
Metaphors and the conceptualization of language
… in the position we take towards these reforms, we involuntarily betray

something about our innate view of the world at large.
Maita Arnautová, Literární noviny, 14 July 1994
The citations from Czech newspapers on the subject of orthographic reform
are full of metaphors for and about language. These are treated separately
from the overt issues the authors raise, for two reasons.
First, metaphoric usage lends itself to analysis using a set of established
linguistic tools, explained below. These contribute to our understanding of
how the metaphors are used, and constitute a separate contribution to the
field of metaphor analysis in a comparative context.
Second, if we buy in at least partially to the cognitive theory of meta-
phor outlined below, then metaphoric usage will play quite a different role
in creating discourse than overt argument does. The latter tries to make an
intellectual case that persuades; the former appeals to innate or deeply em-
bedded ways of understanding and perceiving, and can persuade without
reference to argument.
1. The place of metaphors
The field of metaphor studies has grown tremendously in recent years, and
now has at least two clear branches. One branch, continuing a traditional
view of metaphor within the context of philosophy of language or of
literary studies, sees metaphor primarily as a rhetorical device. The other –
a newer view – takes a cognitive perspective, seeing metaphors in language
as a reflection of a method of understanding the world around us.
The implications of these two views are quite different. If a metaphor is
primarily a conscious creation, designed to produce a particular effect, then
our analysis of it will focus on its effect on the reader/listener – it does not
necessarily tell us much about the creators of metaphors, or if it does, then
it is simply showing us whatever they wanted us to see or believe about
them. Researchers taking this view are most interested in metaphors that
stick out: those that are interesting, or unusual, or arresting. They regard so-
The place of metaphors 263
called “dead” metaphors (i.e. the task in front of you meaning the task in
your future) as less interesting, or even trivial.
If, on the other hand, metaphor reflects a way of understanding through
comparison, then it is precisely these “dead” metaphors, which appear so
often and in everyone’s speech, that help us grasp how our minds are
structured. Brilliant and unique comparisons are, by contrast, of less inter-
est, as they are idiosyncratic. It follows that, in this view, the researcher’s
primary concern is what metaphors tell us about the mind of the
speaker/writer.
The data from this study suggest that there is room for both views in a
study of metaphor that focuses on a cultural issue. The cognitive approach
lays the basic groundwork for how we use metaphors, revealing precon-
ceptions and logical suppositions that underlie the argument. However,
their creative use often extends beyond the basic cognitive networks of
metaphors, activating and contributing to cultural scripts.
1.1. Rhetoric- and philosophy-based views of metaphor
The traditional view of metaphor stretches back to Aristotle, and more re-
cent exponents of it like Kittay (who comes at it from a philosophical per-
spective) take as their starting point that a metaphor is fundamentally a lin-
guistic signpost: a figure of speech that attracts attention by virtue of its
unusualness.
Kittay (1987), for example, does not deny that metaphors may have
some cognitive basis. However, she says that little enough is known about
the linguistic expression of metaphor, and that elucidating this linguistic
basis for metaphor should precede an extensive investigation of the cogni-
tive basis for metaphor.
In such a view of metaphor, so-called “dead” metaphors are degenerate
cases; their power is far less than “fresh” or “live” metaphors, although
scholars like Kittay nonetheless admit them as being members of the cate-
gory of metaphor.
In fact, the Czech debates on orthography were full of conscious refer-
ences to metaphor, and to analyses of other scholars’ uses of metaphor.
This is to be expected in the circumstances; in a debate that involved some
of the nation’s most prominent authors, translators, and critics, few of them
could pass up the chance to subject each others’ texts to close analysis.
Several examples of this genre were splashed across the pages of the
prestigious literary weekly Literární noviny in 1993–1994. Among the
264 Metaphors and the conceptualization of language
heavyweight participants in these duels were: the former dissident and

critic Karel Palek, who goes by the pen name Petr Fidelius, and is the au-
thor of the acclaimed ěeþ komunistické moci (‘The Language of
Communist Power’); Alexandr Stich, professor of the history of Czech at
Charles University; JiĜí Holý, at the time a researcher in Czech literature at
the Academy of Sciences and now professor at Charles University; poet
and novelist Michal Ajvaz; émigré linguist and professor JiĜí Marvan.
For instance, in a lengthy contribution spread across two issues (25
March and 1 April 1993), Fidelius subjected Stich’s use of words such as
pĜirozenost ‘naturalness’, regulovat ‘regulate’, vyvíjet ‘develop’, and
zákonitost ‘regularity’ to an analysis of metaphorical content and implica-
tions. In an article the following year (15 September 1994), he dissected
Holý’s use of battle imagery (in an 18 August piece), to which Holý posted
a response on 29 September defending and modifying some of his original
metaphors.
Metaphoric language was used in all of these pieces on at least two lev-
els. It was a didactic device, to explain and clarify as well as to influence
opinion. But it was also itself the subject of explanation and dissection, as
people of varying opinions and persuasions tried to show how language
was being employed in these debates.
These rarefied discussions, though, reached only a select and highly
educated audience. Literární noviny, while influential among the nation’s
elite, is not widely read.345 In mass-market publications, this reflective,
interpretive approach to metaphor was by and large lacking.
1.2. Cognitive views of metaphor
The cognitive school of metaphor began from the belief that metaphors are
fundamental to our way of understanding and thinking. In this view, there
is a hierarchy of “natural comprehensibility” for human beings, which is
rooted in the here and now of our physical bodies, and proceeds in ever-
widening circles outward to the less physical, the less personal, and the
more abstract. Among the more naturally comprehensible elements are:
location, movement, the human body, items in the physical world, and
everyday personal interaction. Among those less naturally comprehensible
are: time, social constructs, emotions, and abstract qualities or values.346
In a garden-variety metaphor found in speech or literature, one element
displaces another, creating an implicit “equation” between the replacer and
the replacee. Lakoff and Johnson said that this “surface” equation in the
text reflected a deeper propensity to understand one item in terms of an-

other, which we can call a conceptual metaphor, following Kövecses
(2002: 4–6).347 These two linked elements are the source and the target.
Lakoff and Johnson write them in the form THE TARGET IS THE SOURCE,
which has become a more or less standard format for conveying conceptual
metaphors (see e.g. Kövecses 2002: 6–9).
A typical metaphor uses a more naturally comprehensible element (the
source) to stand for a less naturally comprehensible one (the target). When
we say Now you’ve got that behind you, we use space (in front of – behind)
to explain time (prior – after). The metaphor underlying this replacement
reads: THE PAST IS BEHIND. This metaphor fits the hierarchy described
above: time is less naturally comprehensible than the relationship of one’s
physical body to its environment. A time expression therefore forms the
target, while an expression of physical position forms the source.
We probably would not use a time metaphor to explain a physical posi-
tion. As expected, the sentence *Please write your answers in the booklet
prior to you on the table is infelicitous. Metaphors, then, unlike mathemati-
cal equations, are not commutative – they possess an inbuilt directionality
rooted in human perception and the human condition.348 This directionality
is evidence for a cognitive basis for metaphor.
Lakoff and Johnson found that conceptual metaphors often “clustered”
around various themes. They can be connected around the source, the tar-
get, or the common path of the metaphor.
For example, instead of saying Now that you’ve got that behind you…,
we could have said, Now that you’ve wrapped that up…. Instead of basing
our metaphor on spatial relations, we have based it on a common physical
activity: wrapping up a package to make it “finished”. In notational terms,
we have changed the source, but retained the same target. Instead of THE
PAST IS BEHIND, the new metaphor reads THE PAST IS A WRAPPED
PACKAGE. Both metaphors are connected by their target; the way the two
sources relate the target to our personal experience illuminates different
ways of perceiving the past.
The same source can serve two different targets. For example, if I say,
I’m behind in my work, I do not mean that I am physically in the back of it,
nor that I am in the past, but that I have not progressed as much as I would
have liked. Here the source invokes a different picture: I have an ideal self
who is facing away from me, toward the future. He came from my direc-
tion; I am behind him because he passed this way some time ago. The
metaphor is LACK OF PROGRESS IS BEHIND. It is not identical to THE PAST
IS BEHIND, nor does it allow us to equate lack of progress with the past. But
there is a clear connection between them in that both rely on the same
physical direction to clarify a more abstract concept.
We can also identify a metaphor in sentences like You’ve got your whole
life in front of you, which comes out as: THE FUTURE IS AHEAD. Although
this shares no elements with THE PAST IS BEHIND, it is nonetheless related
to it. Both use basic orientation as the source for a metaphor for time.
Whether you choose to draw up a deeper-level metaphor such as TIME IS
PHYSICAL ORIENTATION depends on how useful you feel it is.
By linking metaphors via shared sources, shared targets and “higher-or-
der” metaphors as demonstrated above, we can identify larger groups of
metaphors called networks.
If metaphors arise from common human patterns of thought, we would
expect them to be universal and largely identical across languages. The
original work on the cognitive origins of metaphor was done on the basis of
English by Anglophone scholars, and promoted this universality without
ever citing other languages.349 More recent research has shown that distinct
differences exist among the metaphoric networks of individual languages,
and the question now is what this diversity means for a cognitive theory of
metaphor.
Some scholars, like Kövecses, emphasize the commonalities across lan-
guages, and treat the diversity of metaphoric usage as a naturally occurring
variation that is not particularly crucial for the hypothesis as a whole.
Studies have emphasized the similarities between such disparate languages
as English and Chinese (Yu 1998). However, other studies show a wider
variation in the scope and availability of metaphors, particularly as regards
e.g. emotion.
If there is substantial variation in the metaphors available across lan-
guages (and across cultures using the same language, such as British and
American English), then where do conceptual metaphors originate? If they
originate as a function of human cognition, then why are they not identical
from language to language? If some are culture- or language-specific, then
presumably only the deepest-level schemas (space – time) come from the
cognitive realm, while all specific conceptual metaphors reside in the way a
language or a linguistic community interprets cognitive relations.
1.3. Reconciling cognitive metaphor and culture
Unlike many cognitive studies of metaphors, the current study is based on

metaphors found in a corpus of thematically cohesive texts. As such, it of-

fers scope for learning not just about individual metaphors in a language,
but about their interaction with culture and society.350
A promising approach is offered by Nerlich, Hamilton and Rowe
(2002).351 In examining how a recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease
(FMD) was depicted in the press, they argue that to discuss the relevance of
metaphors in a social context, more than the cognitive approach is needed:
Analysing FMD as a social and cultural phenomenon allows us to go be-
yond the single-sentence analysis method, which still prevails in cognitive
linguistics, and focus instead on metaphors as part of stereotypical narra-
tives and as used in the context of wider semantic and historical fields of
imagery. We argue that metaphors are not only cognitive but also cultural
and social phenomena. They tap into a nation’s cultural imagination, they
reinforce cultural stereotypes, they naturalise social representations and they
shape social policy.
In the analysis that Nerlich et al. offer for foot-and-mouth disease, the
metaphors arise cognitively, but are interpreted culturally. Essentially, cul-
tural factors determine which metaphors prosper, and what their effect is.
A crucial role here is played by cultural “scripts” like those proposed in
Lakoff (1991). Legends and fairy tales are typical scripts of this sort.352 In
an analysis of the (first) Gulf War, Lakoff demonstrates that while the
metaphors used are largely universal ones, the cultural scripts that tie them
together, and the entailments that make these ties possible, are distinctly
American, and differ from the entailments and scripts of the Arab world.
A similar tack was taken by Musolff, who identifies a number of com-
mon metaphorical domains in the discussions of the European Union found
in the UK and German press. Musolff argues that the ways these metaphors
are used both reflect national attitudes towards the EU and influence them
as well (2000: 4–5).
Part of our task will therefore be to determine whether there is anything
specifically “Czech” about these metaphoric networks and how they tie into
the real-world events.
1.4. Metonymy
In contrast to a metaphor, which conceives of one item in terms of a con-

ceptually different one, a metonym substitutes an item for another that is
closely related to it. Common conceptual metonyms are written in the form
THE TARGET FOR THE SOURCE, following Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 35–
40):
THE PART FOR THE WHOLE (‘He got a by-line in yesterday’s paper’);
THE INSTITUTION FOR THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE (‘The Arts Faculty
turned down his request’);
THE PLACE FOR THE INSTITUTION (‘Washington issued another denial
tonight’);
THE PLACE FOR THE EVENT (‘Remember the Alamo’).
Metonymy and metaphor often apply within the same expression.
1.5. Working principles
The analysis that follows is based on the following suppositions:

– Metaphors have a cognitive basis.
– They shape the way we handle abstractions, events, and con-
cepts.
– Metaphoric structures allow us to impose complex entailments
and conclusions from one sphere of reference onto another.
– By imposing these entailments and conclusions, we change the
way the target sphere is perceived. In this way, conceptual
metaphor contributes to rhetoric.
– Creative, intentional use of metaphor, as well as the deliberate
analysis of metaphor, has an impact on the arguments presented
and thus also contributes to the rhetoric of a particular dis-
course.
– Commonly accepted cultural scripts or myths about a nation’s
origin, history, etc. affect how metaphors are used, and either
contribute to or hinder their prosperity and popularity.
2. The metaphorical patterning of language
In collecting metaphors from my sources, I focused on the sphere of lan-

guage. Interestingly enough, this has not been a subject of substantial inter-
est for scholars of metaphor – certainly compared to spheres like the emo-
tions, which have been well-studied.353
Terms like language (Czech jazyk) have multiple meanings. Often this
polysemy results from metaphoric or metonymic operations. In Czech, the
The metaphorical patterning of language 269
basic meaning is that of a physical organ in the mouth (tongue), which re-
fers by extension to a system of communication (Saussure’s langue) and an
instance of communication (Saussure’s parole), which is an example of
part-for-whole metonymy. For example, the admonition Watch your lan-
guage!/Pozor na jazyk! means not “watch which linguistic system you
use!” but “watch which words you use and what information you convey!”
We can also identify a further bifurcation between generic and specific
language. If we say Language changes over time/ýasem se jazyk mČní and
The language has changed over time/Jazyk se þasem zmČnil, we interpret
the word language/jazyk in two different ways. Language changes over
time refers to human language, all language systems, whereas The language
has changed over time refers to one particular language, in this case study
usually meaning ‘the Czech language (þeský jazyk, þeština), the native lan-
guage (mateĜský jazyk, mateĜština)’.354
language
‘linguistic system’ ‘discourse’
‘generic system (human language)’ ‘specific system (our language)’
‘standard language’ ‘our standard language’
Figure 8. Meanings of language

When considering metaphors for language, then, we will have to be
careful which part of the scheme in Figure 8 we are dealing with. Often, as
it turns out, when we talk about language (either generic or specific) we
mean ‘the standard language’ or ‘our standard language’. These end up in
the bottom row in Figure 8. This distinction may have more significance for
Czech because of the existence of a spoken norm that hews closely to the
standard written language and differs substantially from the native dialects
of the vast majority of speakers of the language (see chapter 2, section 4).
As we will see, the contributions to the orthography debate drew on all
these meanings. Once we have articulated these possible interpretations of
the concept language, the next step is to consider what other concepts
played a crucial role in this debate. I focused on three others: orthography,
regulation, and discussion. Language and orthography are abstractions

whose meanings can be readily accessed through metaphor; regulation and
discussion are processes subject to metaphorical interpretation.
Orthography (Czech pravopis) refers to the system of symbols used to
convey language in written form. In Czech it is a broader term and a more
commonly used one than the scholarly-sounding English word; pravopis is
a calque from Greek composed of native roots: pravo- ‘correct, right’ + -pis
‘write’. Pravopis is both the principles of spelling as well as the spelling of
individual words; it includes punctuation and capitalization.
For many a Czech native speaker, there is apparently an element to
pravopis that a native speaker of English would never associate with or-
thography. Pravopis becomes associated with correctness in the language
in general, and in the popular mind comes to subsume matters of both
grammar and language culture. This is not part of the standard definition of
orthography, and I have marked its elements with an asterisk in Figure 9:
orthography
‘system of writing’ ‘*correctness’ ‘spelling’
‘*grammar’ ‘*language culture’ ‘*the standard language’
Figure 9. Meanings of orthography

Language regulation (Czech jazyková regulace) is a concept with a long
history in Czech, but the term itself is relatively new and, like its English
equivalent, has no common currency beyond linguistics. The traditional
popular term, as we saw in chapters 3 and 4, was (vy)tĜíbení jazyka ‘lan-
guage refinement’, with the nineteenth-century term brusiþství ‘whetting’
acquiring pejorative overtones. The Prague School saw regulation occur-
ring in the context of overall language cultivation (péþe o jazyk) or lan-
guage culture (jazyková kultura), and in place of correctness (správnost)
spoke of functionality (funkþnost), the appropriateness of a particular ex-
pression for the given communicative situation.
When ordinary educated Czechs talk about language regulation, then,
the word regulace rarely comes up; they discuss language cultivation, lan-
guage culture, reform (reforma), modification (úprava), acceptance into the
standard (zespisovnČní355), or among linguists, the setting or defining of a
Data from the corpus 271
norm (stanovení/urþení normy). All these words are far more common than
regulace and were widely used in the 1993 debates. In identifying meta-
phors, I interpret regulation to mean any of these sorts of activities, i.e. any
activity that changes or intends to change the standard form of a language,
written or spoken.
Discussion is the most self-explanatory of the concepts. As people
commented on language, orthography and regulation, a number of remarks
were inevitably directed towards the very existence of a national exchange
of views on the subject: people had opinions on how it was being handled,
whether the tone and subject matter were appropriate and what effect they
might have on the outcome of the reforms.
To sum up:
Language is a system for communication (generic or specific), or an in-
stance of communication;
Orthography is a system of expressing language through written signs;
Regulation is the attempt to control the way a language is used;
Discussion is the exchange of views about language, often taking place
in the context of a discussion about regulation.
These are dry, technical definitions, but the debate itself was far from
dry and technical. Some of this was due to bombast, outrageous language
and parody, but not all. Even if we think we know what the relationship is
between language, orthography, regulation, and discussion, the metaphors
employed can create a different, more emotionally charged picture.
3. Data from the corpus
The “metaphor corpus” is based on the general newspaper corpus. It con-

tains 650 examples of metaphor, metonymy, and simile grouped around the
four concepts language, orthography, regulation, and discussion. These are
the majority of examples retrievable from the newspaper corpus, with a few
important exceptions.
Some “dead metaphors” occurred so frequently that, in the interest of ef-
ficiency, I collected only a few tokens of them. Larger samples would not
have been useful for the analysis, and would only have served in the end to
swell the statistics. These metaphoric uses of words were common:
– bouĜlivý ‘stormy’, used of discussions;
– jednoduchý ‘simple’, zjednodušení ‘simplification’, zjedno-
dušování ‘simplifying’ are used in discussions of orthography
and reform, although there is no straightforward way of defining

what constitutes a “simple” orthography or a “simplification”;
– obrození ‘resurrection, revival’, obrozenec ‘revivalist’ are fre-
quently met in reference to the národní obrození ‘National Re-
vival’, the renaissance of Czech in the nineteenth century, and
no longer really carry the literal meaning ‘return to life’;
– platný ‘valid, in force’, platnost ‘validity’, platit ‘be in force’
are applied to laws and official regulations and appear in a vast
majority of articles about the Rules;
– prznČní jazyka, zprznČní jazyka ‘defilement of the language’,
coming from a verb meaning ‘defile, violate’;
– pĜirozený ‘natural’, pĜirozenost ‘naturalness’ is extremely fre-
quent in these articles, especially as concerns the notion of lan-
guage;
– Ĝídit ‘to drive, direct’ can be used for vehicles, but used in its
figurative sense it is extremely common in this corpus and
elsewhere.
– zdomácnČlý ‘nativized’, zdomácnČt ‘become adapted, gain cur-
rency’, zdomácnit ‘adapt, acclimatize’. All these words have the
root -dom- ‘home’ but were not counted.
– In addition, when a single article repeated a metaphor several
times, I often collected only a single token, unless further tokens
offered interesting developments on the metaphor.
4. Metaphors for language
I recorded 192 metaphors and similes featuring language. The source do-
mains of these metaphors provide varying degrees of information. Some are
quite specific, offering what Kövecses calls “a relatively rich knowledge
structure for the target” (2002: 33). These structural metaphors include:
LANGUAGE IS A PERSON; LANGUAGE IS A PLANT; LANGUAGE IS AN
ANIMAL; LANGUAGE IS A MONSTER; LANGUAGE IS A TOOL; LANGUAGE IS
NATURE OR A NATURAL FORCE; LANGUAGE IS A BUILDING; LANGUAGE IS
THE EARTH, THE LAND; LANGUAGE IS A JUNGLE; LANGUAGE IS RAW
MATERIAL, CLAY; THE NATIVE LANGUAGE IS A MACHINE.
Others map a less concrete entity onto a more concrete one, without
being too specific about exactly what that more concrete entity is. These are
what Lakoff and Johnson call ontological metaphors:
Metaphors for language 273
LANGUAGE IS A TREASURED INHERITANCE; LANGUAGE IS A SACRED

OBJECT; LANGUAGE IS A CLOSED PLACE; LANGUAGE IS CLARITY;
LANGUAGE IS A THREE-DIMENSIONAL OBJECT.
A third type of metaphor relates the target domain to a source domain of
basic spatial concepts. Lakoff and Johnson term it the orientational meta-
phor. This is poorly represented for language, with the exception of the no-
tion of transfer or movement from x to y:
LANGUAGE IS MOVING FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER; THE NATIVE
LANGUAGE IS HOME.
This treatment focuses on one relatively rich set of metaphors for lan-
guage, those concerning the metaphor LANGUAGE IS A PERSON.
4.1. Language is a person
Ninety-eight examples concerned the personification of language. Person-

hood is a rich structural metaphor; it allows us to ascribe to the language all
the characteristics we know and associate with human beings. Some of
these characteristics are expressly reflected in the metaphors themselves, as
seen in the following examples.
Language is alive and Language deserves respect:

