PÔVOD A PODOBY ČEŠTINY AKO SPISOVNÉHO JAZYKA SLOVÁKOV (NIEKTORÉ ZÁVERY Z FILOLOGICKEJ ANALÝZY BARDEJOVSKÉHO KATECHIZMU)

Both the text and the orthography of the Bardejov Catechism testify to the borrowing of its Czech language from the Melantrich Bible (i.e. the Prague tradition) rather than from the Kralice Bible (i.e. the Moravian tradition), as has traditionally been thought in Slovak historiography. This situation, of the Slovaks using a language that is not their own, goes back to the prohibition on Slavonic liturgy by the Western Church, effectuated in 885 by King Svatopluk. This liturgical language was completely banned on the territories of today’s Slovakia, but was preserved and kept by its neighbours in the Czech/Bohemian Principality, and by the Slavonic peoples in the Balkans (as Old Church Slavonic language). Later, around 1370, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, the complete Bible was translated into Czech, and the texts in this Czech language, readily comprehensible, were later used by the Slovaks as well. In 16th – 18th century, Czech language, sometimes also referred to as „lingua slavico-bohemica“ (cf. the Grammar of Paulus Doleschalius, 1746) was occasionally deployed by some Slovaks as their literary language; in other cases it was more or less adapted to different Slovak dialects, and used as an everyday written language referred to as a cultured Western/Central/Eastern Slovak.