The linguist’s approach is foremost respect and humility before that won-
derfully alive organism: our mother tongue. (Milan Žemliþka in Lidové
noviny, 1 April 1994)356
Language has a spirit:
The implied demands for absolute immutability of orthography go against
the spirit of the language. (František Fröhlich in Literární noviny, 3 March
1994)357
Language has a body and We have a relationship to language:
…we must return feeling to its deadened body, find an echo of its blood
pulse and once again find in ourselves an emotional and ethical relationship
to the language… (ZbynČk Srb in Jihoþeská pravda, 6 March 1991)358
Language has a voice:
It would be an interesting reaction to this experiment in muzzling the Czech
language by the great and the good of our culture… (Karel Pecka in Lidové
noviny, 17 March 1994)359
Language behaves:
Borrowed words always act like foreign bodies and languages have to cope
with them somehow. In principle, languages resolve this situation in their
orthography and pronunciation in three ways… (František Daneš in Vesmír,
1 September 1993)360
Language was born:
…although however surprisingly viable the little child proved to be, his
“unnatural” birth brought with it a series of problems… (Petr Fidelius in
Literární noviny, 1 April 1994)361
Language grows up:
Our linguists still seem to share the feelings of the Revivalists: that Czech
has not yet broken free from its diapers and needs ever more improvements.
(JEŠ in ZN noviny, 27 May 1993)361
Language can die and Language sleeps:
Having read the new Rules [of Czech Orthography] I feel the urge to call
out: “The Czech language has not died; it is merely sleeping!” (Jaroslav
Šajtar in Reflex, 6 December 1993)362
Language can be injured:
Let us return to before the moment when the Bolshevik violence against our
language began... (JiĜí Šváb in Lidové noviny, 5 June 1993)363
Language has emotions:
O God, how low I have sunk, weeps the Czech language. (Jaroslav Bašus in
Telegraf, 10 July 1993)364
The data offers further evidence that LANGUAGE IS A PERSON because:
Language is alive, Language has a fate, Language has a lineage, Language
has a family, Language can have corrective training, Language is beauti-
ful/ugly…
What is the point of employing such metaphors? Metaphoric expres-
sions in which LANGUAGE IS A PERSON are most often used to show disap-
proval of regulation. Once we assign human qualities to a language, it ac-
quires rights and privileges of its own; it must be treated differently from a
mere thing. This point usually goes unsaid, but it is nonetheless a logical
conclusion of accepting the metaphor. An unexpressed but necessary as-
sumption of this sort is called an entailment, and this metaphoric network is
rich in such entailments. For example:
Metaphors for orthography 275
– Violence against a defenceless living being should not be

tolerated.
– Actions that make a person cry are cruel.
– Actions that might cause a person’s death are evil.
– Someone that we respect and have a relationship with deserves
to be treated as an equal to us.
– Any person has rights to grow and develop as he desires.
– Attempts to forcibly change or dominate another person are
wrong.
These entailments suggest, therefore, that we cannot simply study lan-
guage and make changes to it. Practical concerns aside, the conceptual
metaphor LANGUAGE IS A PERSON tells us that it is immoral to do so, and
that our interference will have negative consequences. (Those who gener-
ally favour regulation are more likely to employ the conceptual metaphor
LANGUAGE IS A PLANT, as it allows regulators to invoke the idea of culti-
vation or gardening as a way to work with nature.366)
5. Metaphors for orthography
For orthography, the dominant conceptual metaphor (89 of 96 attestations)

is ORTHOGRAPHIC RULES ARE LAWS. Like LANGUAGE IS A PERSON, this
metaphor is structural in nature; it relates the prescriptions that govern our
everyday activities to those that regulate our use of the standard language.
As mentioned earlier, the Czech words platný ‘valid, in force’, platnost
‘validity’, platit ‘be in force’ are applied to laws and official regulations
and appear in a vast majority of articles about the Rules. Alongside the oft-
repeated headline Nová Pravidla þeského pravopisu…nabyla již platnost
‘The new Rules of Czech Orthography have now come into force’ there are
numerous examples of this sort:
And so there arose a comical power-sharing between the Academic Rules of
Czech Orthography from November 1993, which are in effect everywhere,
and the School Rules of Czech Orthography from 1957, which from Sep-
tember this year will again be in effect in schools. (Petr Karban, ýTK, in
Expres, 21 July 1994)367
But there are numerous other instances where individual metaphoric ex-
pressions draw on this idea of legality. Some use the word zákon ‘law’
either to point out the similarities or to deny them:
…if something is codified, then it is in force and has the form of a law, al-
beit a senseless and incomprehensible one… (Michal Bauer in Tvar, 23
January 1997)368
After all, the Rules of Czech Orthography…are not a law whose violation is
punishable. […] After all, the only punishment we can expect is mockery
and mistrust. (Jan Jirák, Lidové noviny, 7 August 1993)369
Others use the word uzákonit ‘legalize, enact’ or the verbal noun
uzákonČní ‘legalization, enactment’:
I would come to the conclusion that there are few modifications here, that
for the most part they are necessary changes that just legalize what part of
society put into practice a long time ago. (Jan Balhar, Lidové noviny, 25
September 1993)370
Some accepted the Rules’ de facto status as laws, but then questioned
why they did not have the same status as other laws:
It is a misfortune that the rules have a traditional authority in this country:
they have become a law that schools, offices and the press obediently
follow. What bad luck that the president cannot veto this law; what bad luck
that he cannot dissolve the Czech Language Institute and call new elections
for it. (Tomáš NČmeþek, Mladý svČt, 4 August 1994)371
In several instances, the Rules were compared to traffic laws:
If the Highway Code had more than one resolution for individual situations,
we’d soon be massacring each other out on the roads. (ZdenČk HeĜman in
Svobodné slovo, 20 July 1994)372
References to laws and legality invoked a range of entailments of the
metaphor. For example, laws forbid, enable, and permit, among others.
Orthographic rules forbid:
…the authors of the Rules claim for themselves the right to forbid those
who don’t share their conception of the language to write as they wish…
(Michal Ajvaz in Literární noviny, 14 October 1992)373
Orthographic rules force:
With the publication of the new Rules, the standardization of a formerly
forbidden form [of the infinitives moct, péct] is complete. It will simplify
things for us especially in oral discourse, where we had been forced to
express ourselves bookishly, against our will. (Milan Jelínek in Lidové
noviny, 10 June 1993)374
Metaphors for regulation 277
Language is a living organism and no expert force-fed in the hatchery of

Bolshevism to meet Bolshevik exigencies has the right independently to
make decisions about it and to force his decisions on anyone else as the
single possible canon. (Jan Beneš in ýeský deník, 20 May 1993)375
Rules can be fine-tuned:
Let’s not be afraid! The new Rules of Czech Orthography will be fine-
tuned, as all our laws are. (Marie Hanušová in Telegraf 28 July 1993)376
Rules impose obligations:
…the Rules were created by someone and solemnly presented to the people
– understandably with the obligation to respect them unconditionally.
(Šárka Dostálová in ZN noviny, 18 May 1993)377
Rules cause over-regimentation:
Prime Minister and Civic Democratic Party chairman Václav Klaus yester-
day declared himself to be against excessive regimentation of the language.
(Unsigned, probably ýTK wire service, in ZN noviny, 22 July 1994)378
Rules can permit:
In the depths of my soul I still hope (perhaps in vain) that it will be admissi-
ble to write “the old way” as well for some time to come. (Opinion signed
“BOD” in Nová svoboda, 5 January 1991)379
As compared to the LANGUAGE IS A PERSON metaphor, the OR-
THOGRAPHIC RULES ARE LAWS metaphor invokes an ideology that does not
militate so strongly in one direction. While a great majority of the contri-
butions using this metaphor were against the new Rules, a number of those
for it also invoked it, often because they thought laws are an appropriate
model for orthographic rules or simply accepted as a fact that it had to be
so.
This metaphor is an underlying trope in the orthography debate, one that
subtly influenced the argument on both sides. The belief that orthographic
rules had some magical power over an entire society may have been bol-
stered by the deformations of the communist era, when the distinctions
between programmes, laws, rules and recommendations were less impor-
tant than the authority of the people issuing them.
6. Metaphors for regulation
A plurality of metaphors retrieved – 303 out of 650 – concerned the target

domain language regulation. They covered a variety of source domains:

Ontological metaphors:
REGULATION IS A CLEANSING OR WIPING CLEAN; REGULATION IS
VIOLENCE; REGULATION IS SIMPLICITY; REGULATION IS LIGHTNESS;
REGULATION IS DARKNESS; REGULATION IS DEFORMATION; REGULATION
IS BOWING/GIVING WAY/BENDING; REGULATION IS CHAOS.
Structural metaphors (various):
REGULATION IS A PATH/JOURNEY; REGULATION IS A WAVE; REGU-
LATION IS A NATURAL CATASTROPHE; REGULATION IS A DIVIDER OR A
BARRIER; REGULATION IS MANUFACTURING; REGULATION IS GUARDING
OR WATCHING.
Structural metaphors (political and social phenomena):
REGULATION IS A BATTLE; REGULATION IS RELIGION; REGULATION IS
DICTATORSHIP; REGULATION IS AN INVADING ARMY; REGULATION IS AN
ATTACK; REGULATION IS A COURT CASE; REGULATION IS A DESECRATION.
Structural metaphors (science and technology):
REGULATION IS SCIENCE; REGULATION IS ENGINEERING; REGULATION
IS MATHEMATICS; REGULATION IS A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT;
REGULATION IS RATIONALITY; REGULATION IS SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY;
REGULATION IS HOME IMPROVEMENTS; REGULATION IS TRANSPLAN-
TATION.
By far the most fruitful metaphor was REGULATION IS A PATH/JOURNEY,
with 124 attestations, in which an abstract process (regulation) is rendered
as movement through space (path/journey). Some examples used the word
cesta ‘path, journey’; other nouns included smČr ‘direction’, krok ‘step’
pochod ‘march’ linie ‘line (of movement)’, and návrat ‘return’. A
multitude of verbs set regulation in motion, among them: jít ‘go’, vést,
zavést ‘to lead’, dostat se ‘to find one’s way’, dostoupit, postoupit ‘to
proceed’, probČhnout ‘to run through/past’, blížit se, sbližovat se, pĜiblížit
se ‘to approach, to come close’, vzdalovat ‘to distance’, posouvat se ‘to
shift (oneself)’, odsouvat ‘to shove away’, hnát ‘to chase, drive (a
creature)’, vhánČt ‘to drive into’, spouštČt ‘descend’, vydávat se ve stopách
‘to set off in the tracks of’, vyjít vstĜíc ‘meet partway’, and vymanit se
‘escape’.
Twenty-eight examples simply referred to the process as a journey,
either disparagingly or approvingly:
The creators chose the third and worst path: they proclaimed an example of
what up till now was non-standard Czech as a model, at times the only
correct one. (Tomáš NČmeþek in Mladý svČt, 4 August 1994)380
Metaphors for regulation 279
The fact that Czech orthography stopped halfway along the path in 1957
was not the fault of linguists, but in fact of those incompetent Bolshevik
interventions… (Alexandr Stich in Literární noviny, 13 September 1990)381
Simple equations like these are vastly outnumbered by examples in
which the journey has a metaphoric goal as well as a metaphoric process.
Many metaphoric expressions recast the tension between East (old-fash-
ioned, poor, dirigiste) and West (modern, wealthy, respectful of tradition),
with the Czechs being on a path between the two. In theory, this metaphor
could focus on the Czechs travelling west, and thus warn them to abandon
Eastern ways. In actuality, none of the examples see this happening; they
all point, alarmed, to the way that despite political moves towards Western
Europe, the Czechs are moving away from it culturally (21 examples):382
With the introduction of “kurz” and “izmus” we are shifting unambiguously
towards the East and ignoring the spelling of foreign words in Western
countries. (Margit Herrmanová, Lidové noviny, 25 September 1993)383
Only in three examples was the movement toward the west phrased
positively, and in each case it was positioned as a return:
If we want to return to western culture, then let us take their language cul-
ture as a starting point. (Vladimír Lišþák in Telegraf, 19 June 1993)384
A further sort of journey threatens a move away from civilization and
has at its endpoint primitivism or barbarism (14 examples):
In the linguistic sphere as well, using the model of Rádyjo and Soviet lin-
guistics, our collaborationist Czech scientific society set off many years ago
quite systematically along a path to implement primitivism in our legal
norms, in this case infiltrating communist newspeak into grammatical rules.
(Radek Hlavsa in ýeský deník, 22 May 1993)385
Primitivism and barbarism are, of course, closely connected in the post-
communist mindset with the ideals of the communist regime. The path
metaphor is especially tempting here for another reason, as during the
communist regime, recommended courses of action were often depicted as
a path or journey towards the creation of communism or socialism. This
gives the metaphor a special resonance in the Czech context (5 examples):
I greatly welcome and respect the decision of ýeský deník not to submit to
further creeping Bolshevization of the language on its path towards a rup-
ture with the traditions of European civilization. (Jan Beneš in ýeský deník,
20 May 1993)386
It also opens up all sorts of possibilities for caricaturing orthographic
reform, as in the following example, in which the phrase jít s pokrokem ‘go
along with progress’ conjures up a well-worn slogan for those who chose to
cooperate with the communist regime:
Meanwhile, how can we forget the old rhetorical figure of “the whole
people”, to whom in reality only some belong – that is, those who go along
with progress! (Petr Fidelius in Literární noviny, 16 December 1993)387
Paths of reform often lead downwards, calling on the orientational
metaphor DOWN IS BAD, and making use of words like pád ‘fall’, prohlou-
bit/prohlubovat ‘deepen’, nízký ‘low’, úpadkovost ‘decadence’, pokleslý
‘degenerate, trashy’ (12 examples).
I call for a return to before that pernicious moment when the descent from
learning into somewhere in hell first began. (JiĜí Šváb in Lidové noviny, 5
June 1993)388
A number of them hint that the path has an undesirable end, without in-
forming us exactly what it is:
Besides, there is the question of how far to go in the direction already taken.
Is it appropriate to go only as far as [the spelling] ingoust [for inkoust], or
should we go as far as bijologije [for biologie]? It is a path without end and
not a pretty one, on which there is no need to set off at all. (Ivo Horák in
Lidové noviny, 4 December 1993)389
Over and over, we meet the statement that the goal of regulation was to
bring the written standard closer to the spoken language:
The argument that written discourse should come closer to spoken does not
seem like a valid one to me… (J. Holcová in ýeský deník, 25 May 1993)390
This is a conceptual shortcut; strictly speaking, written language cannot
be brought “closer” to a different mode of expression. In this instance, the
authors are querying whether written standards should be adapted to reflect
the phonological pattern of the contemporary language more closely. The
path metaphor here allows us to create the following picture (or pseudo-
schema) quickly and easily:
Written language Spoken language

PATH TO
Figure 10. The path metaphor: written to spoken

Metaphors for discussion 281
It makes the identification between the two seem more radical, and
vastly oversimplifies what the effects of the reform are likely to be. A more
satisfactory account appears in the following example:
Taken strictly, the existing orthographic norm is further than halfway to

total phonetization… And so we could go on in this way. (JiĜí Wackermann
in ýeský deník, 10 June 1993)391
Here it may not be entirely clear what the author means by “phonetiza-
tion”, but at least the use of this pseudo-scientific term openly raises the
question instead of burying it in an oversimplified metaphor.
A last variation on the path metaphor is when a journey’s explicit goal
is to meet someone or something:
…whether it was the need to show proof of some sort of activity that led
these specialists garlanded with titles to this decision, or whether the deci-
sive factor was their eagerness to meet partway the very section of the
population whose poor knowledge of Czech prevents them from garnering
proper esteem among intellectuals. (Petr Zavoral in ýeský deník, 27 July
1994)392
The phrase jít vstĜíc, literally ‘go towards’, appears frequently in this
context, often in its secondary meaning ‘placate, appease’. It almost always
occurs in the image: linguists (or the standard they control) going towards
the less-educated (or their demands, or their level of mastery).
All the path metaphors erase or conceal interesting conceptual differ-
ences between place and time. Regulation is a process occurring over time;
it has a history. By giving this history a physical space, the metaphors open
the possibility of return along the path. Nothing is irrevocable; we can re-
turn to the past; we can revisit places we have already passed through. This
is one reason why the path metaphors are so attractive for those who want
to abandon reforms. They suggest that all we need to do is backtrack, as if
that were actually possible, and we will be able to restore the previous
standard or the previous status quo.
7. Metaphors for discussion
Of the 59 examples of discussion (of the Rules) or reaction (to the Rules) as
a metaphor, half present it as a fight or a battle. The remaining are equally
negative in their assessment, proposing:
DISCUSSION IS DARKNESS; DISCUSSION IS A FIRE; DISCUSSION IS AN

AVALANCHE; DISCUSSION IS A STORM; REACTION IS POISONOUS; RE-
ACTION IS A WAVE.
These are all varieties of natural catastrophes or causes of harm and
injury, with the exception of darkness, which has its own raft of negative
associations generated from the metaphors LIGHT IS KNOWLEDGE and
DARKNESS IS IGNORANCE.
Three further metaphors (DISCUSSION IS A PLAY; DISCUSSION IS A
DANCE; DISCUSSION IS A GAME) seem on the face of it not to have these
negative associations, but in context only the negative characteristics of
these concepts are invoked: games, plays, and dances emphasize artifice,
formality, arcane rules, and unnecessary fuss:
How will we write? A new game by the old rules (Headline for Eva
Kašáková in Veþerník Praha, 21 July 1994)393
…a conservative fundamentally cannot win against the world – his only
victory comes when he loses slowly. (Richard Štencl in Respekt, 8 August
1994)394
The dance around the Rules will cost us millions (Headline for Petr Karban
in Expres, 21 July 1994)395
…I am sometimes taken aback by the fervour with which defenders and op-
ponents of reform take to the stage. (Rudolf BattČk in ýeský deník, 8 Octo-
ber 1994)396
The metaphors DISCUSSION IS A FIGHT and DISCUSSION IS A BATTLE
parallel those found for regulation: REGULATION IS VIOLENCE, REGU-
LATION IS AN INVADING ARMY, REGULATION IS AN ATTACK, and
REGULATION IS A BATTLE. The difference, of course, is that those deni-
grating regulation tended to be opponents of reform, while those denigrat-
ing discussion often supported the reform, or at least a more positive ap-
proach to the reform. The authors of the Rules themselves even used these
metaphors, emphasizing the extent to which they felt personally injured by
the tone and thrust of the arguments:
The wartime edition of the Rules from 1941 was not attacked too much,
mainly because it was not an appropriate time for assaults on Czech orthog-
raphy. (Miloslav Sedláþek in Lidové noviny, 13 August 1994)397
Opponents of the reform, however, also characterized the reformers’
behaviour as violent. For example, Maita Arnautová, writing in Lidové
noviny on 14 July 1994, argued that the counterarguments advanced by
Metaphors for discussion 283
reformers were equally personal:

When you timidly hint to them that you might have had something to say on
the matter as well, because after all it’s your language too, they immediately
bash you on the head with some “connotation” or other and that’s the end of
it.398
A specific subset of references concerned the tahanice kolem Pravidel
‘the tussles over the Rules’. This almost always referred to the tug-of-war
between the CLI and the Ministry of Education over the validity of the
school edition. For example, a series of interviews with members of the
public in Hradecké noviny entitled The tussles over orthography do no one
any good399 quoted one person as saying: “I simply did not like the tussles
over the modifications to the rules of orthography.”400
The expression pravopisná válka ‘the orthography war’ became a cliché
of newspaper headlines in 1993–1994, to the extent that journalists began
to comment on it facetiously:
Well come on, in the silly season every war’s a good war, especially if it’s
not bloody, like the ones in Bosnia or Rwanda. (Dobromil DvoĜák in Mo-
ravský demokratický deník, 25 July 1994)401
Opponents of the new Rules, like OldĜich Uliþný (writing in ZN noviny
on 16 August 1994) justified their attack as self-defence:
When last year we found ourselves presented with the new Rules of Czech
Orthography as a done deal, we had the choice of either nodding it through,
or doing battle.402
The metaphors DISCUSSION IS A FIGHT and DISCUSSION IS A BATTLE
were among the most evenly balanced, in that they were used equally by
both sides. Their contribution to the debate was to give it two well-worn
names, and to identify the debate in the public mind with a particular series
of images. Instead of being simply a discussion, it involved two sides en-
gaged in a struggle, physical damage, and a “winner” and “loser”. The im-
ages were catchy enough that words like válka ‘war’ and boj ‘battle’ often
replaced the less colourful diskuse ‘discussion’ in newspaper headlines:
About two wars on Czech territory
“A fierce battle rages”
A fight for the language’s existence
A linguist’s attack
A truce on the Rules
Both promises and threats accompany the battle over the rights to publish
the Addendum and the Rules

Boxing with orthography
Do you get along with the new orthography?
From orthographic battles to language culture?
In defence of the mother tongue
Long live the Czech furor orthographicus
The battle over “new Czech” continues
The end of orthographic battles (?)
The fracas over orthography helps no one
The orthographic war has for the time ended in compromise
The war over the Rules
The imagery was even extended to matters concerning other sorts of
language regulation, as well as to reforms in other countries:
Feminism and a couple of slaps
Germany fights over orthography again403
8. Metaphoric networks crossing domains
In the preceding sections, we focused on metaphoric networks connected

by target domain. However, there are a number of pervasive networks that
cross domains, linking to deeper, culturally significant concepts and meta-
phors. For example, the metaphor LANGUAGE IS A TOOL combines readily
with metaphors for regulation, including REGULATION IS SCIENCE,
REGULATION IS TECHNOLOGY, REGULATION IS MANUFACTURING, and oth-
ers.
The metaphor LANGUAGE IS A TOOL appears twelve times in the corpus:
Yes, we understand that language is alive, malleable, develops and moulds
itself like a piece of clay spinning on a potter’s wheel. (Milena Tuþná and
Robert Malota in Lidová demokracie, 25 May 1993)404
This particular metaphor is quite resonant in Czech – much more so than
in English – because it has a long history of use on all sides of the debate.
Its three most powerful instantiations – the whetstone, the tool of human
communication, and the engineer of human souls – are as familiar to the
Czech public, and as likely to be invoked in appropriate contexts as is the
English metaphor of the “silent spring” in ecological or environmental
contexts. Nerlich observes that metaphors like these are incredibly resilient:
Metaphors like silent spring seem to have a semantic dynamics that is based
Metaphoric networks crossing domains 285
on the one hand on their intrinsic or textual semantic potential and on the
other on their extrinsic or contextual use in various social, political, cultural
and economic circumstances over time. This dynamic adaptability and
polyphonic potential is also grounded in the metaphor’s appeal to various
audiences at one and the same time (see Kroll 2001) and over time. (…)
Over time the title becomes gradually dissociated from the book and takes
on its own semantic dynamics, but echoes of the book’s content survive
with the title and are themselves adapted to changing circumstances. This is
important if a metaphor is to survive in and reverberate with popular imagi-
nation. (Nerlich 2003)
The earliest of the three Czech metaphors concerns the word brus, or
whetstone. There is a Czech tradition of seeing language as a tool that can
be sharpened or honed for better use, and images of the knife, the whet-
stone, and the knife-grinder are deeply ingrained in the Czech conscious-
ness.405
In the twentieth century, the functionalists challenged this view by talk-
ing about language as a “tool for human communication” (nástroj lidského
dorozumívání), a conception popularized by Havránek. This term can be
seen as a direct reaction to the puristic imagery of the knife-grinder (purist),
the knife (language) and the whetstone (primer), which focuses on the
ability of the grinder to produce a finer, keener product. By de-emphasizing
the shape of the tool and focusing on its purpose, the functionalists
reoriented the debate around the question of what language does (i.e. its
function), as opposed to what it is (i.e. its form). In other words, a knife
need not be good simply because it has an excellent knife-like form; we
judge it by how well it cuts.
In the end, then, the tool for human communication is a direct response
to the imagery of purism. It appears in the corpus a number of times, often
sarcastically or with a slight disparaging tone (here with metonymy: THE
WORD FOR THE LANGUAGE):
The written word in the school is also something slightly different from an
expression of one’s own thoughts and a tool of communication with others.
(Vladimír Václavík in Lidové noviny, 3 August 1994)406
There is a further subtext to the idea of language usage, one that arrived
on the scene with communism and the ideology of socialist realism. In the
1930s, Stalin drew a parallel between scientific engineers and “engineers of
the human soul”. Zhdanov and Gorkii, addressing the Writers’ Congress in
1934, applied this term to writers, exhorting them to take up the new Party-
approved line and adhere to the newly-minted artistic movement of social-
ist realism, or art in the service of socialist goals.

After the communist putsch of 1948, socialist realism became the offi-
cial artistic movement of Czechoslovakia as well. The movement came to
be associated with artistic banality, adherence to sterile, conservative, un-
subtle forms and a neglect of the creative side of artistic writing. Faithful-
ness to a political manifesto was seen as more important than the artistic
creation itself; an exemplary piece of socialist realist literature might be
quite a poor novel or story indeed. What Berlin (2000: 17–18) wrote about
Soviet Russia is equally valid for Communist Czechoslovakia:
The ‘engineer of human souls’, to use Stalin’s phrase, knows best; he does
what he does not simply in order to do his best for his nation, but in the
name of the nation itself, in the name of what the nation would be doing it-
self if only it had attained to this level of historical understanding.
Linguists too work with language, and were frequently said to wield so-
cialist terminology to produce a product that serves its pragmatic purpose
but is not aesthetically pleasing. In addition, their actions are often per-
ceived as high-handed, taken in the name of the masses without any con-
sultation with them.
The engineer of human souls metaphor is thus easy to apply to linguists,
and this is in fact what happens in the orthography debate. Consequently,
the science and tool metaphors are double-edged; while they invoke views
of dispassionate and useful study, they also directly recall language purism
and totalitarianism:
REGULATION IS ENGINEERING
I cannot escape the impression that they [i.e. these changes] would not have
come about if this sort of activity did not have a long tradition here and did
not at the same time evoke in its participants a sense of the importance of
their engineering, which will influence the writing of millions of people.
(Ivo Horák in Lidové noviny, 4 December 1993)407
In the newest rules, at least, the attempt at linguistic engineering hits you
right between the eyes. (Martin Daneš in ýeský deník, 12 May 1993)408
REGULATION IS AN EXPERIMENT
They love to death experimenting on live organisms – just try and see what
will happen if all borrowed words pronounced more or less long are also
written with a long vowel… (Maita Arnautová in Literární noviny, 14 July
1994)409
Metaphoric networks crossing domains 287
REGULATION IS MANUFACTURING
No loss if scholarly workplaces that churn out rules of “orthography” like
these become defunct. (Vladimír Soukup in ýeský deník, 3 June 1993)410
REGULATION IS AMATEUR REPAIR
Hansen asserts that he knows sixth-form students who prefer to read Ibsen
in English, because after a hundred years of linguistic tinkering, his Norse
sounds archaic and foreign to them. (ZbynČk Petráþek in Respekt, 11
August 1997)411
Through the use of existing metaphors and the creation of new ones, the
people who engaged in this debate over orthography were constructing al-
ternative ways of looking at the conflict. A typical non-metaphoric under-
standing of the relationship between regulation and language would be as
follows: Regulation acts on language to produce regulated language:
REGULATION LANGUAGE REGULATED LANGUAGE
Figure 11. Non-metaphoric links

Adding the metaphors to it, we come up with:
Å positive connotations Æ
SCIENCE (TOOL OF IMPROVED TOOL

COMMUNICATION)
(REGULATION)
TOOL (PROGRESS)
(LANGUAGE)
MANUFACTURING,
ENGINEERING (“PROGRESS”)
EXPERIMENT (WHETSTONE)
HOME REPAIRS
(ENGINEER OF SOULS) DEFORMED TOOL
Å negative connotations Æ
Figure 12. Metaphoric links

Science (seen also as manufacturing, engineering, or experiments) acts

on the tool (language) to produce either an improved tool or a deformed
tool. Pre-existing metaphors in the culture (the engineer of human souls, the
whetstone, the tool of communication) contribute to the end result. While
the tool of communication has positive associations and suggests an im-
proved product, the engineer of souls and the whetstone have negative as-
sociations for most Czechs, and lead them to conclude the tool has been
damaged or deformed. Likewise, those believing in true scientific progress
see the process leading to an improved linguistic tool. However, those in-
clined to view reform as the sort of false scientific “progress” the commu-
nists espoused perceive the resulting tool to be inadequate or unsatisfactory.
The common understanding of metaphors is that they provide alternate
ways of explaining and viewing complex relationships. In this particular
context, they have an additional function. Almost no one takes a completely
neutral view of language regulation, saying that its effects are neither good
nor bad. Instead, everyone has an opinion. They like the results, or they
detest them. Metaphorical language allows them to justify their views, and
to invoke certain traditional images in support of these views. This par-
ticular metaphoric network calls on metaphors specific to Czech culture,
using them as rhetorical weapons, and building associations to promote a
view of language change and the people who were engaged in it.
In the English tradition, science metaphors are largely positive ones. On
the face of it, then, this metaphoric network could have been favourable to
the linguists involved, allowing them to associate their own social science
methods with those employed by natural scientists. Entailments of science,
engineering, and technology are: a world run according to a series of laws
that we discover through experimentation; precision of construction; im-
provement in one’s comfort; and progress. The latter also provides a link to
other metaphors we explored: progress is a spatial metaphor linked to the
idea of position on a path.
These entailments are not absent from Czech culture, and the Czech
linguists did employ them in explaining their methods and views about
language change. However, they were swamped by other, negative
associations of these phrases. Communist propaganda had heavily
emphasized technology, engineering, and progress, and thus their products
had come to be tainted by totalitarian politicization: technika ‘technology’
was seen as dehumanization, inženýrství ‘engineering’ as social tinkering,
and pokrok ‘progress’ as the destruction of traditional cultural values.
Conclusion 289
9. Conclusion
Metaphors have played a variety of roles in the arguments presented here.

We can identify their influence on the logic of a debate, their political sig-
nificance, and the extent of their cultural specificity.
As we have seen, metaphors can serve the logic of a debate, providing
short cuts for lengthy explanations. However, no substitution is a perfect
match, and the structure that metaphors impose can have a subtle or not-so-
subtle impact on the debate. In some instances (the written language is ap-
proaching the spoken one) metaphor oversimplified the situation and al-
lowed the introduction of tangentially related observations in support of an
argument (politicians don’t know how to speak correctly these days; all you
hear these days on the radio is Prague dialect). In other cases (the scientist
wields a tool) the metaphor added levels of complexity that were not there
before, implicitly relating the issue to previous debates (a good scientist,
like Mathesius, or a misguided scientist, like Marr?).
Metaphors could be pressed into political service as well, explicitly em-
ployed in the service of various angles of the debate. In the debate over or-
thography, metaphoric language by and large served the purposes of the
objectors, not the defenders. When the authors of the Rules and their col-
leagues tried to use metaphoric language, more often than not they saw
their metaphors turned back against them as examples of leftover commu-
nist-era discourse. Metaphors turned out to be a powerful weapon in the
orthography wars: they mobilized opinion against the proposed changes,
labeled the reformers as crypto-communists, reduced the arguments to sim-
pler, more black-and-white questions, and entailed sometimes implausible
solutions.
Metaphors in these debates enjoyed varying degrees of cultural speci-
ficity. They were sometimes universal (REGULATION IS A PATH), but fre-
quently language-specific, or with culture-specific entailments (LANGUAGE
IS A TOOL) that determine how they are used and what their impact is.
This situation is far from unique to the Czech spelling debates, although
each political issue will have its own specific features. In their analysis of
the foot-and-mouth epidemic, Nerlich, Hamilton, and Rowe (2002) con-
cluded:
In sum, metaphors help us to assume much needed imaginary control of a
threatening world, a world that sometimes thwarts easy understanding. In
this respect metaphors are indispensable to politicians, to the public and also
to journalists when writing about phenomena such as FMD.
The rhetoric in the Czech orthography debates headed in the opposite

direction, but for the same reason. Here, the metaphors often served to rein-
force the perception that matters were out of control, not under control.
Along with metaphors for war, battle, fights, putsches, terrorism, etc. as
detailed earlier, the words pravopis, pravopisný ‘orthography, ortho-
graphic’ were paired in headlines with words like chaos, zmatek ‘confu-
sion’, barbarské poþiny ‘barbarous acts’ loterie ‘lottery’, na levaþku ‘from
bad to worse’, žerty ‘jokes’, apríl ‘April Fool’, vášnČ ‘passions’. A debate
and a ministerial cock-up became, in newspaper language, chaos, confusion
and a downward spiral.
Differences in national scripts undoubtedly played a large role here.
Nerlich, Hamilton, and Rowe note that once the war metaphor was estab-
lished, reference began to be made to existing wars: the Gulf War, the
Falklands, and Bosnia. Interestingly enough, they do not mention the war
that has perhaps more than any other shaped British cultural identity: the
Second World War. It is omnipresent on British television – not a week
goes by without a WWII nostalgia-fest – and is one of the most popular
periods studied in British schools for A-level history exams. Tabloid papers
rehash the “British” victory every time Germany comes into the news. A
cultural script for war in Britain would be heavily based on this most feted
of conflicts, and it is indeed a script for victory.
A Czech script for war or any conflict must be based on their perennial
status as pawns between great powers. Conflict in the Czech context brings
a tug-of-war between others; the Czech is caught in the middle and cannot
benefit from it. Famous Czech fictional accounts of the Second World War
(Škvorecký’s The Cowards, Hrabal’s Closely Watched Trains, Grosman’s
The Shop on Main Street) do not treat war as a march towards victory; in-
stead, the Czech (or Slovak) is caught between two masters and may perish
in the confusion.
Newspapers were able to use this script to offer sympathy for the poor
reader, reinforcing their solidarity with him and hopefully securing his in-
terest in their publication in the process. As they portrayed it, the ordinary
person was yet again caught in a battle not of his own making, this time
between the CLI and the Ministry. The battleground was his mother tongue.
If fitting the facts to this script involved a slight distortion of the truth –
ignoring the optionality of the Rules and exaggerating the confusion – this
distortion came from the script, not from a deliberate falsification.
The impact of metaphors in the orthography debate is thus multi-lev-
eled. Universal conceptual metaphors had a strong impact on how
Conclusion 291
arguments were made and perceived, while cultural entailments and

cultural scripts played a role in which ones were emphasized, which were
successful, and how the debate itself ran.
Chapter 9
Conclusions
I pulled out a brochure that stood closer to the volume bound in purple vel-
vet, and leafed through it: as I had feared, I found on its pages far more
letters from the other city: there were entire words and sentence fragments.
With trepidation I reached for the volume next to the mysterious purple
book. When I opened it, I felt as if I had pushed aside a flat stone and was
watching the teeming beetles underneath. The pages were almost entirely
covered with the bold black letters from the other side of the border; only
isolated islands of Latin letters remained. Sickness overwhelmed me and I
slammed the book shut. Now I knew for certain what had happened to me:
the foreign writing was spreading through my library, growing on it like a
fungus. I quickly pulled out the infectious purple book and ran round the
room with it, looking for a place to hide it. Could my library, suppurating
with this incomprehensible writing, ever recover?
Michal Ajvaz, Druhé mČsto (‘The Other City’), 2005 [1993]: 164
An account of spelling reform that rests solely on a close reading of corpus
planning or on an evaluation of the implementation process will fall short
of explaining why a change is or is not successful, or even why a change is
proposed at all. It appears that spelling reform and the reactions to it con-
stitute merely surface manifestations of deeply held beliefs and entrenched
myths about language overall and a single language in point. Spelling is a
deceptively simple subject; everyone is an expert, and it is thus an easy,
highly visible target for public reaction.
In examining the public reactions to reform, we need to return to Coo-
per’s original questions and apply them more stringently, not only to the
reformers (the “subject”) and the reforms (the “direct object”), but also to
the populace as a whole (the “indirect object”, who serve as the beneficiar-
ies or the affected party) and to the social situation in the places where the
language is used (the “prepositional object” or location).
1. Participants, beneficiaries, and victims of reform
The content of any given reform may be incidental to the reactions it

evokes. What emerges from our study is the tremendous influence of peo-
ple’s training and their societal roles in shaping their reaction to reform
proposals. For Czech and other languages that have undergone spelling re-
form in recent times, we can return to our scheme of actors outlined in
chapter 5, section 1, and look at the benefits and costs that accrued – or
were perceived to accrue – to these groups.
I. Linguists stand to benefit from spelling reform in that public discus-
sion of it raises the profile of their profession and individually makes them
instant experts on a subject of national controversy. They can also be nega-
tively affected by it if they feel a reform casts their profession in a bad
light.
In the debates around Czech spelling reform, both these effects were
felt. Linguists were in great demand as commentators, interpreters of the
new Rules, and occasionally as named opponents of it. Suddenly they were
the focus of national attention. On the other hand, the picture of linguists in
the press was not in general a positive one. They were portrayed as ma-
nipulators of language – the “engineers of human souls” – regardless of the
actual stances of individual linguists towards the reforms.
Ia. Reformers are perhaps the most obvious beneficiaries of spelling re-
form. It provides them with employment and (under certain circumstances)
can mean substantial financial gain for them and a source of income for
their employer. It brings them heightened media attention. Of course, a re-
form that is not well accepted can blight the career of such a linguist.
The linguists who formed the Czech orthographic commission within
the CLI in the short term saw personal and professional benefit from the
actual creation of the Rules. They received salary bonuses and engaged in a
high-profile activity that was meant to reinforce the status of their em-
ployer. However, the long-term result of the brouhaha around the Rules did
not redound to their benefit. Both in print and in person, those connected
with the reforms spoke of the tremendous stress of defending their personal
integrity and the worth of their work day after day to a largely hostile press
and public. In retrospect, the reformers seem to have looked primarily at
the short-term benefits and what they felt was the overarching benefit to
society of their work. They did not seem to have anticipated the personal
costs of the reform process.
II. Implementers often see themselves as benefiting by spelling reform.
Their benefit consists in an improvement in their working conditions,
sometimes very specific: they will not have to spend as much time teaching
this particular difficult point, or will not have to turn to the dictionary as
often for a certain matter. Unlike in group I, the cost/benefit analysis is not
294 Conclusions
an either/or scenario: there is inevitably a price for implementing the re-

forms, which involves preparation and re-training. They justify their opin-
ions by analysing whether the benefits will outweigh the costs or vice
versa.
Many in this group, especially teachers, cautiously welcomed the Czech
reforms, at least at first. As the controversy wore on, more inconsistencies
in the Rules were exposed and new variants and stylistic differentiations
appeared in the Addendum. These decreased the benefits this group would
see from the Rules and increased the cost of implementing them, and
gradually the voices of individual teachers and language users began to be
raised against the new Rules.
IIa. Officials as a sub-group are less likely to see benefits accrue to
themselves. Many of them take the process of reform as a given, but see
primarily its possible costs for them in terms of dealing with the public re-
sponse, mediating between feuding groups of reformers, and handling the
media. The benefits they experience, if any, are limited to satisfying certain
constituencies who favour reform – and, if their detractors are to be be-
lieved, to the increased influence and favours gained from nodding through
contracts and agreements favourable to certain parties.
The Czech officials were caught in an unenviable situation, with few
benefits on offer and many costs. Their attempts to “spin” the controversy
were designed to deflect attention from the government’s role in approving
these reforms and to minimize their impact.
III. Proficient users and those who label themselves primarily as such
tend not to perceive much benefit from reform. It may offer them the small
psychological boost of an opportunity to vent one’s spleen, but by and large
they are conscious of its costs to them. As people with greater internaliza-
tion of the existing state of affairs, they discern the difficulties involved in
adjusting to it. The benefits they find in any reform tend to be by proxy, if
they choose to align themselves with some other group.
The Czechs who presented themselves as belonging to this group were
the most vociferous opponents of the reform. Very few of them saw any
benefits to themselves from the new Rules. Many perceived spelling reform
as a process designed to damage the nation’s cultural elite; in other words,
not only was it not beneficial, but even deliberately harmful.
IIIa. Discipline-based specialists see both benefit and cost in spelling re-
form. Benefit comes in the form of simplification of their procedures with
the introduction of a firm standard. Cost accrues through the simple fact
that reforms may only have a partial impact on the field and thus fixed
practices may in fact be destabilized. Discipline-based specialists tend to

see themselves as members of an international community, and changes
that remove similarities between Czech and foreign nomenclature appar-
ently increase the difficulty of access to the outside world, imposing a high
cost on the field. The belief that having similar spellings to words in for-
eign languages will increase access to these languages is ideological in na-
ture.
In the Czech debates, the lack of consultation with discipline-based spe-
cialists outside of language pedagogy became an issue. Members of indi-
vidual disciplines were easily able to find fault with the rules that con-
cerned their particular fields. Costs were thus perceived as higher than
benefits.
IIIb. The press and other media can become players in this debate, and
can use it to promote their own agenda (increased circulation, increased
national profile, promotion of the views of their editors or publishers). They
are thus primarily beneficiaries of orthography controversies. That is not to
say that there are no costs to the media. In the course of the reform, they
become obvious targets for the wrath of the reading or viewing public, and
of course experience their own costs in retooling and retraining.
The experience of the Czech press was varied. Certain right-leaning pa-
pers benefitted from running campaigns against the new orthography. In
rejecting the reforms outright, they also minimized their costs. Opposing
the Rules outright was thus an excellent option from a cost-benefit point of
view. Some newspapers on the left incurred costs in switching over, and
failed by and large to reap the benefits of increased reader interest. Instead,
they incurred the wrath of their public by moving quickly to adopt the re-
forms. Fast adoption was thus the least palatable option. The broad middle
ground took cautious, equivocating stances in which some changes were
adopted immediately while the more controversial ones were kicked into
the long grass. This approach spread costs over the long term and mini-
mized immediate negative impact. For a paper unwilling to take a strong
negative stance, this was clearly the method of choice.
IV. Non-proficient users are frequently held out as the primary benefici-
aries of spelling reform, but often these arguments are simply proposed for
them, rather than stated by them, and so the benefits and costs for this
group are a matter of debate. There is an assumption that a wholesale re-
duction in exceptions to spelling rules means a faster, easier route to liter-
acy and increased feelings of confidence about one’s native intuition, as the
number of places where spellings correspond closely to pronunciation
296 Conclusions
should increase and the time devoted to spelling instruction concomitantly

decreases.
However, there is no evidence from the Czech context to support this
claim. Even if we take it as a self-evident truth, none of the reforms pro-
posed represent the sort of sweeping simplification that seems likely to save
much time or effort; they have been small amendments. The benefit to this
group can thus only seem substantial if we take a long view over a century
or more of reform, or if we rely on anecdotal evidence that every tiny ad-
justment has an important psychological benefit. The costs to this group are
the same as for other groups in terms of retraining and relearning, although
it has been assumed that this group will object less because they will see
the obvious benefits for them. This ideology relies on people accepting the
pronouncements of professional linguists as to their needs and abilities.
IVa. School pupils are a prime target of orthographic reform, one of
whose stated aims is to make sure that as many of this group become profi-
cient users as quickly and easily as possible. As noted above, this benefit
seems to be based on a theoretical sweeping reform, and it is harder to
make a case for it in any of the cautious, partial reforms that have been im-
plemented. This ideology assumes that these benefits will accrue over the
long term: the students of the present are expected to perceive benefit
which may actually only accrue to their great-grandchildren. The costs in-
volve the upheaval in the school system and the need to negotiate one’s
way in later life through books representing an older norm, which could
prove confusing (although this is an ideological position as well; the differ-
ences may well not hinder reading skills).
The value of this typology, like any other, will be ascertained through
testing on other language situations to see how well it applies.
2. Conclusions on authority, legitimacy, and reform
External realities – the location of a reform in a particular social context, at

a particular point in history and a particular era – can have a powerful in-
fluence on the course of reform, even if they are apparently unrelated to the
reform’s subject matter. As was shown in the Czech case study, a society
that accepts reform at one juncture may suddenly reject it at another.
A track record of manipulation does seem to be important for future re-
forms. Azeri seems, after an unstable history involving numerous script
reforms, to be entirely willing to consider a further one. Russian and Ger-
Conclusions on authority, legitimacy, and reform 297
man have a history of both resisting reform and yet creating centralized
bodies that propose and attempt to implement such reforms. Norwegian and
Czech, along with a number of other languages referred to in this study,
such as Dutch, have a history of repeated intervention and reform, but there
is evidence that it is becoming harder to impose reforms on an increasingly
fractious public.
Why has the public grown increasingly dissatisfied with spelling re-
form? In the Czech case, as well as several others, mass literacy and de-
mocracy apparently undermined the authority of small appointed groups,
and this shift is most noticeable in the formerly routine matter of ortho-
graphic reform. Gradually such groups are losing their reforming function
and retaining only their status as “guardians of the language” – essentially
as figureheads whose only power is to reinforce the existing order. Like
politicians in a democracy, their popularity varies in inverse proportion to
their propensity and ability to upset the orthographic status quo. Their abil-
ity to approve and indicate change in the lexicon seems, by all accounts, to
continue unabated, as many of these bodies are still responsible for highly
regarded dictionaries, but it would not be surprising if this were the next
area to come under sustained public attack.
In the Norwegian and German examples, this slow movement from re-
formism to skepticism is visible throughout the twentieth century, whereas
in Russian and Czech, the process was less visible due to a lengthy interval
of totalitarian rule. Totalitarianism proved to be a congenial environment
for reformist activities, primarily because it offered opportunities to imple-
ment reforms quickly and effectively through a system of political pressure.
By putting the unquestioned might of the state behind reforms, totalitarian
control tended to hide the arbitrary basis of linguistic authority in these so-
cieties. After this control ceased, there was a strong backlash against any
regulation that was seen to be part of the old structures.
Since the collapse of communism, the connections between political
dogma and regulation have come to the foreground in the debates over or-
thographic reform in the Czech Republic and, to a lesser extent, in Russia.
This reaction has been strong and bitter in the Czech Republic, and is a leg-
acy of the close identification between Marxist doctrine and the dominant
linguistic school of thought, Prague School Functionalism, as well as the
(sometimes overstated) tendency of Czechoslovakia’s communist rulers to
promote a sort of pro-Russian “pan-Slavism” in orthography.
An anti-reform position, however, is not an inevitable result of the col-
lapse of totalitarianism. In the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and
298 Conclusions
Lithuania, regulation in all spheres is now more active than ever. The
newly independent states have appropriated old structures from the com-
munist period and made them symbols of renascent national pride,412 typi-
cally directed either overtly or covertly against Russian residents of the re-
publics. Indeed, all three countries are conducting standardization activities
at an accelerating pace. Here, the specific political and social exigencies of
having a large Russian minority have, as in Azerbaijan, prompted the
populace to coalesce around the idea of a standard language, and, by exten-
sion, of an orthography, as a national symbol, resulting in the strengthening
and extension of regulatory power.
3. Conclusions on language ideological debates
Arguments for and against orthographic reform can also be found in the
language itself. I have argued that metaphorical conceptions of language,
both generalized and language-specific, have played a role in shaping the
Czech debate on orthographic reform. The cross-linguistic metaphors and
scripts may prove useful in further analyses of why language reform takes
off or breaks down; those metaphors and scripts specific to Czech may
suggest patterns for analysis of other languages, and may help to explain
apparently divergent results of reform in otherwise similar languages.
The ideological debates we have identified about spelling reform re-
vealed that the discussion was rarely about the particulars of which letter
was to be written where. Instead, many participants in these debates were
intent on making more global points about the regulation of an activity as
simultaneously public and private as writing. In the course of the debates,
we can trace the evolving normalization of particular viewpoints on lan-
guage.
All the participants saw language as a tool of one or another sort, but the
views of this tool varied greatly.
Through the 1920s and 1930s we saw the normalization of functionalist
views of language regulation. According to functionalists, language was a
tool of human understanding, and language regulation came to be construed
as simply a second-order tool that increased language’s effectiveness by
making standard written discourse easier to produce. Easiness meant more
one-to-one correspondence with correlating items in spoken codes, a code
for which was often the word clarity. By the 1960s, scholars were simply
debating the merits or drawbacks of particular changes or types of changes,
Conclusions on language ideological debates 299
while taking for granted the linguistic correctness of this approach. Within
the linguistic community, public views and attitudes on language regulation
were considered extra-linguistic and were advanced more apologetically.
The aesthetic component of language regulation was thus sidelined. The
new stasis favoured continued active regulation. It adjusted the standard
language and orthography based on linguistic evaluations of its ease of pro-
duction.
But other views of language also came forward in these debates. Those
who viewed the Czech language as a repository of the nation’s essential
characteristics – a distillation of the characteristics of “the great Czech na-
tion” – looked askance at regulation, which for them constituted tampering.
The 1993 debates were the first in almost a hundred years in which this
primarily aesthetic view gained greater currency. That does not mean that it
had not been present earlier. Even in the 1950s, more conservative func-
tionalists had appealed to the patriotic element in heading off what they
believed to be overly radical reforms. But it was first in 1993 that we can
see the language reformers themselves being brought around to the conclu-
sion that the patriotic, aesthetic component of orthography was a more
powerful force than they had imagined. Their various attempts to soft-pedal
the reforms and make them more inclusive are evidence of movement on
this account. By the mid-1990s, this more sceptical view of orthographic
reform has moved into the linguistic mainstream.
In a few cases, language, and especially the written language, was
viewed negatively: as a means of controlling and directing expression.
These people saw the highly regulated Czech language as the weapon of
the “little Czech”: envious of those harder-working or more talented, too
lazy to look at content, the “little Czech” was fixated on form and reflex-
ively conformist in his views. In this view, spelling reform was one of an
arsenal of tools that suppressed or deformed discourse.
Debates on the nature of the public and private sphere also contained
ideological assumptions about language use as a public and private act. In
the early 1990s, we can watch Czech society through the prism of these
debates as it grapples with the relegitimization of the private sphere after
forty years of communism.
At the time, private authorship and private publishing were evolving as
concepts in the Czech community, with significant consequences for their
understanding of authority and legitimacy.
Under the communists, “private” had come to mean “unofficial, under
the table, informal”. Now that meaning was changing. Authors working for
300 Conclusions
a government institution were, it turns out, private individuals, and the

publishers of their works could be private presses. No one seemed entirely
sure how private authorship would mesh with the public status of linguistic
and educational institutions, or what they should think about public-private
partnerships for publishing. The 1993 spelling reform was thus a public-
private hybrid that served as a testing ground for some of the debates on
private property that were convulsing the new republic.
The re-emergence of the private sphere also meant changes for the defi-
nition of the public sphere. The media were formerly public in both owner-
ship and reach: belonging to the state, they operated on a highly visible
stage. Their redefinition as private enterprises entailed difficult decisions
about whether they had to, or wanted to, respect reforms aimed at least par-
tially at them. The positions Czechs took on these issues were thus part of
wider debates and carried with them assumptions about the nature of public
and private enterprise.
As seen through the prism of spelling reform, the outcome of language
regulation thus proves to be only partially dependent on the activities of the
regulators themselves. Reasonable or irrational, consistent or idiosyncratic,
spelling reforms and their creators exist in social and linguistic contexts
that in the end, determine their fate more surely than anything in the reform
itself.
Notes
1. According to www.wallonie.com (last accessed 22 August 2003).

2. Even examples of radical change are arguably a product of regulation rather
than creation. In the mid-twentieth century Soviet Union, Cyrillic-based
scripts were imposed on a multitude of languages that had previously used
Arabic and other scripts. Although adapting a completely new alphabet to
these languages has much in common with the creation of new writing sys-
tems, these languages nonetheless had established writing traditions, and the
script changes had to make concessions to existing spelling conventions.
3. Comprehensive definitions and examples can be found in Kaplan and Baldauf
(1997: 28–43).
4. Because of the imprecision in the term alphabet he prefers signary.
5. Often the term orthography contrasts with a more general term, such as Rus-
sian ɩɢɫɚɧɢɟ ‘writing’, Czech psaní ‘writing’.
6. For Norwegian, the widespread but relatively minor differences between the
two written codes, Bokmål and Nynorsk, and their status as predominantly
written codes contribute to a blurring of the boundaries between grammati-
cal/lexical regulation and orthographic regulation. Jahr and Janicki (1995: 28)
point out triplets like sjølv, sjøl, selv ‘self’, where the third form stands out as
clearly different both orthographically and phonologically (phonetically), but
the first two differ primarily on the grounds of orthography. Omdal (1995:
91) cites battles over forms such as solen/sola ‘the sun’, kastet/kasta ‘threw’,
where a multipurpose grammatical ending -a that is identified with a single
letter is seen as a sign of excessive permissiveness within the Bokmål norm.
Haugen (1966) offers numerous examples of proposed reforms, stretching
back a century, that involve a mixture of purely orthographic, grammatical,
and lexical alterations. The term orthography or spelling thus appears in
Norwegian far outside its generally accepted context, even among linguists.
Linn (2004) describes a debate surrounding an article written in an older
variety of Nynorsk called Høgnorsk. The official Norwegian language
planning journal rejected the article, in part on these grounds, and in the
furore surrounding the affair there was repeated reference to the author’s
orthography – this despite the fact that use of Høgnorsk implied various
differences in morphology and lexicon as well. Hallaråker (2001), in a review
of the status of Nynorsk, consistently refers to language reform as “spelling
reform”, regardless of what actual changes took place.
7. Cooper’s scheme is elaborated in outline format (1989: 98); I am following
the condensed format, emphasis and punctuation given in Ager (2001: 7).
8. The singling out of education, for instance, strikes me as a particularly North
American distinction. The United Kingdom, like many other countries, has a
302 Notes
Ministry of Education on the same level as any other government agency; its
agenda is driven by the same short-term centralized imperatives as other
ministries, and it controls the school curriculum tightly through a web of fi-
nancial directives and assessment structures administered either centrally,
through outsourcing, or via quangos (quasi-non-governmental organizations),
just as any other ministry does. The only sense in which it differs from other
ministries is in the manifold opportunities it has to take decisions influencing
how English is taught to the young. A model allotting an independent place to
education seems more suited to the (relatively rare) situation of e.g. the
United States or Canada, where states and localities exercise far more control
over curricula than the federal governments do.
9. A permanent language commission first came into existence in Norway in the
early 1950s. It was the brainchild of officials at the Ministry of Church and
Education, under whose aegis it met. Acting on the advice of the cabinet, the
King appointed its members from university and school teachers, the press,
the State Broadcasting System, the Society of Authors, and the major diction-
ary publishers. Some members were to be nominated directly by the Ministry;
others would come from the organizations themselves. In an original pro-
posal, its charter directed it to work for the unification of the two standards,
and dictated that members be chosen who would be amenable to this task.
This mandate came in for sharp criticism, and was later abandoned; in its final
version, the commission was to be evenly divided between users of Bokmål
and Nynorsk, with the Ministry’s ability to make appointments reduced
(Haugen 1966: 176–192).
10. Based on the websites of these organizations: http://www.academie-fran-
caise.fr/, http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/dglf/garde.htm (last accessed 19
June 2006).
11. Found at http://www.eki.ee/knn/kns2.htm .
12. The Norsk språkråd implements language policy for schools and the govern-
ment. It is empowered by the ministry of education, for example, to approve
all word lists for school teaching, it sets binding orthographic and other lan-
guage standards for the publication of textbooks (læreboknormalen), and its
founding act enjoins the Council to author language legislation to be acted
upon by Parliament (see http://www.sprakrad.no)
13. Some of Cooper’s associated points – opportunities and incentives to take the
planned behaviour on board or to reject it – will be treated elsewhere below.
14. We are used to thinking of Peter the Great as someone who got his way once
he set his mind to it, but in the matter of language he was at least partially
pragmatic. His original proposal eliminated (depending on how one counts it)
at least fifteen letters, but eventually he caved to pressure from advisers and
readmitted some of them. In his final version of 1710, the letters <ɢ, ɮ, ɡ, ȟ,
Ȟ> were reinstated (see Pekarskii 1862: 644–645). At first, Peter decreed that
this new font was to be used for all printed works, but there was substantial
Notes 303
resistance to this in religious quarters; he thus backed off and allowed reli-
gious publications to continue using their traditional font. In practice, reli-
gious writers continued to use many of the old letters as well.
15. Ager (2001: 125–126) proposes that our opinions can be categorized into atti-
tudes, beliefs and values about language, and that only the first group is ac-
cessible through ordinary study; we can only infer or surmise the existence of
values and beliefs through what we learn about attitudes.
16. An excellent example of this is the heightened profile of the Latvian language
planning agency in the much-trailed language purification campaigns of the
early 1990s (Druviete 1997).
17. See, for example, Steven Johnson (1998).
18. Population data from www.ethnologue.com .
19. Numerous complaints to this effect and reassurances from those working on
the new Azeri computer standards were to be found on www.latin.az, the na-
tion’s official Latinization site. However, these were removed by mid-2006.
20. Two cogent summaries of script reform in the Soviet Union are Haarman
1992 and Institut iazykoznaniia Akademii nauk SSSR 1982.
21. From http://www.azer.com .
22. See, for example, the reminiscences of Anar (2000). Anar, at the time of writ-
ing head of the Azerbaijani Writers’ Union, recounted his mother’s account of
the events surrounding the Cyrillicization of Azeri orthography. According to
her, Anar’s father Rasul Reza had also served as head of that same union in
1939, and that year was ordered by the first secretary of the Azerbaijani
Communist Party to prepare the way for Cyrillicization, supposedly on Sta-
lin’s direct orders. Reza decided to go along with it, because he feared that
any reprisals from Stalin would unleash far more unhappiness on the country.
23. Azeri’s new Latin alphabet was not identical to those of the “first Latin” pe-
riod. It had fewer characters specific to Azeri, and more use of diacritics in
their place. Of the 32 characters in the new alphabet, six were different from
the “first Latin” characters representing those sounds. The “second Latin” al-
phabet dropped the apostrophe, used to represent a glottal stop. It also appar-
ently tried to introduce a new character <ä> for /æ/, but within half a year,
Azeris had reverted to using the old <> for this purpose, which had remained
constant through the “first Latin” and Cyrillic periods. The price of this bit of
nationalism is that Azeri Latin contains one character not used in Turkish,
rendering Turkish fonts and keyboards unfit for use.
24. The text of this is available on the official Azerbaijani Latinization site at
www.latin.az. It is published in Azeri Latin and in Russian; I cite in transla-
tion from the latter.
25. Aliev continues by noting that “[l]anguage develops according to its own in-
ner laws, but alongside this, broad possibilities created for research and appli-
cation can spur a more intensive and complete development.” Here, as else-
304 Notes
where, Aliev, a former Soviet KGB official and Politburo member, leans
heavily on the clichés of the Soviet era. There is mention of language as a
“priceless national achievement” of the Azerbaijani nation which each Azer-
baijani must “treasure like the apple of his eye” and of the part the language
plays in affirming the nation’s ancient provenance and glorious future. Aliev
hastens to note the assured place of Azeri as one of the most perfect
languages in the world, and the frequency with which it is compared to
French in the richness of its cultural heritage.
26. The popularist-nationalist flavour of these decrees is evident. Not only do
they command the use of Azeri in numerous spheres where it is not currently
used, but they also direct the Cabinet of Ministers to draw up a law “defining
measures to be taken against the introduction into the Republic of Azerbaijan
secret or open propaganda against the state language, the opposition to the use
and development of the Azerbaijani language, attempts to limit its rights,
[and] impediments to the use of the Latin script.”
27. The switch in the electronic media is proceeding apace, but is still not com-
plete. For example, the site of Azerbaijan News Service, the leading inde-
pendent broadcast news provider, is still primarily in Cyrillic, with only the
occasional Latin-script word or heading (see www.ans-dx.com, last accessed
5 June 2006).
28. Since then, standards have been recommended.
29. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1468569.stm
30. In fact, a 1992 law declared Turkish to be the state language, a fact that Aliev,
ten years later, decried as being “anti-constitutional” and “against the will of
the people”. Once Aliev returned to power, this law was repealed.
31. See the pages of the Lithuanian Parliament, under whose aegis the Commis-
sion operates: http://www3.lrs.lt (last accessed 19 June 2006)
32. In 1946, the commissars were renamed ministers, their bailiwicks became
ministries, and this body became the Council of Ministers.
33. The text of the 1964 reforms is available on the site www.gramma.ru .
34. Public reaction is entertainingly documented in a collection of these letters,
published shortly after the incident. See Bukchina (1969).
35. In addition to the corpus planning angle, there is a strong status planning
component to this as well. Norwegians have the right to send and receive
correspondence with official bodies in either variety, and the proportion of
documents produced in each variety cannot be less than 25 percent. See
http://www.sprakrad.no/policy.htm, last accessed 6 June 2006.
36. For example, research conducted during the building of the Czech National
Corpus showed that in certain scholarly disciplines, publication in Czech had
effectively ceased by the early 1990s. Standard written Czech had thus lost
certain functional spheres of usage, although it continues to be used, of
course, in teaching and oral discourse.
37. Sally Johnson (2005: 45–84) considers some of the tensions encountered in
Notes 305
the orthographic reforms and how scholars later evaluated the decisions that
had been taken.
38. Interestingly, the EU is invoked several times in this document, with the
guiding focus on its commitment to the “preservation of a culturally and
linguistically diverse Europe”. According to the Estonian Education Minister,
Estonia can best contribute to this state of affairs by protecting and
developing its national language (4).
39. Through their example of standardization, Milroy and Milroy define ideology
as an unachievable striving for an ideal, implicitly opposing it to e.g. reform,
which is concerned with specific proposals and how they are implemented
(1999: 19). This definition differs in many respects from the one adopted
here, but the example is clearly valid for both definitions.
40. Since then, émigré presses have passed gradually into the hands of the so-
called “third wave” of Russian emigration, who were born in Soviet times and
employ the new orthography as a matter of course.
41. From www10.brinkster.com/Petrograd/, last accessed 5 March 2004.
42. In PiĢha, Petr, PamČĢ a nadČje: Z povČsti ýech a Moravy, p. 365. PiĢha, who
was Minister of Education in 1992–1994, produced this book retelling popu-
lar Czech legends and fables in 2003. For more about him, see chapter 5.
43. A search on this phrase in Czech (srdce Evropy) retrieved 68,200 responses in
Google, many from travel agencies and news articles. A search on the English
phrase reveals that the Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles, and others (including the
Swiss) are also eager to claim this title (www.google.com, 27 July 2004).
44. 2001 census figures from the Czech Statistical Office (www.czso.cz, accessed
23 July 2004). Population statistics from 1996, the closest available to the pe-
riod discussed in this book, are not greatly different from the most recent cen-
sus, although a comparison between them shows a slight overall drop in the
population, as well as a decline in city populations over the period and a
growth in the suburban belt around the republic’s major towns (cf.
http://www.envir.ee/programmid/pharecd/soes/czech/cr97-htm/a111tab0.
htm, last accessed 20 March 2003). The Czech Statistical Office cites figures
primarily by the current divisions into kraje, or regions, which do not exactly
correspond to the traditional tripartite ethno-geographic division of the coun-
try. For this rough estimate, I assigned the Vysoþina region entirely to Mora-
via, which slightly inflates Moravia’s population and under-represents the
population of Bohemia. These measures, of course, show location of resi-
dence, rather than a person’s sense of cultural and regional affiliation. A resi-
dent of Prague originally from East Moravia would still consider himself Mo-
ravian, and despite the fact that his speech has largely accommodated to Pra-
gue norms, he might well proclaim that he continues to speak Moravian.
45. There have been attempts in recent years to outline a standard written form of
Moravian. The more humorous efforts are widely read and cited as a badge of
306 Notes
local difference, while the occasional more earnest attempt falls on deaf ears.
On the jocular side, http://www.olomouc.com/hanactina/ offers lessons in
Haná (North Moravian) and http://morce.slovniky.org/ provides a Moravian-
Bohemian (Czech?) dictionary. Šustek’s agitation for a codified Moravian
standard (1998) does not seem to have caught on, although it drew a stinging
response from Stich (2000).
46. The adjective þeský means both ‘Czech’ and ‘Bohemian’, just as the eth-
nonym ýech means both ‘a Czech’ and ‘a Bohemian’, so no distinction is
possible.
47. A site sponsored by Czech Radio (http://www.romove.cz/cz/clanek/18884,
last accessed 23 July 2004) estimates the number of Romany in the republic
at 250,000–300,000, or under 3 percent of the population. Neustupný and
Nekvapil also comment on this discrepancy and arrive at a similar actual
population figure for the Romany (2006: 37).
48. Religion, often a significant determiner of ethnic allegiance, plays a confusing
role in the Czech context. Holy (1996: 41–42) points out that although a ma-
jority of Czechs are at least nominally Catholic, many of the iconic figures of
Czech culture were either Protestant or are known for their opposition to the
established Catholic church. Religion thus fails to provide strong, unambigu-
ous symbols around which national sentiment can coalesce.
49. A cogent discussion of this period is found in Veþerník (1999: 399–401).
50. Ivan Klíma’s autobiographical hero in Love and Garbage recounts his adven-
tures sweeping the streets of Prague, while Václav Havel’s Ferdinand VanČk
in The Audience draws on the author’s memories of his time working in a
brewery. The gynecologist as hat-check girl comes from the film of Michal
Viewegh’s The Wonderful Years that Sucked, while the stoker is perhaps the
most widespread of all clichés of this sort (and was the profession of Karel
Palek, a.k.a. Petr Fidelius, a contributor to the orthography debates; see his
publisher’s biography at www.i-triada.net/fidelius.htm).
51. Pedagogue OndĜej Hausenblas, who has devoted his career to studying the
teaching of Czech in the country’s schools, has repeatedly called attention to
the excessive focus on the mastery of memorized material (a good summary
appeared in Lidové noviny on 16 May 1991 under the title “Škola jako
choroba” (“School as an Illness”).
52. Leff (1996: 119) notes: “Ideological content and the heavy communist
emphasis on technical subjects (less sensitive ideologically and necessary for
the building of socialism) severely stunted study of the social sciences and
humanities […].”
53. The Law on Ex-Judicial Rehabilitation (1991/87) can be found on the site of
the Interior Ministry: http://mvcr.iol.cz/sbirka/1991/sb019-91.pdf.
54. Kotrba (1994) provides a detailed summary of privatization and its interaction
with other economic activities. Various handbooks on the period review the
Notes 307
privatization process; see especially Leff (1997: 189–196), Shepherd (2000:

79–95).
55. Shepherd (2000: 105–106, 188–189) details the case of Jaroslav Lizner, who
was head of the Finance Ministry’s voucher privatization section, as well as
head of the Central Securities Register and was thus entrusted with the safe-
keeping of all details regarding share ownership. Lizner was arrested in Octo-
ber 1994 and subsequently tried and sentenced for receiving 8.3 million
Czech crowns – approximately US $300,000 – as a bribe in the privatization
of a dairy firm. His arrest and trial prompted speculation of widespread cor-
ruption in the privatization effort, which Lizner subsequently confirmed anec-
dotally.
56. To make a long story short, over 70 percent of small investors handed their
shares over to cleverly structured investment firms, and saw no profit or very
limited gain from the venture. The rest invested directly in the new private
companies, and many thus saw their shares plummet in value during the
asset-stripping scams of the mid-to-late 1990s. Few ended up worse off than
before, but the experience provoked a wave of disillusionment with the
government’s policies. Václav Klaus, who led the privatization effort and
served as both finance minister and prime minister in the first half of the
1990s, admitted in an interview in the news magazine Mladý svČt (15
November 2000) that the effect of privatization was not the mass expansion
of the stock-owning class he had predicted, and that the government had not
foreseen the public backlash that would come when privatization failed to live
up to their expectations.
57. The text of lustration law 451/1991 Sb. can be found on the Czech parlia-
ment’s site: http://www.psp.cz/docs/laws/fs/451.html.
58. According to Valis (2003), 300,000 people were lustrated, but only a hundred
or so can be shown to have lost their jobs as a result. Jobs were renamed or
reclassified to accommodate a lustrated individual, and individuals so labelled
may have avoided certain sorts of promotions or job applications, so the ef-
fects were undoubtedly greater than this minuscule figure suggests.
59. Even today the existence of a checkpoint halfway across “their” country
seems to have resonance for Czechs; witness the tragicomic border scenes in
Alice Nellis’s 2002 film Výlet.
60. The tone of regret is elegantly captured in a “pro-con” article in Podnikatelský
týdeník Profit (6 January 2003) featuring Czech politicians Václav Havel and
Petr Uhl arguing as to whether or not the split was inevitable. Although they
disagreed, neither saw the split nor the way it had been done as a positive de-
velopment. (See www.profit.cz).
61. Slovaks showed significantly less enthusiasm for democracy, tended to as-
cribe far more functions to the state than Czechs, and were even less con-
vinced than their western neighbours that government reflected their needs
and wishes.
308 Notes
62. The collapse, when it came, was slow and at the time of their survey had not
begun.
63. Slavonic and Slavic are synonyms. The former is preferred in Britain and
many Commonwealth countries, while the latter is used in America and, in-
creasingly, in Canada.
64. In the days of the federation, news programmes were traditionally fronted by
two moderators, Czech and Slovak, with reporters speaking in either lan-
guage; Slovak films and programmes were shown without subtitling or dub-
bing. Slovak politicians and lecturers spoke and published in the Czech lands,
and did so in their native language. These days, political speeches are some-
times translated, although the tradition of passive bilingualism survives in
academia.
65. Although the modern day countries of Poland and the Czech Republic share a
lengthy frontier, most of the border regions were, with the exception of Sile-
sia, German-speaking until the end of the Second World War, and there was
thus no direct Czech-Polish linguistic contact in these areas.
66. The information here represents, to a large extent, the “received view” of the
Czech language situation. Information on the interaction between dialects and
the standard is available in numerous sources, although most of them consti-
tute assertions of fact rather than being based on evidence. Among the works
of the best-known Czech scholars are Chloupek (1987), Daneš (1969), ýer-
mák (1987, 1993, 1997), Havránek (1979a, 1979b), Horálek (1992), Hronek
(1972), Jedliþka (1963), Jelínek (1979), Mathesius (1932), and the numerous
contributions of Sgall and his collaborators; see espec. Sgall (1981, 1990);
Sgall and Hronek (1992); Sgall, Hronek, Stich, and Horecký (1992); and a
major evidence-based study by Sgall’s students, Kravþišinová and BednáĜová
(1968). The views of Western scholars are best represented by Hammer’s
studies of code switching (1985, 1993), Kuþera’s studies of aesthetic
judgments of CC and SC varieties (1955, 1958, 1961, 1973), and Townsend’s
description of Spoken Prague Czech (1990).
67. These new “hybrid” genres have not as yet been the subject of much study.
See, however, ýmejrková (1997), Gammelgaard (1997), Bermel (2000).
68. This openness of the short vowel is most noticeable in Central Bohemian
speech; the vowel approaches /i/ in other parts of Bohemia and in Moravia.
69. The fact that /u/ has two graphic representations is a historical accident. Al-
though the grapheme <ú> is used to indicate /uÖ/ in words of recent foreign
origin such as skútr ‘scooter’, it primarily represents the reflex of old Czech
/u/. In many varieties of the spoken language, this vowel later developed to
/ou/ (and onward from there to e.g. /oÖ/ in some Moravian dialects), but the
older form is retained in SC in word-initial position. The grapheme <Ĥ>
represents the reflex of old Czech /oÖ/, which in most dialects of Czech first
became a diphthong /uo/ and finally a monophthong /uÖ/, and it was this stage
Notes 309
that is preserved in SC. In SC, then, this vowel is identical in pronunciation to

the pre-existing /u/ written <ú>. Historically, the four vowel letters , <y>,
<í>, <ý> had represented four different phonemes, but by the nineteenth cen-
tury these had converged to two based on the original vowel length: short
/+and long /iÖ/. See Horálek (1992) on the historical phonology of Czech, or
Townsend (1990) for a summary of its impact on contemporary phonology.
70. [×] and [x] are said to be paired consonants, and in most respects they behave
as such, except that they are respectively a laryngeal and a velar. Also, voice-
less consonants do not assimilate to a following [v].
71. The alternative explanation – that the underlying consonant is voiceless, and
it becomes voiced in intervocalic environments – is not very satisfactory, be-
cause there are also words like [N'V] ‘years, summers (gen. pl.)’ which alter-
nate with forms with intervocalic [V]: [N'V'Z,N'V+,N'VWÖO]‘years, summers (loc.,
instr., dat. pl.)’. This would mean that there were two consonants /t/, identical
in sound, one of which was realized as [d] outside final position, and one of
which was realized as [t] outside final position. There are other examples of
the regular correspondences between voiced and voiceless consonants, such
as regressive assimilation within clusters, making this a regular feature of
Czech.
72. Some scholars (Grygar-Rechziegel 1990; Micklesen 1978) have declared
Czech to be a canonical case of diglossia, but it falls short in having far less
differentiation between high and low varieties than do Ferguson’s test cases.
73. Šonková’s corpus contains a relatively high occurrence of particles (14.6%)
and conjunctions (11.9%), both of which tend to be lexically marked as be-
longing to the spoken sphere. Written texts have far fewer of these and so
give less evidence of their status.
74. The relationship between standard and non-standard forms of Czech has been
a lively topic for centuries, and shows no sign of going away. Anyone wish-
ing to read further in these areas could start with these basic articles: for a
progressive perspective, ýermák and Sgall (1997), Chloupek (1969), Daneš
(1979 or 1987), O. Hausenblaus (1993), or Kraus et al. (1981), while Palková
(1989–1990) represents a more conservative view. For an outside perspective,
Gammelgaard (1999) is a concise and intelligent summary. To see how
Czechs viewed the issue in years gone by, readers can turn to Haller (1933)
for a purist perspective, or Jakobson (1932) for the Prague School version.
75. Some native speakers will insist that they pronounce /s/ in these words. In
most instances, they do not in fact do so. This self-deception is an interesting
phenomenon, and we will return to it in later chapters.
76. German also tends to lengthen these vowels in borrowed words (Sgall, per-
sonal communication).
77. A comprehensive look at the debates surrounding and <y> in the 1960s
310 Notes
and the various suggestions for reform that were put forth is given in Cvrþek
(2006: 49–53). The complexity of the issue is laid out in its full glory in Sgall
(1994: 270–278, 283).
78. The use of the preposition s in the meaning ‘down from, off of’ has in fact
been made optional in recent versions of the Rules of Czech Orthography,
which permit its replacement by z, formerly only ‘from, out of’.
79. In this table, dialect forms are given as “proposed written forms” for easier
comparability.
80. A 1992 poll claimed that these hypercorrections “bothered many” of those
who wrote in (Dokulil and Sgall 1992: 171). However, the authors adduce no
figures, and the survey’s results, which depended on people writing in re-
sponse to a question, are not reliable.
81. Or /c/ in some Silesian dialects.
82. For the small class of verbs ending in –ci, the CC ending -ct, however, was
not admitted to SC.
83. The CC form is given in a common transcription to facilitate comparison.
84. A sustained argument in favour of this reform is given in Starý (1992).
85. It is here we learn, for instance, that the genitive case of Zeus is Dia, follow-
ing the ancient Greek model. This example captures the archaizing flavour of
Czech classical names.
86. The introduction of this alternative form in <k> reflects a frequent tendency
in Czech for borrowings in <–ing>, which according to standard Czech pro-
nunciation rules have final devoicing in the nominative singular, to extend
this devoicing to all other positions. A similar development can be found with
words like trening (1941), now trénink ‘training’. There is some evidence that
this trend is now reversing thanks to the influence of English (see Blatná
[2000]).
87. This was reported by both Alexandr Stich and ZdenČk Hlavsa in newspaper
interviews (16 December 1993 in Lidové noviny and 30. January in ýeský
deník).
88. By “predesinential” I mean the syllable preceding the grammatical ending. In
the citation form, this will often be the final syllable for masculine nouns
(balon ‘balloon’), but will be the penultimate (sezona ‘season’) or antepenul-
timate (galerie) syllable for other nouns.
89. Under the old spelling, which had remained possible under the 1957 and 1983
Rules, these would have been spelled: analysa, analysovat(i), thema, the-
matický. Czechs would have had to learn that the final vowel in the stem was
often pronounced long for the basic noun and short for derived words.
90. This is based on a survey of a short newspaper article of 311 words. A radical
change where all <y,ý> were replaced by <i,í> demanded 89 changes. A less
radical change where <y,ý> were left after <d,t,n> demanded only 32
changes. (In the same article, the 1993 reforms would not have required any
Notes 311
changes. A further article on the presidential veto contained four words out of
364 where the 1993 Rules would have required changes – but all were tokens
of the quite foreseeable word prezident.)
91. For example, many university (small-d) departments renamed themselves
“institutes” in the 1990s without really changing their status as subunits
within the still largely independent faculties. Are some institutes more
“capital” than others? And what about the “research centres” that are now
becoming more popular, largely along the same lines?
92. There is ample evidence from other Slavonic languages that the alternations
found in SC represent an older state of affairs. Compare, for example,
Russian 1 sg. ɭɦɪɭ [W¥OTW? vs. 2 sg. ɭɦɪɺɲɶ [W¥OT,Q5] ‘die’ and 1 sg. ɩɟɤɭ
[R,+¥MW] vs. 2 sg. ɩɟɱɟɲɶ [R,+¥V5Q5] ‘bake’.
93. The change in the infinitive is discussed in chapter 2, section 6.3.
94. See section 6 for a discussion of this.
95. Another objection sometimes raised to the codification of forms like sází is
the following. Czech has a common rule that to form the imperative, you re-
move the –í from the third-person plural non-past form and add the
imperative endings. Thus prosit (prosí) has pros! proste!, trpČt (trpí) has trp!
trpte! and sázet (sázejí) has sázej! sázejte! This line of reasoning is facile on
the face of it, as it relies on arguments about the structure and relation of
forms and how to make them more transparent, rather than on what is actually
said, used, or felt to be correct. However, it does point out that “simplifying”
one corner of a system often “complicates” other parts of it, making this
instance of regulation in effect a zero-sum game.
96. As if this were not complex enough, words like ofenzíva ‘offence’, where the
same issue crops up but where the possible long vowel is in the suffix, have
three possible variants: ofenzíva – ofenziva – ofensiva. This suggests a more
classical definition of ‘marked’ and ‘basic’ as in Table 17.
97. In other words, it is a typical result of a reform produced under extreme time
pressure by a large, heterogeneous committee – precisely what the Rules’
planners had sought to avoid. Petr Sgall, who was in the group that produced
the Addendum, stressed that under the circumstances, it would have been
hard to achieve a better result. The real problem, he stressed, came from the
fact that the original reform itself was deeply flawed: “Among its
fundamental errors was the fact that it retracted changes made earlier (in
vowel length) and that it proclaimed as obligatory even features that were
hard for the professional community to accept (filozofie,-izmus). The
Addendum could only temper these mistakes so as to find an acceptable
compromise; it could not exclude features that the reform had already
‘permitted’. Therefore, it could only multiply the number of doublets, and so
it was necessary to mark which variants would have preference in schools”
(personal communication).
312 Notes
98. Borovský was a prominent mid-nineteenth century satirist and Czech patriot
(cited in Tešnar [2000: 250]).
99. I use the term Czech lands (þeské zemČ) to mean the homelands of the Czech-
speaking Bohemians, Moravians, and Silesians, which throughout history
have almost always formed some recognizable administrative unit as well. In
general, it includes what was the predominantly German-speaking (until
1946) periphery of the kingdom, called the Sudetenland (Sudety), which has
historically belonged to the Czech crown and which traditionally had a sub-
stantial Czech-speaking minority population.
100. Jelínek (1971: 19). Like many puristic campaigns, the results of this one were
mixed. Modern Czechs do still wipe their mouths with ubrousky ‘napkins’,
but only after eating their knedlíky ‘dumplings’.
101. Certain texts in Glagolitic, the original alphabet created by Constantine and
Methodius for use in the Slavonic mission to Moravia in 863, contain numer-
ous telltale signs of the mission’s Czech origins, and there are even some later
texts in what appear to be Old Czech using the Glagolitic alphabet. However,
these cease by the end of the eleventh century and there does not appear to be
any obvious continuity between them and the Czech language texts using
Latin letters that start to appear a century later. See Horálek (1992: 366).
102. The fact that a substantial body of texts employing similar language and con-
ventions appears almost out of nowhere led Havránek to speculate that there
was a significant written tradition preceding this period, but that its works did
not survive.
103. I use the terms digraph, digraphic here throughout, although strictly speaking
these terms refer only to pairs of characters, when these systems sometimes
invoke trigraphs (groups of three characters) as well.
104. Czechs traditionally distinguish two common inventories of digraphs, an
“older” and a “younger” set, that appear in texts of the fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries. Although more precise than what preceded them, neither set
fully distinguishes all the phonemes of Czech – the “older” set conflates
voiced and unvoiced sibilants ([U] and =\]; [5] and [<]), and the “younger”
fails to distinguish dental sibilants from palatal sibilants ([\] and [<]; [U] and
[5]). There is a full description in Havránek (1979b: 28–30) and a chart in
section 1.2. Eventually the digraphs used for Czech made their way to Poland,
and a modified version of them is still in use in Polish today.
105. This link also conveniently allies one of the great heroes of late medieval
Bohemia and a figure of national pride with the cause of orthographic reform.
106. Digraph I is an “earlier” system; digraph II represents the “later” type; the
examples are abstracted from the discussion in Havránek (1979b) and Flaj-
šhans (1924). For technical reasons the innovative “hook” accent is used in-
stead of the original “dot” accent when describing the Hussite system.
107. There were numerous further differences in the way this writing system was
to be implemented, most of which derive from divergences between modern
Notes 313
Czech and the language of Hus’s day (most notably the presence of a diph-
thong /K'/or /KL'/ that is largely lacking from contemporary Czech).
108. Hus in fact criticized speakers in Prague for failing to distinguish these two
consonants.
109. This was not the first translation of the Bible to appear in Czech; one was
completed as early as the reign of Václav IV in the mid-fourteenth century.
110. Most of these are eventually rejected.
111. This argument is so pervasive that it runs through nearly every book on his-
tory, language, and literature that mentions this time period. We have already
seen it in Havránek and Horálek, and it is characteristic of work by BČ-liþ as
well. It applies to older history texts, including Flajšhans (1924) and Bílý
(1904), which served as material for many later surveys of the period. A.
Novák (1986) and other primers on Czech literature also take this tack.
112. In the English summary to his monograph, Starý calls it the Syndrome of Na-
tional Fate.
113. The national destiny syndrome is submerged for the first few years of Prague
functionalism, but then reappears in the works of Havránek and BČliþ, who
equated the loss of strict stylistic differentiation with a loss of functionality
(Starý 1995: 85; BČliþ 1951–1952, 1955, 1958b). We will discuss its potential
effects later in the section on functionalism. For example, BČliþ (1951–1952:
75) writes: “The superdialectal form of this language [i.e. Humanist Czech] is
then especially welcomed in the first half of the last [nineteenth] century,
when, out of a nationality in deep decline after the Battle of White Mountain,
the modern Czech nation was formed, with the ascent of the bourgeoisie in
the so-called revival process. Both linguistic theory and practice of the time
consciously turned away from the degenerate Czech of the Baroque period,
corroded as it was on the grammatical side by unsystematic incursions of
dialectisms differing in different parts of the country, and reached back to the
fully elaborated and stable norm before White Mountain as attained in the
second half of the sixteenth century, especially in the Kralice Bible.”
114. As Hobsbawm (1990: 30–33) points out, a “nation” is a notoriously fuzzy
concept. While today it is equated with political distinctness, its traditional
meaning concerned ethnic, linguistic, and cultural distinctness. When “na-
tionalism” began to acquire political overtones in the nineteenth century, at
least three criteria were advanced for political nationhood: cultural distinct-
ness, economic self-sufficiency, and size. The extent to which the Czechs
would meet these criteria depended largely on the impact of the National Re-
vival in raising linguistic and cultural consciousness, and economic develop-
ments in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (Size was a matter of great discus-
sion; under some views, the Czechs were a large enough nation to aspire to
political independence, while according to others, the future of Europe lay in
large nation-states on the model of France, Spain, or Austria-Hungary.) BČliþ
314 Notes
(1951–1952) contains a description of “nationhood” in the Czech lands and

its relation to language.
115. This liberalization was duly sabotaged in 1821 by the declaration that Czech
itself could not be acknowledged as a legitimate subject of study (Tieftrunk
1881).
116. Sayer (1998: 80) notes that Rettigová’s cookbooks enjoyed far more popular-
ity in the early years of the century than any of her patriotic morality tales.
117. ýuĜín (1985: 192) says that Pelcl, Tomsa, Dobrovský and other grammars of
the time were – based on their titles and forewords – explicitly aimed at Ger-
mans, although in his opinion a more likely target was the population of “de-
racinated (odrodilé) Czechs” or those Czechs who had received education in a
foreign-language medium and forgotten their native tongue in part or full.
Dobrovský and Pelcl did publish works in Czech as well; see Sayer (1998:
68) and Dobrovský and Hanka (1822).
118. Both Havránek and ýuĜín note that Tomsa recommends “dropping” /v/ in
certain words. However, his list of words that should not drop /v/ includes
many where prothesis did take place. He thus appears to have had trouble dis-
tinguishing the two types of words himself.
119. Some of these neologisms were more successful than others. Záliv and náĜeþí
are now standard, as are zámČr and úvaha. ZemČpis exists alongside the more
technical term geografie, while slovozpyt has given way to the rarer jazykoz-
pyt and the more common jazykovČda and lingvistika.
120. For a hagiographic view of Jungmann, see Flajšhans (1924: 322–325).
121. The account in this section is based on Tieftrunk (1881), an extensive history
of the founding and activities of the Matice þeská.
122. A brief biography of Nejedlý is at www.libri.cz (last accessed 20 July 2003).
123. Sayer notes that the financial and membership difficulties of the Matice are
“eloquent testimony to the vast gulf that still lay between the buditelé [‘awak-
eners’] and the nation they were so busily representing, in all the various
senses of that word.” (1998: 80–81)
124. This is an oversimplification of the problem and the rationale, but it will do
for the current purposes. His reasons are laid out in detail in Dobrovský
(1822: xxvii–xxviii).
125. Some of Hanka’s early ideas, such as substituting new Cyrillic-based letters
for Hussite diacritics, e.g. <ɱ, , , ʄ> for <þ, š, ž, ch>, did not catch on, al-
though Hanka apparently continued using them throughout his life (Flajšhans
1924: 319).
126. Dobrovský was notably less dogmatic about his proposed reform than was
Hanka. In the introduction to their grammar Mluvnice þili soustava jazyka
þeského (1818: xxvii), Dobrovský wrote: “I think that I am behaving accord-
ing to the rules if I always write i after c, never y, but after z and s either i or
y, depending on which model (analogy) one or the other demands. Let each
write as he likes, y always and everywhere after z, s, c according to the old
Notes 315
custom – I have nothing against it.”

127. The Czech original and the version in modern orthography have been cited
from http://www.lupomesky.cz/maj/maj-puv.html (last accessed 20 July
2003) .
128. As is well known, some Czechs never reconciled themselves to these new
spellings. Historian and Charles University rector W.W. Tomek, for instance,
continued to use the Renaissance spellings until his death in 1905, and thus
became a symbol of those who resisted the 1993 reforms.
129. Sayer notes that many of the “awakeners” themselves felt unsure of their
Czech, and continued to use German in many aspects of their home and pro-
fessional lives.
130. Tieftrunk (1881).
131. This is what the metaphor suggests, and what the authors of the brusy wanted
from the public. As it turned out, they themselves, and not the readers, be-
came known popularly as the “grinders” (brusiþi).
132. Gebauer later withdrew from this commission. Hattala was originally on it,
and withdrew to write his own, competing whetstone.
133. Some of his opponents felt that even words borrowed in antiquity, and now
used in completely different meanings should be proscribed. For example,
knČz ‘prince’, attested in many Slavonic languages since the early middle
ages, and ultimately from Germanic kuning > German König ‘king’ was
anathema for some of them.
134. Certain features of Hattala’s Whetstone represent his own particular brand of
purism. He was a Slavist by training and looked very favourably on pan-Sla-
vonic features; the endless references to Russian, Polish and Bulgarian forms
are clearly the product of his personal desire to slot Czech more neatly into
the Slavonic family. He was not alone in this Einbau approach to vocabulary
enrichment – many of the revivalists had shared this vision – but his ground-
ing in the field made him one of linguistic pan-Slavism’s more convincing
advocates.
135. Thomas’s reply, of course, calls on what Fishman might term a vernacularist
approach to language regulation: the belief that “good” planning activity
should incorporate vernacular elements into the standard so as to make it eas-
ier to master.
136. Havránek (1979b: 124–126) gives a complete list of these features.
137. In time, this strain of thought would develop into the “criterion of the good
author”, championed by the moderates against the purists, and named after
Ertl’s influential 1929 article on the topic. The rationale ran: if a “good au-
thor” uses a given word, phrase, or construction, then we should accept it as
part of the standard language. This may seem like a commonplace, but in the
context of early twentieth-century Czech, with its dozens of influential grind-
ers, it was a radical assertion.
316 Notes
138. Sedláþek was an author of the 1993 Rules, so his assertions should be taken
with some caution. A pedagogue by background, he was keen to portray
spelling reform as consistently bringing educational benefits.
139. It is interesting to contrast this development with that of the 1993 Rules. One
of the primary criticisms levelled against them was to be that they modernized
too drastically and did not permit people to continue using older variants of
words. These complaints came largely from outside the educational sector,
which was, of course, the primary intended target of the reforms. Then, in
1994, when the CLI was forced to back down and admit a host of doublets,
the calls of dismay began to resound: “now everything is permitted.”
140. In the given case, this would have been: the Austrian ministry for Czech edu-
cation in 1913; the Czechoslovak ministry in 1921; and the Protectorate au-
thorities in 1941.
141. In the end, the Matice had contented itself with publishing Jungmann’s
Czech-German dictionary. While a monumental work in and of itself, it was
not really the national reference work the Czechs desired. It was the product
of a single mind, working at a time when Czech vocabulary was substantially
less elaborated. Jungmann’s lexical inventiveness had suited the era in which
it was written, but fifty years on, this idiosyncratic work – composed, not
incidentally, in German – was felt to be inadequate as a definitive dictionary
of the modern language.
142. The Office had at most times at least three researchers on secondment from
their teaching jobs. Details of its founding and development are given in Fili-
pec (1981), Havránek (1953), and Machaþ (1971), on which this account is
largely based.
143. In Naše Ĝeþ (1924: 58–59), for example, the editors took one amateur linguist
to task for ranting about “student slang” when virtually all his examples came
from ordinary Prague Czech. This, they correctly noted, was not slang at all.
A later article (1925: 20–21) dressed down a purist who was arguing for a
language institute. Naše Ĝeþagreed with him, but said his goal – to return
Czech to the purity of its sixteenth century roots – was misguided. Here we
can see some startlingly modern language: “Although the humanists returned
to classical Latin, it was a still dead language. Live speech forges
irrepressibly forward in its development, and even in times of so-called
decline, language does not go back but forward, even if the arc of its
development is broken. Every attempt to revive expressions that have died off
must therefore end in failure. If by some chance, through pressure from an
authority such as schools, etc., we managed to revive e.g. the genitive of
negation in all the places it had formerly appeared,… once the pressure let up
just a little, the elemental wave of linguistic development which had
abandoned it in the first place would sweep it away.”
144. Left aside is the question of whether “correct” pronunciation and “true”
Notes 317
pronunciation necessarily coincide.

145. The words cited here were: krise, okase ‘crisis, occasion’, which were said to
be normatively pronounced with [z].
146. It had already been found in words like: fáze, fráze, múza, drezina, sezona,
rezonovati. The commission proposed extending it to words like absolutiz-
mus, aprovizace, fantazie, filozofie, krize, muzeum. (Redakce Naší Ĝeþi 1921:
307)
147. In Zubatý’s case, his approach to language reform verged on the puristic; see
e.g. Zubatý (1920, 1924).
148. Mathesius (1932: 22–23). The examples he gives all represent words where
both the spoken language and the written language had previously had a long
vowel, but a short one was introduced in the Rules to make it conform to a
particular view of how diminutives or derivatives should be formed.
149. The Czech name is Ústav pro jazyk þeský ‘Institute for the Czech Language’,
often abbreviated in publications and citations as ÚJý. The English equiva-
lent used here, Czech Language Institute, is the one listed on the Academy of
Sciences official web site (www.cas.cz).
150. Citations from the Theses of the Prague Linguistic Circle (Teze Pražského
lingvistického kroužku) hereafter TPLK 1929, pp. 35–36.
151. Systemic-functional Linguistics (SFL) shares some general principles with
Prague functionalism, but the ties between SFL and Prague functionalism
have never been close, and SFL traces its lineage principally to the work of
the British linguist M. A. K. Halliday, who in turn drew many ideas from J.
R. Firth. (My thanks to Nigel Gotteri for help in formulating this statement.)
152. Good English-language summaries of Prague School linguistics are ýermák
(1995) and Sgall (1997). A very positive evaluation of the Prague School’s
contribution to language management is offered in Neustupný and Nekvapil
(2006: 167–175).
153. I will limit my discussion here to the impact of the Prague School on language
cultivation; for a good (if worshipful) overall history of the Prague School in
English, see Toman’s Magic of a Common Language. The Benjamins series
Prague Linguistic Circle Papers offers a selection of works in English. Other
works include e.g. Savický (1987), Leška, Nekvapil and Šoltys (1987), Ko-
Ĝenský (1991 and 1997), Leška (1992), Luelsdorff (1994), and Nebeská
(1996).
154. It would be simplistic to disregard the receiver altogether, and functionalist
language planning does not do this. In places, for example, functionalists have
considered what linguistic distinctions are necessary or confusing for the re-
ceiver of a text, but this again feeds back to the goal of making the production
of text more effective.
155. This Bohemocentric idea (the [z] pronunciation is primarily Moravian) was
later rejected, and both pronunciations remain standard for <sh>.
318 Notes
156. Starý (1995) offers a much stronger critique of functionalism. He claims that
purism and functionalism are different on the face of matters, but make com-
mon assumptions, coming as they do out of a common social climate. Both
see an urgent need for the expansion of Czech’s functional possibilities, due
to the founding of the new state – what he calls “dynamicity of activity” (dy-
namizace dČní, 1995: 108); both essentially accept the status quo of a lan-
guage divided between standard and dialect. According to Starý, the two
camps differed only in method: while purists continued to insist that the lan-
guage could be made fit for these new functions only by a thorough cleansing,
the functionalists had a range of less intrusive measures to accomplish this
same end (1995: 113) . In the nineteenth century, we noted that pan-Slavic ar-
guments were often used to justify a greater degree of intervention in the
Czech language: to create vocabulary, alter the spelling, or introduce new ex-
pressions. Starý asserted that among the functionalists, it was the Slavist-
trained scholars Havránek, BČliþ, and Dokulil who took the most interven-
tionist approaches. This was legitimized, Starý notes, through Dokulil’s the-
ory of the perspective depth of codification. To judge which forms are appro-
priate for codification, their perspective depth has to be evaluated, which can
be done only by linguists. The linguists examine what forms prevail, what are
coming in, and which are going out, and on this basis make adjustments ac-
cordingly to the codified forms of the language (1995: 123). This method es-
sentially takes language regulation out of the hands of the public and puts it in
the hands of linguists, who get to look and judge what is appropriate: a
method Starý calls traditionalist and doctrinaire in its approach to language
planning (1995: 125).
157. In the past, when Czech linguists argued for the retention of traditional forms,
they had cited the language’s own traditions, rather than a perceived need for
it to be consistent with foreign languages. However, we see this very argu-
ment resurfacing predominantly among non-linguists in the 1993 debates. See
chapters 5 and 7.
158. The functionalists expressed guarded praise for the 1941 Rules, although
Havránek professed himself disappointed with the survival of too many a
conservative form (1947–1948: 17–22)
159. There are several excellent surveys of this period, which my discussion draws
on: P. Novák (1990, 1991), as well as Leška’s (1993) critical response. A de-
finitive and detailed study of this period, however, still remains to be written.
160. In 1953, when the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (ýeskoslovenská
akademie vČd) was founded, the CLI was transferred over to the new institu-
tion.
161. A brief history is available in the Bulletin of the National Library,
http://www.nkp.cz/PublicRel/bp/archiv.htm . From the discussion in Daneš
Notes 319
and Dokulil 1971 it is clear that Havránek was responsible for setting the
agenda of the new institute. Získal continued to run the ongoing dictionary
project, which, they said, kept him fully occupied.
162. A list of the changes is found in Naše Ĝeþ 33 (1949).
163. Shepherd (2000: 24) remarks: “[…] in sharp and essential contrast to the So-
viet Union under Stalin, Czechoslovakia was never, at any time, a society run
along totally terroristic lines. It was bad enough nonetheless. In the 1950s tens
of thousands were sent to prisons and work camps where many died, often
under torture. Show trials rammed home the message that dissent of any kind
would not be tolerated. […] In the years following 1948 Czecho-slovakia’s
communist leaders squandered the country’s place as one of the wealthiest in
the world, beat the population into a regimented submissiveness, poured class
hatred into their homes through official propaganda, taught people to inform
on their friends, live [sic] a life of dishonesty, cultural and spiritual decay, and
destroyed large parts of the environment to boot.”
164. See Stalin 1950a and 1950b for the Czech versions; an English version is at
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1950/jun/20.htm, last
accessed 17 July 2006. The extent to which Stalin was actually involved in
the writing of the article and subsequent discussions of it is not known.
165. See, for example, K. Hausenblas (1950, 1951–1952), Havránek (1951–1952a,
1951–1952c), Trávníþek (1952), Šmilauer (1950a).
166. Dozens of dutiful articles by leading Czech linguists filled with the socialist
rhetoric of the day testify to the close links between functionalism and com-
munism that were proposed and constantly reinforced (see e.g. Havránek
1949). Not all linguists were this politically successful. Skaliþka, for example,
was subjected to heavy criticism for his work on linguistic typology, which
was branded too “structuralist”. However, having genuine communist
sympathies was not enough to ensure freedom from interference. P. Novák
(1990) reports a personal comment that Havránek made to him in 1976: “Be-
fore the war they attacked us for being Marxists, and after the war for being
counter-Marxists” (1990: 21).
167. See Jedliþka (1947–1948a) for a straightforward dissection of some new post-
war whetstones. This is summarized with a slight Marxist spin in Jedliþka
(1955). A couple of the personal feuds of the 1950s are described in Connolly
(2000: 192–194).
168. One striking exception to this is Trávníþek. His strong pro-communist stance,
unalloyed by affiliations to any particular linguistic school, ensured his con-
tinual rise through the ranks to the position of “first linguist”. Debates con-
tinue about Trávníþek’s linguistic legacy; while his place in the history of
Czech language culture is assured thanks to his grammars and dictionaries, he
left little lasting evidence of a consistent method or approach beyond his
320 Notes
resolute objections to the plans and convictions of others. Hints of this are al-
ready visible in Trávníþek’s necrologies (see e.g. Jelínek 1961).
169. Leška contended that it is pointless to study Marxist linguistics as if it had
been a serious endeavour, because such attempts fail to capture the “absurd-
ity” of life in a totalitarian state. “Anyone who lived through that era knows,
after all, that those erstwhile officially proclaimed trends had no more credit
in linguistics than e.g. the advice of the time to agricultural workers to
‘plough with the skimmer and conduct the stubble ploughing right after
scything’ in villages where collectivization was imminent. [...] It is a waste of
time to look back; why walk arse forwards, as V. ýerný says. Time itself will
sort things out shortly enough. Trávníþek’s work has been sorted out long
ago, and no linguist would ever think – unless time hung heavy on his hands –
to read his bellicose articles on Marxist linguistics. I think the older genera-
tion should not permit itself to waste time on such navel-gazing; it has already
lost more than enough this way. No one will strip the communist decorations
from windows so adorned in days gone by, and nowadays no one decorates
them anymore” (1993: 133–134). The deliberate amnesia that Leška proposes
may be an appropriate prescription for his generation, but it begs the question
of whether linguists at large can learn something from the intertwining of
politics and linguistics that took place in the communist era.
170. Skaliþka (1957), for example, discusses the ramifications for linguistics of the
current orthodoxy, which stated that language was part of the superstructure
of society (as opposed to the base, in Marxist terms).
171. The article features some colourful language, in which Jakobson and others
are accused of cosmopolitanism and Jakobson is condemned to spend his
final days “under the cover of American imperialism” and to “end on the
scrapheap of history”. Sgall himself partially retracted the formulations of his
1951 article a few years later (Sgall 1956). In later years, he disclosed that,
prior to publication, Sgall (1951–1952) had undergone considerable editorial
intervention without his knowledge, leading to a substantial distortion of the
points he had wished to make.
172. The focus on identifying formal, abstract features was a prominent component
of Jakobsonian structuralism, although, as we have seen, the language culture
specialists like Havránek, BČliþ, Jedliþka, and others took pains to distance
themselves from it and other forms of structuralism in the 1950s. See e.g. BČ-
liþ (1950, 1951–1952, 1955), Havránek (1951–1952a, 1951–1952c, 1958),
Jedliþka (1955, 1958), Skaliþka (1947–1948).
173. Czech linguistic journals positively teemed with these sorts of articles, often
penned by well-respected scholars. (Often they masked a perfectly reasonable
point with a veneer of Marxist terminology.) See e.g. Daneš (1962), Chloupek
(1980) for examples.
Notes 321
174. There were times as well when “criticism of bourgeois theories” simply meant
disagreeing with a Western researcher in the spirit of scientific enquiry. As an
example: CLI researcher and later director Daneš sternly criticized the work
of American Bohemist Henry Kuþera’s work on the phonology of spoken
Czech (Daneš 1957). Daneš’s objections had nothing to do with whether the
work was “bourgeois” or not; they centred on what he felt was the subjective
nature of Kuþera’s methodology, and the deep philosophical difference be-
tween Daneš and Kuþera had everything to do with their differing approaches
to standard and common Czech, and little to do with their status as represen-
tatives of socialist and imperialist linguistics.
175. See, for example, Daneš (1947–1948), Trnka (1942).
176. In an interview many years later, Alexandr Stich said that “the main author of
the text of the 1957 Rules was – and the public does not know this – the late
František Váhala” (Lidové noviny, 16 December 1993).
177. An overview of changes is given in KuchaĜ and Váhala (1960: 41–43). Indi-
vidual articles discussing the planned changes and the manuals resulting from
them include: Horálek and Váhala (1955), K. Hausenblas (1957), Dokulil
(1957), Daneš (1958), Jedliþka and Šmilauer (1958), Váhala (1958a, 1958b),
and Ženatý and Syrovátková (1959).
178. Reported in Lidové noviny, 16 December 1993. Other members of the com-
mission, such as Daneš, have repeated this claim (although without naming
Kopeþný) in other venues.
179. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, Daneš (1977), Filipec (1979), Michálk-
ová (1979), Hrušková and KĜístek (1979), Kraus et al. (1981) and Kraus
(1985) discuss the problem of codification and normativity, Králík (1983)
took a quantitative look at Czech graphemes, Klimeš (1979) and Sedláþek
(1985–1986) considered the pedagogical implications of Czech orthography,
Sochová (1976a, 1976b) reviewed specific features that were being altered,
and Tejnor (1969) made a quantitative assessment of public attitudes towards
the spelling of specific words.
180. The influence of Russian in the Soviet period is probably best treated under
the rubric of internationalization. In the twentieth century, arguments in fa-
vour of adopting Russian words or conventions were typically advanced un-
der political rationales rather than those of linguistic similarity.
181. Large-scale borrowing from English in the mid-to late 1990s now threatens to
reverse this, with English loans being perceived as faddish and displaying ig-
norance of one’s native vocabulary and culture. This is not only a pedant’s
conceit; the 2000 feel-good film Cesta z mČsta (Down from Town) featured a
self-absorbed computer programmer whose speech was littered with Angli-
cisms. A jaunt into the countryside reacquaints him with the delights of tradi-
tional Czech values.
322 Notes
182. From an interview with Alexandr Stich and Josef Šimandl, later published in
edited form in ýeština doma a ve svČtČ(thanks to JŠ).
183. As reported in Lidové noviny, 29 August 1994. This change in titular leader-
ship was significant. Havránek was a member of the Communist Party (as we
saw in chapter 4), but was an internationally known and respected linguist.
Petr was not well-known outside Czechoslovakia and had a background in
Slavistics rather than Bohemistics. In later years his contributions to scholar-
ship consisted primarily of linguistic analyses of the works of Marx and
Engels, and his reputation as director was primarily that of a Party function-
ary.
184. Among the recommendations of this commission were that the purely ortho-
graphic distinction between <y, ý> and <i, í> be simplified in favour of <i, í>
except after dental consonants, where the distinction is meaningful, and for a
few individual words such as bít ‘hit’ vs. být ‘be’.
185. At http://www.cibulka.net/77/1987/INFORM7/03.htm, last accessed 19 June
2006, numerous typos corrected.
186. Further evidence is brought forward by teacher and textbook author Jarmila
Ryšánková in a letter to Telegraf on 28 July 1993, in which she says that a
document called “Rationalization of Czech Orthography” was brought to the
Ministry of Education under the patronage of the head of the orthography
commission and the director of the CLI. This reform, planned for 1990,
would supposedly have addressed all those found eventually in the 1993
reform, but would also have included the abolition of the letter <Ĥ> and
sweeping simplifications to the problem of and <y>. She does not list any
sources for her information.
187. For here it will suffice to say that the academic edition was the “gold stan-
dard”; it had a larger dictionary and fuller information on unusual words. The
school edition contained morphological information and was more widely
used by the public. See section 7 below for a detailed explanation of the dif-
ferences between the two editions.
188. The Czech name translates more informatively as “language advice office”,
but the term “language service” is preferred by, for example, UhlíĜová (1997)
in conformity with other similar bodies and is therefore used here.
189. At the sub-institutional level, the CLI’s grouping of departments has changed
over the years, although the basic working groups have remained the same.
For example, Petr (1981) divides the Institute as follows: Department of
Grammar; Department of Lexicology and Lexicography; Department of
Mathematical Linguistics and Phonetics; Department of Language Culture,
Stylistics and Terminology; Department of Dialectology; Department of
Onomastics; Department for the History of the Czech Language.
190. In an interview for this study, Kraus remarked that “some people were on the
commission because it interested them; others were there as punishment.”
Notes 323
Kraus, who maintains he had always had a sceptical attitude towards spelling
reform, saw himself in the latter camp. It was no little irony that, as director
of the CLI in 1993–1994, he found himself in the position of defending not
only his colleagues’ scholarly integrity but the Rules themselves.
191. Those listed were Anna ýerná, Libuše Hanzalová, Miloslav Churavý,
Miloslava Knappová, Ilona Páclová, Nikolaj Savický, Alexandr Stich and
Daniela Škvorová.
192. From www.cibulka.net/77/1987/INFORM7/03.htm, last accessed 4 November
2003. Even those scholars who had been on the earlier commission were kept
in the dark about the proposed reforms (Sgall, personal communication).
193. Interview with O. Martincová.
194. The figure cited in her 1993–1994 articles of 21 educational institutions re-
sponding does not count individual responses, but classifies them by origin.
(Personal communication)
195. The location of Sgall’s internationally prominent linguistic research group in
the Mathematics and Physics Faculty of Charles University is a further poli-
tico-historical curiosity; Sgall reports that in the post-1968 “normalization”
era, he and his entire group were forced to leave the Faculty of Philosophy
and Arts because he refused to collaborate in the ongoing purges of “unreli-
able” staff (personal communication).
196. In 1990–1991, after the Velvet Revolution, the Faculty of Philosophy and
Arts of Charles University hired, re-hired, or promoted large numbers of
academic staff who had previously been shut out, let go, or denied advance-
ment on the basis of insufficient political reliability or pliability. This process
was often called “rehabilitation”.
197. Cited by Martincová from a copy of the letter seen by the author.
198. However, there were attempts to limit the amount of consultation and discus-
sion within the Academy of Sciences. See the next chapter for details.
199. “The Council of Writers is an open organization; its single criterion is proof
of literary activity. It associates Czech and Moravian writers, literary scholars
and critics at home and abroad. It was formed in Prague in December 1989.
The Council runs a foundation that supports the publication of artistic and
non-commercial newspapers of original Czech literature, literary scholarship
and criticism and translation of high-quality foreign works.” From the Radio
Praha pages: http://www.radio.cz/cz/zpravy/34320 .
200. This last involves the question of and <y> in verb endings, a matter of
perennial debate. See chapter 2, section 5 for a discussion of this controversy.
201. These all came from the CLI’s clipping file. Had I been able to extend my
newspaper survey back to 1990, others would undoubtedly have been found.
202. In at least one case, she reports, a group of particularly entrepreneurial teach-
ers asked for a copy of her talk, and then printed and sold it for 10Kþ, or
about US 30¢. When she learned of this and asked them why they had done it,
324 Notes
they replied that it would save them spending money on the Rules later, once
they were published. Once again, it seems the laymen’s lack of understanding
of authorial rights and the consultative nature of the whole exercise conspired
to misinform a section of the public.
203. Sgall states: “In the mid-1960s, the common view of the linguists on that
commission… was: either let’s have a reform that would substantially ease
the teaching of orthography in schools (i.e. at least the abandonment of
“specified words” with -y-, etc.), or no reform at all, because a partial reform
would only cause a broad negative reaction and so prevent a useful reform for
decades to come.” (personal communication)
204. The treatment here is a brief historical resume; a more extended discussion of
the issues raised in the papers is found in chapter 6. There were also, of
course, academically-oriented summaries of the new Rules that reached a
smaller audience, such as Koblížek (1993–1994a, 1993–1994b).
205. The gap in the middle of this extract results from Martincová’s decision not to
talk about the specifics of this problem on the record. It is also alluded to, but
not specified any more deeply, in newspaper articles from 1994.
206. Dodatek can also mean ‘amendment’ or ‘supplement’.
207. This was reported in various places, among others ýeský deník, 26 July 1994.
208. Šimandl notes that the Rules did not actually make any changes to the basic
principles of hyphenation (personal communication), so that this statement
does not actually make much sense.
209. On 11 August 1994; the offending article appeared on 6 August.
210. For example, the spell-checker for Microsoft Office 2002 seems to know
about most of the spelling variants permissible under the Rules, but cannot, of
course, tell if they are being used appropriately or not.
211. Some papers were examined in shorter runs because that was what was avail-
able. The state of Czech press distribution abroad in the early 1990s, com-
bined with the poor condition of ten-year-old newsprint, sometimes meant it
was impossible to get hold of complete runs for particular papers. The amount
of data involved made it impossible to read every issue carefully from cover
to cover; I therefore scanned primarily for headlines, pull quotes and first
paragraphs, and read particular pages in each newspaper (culture, domestic
news) with greater care. A further limiting factor was the availability of peri-
odicals in Britain and in the Czech Republic; for example, libraries do not
subscribe to or archive the more down-market dailies, such as Haló noviny,
Špígl, or Blesk, and access to regional papers was limited. Electronic sources
were helpful in tracing the later arc of the reforms, but online archives of
Czech newspapers begin only in 1996–1999.
212. “Quality dailies” are those with a substantial commitment to covering news.
The down-market papers are those that concentrate primarily on celebrity
gossip, scandal, and entertaining factoids. The mixture is not uniform, with
Notes 325
papers like Haló noviny having more news content and those like Blesk
veering toward the sensational end of the scale.
213. “Z dopisu doc. PhDr. Milana Žemliþky, katedra þeského jazyka a literatury
Pedagogické fakulty VŠST, Liberec.” In Lidové noviny, 1 April 1994.
214. Following Ager (2001), we could describe these as respectively instrumental
and ideological; I reserve these terms for their more general meanings as dis-
cussed in chapter 1, section 5.
215. These are editions of the “academic” Rules. The school Rules were issued
every year or two from 1958 onwards, although most of these were simply
new printings; content was revised roughly in sync with the editions of the
academic Rules.
216. J. Šimandl, personal communication
217. One anonymous reader of Telegraf, however, objected to the wholesale omis-
sion of all pre-Revolutionary terms. In a lengthy digest of readers’ commen-
tary on the Rules, Anna Vejvodová wrote: “Given that this is a school edition,
the dictionary should contain historical and contemporary concepts, at least
for the information of pupils. They will not be able to ascertain if [the name
of the Czech Police] is written policie ýR, Policie ýR or ýeská policie, nor
[how to capitalize the Russian] October Revolution, not to mention [whether
the Soviet army is] SovČtská ([or] sovČtská) armáda. The omission of
concepts so significant to our history once again introduces a political
viewpoint into the orthographic rules that has no business being there” (see
Telegraf, 28 July 1993). On the face of it, this reader has a good point,
although had the Rules retained these sorts of examples, many people would
undoubtedly have complained that they were anachronisms, or worse yet,
proof of the CLI’s crypto-communist sympathies. Here the orthographic
commission was damned if it did, damned if it didn’t.
218. For instance, the introduction to the 1983 school Rules informs us that, “An
attempt to partially phoneticize orthography along functional principles and
thus bring the written language closer to its spoken form in a sensible manner
came to the fore […] during the compilation of the 1957 Rules. This effort
formed an integral part of the democratization process effected according to
the language policy of the people’s democratic state, of a process focused on
simplification and thereby on the accessibility of the standard language to the
broad masses of its users.”
219. By Czechification Daneš means the switch to spellings more closely reflective
of common pronunciation.
220. Daneš was at the time the director of the CLI. He had been a member of the
commission that drew up the 1957–1958 reforms.
221. Šimandl recalls that, in communist times, this behaviour was far from excep-
tional: “Dressing scholarly goals in costumes acceptable to the ruling party
was the ‘mission of the time’, which was undertaken at all levels. For exam-
326 Notes
ple, teachers at primary and secondary schools constantly had to formulate

and reformulate the instructional-educational goals (IEGs) of their subject,
dialect and even individual passages of teaching material, in this fashion. I
can remember how for Latin (!), for example, we came up with: ‘JANUARY.
Nominal declension patterns 4 and 5. IEG: deepen perception of systemic re-
lations in language.’ The emphasized part quotes the resolution of the imme-
diate past Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, specifically the
passage setting tasks for linguistics. Oh, how grateful we were to those com-
rades for including among their phrases that single one that we could cite and
use to defend our activities in the classroom (which were by their nature
hardly any different from the way this subject had been taught in the Austro-
Hungarian Empire or in the Czech Republic today)” (personal communica-
tion).
222. The matter is further discussed in articles and letters by Jan Beneš, Ema
Borovská, JiĜina ýílová, František Daneš, Petr Fidelius, Pavel JĤza, Antonín
Kostlán, Jitka Matuzsková, Ladislav Muška, Karel Oliva, ZdenČk Podracký,
Pavel Ries, Zdenka Rusínová, Vladimír Soukup, Vladimír Veverka, and an
unsigned piece in Reflex.
223. “Nový pravopis slov kurz, konkurz, pulz, impulz þi Alojz zdĤvodnil kolektiv
autorĤ Ústavu pro jazyk þeský v pĜíruþce Co pĜinášejí nová Pravidla þeského
pravopisu, vydané už v roce 1991, tím, že ‘se výrazy psané se z již hojnČ vy-
skytovaly’ (‘na dizidenty si posvítíme’, vyskytovalo se hojnČ ve svodkách
ústĜedních výborĤ)…” Martin Daneš in Lidové noviny, 21 July 1994.
224. In an interesting twist of fate, Oliva’s son became the director of the CLI in
2003.
225. Jitka Matuzsková in ýeský deník, 20 May 1993.
226. For example, see Radek Hlavsa’s letter to ýeský deník, 22 May 1993.
227. “Po nástupu Federální slovenské vlády a husákovského þeského ‘new speaku’
se novČ politicky pĜizpĤsobil i þeský jazyk k obrazu nových pánkov
veĐkomožných. Hlasatelé nových federálných poriadkou z Východu nejen
mysleli azbukou, ale psali jí pĜímo i foneticky v transkripci do latinky.” Letter
from F.E. Pivec in Telegraf, 19 June 1993. I have added italic type to show
words given for ironic effect in (sometimes incorrect) Slovak. There is no
space to discuss Pivec’s original use of linguistic terms in the last sentence.
228. Cited in Rudé právo, 22 July 1994.
229. See pieces by Karel Jileþek, Vladimír Karfík, Miroslav Srb, and Jana Vack-
ová.
230. In Literární noviny, 5 August 1993.
231. See sources at http://www.ejc.nl/jr/emland/czech.html, http://www.ce-
review.org/00/2/stroehlein2.html, http://www.ce-review.org/99/8/culik8.html,
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Czech_Media.doc, http://www.svu2000.
Notes 327
org/issues/kuras9.htm, http://www.mediazurnal.cz/.
232. The deep scepticism over Europe that characterizes the Civic Democratic
Party today is a more recent development and was not part of their pro-
gramme in the early 1990s.
233. A deeply disturbing account of this process is given in ýelovský 2002.
234. ýulík is no fan of the Czech press, as anyone who follows his internet journal
Britské listy will be well aware.
235. For example, Daniela Prokopová, writing in ýeský deník, even correctly ac-
cused her colleague Vlaćka Kuþerová at Mladá fronta dnes of having copied
text from the Addendum virtually word for word and put it under her own by-
line.
236. There were other grounds for lustration as well, although these were the main
ones. The lustration law (lustraþní zákon) of 1991 can be found at
http://www.psp.cz/docs/laws/fs/451.html .
237. In 1993 Lidové noviny had a third category alongside From abroad and From
home, namely: From Slovakia.
238. The ABC ýR figures should be a better indicator of prosperity than those
from Marketing & Media (www.mam.cz), as they represent sales at 50% of
the list price or above, instead of just copies printed.
239. According to HospodáĜské noviny on 24 June 1993.
240. According to Rudé právo on 16 September 1994.
241. It is not always easy to distinguish letters from opinion pieces. I treated an
item as a letter if any of the following applied: it appeared in a column titled
“letters”, “your responses”, “you wrote us…” or was otherwise identified as
coming from the newspaper’s readership; it contained a salutation at the be-
ginning or end; it used such typical formulae as “I write in response to…”; it
was published alongside similar pieces that were obviously letters.
242. See chapter 7, section 1.3 for examples.
243. This decision was publicized on 10 May 1993 on the front page of the
newspaper.
244. “NOVÁ PRAVIDLA þeského pravopisu, vydaná nakladatelstvím Pansofia,
nabyla již platnost, ale do školní výuky budou zavedena až od nového škol-
ního roku 1993/1994.”
245. “Pravidla þeského pravopisu nejsou zákonem”
246. In addition to those quoted below, this theme crops up in articles by Ladislav
BartoĖ, Jaroslav Bašus, Hana ýápová, JiĜina Fikejzová, Eliška Hrbáþková,
Petr Kettner, Karel Oliva, Bivoj ŠĢáhlav, ZbynČk Srb, Arnošt Tabášek, and
unsigned authors in Mladý svČt and KvČty.
247. “Hrozím se toho, že by pĜíštČ text naší hymny mohl v duchu pravidel pra-
vopisu zaþínat slovy Gde domof mĤj!” Karel Lachout in Veþerník Praha, 18
July 1994. The title and opening words of the Czech national anthem are, of
328 Notes
course, Where is my Homeland?

248. JiĜí Šváb in Lidové noviny, 5 June 1993.
249. “Pokud by Ústav pro jazyk þeský pokraþoval stejným smČrem, za nČkolik let
bychom museli psát ‘ve vobecný þeštinČ’ a chodit do ‘kurzĤ, kerý bi bili vo
vobecný þeštinČ’.” Vladimír Lišþák in Telegraf, 19 June 1993.
250. A similar tendency is evident in modern Britain, where innovations and non-
standard forms are widely said to be “Americanisms” regardless of their
provenance. Ivan Kytka, writing in Mladá fronta dnes on 27 July 1994, even
found an uninformed Briton to speak to it. Jane Birke of the English Speaking
Board commented: “I’m horrified when I see the American form nite instead
of English night in a public place. American orthography is creeping into our
language and threatening our cultural heritage through the simplification of
spelling for several words, for example the introduction of the verbal ending –
ize instead of English –ise.” This commentary is unblemished by any actual
linguistic facts; nite is not a legitimate American spelling of night, nor is –ize
a “simplification”.
251. Josef PĜibyl in Moravský demokratický deník, 11 August 1993.
252. The 1941 Rules, for example, steer clear of any mention of this feature, and
the 1958 school Rules explicitly single out the pronunciation [sx], which
Kupková clearly prefers, as being ‘frequent in Bohemia’.
.
253. Josef Skýpal in Lidové noviny, 18 September 1993
254. “Se mnou si ovšem nejvíce pohrávají hlasatelky, u nichž si teprve dodateþnou
rekonstrukcí vČtné souvislosti uvČdomím, že zmínČné Felepéne jsou Filipíny.
Zdálo by se snadným uzákonit, že ‘i’ nelze vyslovovat jako ‘e’, ba ani ‘e’
jako ‘a’, ‘nČcmáĖa’ by to bylo stejnČ obtížnČ jako vsugerovat našim zlatým
hradeckým fotbalistĤm, že nelze stĜílet jen do tyþí a do bĜevna.” Josef Rodr in
Lidové noviny, 18 September 1993.
255. In addition, Havel has a fairly common speech defect. He rolls his r’s incor-
rectly, a feature known as ráþkování.
256. From a letter by Nataša Valešová in Telegraf, 10 July 1993. She is trying to
make the linguistic point that /z/ for <s> was only permissible when the <s>
was surrounded by vowel letters. Where the <s> was doubled, /s/ was the
only acceptable pronunciation. This rule of thumb has been on the wane since
the 1920s. She also argues that where <s> gives way to other letters in
oblique case forms in ancient Greek or Latin, we should continue to
pronounce /s/ in Czech. Information about Greek and Latin declension
patterns is, of course, inaccessible to the vast majority of Czech speakers.
257. “Až ve vašem þasopisu jsem se v þlánku Vyšla pravidla þeského pravopisu
(Respekt þ. 20) doþetl, že tato úprava byla zvolena podle spisovné výslov-
nosti. Tu používají napĜ. prezidenti. Obávám se, že jako vzor pro psaní slov
konkurz a kurz jsme si zĜejmČ vybrali ‘spisovnou’ výslovnost bývalého
prezidenta Antonína Novotného, který rád mluvíval o ‘zainterezovaných ze-
Notes 329
mČdČlcích’ (nejen jsem slyšel na vlastní uši, ale bylo to tehdy nepĜíznivČ ko-
mentováno v tehdejším tisku).” Mojmír Hradecký in Respekt, 21 June 1993.
Novotný, president from 1957–1968, was well known for his leaden rhetoric;
his most famous speech was the one in which he proclaimed, “There will be
meat!” (A potted biography is available at www.hrad.cz .)
258. In Literární noviny, 8 September 1994. Jamek stretches the truth in saying that
this distinction was abolished; one can still distinguish these prepositions if
one wishes (Sgall, personal communication)
259. ýeský deník, 15 June 1993. Benda had objected to the word úplata because he
said that it was a Communist-era substitution for the time-honoured word
úhrada and carried the connotation of úplatek ‘bribe’. The Communists, he
claimed, had thereby introduced a connection between payment and graft, a
sign of their debased morality.
260. 5 May 1994 in Tvar.
261. See, for example, Jarmila Ryšánková, writing in Telegraf, 28 July 1993.
262. Literární noviny, 3 March 1994.
263. Anonymous (BOD) in Nová svoboda, Ostrava, 5 Jan 1991.
264. Josef Tuþek in Mladá fronta dnes, 19 April 1994.
265. See, for example, Svobodová 1988 for examples of their queries. Linguists at
the Language Service regularly publish articles describing queries from the
public and reactions to reform; see for example Polívková (1971) and (1988),
Polívková and Svobodová (1987), Šimandl (2000), Svobodová (1994) and
(1998–1999).
266. Functionalist linguists emphasize over and over again that this
interventionism only applies to standard languages; there is no point in trying
to intervene in ordinary spoken language. This is the point that distinguishes
them most clearly from their puristic predecessors in the Czech lands.
267. In essence, “excerption” is a technical term for “finding examples and filing
them.” Excerption as it is frequently practiced raises a number of obvious
questions. Excerption files can contain lists of examples retrieved from vari-
ous printed or recorded sources. These files tend to reflect the idiosyncratic
interests and fluctuating attention spans of their human creators. Such limita-
tions come with the territory, but the protocols for excerpting vary quite dras-
tically. It is often impossible to gauge how extensive the body of excerpted
work is, and how thoroughly it was combed. Without this information, we
lack the context that helps us decide how significant the noted feature is. In
other words, if the form citron (which was non-standard between 1957 and
1993) is attested x times in a file recording usage from 1960–1990, we would
also want to know how many times the form citrón (the standard spelling in
that period) occurred. We might also ask whether, for each example, the re-
searcher combed the entire text in which it appeared, or just picked out the
form that interested him. Further, we would be curious how he chose the texts
330 Notes
to excerpt – did he first look for wayward forms and excerpt texts that had
them, or did he pick his texts to achieve a particular sampling, and then pro-
ceed with excerpting? Until we know this, we cannot say whether x attesta-
tions is a significant or insignificant number. Advances in technology and the
corresponding rise of computerized corpora mean that the 1993 Rules un-
doubtedly represented one of the last projects of its kind to be dependent on
large-scale manual excerpting of texts.
268. Commentary from the authors is in StanČk (1956), Komárek (1957), Buchte-
lová and Švestková (1977), and HĤrková and Buchtelová (1979). A detailed
discussion of the research that went into the second volume of this study is
found in Stich (1982).
269. See, for example, Hlavsa’s otherwise quite reasoned description of functional-
ist language planning, in which he talks about “aesthetic pseudoarguments:
their real impact is that everything which is new in language is considered
nasty” (1994: 399).
270. Milena Tuþná and Robert Malota in Lidová demokracie, 25 May 1993.
271. 1 June 1993. To judge by the grammatical and word-formation errors in the
Russian, the author was reconstructing this example from memory or making
it up.
272. Of course, many Czechs think the spelling reflects their pronunciation more
closely than it actually does. I have heard Czechs claim that they always pro-
nounce the initial /j/ in jsem, which is a feature of very careful or exaggerated
speech, or that they pronounce words ending in -ismus with an [s] when stan-
dard pronunciation in fact requires [z]. In both instances, they inaccurately
predicted their pronunciation based on the spelling.
273. Or Greek <Ȣ> and <ı>, representing /s/, which often comes into Western lan-
guages by way of Latin.
274. “Retains or reinstates”: Russian ɭɧɢɜɟɪɫɢɬɟɬ ‘university’ reflects the German
Universität in its overall shape, betraying the fact that it was borrowed di-
rectly from German. Yet it has Cyrillic <c>, pronounced /s/, possibly under
the influence of the German spelling, or the Latin spelling universitas.
275. A point made in Stich, “AĢ žije þeský furor orthographicus”, Literární noviny,
13 September 1990.
276. For a review of developments in the early 1990s in Slovak orthography, see
Chloupek (1993) and Blanár (1999).
277. Interview with Ivana Svobodová in Lidové noviny, 1 July 1993.
278. See, for example, Petr Topiarz, writing in Literární noviny on 27 June 1994:
“By this I merely mean to show that many European languages respect (re-
spektují) this orthography.”
279. This article appeared in Lidové noviny on 13 August 1990, but it was by no
means the last appearance of the Churchillian image: it crops up in a far more
ingenious version three years later in JiĜí Marvan’s Literární noviny article of
21 January 1993: “…as if from Aš [in the west of the Czech Republic] to
Notes 331
Znojmo [in the east] an iron orthographic curtain was descending…”

280. Alexandr Stich did this in great detail in an article in Literární noviny on 13
September 1990.
281. Others making these same points were Pavel Santay, Margit Hermanová, Aleš
Máchal, JiĜí Šváb, F. E. Pivec, and J. Koudelová.
282. Miroslav Tuþek, writing in Telegraf on 28 July 1993. Glagolitic is the ancient
alphabet of the Slavs, a precursor to Cyrillic that was used in Moravia in the
ninth and tenth centuries. For information on Jungmann and Gebauer, see
chapter 3, sections 3.2 and 1.1.
283. Marie Krejþová in Telegraf, 31 July 1993.
284. She was not the only writer to do so; Jana Vacková’s article of 6 June 1993
does the same.
285. See, for example, Jaromír Kopecký’s article in Lidové noviny on 21 August
1993.
286. This is not to say that a cogent cultural case cannot or was not made for pre-
serving the spelling with <s>.
287. Where Trávníþková went wrong in this letter was to say that previous reforms
had been welcomed because they had registered changes that everyone found
acceptable. This, however, is a historical error rather than a linguistic one.
288. See pieces by Jaromír Blažejovský, Miroslav Galuška, OndĜej Hausenblas,
Václav Jamek (8 September 1994), Milan Jelínek (5 June 1993), Jaroslav
Kašpar, Antonín MČšĢan, Agáta Pilátová, JiĜí Poláþek, Marie Slámová,
OldĜich Uliþný (16 August 1994), Jana Vacková, and Anna Vejvodová.
289. Bohumil Nuska, writing in Literární noviny, 14 October 1993. The transcrip-
tions of Goethe and Hegel are clearly meant to be Czech back-transcriptions
from Russian, but they are inadequate and inconsistent.
290. Tvar, 5 May 1994. This discussion also appears in pieces by Alice Dubská,
Jan Hlaváþ, ZdenČk Hlavsa (3 July 1993), Pavel Janáþek, Marie Krejþová, Al-
exandr Stich (23 June 1993), OldĜich Uliþný (13 November 1993), and
Vladimír Veverka.
291. Unfortunately for Pick, Lidové noviny printed his article with a fair number of
typographical errors. It appears with the German letter <ß> in both places, for
example.
292. Daniela Prokopová in ýeský deník, 8 August 1994.
293. Found in pieces by Jaroslav Hubáþek, Alexandr Stich (7 January 1993), Miro-
slav ýervenka, Milan Jelínek (12 June 1993), Jan Vokroj, and Jana Janþák-
ová.
294. Antonín Jurák, ýeský deník, 22 May 1993.
295. Milan Žemliþka, Severoþeský regionální deník, 10 December 1994.
296. Vladimír Václavík in Lidové noviny, 3 August 1994.
297. Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. “Zpracoval kolektiv pracovníkĤ
Ústavu pro jazyk þeský AV ýR.” The word prepared translates Czech zpra-
coval ‘processed, compiled’ where the English reader might expect a verb
332 Notes
more suggestive of authorship; this usage is neutral in Czech. The word

kolektiv is common in Czech, and simply means a fixed, pre-defined group.
Committee is too official, while group is too nebulous, so I have opted for the
slightly communist-sounding collective in English.
298. “Všechny tyto okolnosti vzal autorský kolektiv, který Pravidla þeského pra-
vopisu v Ústavu pro jazyk þeský pĜipravil, v úvahu.”
299. “Pravidla þeského pravopisu / Zpracoval kolektiv pracovníkĤ / Ústavu pro
jazyk þeský / Akademie vČd ýeské republiky.”
300. Pansofia is the publisher. “Pravidla þeského pravopisu / Ústav pro jazyk þeský
AVýR / Pansofia.”
301. “Školní vydání.”
302. “PRAVIDLA ýESKÉHO PRAVOPISU / ŠKOLNÍ VYDÁNÍ / Zpracoval
kolektiv pracovníkĤ / Ústavu pro jazyk þeský Akademie vČd/ ýeské repub-
liky.”
303. See Kostlán’s account in Telegraf, 7 July 1993.
304. Contained in Act 283 of the Czech National Council, 6 May 1992.
http://www.cas.cz/en/Documents/law283.html
305. According to the web site of the Czech Academy of Sciences:
http://www.cas.cz/en/Academy.council.html
306. Daneš’s misgivings about allowing functionaries and non-linguists to inter-
vene in linguistic decisions were documented in chapter 6, section 2.1.
307. Mladá fronta dnes, 22 July 1994.
308. Josef PĜibyl in Moravský demokratický deník, 11 August 1993.
309. Milan Stloukal in Lidové noviny, 1 September 1994.
310. JiĜí Mudra, Lidové noviny, 13 August 1993.
311. See, for example: Tvorba, 5 September 1990; Reportér, 21 September 1990;
ýeský deník, 30 January 1993; ZN noviny, 20 May 1993; Práce, 3 June 1993;
ýeský deník, 10 September 1993; Práce, 19 July 1994; Veþerník Praha, 29
July 1994; Mladý svČt, 26 August 1994.
312. “Psaná tváĜ jazyka doznává þas od þasu úprav.”
313. The academic edition appeared in autumn 1993 but its content had been
finalized over a year earlier.
314. This is not surprising, as Hlavsa was the project leader for the academic
edition of the Rules.
315. This entire statement is missing from the school edition, presumably because
the commission would not have been keen to encourage teachers to believe
that the Rules were optional.
316. As is probably evident from context, Jan Patoþka (1907–1977) was a noted
Czech philosopher.
317. There are two Kostláns involved in this controversy: František, an editor of
Telegraf, and his brother Antonín, a historian. The fact that this interview was
Notes 333
conducted by an editor points to the importance that Telegraf assigned to this

issue.
318. Sgall notes: “When the Rules were being approved, the officials did not
realize that there were larger changes beyond fine-tuning the previous state of
affairs, removing certain exceptions, etc., and by the time it became clear that
there were larger changes and that they would meet with objections, it was
too late – the new Rules had already been released.” (Personal
communication)
319. In Telegraf, 22 July 1993.
320. We could also cite in this connection the older grammar by Trávníþek,
Mluvnice spisovné þeštiny (‘A Grammar of Standard Czech’), published in
1949 and reprinted thereafter. Šimandl (personal communication) points to
Šmilauer’s 1972 Nauka o þeském jazyku (‘The Study of Czech’) as an exam-
ple of a book that, although widely successful, only won a handful of reprints,
compared to dozens for Havránek and Jedliþka, and lays the blame for this at
the door of the traditional antipathy between Havránek and Šmilauer.
321. Published under the editorship of CLI director Petr, it was widely used among
linguists and, until the publication of the more user-friendly PĜíruþní
mluvnice þeštiny (‘Grammar Handbook of Czech’) by the team at Brno’s
Masaryk University in 1995, was the only up-to-date reference grammar with
any pretension to comprehensiveness.
322. For instance, it is widely accepted in Czech linguistic circles that the Acad-
emy Grammar contains a significant number of contributions from scholars
considered persona non grata under the communist regime, who therefore
published under pseudonyms.
323. Actual usage of SC falls short of these puristic ideals, as a cursory perusal of
any newspaper or the Czech National Corpus will show. People’s ability to
implement the values they prize so highly turns out to be variable.
324. See pieces by Michal Ajvaz, Martin Daneš, Vladimír Karfík, Ivan Klíma, JiĜí
Landa, Š. Popová, Bohuslav Šajtar, and unsigned articles in Rovnost and
ZemČdČlské noviny.
325. Josef Rubeš, writing in Telegraf, 20 July 1994 [emphasis original].
326. Ivo Horák in Lidové noviny, 4 December 1993.
327. In Literární noviny, 14 July 1994 [emphasis original].
328. Václav Jamek in Literární noviny, 11 August 1994. This theme also crops up
in pieces by Vladimír Burjánek, Richard Crha, Petr Homoláþ, Jaromír
Jedliþka, Petr Kettner, and JindĜiška Ptáþková.
329. The full citation from the Rules is in chapter 6, section 2.3.
330. For a more detailed discussion of the actual reform, see the preceding chapter.
331. Dictations (diktáty) are a favourite form of school exercise and testing, as
beloved of teachers and feared by students in the Czech Republic as the
spelling bee is in America. I suspect there is a typo in this report: certainly vír
334 Notes
‘whirlpool’ makes more sense than vítr ‘wind’.

332. On “specified words” see chapter 2, section 3.1.
333. See pieces by Michal Ajvaz, Maita Arnautová, Rolf Dantes, Šárka Dostálová,
Jaromír Fajkus, Jakub Hádek, Václav Kabíþek, Antonín Kostlán, František
Kostlán, Vlaćka Kuþerová (22 July 1994), Miroslav Malovec, JiĜí Pachman,
Karel Pecka, Alena Polívková, Miloslav Sedláþek, Vlasta Straková, Dana
Svobodová, Josef Šimandl (1993), Petr Zavoral, and unsigned articles in
Nová svoboda and ZemČdČlské noviny.
334. JiĜí Rulf in Reflex , 1 August 1994.
335. Articles and letters by Otakar Jelínek, Olga Martincová, and JiĜí Kraus also
touch on this subject.
336. Mladá fronta dnes, 6 August 1994. The Linguistic Association commissioned
a survey of its membership, and on this basis rejected the proposal for a
commission.
337. Olga Hostovská in Literární noviny, 16 December 1993. Pecka’s opinions are
treated in chapter 5, section 3, and earlier in this chapter in section 2. Also see
pieces by Aleš Fetters, Marie Hanušová, Milan Jelínek (29 May and 16
October 1993), Antonín Kostlán (11 June 1993), and Miloslav Sedláþek (13
August 1994).
338. JiĜí Rambousek in Tvar, 12 August 1993. Also see pieces by Ivana PustČ-
jovská, Alexandr Stich (17 February 1994), and an unsigned article in Mora-
voslezský den.
339. František Fröhlich, Literární noviny, 3 March 1994.
340. For example, linguist Milan Jelínek (Lidové noviny, 20 August 1994) objected
specifically to the rules that allowed more liberal capitalization of nouns,
while Miroslav Srb (Svobodné slovo, 14 July 1993) disapproved of spellings
such as plejboj, plejbek ‘playboy, playback’.
341. For example, interviewer Jan Hrubý (Tvorba, 5 September 1990): said: “Still,
I expected a bolder attack on orthography: for example, that we’d make do
with either i or y. Doesn’t matter which, but one or the other. Or with the
abolition of the letter Ĥ, and so forth.”
342. “[…] Potom se stanou bezpĜedmČtné spory zda ‘s’ nebo ‘z’ a my se nebudeme
muset bát demogracie, protože budeme mít demokracii.”
343. Sgall (personal communication) points out that this view is more of a carica-
ture than an accurate representation of the state of languages east and west.
344. That is not to say that those in favour of reform were anti-European; the
argument was made only by the anti-reform side, while the pro-reform side
insisted that Europe and spelling reform had nothing to do with each other.
345. Its circulation is small enough that it does not even figure in surveys of top-
selling print titles (see www.mam.cz and www.abccr.cz).
346. Glucksberg and McGlone (Glucksberg 2001: 90-107) point out a number of
Notes 335
problems with the cognitive approach to metaphor, particularly in light of

some unsupported assumptions in its categorization of these elements.
347. He calls metaphors in speech or literature a linguistic metaphorical expres-
sion. The terminology is slightly clumsy, but its point is that what we see or
hear is only a surface form, a reflection of a cognitive process during which
the substitution takes place.
348. Empirical evidence for the unidirectionality hypothesis can be found in Jäkel
1999.
349. Lakoff and Johnson mention that metaphor is at least partially culturally
specific (1980: 142–146).
350. Other studies of the effect of metaphor on current events have included Schön
(1979 [1993]), which looked at metaphors for urban renewal, and Delaney
and Emanatian (1999), which examined metaphors for segregated housing
laws.
351. In a later article (Nerlich 2003: 134), Nerlich calls for an “evolutionary
ecology of metaphor”, which would incorporate the study of “how metaphors
adapt, change and co-evolve in natural use”.
352. Later in this chapter, we will consider other, less traditional myths that might
fit this definition in the Czech context.
353. The Berkeley conceptual metaphor database lists one metaphor under the
target COMMUNICATION, which is COMMUNICATION IS LINGUISTIC
COMMUNICATION. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 10–12) discuss language
briefly as an example of the conduit metaphor, in which physical transfer and
conveyance describe language, and this is treated at length in Reddy (1979).
Other handbooks of metaphor and individual studies are sparse in their
treatment of language.
354. Lacking articles, Czech does not offer a pithy distinction as English does
between e.g. language and the language.
355. Šimandl (personal communication) points out that the neutral zespisovnČní is
opposed to pospisovnČní ‘norm-creation’, i.e. by a body of select individuals.
356. “JazykovČdcĤv pĜístup je pĜedevším úcta a pokora pĜed oním úžasnČ živým
organismem – mateĜštinou.”
357. “Implikované požadavky na naprostou nemČnnost pravopisu jdou proti duchu
jazyka.”
358. “…musíme vrátit umrtvenému tČlu citlivost, najít ozvČnu krevního pulsu a
objevit znovu v sobČ citový a etický vztah k jazyku…”
359. “Byla by zajímavá reakce na tento pokus o zglajchšaltování þeštiny u velikánĤ
naší kultury…”
360. “PĜejatá slova pĤsobí vždy jako cizí tČlesa a jazyky se s nim musí nČjak
vyrovnávat. Tuto situaci v pravopise a výslovnosti jazyky Ĝeší v principu tro-
jím zpĤsobem…”
336 Notes
361. “…avšak jakkoli se dítko ukázalo až pĜekvapivČ životaschopné, jeho ‘nepĜi-

rozený’ porod pĜinesl také Ĝadu problémĤ…”
362. “Naši lingvisté jako by stále ještČ sdíleli pocity obrozencĤ, že se þeština
dosud nevyhrabala z dČtských plenek a potĜebuje nová a nová vylepšení.”
363. “Po pĜeþtení nových Pravidel pociĢuji nutkání zvolat: NeumĜela þeská Ĝeþ,
jenom spí!” This echoes an old slogan from the Czech National Revival.
364. “VraĢme se pĜed okamžik poþátku bolševického násilí na našem jazyku…”
365. “O Bože, jak hluboko jsem klesla, pláþe Ĝeþ þeská.”
366. See the image of the gardener in puristic language movements (Thomas 1991:
5–6, 20–21).
367. “Nastalo tak komické dvojvládí Akademických pravidel þeského pravopisu z
listopadu 1993, která platí všude, a Školních pravidel þeského pravopisu z
roku 1957, která od záĜí tohoto roku zaþnou opČt platit na školách.”
368. “…je-li nČco kodifikováno, pak to platí a má to formu zákona, tĜebaže nes-
myslného a nepochopitelného…”
369. “VždyĢ Pravidla þeského pravopisu….nejsou žádný zákon, jehož porušení je
trestné. […] VždyĢ jediný trest, kterého se mĤžeme doþkat, je posmČch a
nedĤvČra.”
370. “Došel bych totiž k závČru, že úprav je zde málo, že vČtšinou jde o zmČny
nutné, které vlastnČ uzákoĖují to, co už þást spoleþnosti dávno realizovala.”
371. “Je neštČstí, že pravidla u nás mají tradiþní autoritu: stala se zákonem, jímž se
poslušnČ Ĝídí školy, úĜady i tisk. Jaká smĤla, že tento zákon nemĤže prezident
vetovat, jaká smĤla, že nesmí rozpustit Ústav pro jazyk þeský a vypsat do nČj
nové volby.”
372. “Kdyby v pravidlech silniþního provozu platilo víc možností jak Ĝešit jednot-
livé situace, brzy bychom se na silnicích pozabíjeli.”
373. “…autoĜi pravidel [si] osobují právo zakazovat tČm, kteĜí jejich pojetí jazyk
nesdílejí, aby si psali po svém…”
374. “Vydáním nových Pravidel je tedy zespisovnČní dĜíve zakázaného tvaru
ukonþeno. Uleví se nám zejména v mluvených projevech, kde jsme byli
nuceni vyjadĜovat se knižnČ proti své vĤli.”
375. “Jazyk je živý organismus a nižádný v líhni bolševismus a potĜebami
bolševismu vykvašený odborník nemá právo si o nČm svébytnČ rozhodovat a
komukoli svá rozhodnutí vnucovat jako jediný možný kánon.”
376. “Nelekejme se! Nová Pravidla þeského pravopisu se budou dolaćovat, jako se
dolaćují všechny naše zákony.”
377. “…Pravidla byla kýmsi vytvoĜena a národu slavnostnČ pĜedána –
pochopitelnČ s povinností je bezvýhradnČ respektovat.”
378. “Proti pĜílišnému reglementování jazyka se vþera vyslovil premiér a pĜedseda
ODS V. Klaus.” This sentence or a variation on it – Klaus apparently used
exactly these words – appeared in a number of reports on this particular
interview.
Notes 337
379. “V skrytu duše (možná marnČ) stále doufám, že bude pĜípustné také ještČ
nČjaký þas psát ‘postaru’.”
380. “TvĤrci si vybrali tĜetí, nejhorší cestu: vzorek dosud nespisovné þeštiny
prohlásili za vzor, leckdy jediný správný.”
381. “Že se v þeském pravopisu r. 1957 zĤstalo stát na pĤl cesty, nebyla vina
jazykovČdcĤ, ale právČ nekompetentních bolševických zásahĤ…”
382. A discussion of the word Evropa in the Czech context can be found in Sand-
ers (2003).
383. “Zavedením ‘kurzĤ a izmĤ’ se jednoznaþnČ posouváme na východ a ignoru-
jeme pravopis cizích slov v západních zemích.”
384. “Chceme-li se vrátit k západní kultuĜe, vycházejme tedy i z její jazykové
kultury…”
385. “Podle vzoru Rádyjo a sovČtské lingvistiky nastoupila už pĜed mnoha lety
þeská kolaborantská vČdecká spoleþnost i v jazykové oblasti zcela pro-
gramovČ cestu k prosazení primitivismu do zákonných norem, v tomto
pĜípadČ komunistického new-speaku do gramatických pravidel.” (This sen-
tence is clumsy in Czech and contains errors discussed elsewhere, e.g. the
notion that the Rules are “grammatical”.)
386. “Velice vítám a vážím si rozhodnutí ýeského deníku nepodrobit se další
nenápadné bolševisaci jazyka na cestČ k jeho odtržení od evropské civilisaþní
tradice.”
387. “Kterak pĜitom nevzpomenout na starou rétorickou figuru ‘všeho lidu’, do
nČhož ve skuteþnosti patĜí jen nČkteĜí, totiž ti, kteĜí jdou s pokrokem!”
388. “Vyzývám k návratu pĜed zhoubný okamžik, jímž zaþal sestup od vzdČlanosti
kamsi do pekel.”
389. “Mimo to je otázkou, kam až v zapoþatém smČru jít. Je vhodné dospČt pouze
k ingoustu nebo až k bijologiji? Je to nepČkná cesta bez konce, po níž se
netĜeba vĤbec vydávat.”
390.“Argument, že se psaný projev má více pĜiblížit mluveném, mi jako argument
nepĜijde…”
391. “PĜísnČ vzato, již stávající pravopisná norma je dál než na pĤl cesty k totální
fonetisaci… A tak lze pokraþovat dále.”
392. “…zda k tomuto rozhodnutí vedla tituly ovČnþené odborníky potĜeba vykázat
nČjakou þinnost, þi zda tu svou roli sehrála jejich dobrá vĤle vyjít vstĜíc té
þásti populace, jíž právČ chabá znalost þeštiny brání v dosažení patĜiþné
vážnosti mezi intelektuály.”
393. “Jak budeme psát: nová hra podle starých pravidel”
394. “…konzervativec proti svČtu zásadnČ nemĤže vyhrávat – jeho vítČzství je totiž
v tom, když prohrává pomalu.”
395. “Tanec kolem pravidel nás bude stát miliony”
396. “…jsem nČkdy zaskoþen zápalem, s nímž obhájci i odpĤrci reforem vstupují
na scénu.”
338 Notes
397. “Váleþné vydání Pravidel z roku 1941 nebylo pĜíliš napadeno, hlavnČ proto,
že k útokĤm na þeský pravopis nebyla vhodná doba.”
398. “Když jim nesmČle naznaþíte, že byste do toho tĜeba také mČli co mluvit,
protože pĜece jen je to i váš jazyk, hned vás praští po hlavČ nČjakou tou
‘konotací’, a je to.”
399. “Tahanice kolem pravopisu nikomu nepĜispívají”
400. “Tahanice s úpravami pravidel pravopisu se mnČ naprosto nelíbily.”
401. “Nu což, v okurkové sezonČ (saisonČ) je každá válka dobrá, zejména není-li
krvavá jako ta v BosnČ nebo ve RwandČ.”
402. “Když jsme byli v loĖském roce postaveni pĜed nová Pravidla þeského
pravopisu jako pĜed hotovou vČc, mohli jsme si vybrat buć pĜitakání, nebo
boj.”
403. O dvou válkách na þeském území – ZuĜí lítý boj – Bití o bytí jazyka – Útok
jazykovČdcĤv – Smír kolem Pravidel – Sliby, ale i hrozby provázejí boj o
právo vydat Dodatek a Pravidla – Boxování s pravopisem – Snášíte se s
novým pravopisem? – Od pravopisných bojĤ ke kultuĜe jazyka? – Na obranu
mateĜštiny – AĢ žije þeský furor orthographicus – Boj o ‘novou þeštinu’ dále
pokraþuje – Konec pravopisných bojĤ (?) – Tahanice kolem pravopisu
nikomu neprospČjí –Pravopisná válka zatím konþí kompromisem – Válka o
pravidla – Feminismus a pár facek – NČmecko se opČt pĜe o pravopis.
404. “Ano, chápeme, že jazyk je živý, tvárný, vyvíjí se a formuje jako kus hlíny na
roztoþeném hrnþíĜském kruhu.”
405. See chapter 3, section 3.5 for the origin of the whetstone metaphor.
406. “Psané slovo je ve škole i nČþím jiným, než vyjádĜením vlastních myšlenek a
nástrojem komunikace s ostatními.”
407. “Nemohu se ubránit dojmu, že by k nim [tj. zmČnám] nedošlo, kdyby taková
þinnost nemČla u nás svou tradici a zároveĖ nevyvolávala v zúþastnČných
pocit dĤležitosti jejich inženýrství, které ovlivní písemný projev miliónĤ lidí.”
408. “AlespoĖ z nejnovČjších pravidel bije snaha o jazykové inženýrství na první
pohled do oþí.”
409. “K smrti rádi experimentují na živých organismech – tĜeba si jen tak zkusí, co
to udČlá, když se budou všechna pĜejatá slova vyslovovaná více ménČ
dlouze…také psát s dlouhou samohláskou…”
410. “Žádná škoda jestliže zaniknou vČdecká pracovištČ produkující podobná
pravidla ‘pravopisu’.”
411. “Hansen tvrdí, že zná gymnaziální studenty, kteĜí þtou Ibsena radČji v an-
gliþtinČ, neboĢ jim jeho norština po stu letech jazykového kutilství zní ar-
chaicky a cize.”
412. See Druviete (1997), Hogan-Brun and Ramoniene (2003), Laitin (1996),
Valmet (1990), and Raag (1999). Of particular interest are the laws
establishing the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language at
www3.lrs.lt, the plan of the Institute of the Estonian Language at
Notes 339
www.eki.ee/eki/schedule.html, and information on the Latvian State

Language Centre at http://www.minelres.lv.
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Index
Academia, 64, 136, 159, 163, 165, 243 Charter 77, 152, 155–156
Academy of Sciences, xii, 64, 71–72, Chinese, 4, 266
110–112, 122, 132, 136, 152, 154, classicization, 30–31
156, 162, 169, 190, 204, 230–235, colloquial Czech, 46
238, 241, 253, 264, 317–318, 323, Common Czech, 45, 51–54, 61–63, 73,
331–332 76, 206–207, 227, 308, 310, 321
Addendum to the Rules, 78–81, 168– Connelly, John, 124
175, 189, 219, 228, 242, 284, 311, Cooper, Robert, 1, 8, 11–13, 16–17, 19,
327 21–24, 149, 292, 301–302
Ager, Dennis, 11, 18, 24–26, 145, 184– corpus planning, 2–3, 9, 19, 30, 96, 104,
185, 218, 258, 301, 303, 325 121, 292, 304
Ajvaz, Michal, xiii, 162, 203, 222, 264, correctness, 5–7, 60, 118, 270
276, 292, 333–334 Coulmas, Florian, 4
Aliev, Haidar,15, 17, 303–304 coupon privatization, 40
alphabet, 3–4, 14–17, 301, 303, 312, 331 Crha, Richard, 223–224, 333
Armenian, 4, 13 ýTK, 172–173, 275, 277
Arnautová, Maita, 262, 282, 286, 334 ýulík, Jan, 192, 194–195, 327
Augst, Gerhard, 26 ýuĜín, František, 94, 314
Ausbau, 30–31 Cyrillic, 4, 7, 13–17, 188, 210, 219–220,
Auty, Robert, 84–85, 88–89 222, 301, 303–304, 314, 330–331
Azeri, 7, 13–18, 296, 303–304 Czech Dictionary Office, 107, 110–111
Czech Language Institute, xi, 72, 116,
Bahadori, Abulfazl, 15 122–123, 129, 131–132, 136, 141–
Baldauf, Richard, 8, 301 142, 146–147, 151, 153, 155–161,
Balhar, Jan, 234 164–165, 167–170, 173, 175, 178,
Baroque decline, 90–91 184–187, 189–191, 195, 206–209,
Bartošek, Miloslav, 166, 168–169, 243 216, 220, 230–238, 240–241, 243–
Belarusian, 185 244, 247–253, 256–258, 276, 283,
BČliþ, Jaromír, 125, 128, 131, 133, 137, 290, 316–318, 321–323, 325–326,
142, 313, 318, 320 333
Blommaert, Jan, 27, 32, 146, 148
Bokmål, 2, 301–302 Daneš, František, 123, 131–132, 155,
Borovský, Karel Havlíþek, 82, 312 159, 185–186, 231, 233, 236, 238,
Bulgarian, 4, 315 274, 308–309, 318, 320–321, 325–
Bull, Tove, 8 326, 332
Bunin, Ivan, 32 Daneš, Martin, 164, 187, 286, 326, 333
Danish, 256
capitalization, 4, 6–7, 64, 70–73, 78, Dankoviþová, Jana, 47
131–132, 137, 152, 158, 160, 172, de Courtenay, Jan Badouin, 20
183–184, dialect, 5, 14, 28, 207, 308, 310, 313,
221, 228, 334 318, 326
þárka, 47 diglossia, 51–55, 309
ýechová, Marie, 156 digraph, 47, 49, 85–86, 312
certificate of approval, 240–243, 256 Dobrovský, Josef, 93–95, 97, 99–100,
366 Index
104–105, 314 grapheme, 46–47, 49–50, 55, 57–58, 81,

Dokulil, Miloš, 123, 310, 318–319, 321 85, 308, 321
Durnovo, Nikolai, 20 Greek, 65, 68, 112, 220, 222, 227, 270,
Dutch, 3, 12, 22, 297 310, 328, 330
Einbau, 30–31, 96, 144, 315 háþek, 47, 86

English, 2–6, 12, 18, 46, 50, 56–57, 61, Haller, JiĜí, 123, 309
68, 82, 85, 87, 112–114, 131, 185, Hanka, Václav, 93, 95, 99–101, 105, 314
218, 221, 266, 270, 284, 288, 302, Hattala, Martin, 315
305, 310, 313, 317, 321, 328, 335 Haugen, Einar, 25, 301–302
Ertl, Václav, 112, 115–116, 315 Hausenblas, Karel, 125, 151, 158, 319,
Estonian, 9, 29, 305, 338 321
Estonian Language Council, 29 Hausenblas, OndĜej, 306, 331
European Union, 34, 41, 267, 305 Havel, Václav, 208–209, 261, 306–307,
Evans, Geoffrey, 36, 43 328
Havránek, Bohuslav, 85, 89–90, 94,
Ferguson, Charles, 51, 309 117–118, 120 122–126, 128, 133,
Fidelius, Petr, 162, 203, 246, 264, 274, 142, 151, 244, 285, 308, 312–316,
280, 306, 326 318–320, 322, 333
FIN, 65, 175 Heller, Monica, 31
Fishman, Joshua, 2–3, 11, 30–31, 96, Hlavsa, ZdenČk, 154, 157–158, 160–161,
104, 121, 144, 315 163, 168, 188, 208–209, 223–224,
Flajšhans, Václav, 99, 101, 313–314 235, 237–240, 310, 326, 330–332
flexible stability, 120, 125 Hlavsa, Radek, 279, 326
Fortuna, 170, 189 Holý, JiĜí, 203, 264
Fortunatov, Filipp, 20 Holy, Ladislav, 38, 44, 205–206, 224,
French, 2, 4–5, 8, 12, 18, 50, 56–57, 68, 306
82, 89, 103, 112, 185, 221, 227, 304 Hronek, JiĜí, 152, 308
functionalism, 97, 107, 113–114, 117– Hus, Jan, 84–86, 90, 313, 314
130, 133, 135, 138, 145–149, 182, Husák, Gustav, 152, 188, 326
186, 215–218, 223, 229, 285, 297– hypercorrection, 61, 74–75, 310, 314
299, 313, 317–319
i vs. y, 48–49, 56–59, 70, 210, 309–310,
Gal, Susan, 28 322–323
Garcez, Pedro, 23 interdialect, 45–46, 51, 55
Gebauer, Jan, 77, 102, 108–110, 113, internationalization, 30–31, 144, 321
223, 315, 331 Italian, 5
German, 4–5, 7, 10, 18–19, 22, 25–26,
28, 49–50, 56, 68, 81–84, 89–93, 95– Jacobs, Dirk, 22
98, 101, 103, 107–108, 122, 144–145, Jahr, Ernst Håkon, 301
185, 221, 226–227, 259–260, 297, Jakobson, Roman, 117, 124, 309, 320
308–309, 312, 314–316, 330–331 Jamek, Václav, 209, 329, 331, 333
Germanisms, 83–85, 91, 102–104, 116, Janicki, Karol, 301
118, 259 Jedliþka, Alois, 125–127, 131, 136, 244,
grammar, 2–4, 7, 30, 37, 52–55, 60, 73– 308, 319–321, 333
77, 83, 92–93, 96–98, 101–104, 106, Jelínek, Milan, 62–63, 90, 92–93, 95,
125, 136, 140, 145–146, 154, 180, 130, 165, 167, 202, 276, 308, 312,
211, 215, 218, 223, 243–245, 250, 319–320, 331, 334
270, 314, 319, 322, 333 Jelínek, Otakar, 334
Index 367
Johnson, Mark, 264–265, 268, 272–273, Macedonian, 4

335 Machaþ, Jaroslav, 111, 316
Johnson, Sally, 10, 185, 226, 304 Marr, Nikolai, 124, 289
Johnson, Steven, 303 Martincová, Olga, xiii, 68, 74, 76–77,
Jungmann, Josef, 95–98, 100–102, 105, 153–157, 159–163, 165, 190, 203,
223, 314, 316, 331 216,, 232, 235, 238–239, 244, 247,
249–250, 323–324, 334
Kaplan, Robert, 8, 301 Marvan, JiĜí, 222, 254–255, 264, 330
Karfík, Vladimír, 189, 326, 333 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 221
Kastner, Arnošt, 169 Mathesius, Vilém, 113–114, 117–118,
Kavan, Jan, 41 120, 289, 308, 317
Kavan, ZdenČk, 128 Matice þeská, 96–98, 101, 110, 112, 314,
Kazakh, 4 316
Kellner-Heinkele, Barbara, 15–17 Milroy, James and Milroy, Lesley, 28,
Khalilova, Konul, 16 30, 305
Kittay, Eva Feder, 263 Moravian, 36, 45–46, 51, 60–62, 87, 96,
Klaus, Václav, 193, 277, 307, 336 207, 305–306, 308, 312, 317
Kopeþný, Václav, 135, 143, 321 morphophonemic principle, 46, 49, 59,
Kostlán, Antonín, 157, 164, 186, 188, 224, 227
204, 231–232, 247, 251, 326, 332, My Fair Lady, 25
334
Kostlán, František, 190, 241, 332, 334 Naše Ĝeþ, 107, 111–113, 116, 123, 131,
Kotrba, Josef, 40, 306 133, 135, 147, 149, 154, 316, 319
KovaĜík, Petr, 166 National Revival, 38, 82–83, 89, 92–105,
Kövecses, Zoltán, 265–266, 272 144–145, 272, 313,
Kraus, JiĜí, xii, 154–155, 157, 160, 163, 336
170, 173–174, 235–236, 239–240, Nejedlý, Jan, 97–98, 100, 314
309, 321–322, 334 Nerlich, Birgitte, 267, 284–285, 289–
KĜístek, Václav, 151 290, 335
kroužek, 47 Nekvapil, JiĜí, 306, 317
KuchaĜ, Jaroslav, 123, 129, 131, 139– Neustupný, JiĜí, 306, 317
141, 321 Newerkla, Stefan, 101
norm, 2–3, 5–7, 10, 25, 30, 55, 68, 73,
Laitin, David, 29 93–94, 98, 108, 119, 143, 156, 204,
Lakoff, George, 264–265, 267–268, 209, 217, 225–226, 228–229, 232,
272–273, 335 236–237, 239–242, 244–246, 248,
Landau, Jacob, 15–17 269, 271, 279, 281, 296, 301, 305,
language cultivation, 107, 117–122, 126, 313, 335, 337
147, 270, 275, 317 Norwegian, 2, 8, 25, 185, 297, 301, 304
Language Service, 123, 154, 215, 322, Novák, Arne, 313
329 Novák, Pavel, 125, 142, 318–319
Latin, 47, 55–56, 65, 68, 82, 84, 89, 95, Novotný, Antonín, 209, 329
112, 130, 144, 188, 220–223, 261, Nynorsk, 2, 25, 301–302
292, 304, 312, 316, 326, 328, 330
Latvian, 185, 303, 339 Obnorskii, Sergei, 20
Linn, Andrew, 301 Oliva, Karel, 187, 326–327
Lithuanian, 18, 304, 338 Omdal, Helge, 301
Lopatin, V. V., 20, 23 orthography, 1–7, 10, 13, 15–16, 18, 23,
lustration, 39–41, 44, 196, 307, 327 31–32, 44–46, 49–51, 55, 60, 62, 64–
368 Index
78, 82–85, 87, 93, 100, 107–108, 110, Raag, Raimo, 29

112–114, 119, 121, 129–130, 132– restitution, 39, 44
146, 149, 150–153, 156, 158, 160– Rusínová, Zdenka, 147, 326
162, 165, 169–171, 174, 179, 182, Russian, 4–5, 7, 9, 12–14, 16–18, 20, 23,
186–187, 189–191, 195–198, 200, 25, 29, 31–32, 37, 49, 82, 95, 121,
202–203, 205–209, 211–213, 214– 125, 134, 144, 185, 219–221, 226,
220, 222–223, 225, 229–230, 233– 259–260, 296–298, 301, 303, 305,
235, 238–249, 241–244, 246, 248, 311, 315, 321, 331
251, 255–258, 260–261, 263, 269–
277, 279, 283–284, 286–287, 289– s and z, 56, 59, 66–67, 70, 77–80, 113,
290, 295, 297–299, 301, 303, 305– 119, 122, 130, 135, 137, 139–140,
306, 310, 315, 321–322, 324–325, 160, 168, 173, 176, 219–221, 223–
328, 330, 334 224, 228, 250–251, 328, 331
Ozhegov, Sergei, 20 Salivarová, Zdena, 41
Sanders, Marie, 41, 337
Palacký, František, 97, 101 Sayer, Derek, 92, 98, 101, 314–315
Panevová, Jarmila, 168–169 Schiffman, Harold, 184, 258–259
Pansofia, 64, 163, 175, 188–189, 203, Schlyter, Birgit, 9
231–232, 327, 332 Sedláþek, Miloslav, 108–110, 151, 154–
Pecka, Karel, 166, 190, 255, 273, 334 155, 161, 235, 237, 282, 316, 321,
Pelcl, František Martin, 93–94, 96, 314 334
Peshkovskii, Aleksandr, 20 Serbian, 4
Peter the Great, 12, 302 Ševþík, OldĜich, 96, 102–103
Petr, Jan, 129, 151, 153, 155–157, 159, Sgall, Petr, xii, 49, 74, 125, 127, 142,
220, 240, 322, 333 152–153, 157, 159, 162, 167–168,
phoneme, 46–47, 49–51, 55–59, 64, 68, 210, 218, 227, 308–311, 317, 320,
81, 84–85, 87, 309, 312 323–324, 329, 333–334
Pilip, Ivan, 165, 168, 170–171, 241–242 Shakhmatov, Alexandr, 20
PiĢha, Petr, 168, 305 Shmelev, Alexei, 21
Polish, 44–45, 95, 121, 144, 308, 312, Šimandl, Josef, xii, 157–158, 167, 322,
315 324–325, 329, 333–335
Portuguese, 22–23 Skaliþka, Vladimír, 319–320
Prague Linguistic Circle, 117, 256, 317 Škvorecký, Josef, 41, 293
Priadko, Igor’, 32 Slovak, 5, 31, 39, 42–45, 107, 113, 121,
privatization, 39–40, 44, 192–193, 196, 130–131, 134–135, 144, 185, 188,
306–307 220–221, 290, 308, 326, 330
Pujmanová, Marie, 135 Slovo a slovesnost, 124–125, 133, 147
punctuation, 4, 6–7, 23, 55, 64, 78, 218, Smetánka, Emil, 112
221, 270 Šmilauer, Vladimír, 121–122, 130–131,
purism, 29, 85, 95–96, 101–102, 107– 220, 319, 321, 333
109, 111–113, 116, 118–121, 123, Šonková, Jitka, 54, 309
125, 127, 143–146, 146, 148–149, Sorbian, 130
223–224, 239, 258–260, 285–286, Soviet Union, 13–18, 20–21, 23, 31–32,
309, 312, 315–318, 329, 333, 336 34, 38, 124, 127, 129–130, 167, 184,
purity, 13, 30–31, 103–104, 113, 144, 193, 222, 259–260, 279, 286, 301,
209, 234, 259, 316 303–305, 319, 321, 325
specified words, 48–49, 59, 210, 251,
Quebec, 2 324, 334
spelling, xi, 1–13, 15, 17–26, 30–32, 33,
Index 369
37, 47–50, 55–60, 65–71, 77–81, 82– Thomas, George, 96, 102, 104, 119, 315,
106, 107–150, 151–153, 156, 160– 336
163, 172–173, 176–177, 178–213, Tieftrunk, Karel, 96–97, 101–102, 314–
214–230, 232–233, 237–237, 239, 315
243, 245–246, 249–251, 253–255, Tomek, Václav Vladivoj, 255, 315
258–259, 273, 282–283, 292, 295– Tomsa, František Bohumil, 93–94, 314
300, 301, 310, 315–316, 318, 321, Tomusk, Ilmar, 29
323, 324–325, 328–331, 333–334 transcription, 51, 121, 155, 188, 219,
spelling pronunciation, 113, 130 222, 228, 310, 331
Sprachbund, 30–31, 144 Trávníþek, František, 123–124, 133, 142,
Stalin, Joseph, 15, 17, 124, 126, 222, 319–320, 331, 333
285–286, 303, 319 Trnka, Bohumil, 117, 142, 321
standard, 2–7, 14, 16, 18, 20, 26, 28, 31, Trubetskoi, Nikolai, 117
34–81, 82–83, 89, 91–93, 95–98, Turkish, 13–14, 16–17, 303–304
102–105, 108–109, 111, 113–114, typeface, 98–99
118–120, 122, 125–126, 128, 131,
133–134, 136–137, 143–147, 151, Ukrainian, 4
154, 165, 180–181, 207–210 , 215– Uliþný, OldĜich, 167–169, 254, 283, 331
219, 221–222, 225–226, 229, 233–
234, 239–245, 253–254, 259, 270, Váhala, František, 131, 133–134, 137–
279–281, 289, 294–300, 304–306, 141, 321
308–310, 314–315, 317–318, 321– Veþerník, JiĜí, 36, 43, 306, 327, 332
322, 325, 328–330, 333 vernacularism, 31, 124, 144
standardization, 2, 5, 7, 9, 29, 107–115, Vondruška, Milan, 152
118, 276, 305
Starý, ZdenČk, 91, 119, 310, 313, 318 Walloon, 2
State Pedagogical Publishing House, Watts, Richard, 28, 31
137, 153, 159, 188 Webster, Noah, 4–5
status planning, 2–3, 19, 304 Weingart, Miloš, 111, 117
Steigerwald, Karel, 212–213 Welsh, 184
Stich, Alexandr, 91, 135, 156, 162, 203, whetstone, 101–103, 105, 110–112, 284–
264, 279, 306, 308, 310, 321–323, 285, 287–288, 315, 319, 338
330–331, 334 white book, 156–157, 160, 248
street names, 70–71 Whitefield, Stephen, 36, 43
structuralism, 319 Wolchik, Sharon, 36
Styblík, Vladimír, 156–157, 244, 250 Woolard, Kathryn, 27–28
Svobodová, Dana, 162 Wright, Sue, 29
Svobodová, Ivana, 154, 157, 329–330,
334 Zeman, Miloš, 41
synthetic reform, 100–101, 256 Žemliþka, Milan, 181, 229, 246–247,
273, 331
Talián, František, 170, 189 Získal, Alois, 122, 319
Tešnar, Hynek, 101, 312 Zubatý, Josef, 111–113, 317

Linguistic Authority, Language Ideology, and Metaphor

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Michal Ajvaz, Druhé mČsto (‘The Other City’), 2005 [1993]: 32

Foreword and acknowledgments xi

4. 1957–1958: The first communist-era Rules 129

versies of 1993–1994. Olga Martincová, one of the project leaders at the

1. The language planning context

which variety is taught in which schools, what influence various official

Words like spelling, orthography, writing system, grammar, alphabet,

orthography the slightly broader meaning it has in many languages: spel-

of travelling, and so forth – fall under spelling. Hyphenation at line breaks

Figure 1. Spelling and its place in a scheme of “correctness”

3. Components of spelling reform

replicated in the other bodies as well.10 The term “quasi-governmental”

Not all participants in a reform agree on what behaviours are to be re-

3.2. People affected

Spelling reform affects the members of a language community in a variety

authoritative source of information. In essence, spelling reform can

3.4. Conditions: A case study

Conditions represent the background to a reform. Cooper (1989: 93–96),

was first identified as a separate language in the mid-1930s in one of

3.5. Notes on conditions

The previous discussion might lead us to conclude that certain structural

tightly controlled, totalitarian society may place a high value on national

example, language planning in communist Czechoslovakia was influenced

3.6. Means: Authority, legitimacy, and force

particular standard at work, but the language he uses in a personal letter or

Curiously enough, examples of force outside these clear examples are

3.7. Decision-making process

harmful to writing, literacy, culture, etc. and must be eliminated. Cooper

…the case of corpus renovation discussed here is indicative of the extent to

4. Motivations for language planning

Inequality is a powerful impetus for spelling reforms done under the

Attitude includes knowledge about language (e.g. its structure, history,

manifestation of a standard code. The existence of an etymological princi-

Goals, according to Ager, can be precise, short-term targets, realizable and

To this point, we have concentrated on enumerating the components and

5.1. Ideologies of language

One school of thought sees the roots of language planning in non-linguistic

the explanation of their success or failure.

5.2. Nationalism: Non-linguistic ideology

Language ideologies can derive from ideologies functioning in other parts

the course of language planning.

5.3. Standardization: Linguistic ideology

on other regional languages as a form of enrichment. Finally, Fishman

5.4. Ideology and culture

An ideology does not spring full-blown ex nihilo; we should be able to find

An orthography only tenuously connected to the communist regime thus

5.5. Language ideology debates

One of the most fruitful ways to examine language ideologies is through

1. The Czech Republic

Culturally, geographically, and linguistically, the Czech-speaking lands

Figure 2. Schematic map of the Czech Republic

There is debate as to whether Bohemians, Moravians, and Silesians con-

1.1. Economic, social, and cultural state of the nation

Forty years of the particular form of social engineering practiced by the

leisure opportunities.49 Advancement at work in any large organization

Anthropologist Ladislav Holy, in a largely anecdotal account of Czech

1.2. The transition of the 1990s

The 1990s saw a gradual dismantling of the structures of state capitalism

nominally hard-line free-market Civic Democratic Party (Obþanská

Restitution meant the return of properties confiscated by the state after

short vowels: C'+QW