Moravian dialects


Moravian dialects are the varieties of Czech spoken in Moravia, a historical region in the southeast of the Czech Republic. There are more forms of the Czech language used in Moravia than in the rest of the Czech Republic. The main four groups of dialects are the Bohemian-Moravian group, the Central Moravian group, the Eastern Moravian group and the Lach group. While the forms are generally viewed as regional variants of Czech, some Moravians claim them to be one separate Moravian language.
Southeastern Moravian dialects form a dialect continuum with the closely related Slovak language, and are thus sometimes viewed as dialects of Slovak rather than Czech.
Until the 19th century, the language used in Slavic-speaking areas of Moravia was referred to as “Moravian” or as “Czech”. When regular censuses started in Austria-Hungary in 1880, the choice of main-communication languages in the forms prescribed in Cisleithania did not include Czech language but included the single item Bohemian–Moravian–Slovak. Respondents who chose Bohemian–Moravian–Slovak as their main communicating language were counted in the Austrian censuses as Czechs.
On the occasion of 2011 Census of the Czech Republic, several Moravian organizations led a campaign to promote the Moravian ethnicity and language. The Czech Statistical Office assured the Moravané party that filling in “Moravian” as language would not be treated as ticking off “Czech”, because forms were processed by a computer and superseding Czech for Moravian was technically virtually impossible.
According to the results of the census, there was a total number of 108,469 native speakers of Moravian in 2011. Of them, 62,908 consider Moravian to be their only native language, and 45,561 are native speakers of both Moravian and Czech.

Dialects

While the former regional dialects of Bohemia have merged into one interdialect, Common Czech, the territory of Moravia is still linguistically diversified. This may be due to absence of a single Moravian cultural and political centre for most of the history, as well as the fact that both of its major cities—Brno and Olomouc—used to be predominantly inhabited by a German-speaking population. The most common classification distinguishes three major groups of Moravian dialects: Central Moravian, Eastern Moravian and Silesian. Some typical phonological differences between the Moravian dialects are shown below on the sentence ‘Put the flour from the mill in the cart’:

Central Moravian

Central Moravian dialects, or Hanakian dialects, are spoken in the central part of Moravia around Znojmo, Třebíč, Brno, Olomouc, Přerov, Zábřeh and Šumperk. While the Central Moravian group traditionally contained many dialects native to specific microregions, today's spoken language across Central Moravia is moving towards a unified "Common Hanakian dialect". Features of this group include
The dialects spoken in and around Brno have seen a lot of lexical influence from Hantec slang, a jargon incorporating many German and Yiddish loanwords into the local Central Moravian dialect. Although by the 21st century the slang had greatly declined in use, some vocabulary from Hantec is still used commonly in everyday speech, for example šalina instead of tramvaj for “tram”, from German elektrische Linie.
The Hanakian dialect has a literary presence. Writers who have written in Hanakian dialect include Alois and Vilém Mrštík, Ondřej Přikryl and Jakub Obrovský. Written Hanakian dialect often distinguishes between "wide" or "open" ê and ô, and "closed" e and o, to reflect dialects which pronounce these two sounds differently.

Smrť kmotřička (example text)

Czech translation:

Eastern Moravian

Eastern Moravian dialects are transitional dialects between Czech and Slovak. They are spoken in the strip of land extending from Břeclav to Hodonín, Kyjov, Uherské Hradiště, Zlín and Vsetín. The Eastern group contains two dialects of specific interest, the Moravian Wallachian dialect and the Moravian-Slovak dialect. Features of Eastern Moravian dialects include:
, spoken in north-eastern Moravia and the adjacent regions of Silesia around Opava, Ostrava, Frýdek-Místek and Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, are transitional dialects sharing more features of Polish. Defining phonological features include loss of distinction between long and short vowels, a feature colloquially known as “krátký zobák” in Czech, stress shifted to the penultimate syllable of the word, as in Polish, rather than the first syllable, alveolar consonants d, t and n often shifted to their palatal counterparts, and a distinction between “hard” š, ž, č and “soft” ś, ź, ć, as in Polish. Silesian dialects also contain many German loanwords unfamiliar to other Czech dialects. The Lachian dialects are closely related to the Cieszyn Silesian dialect, spoken in the area around Karviná, Český Těšín and Třinec as well as on the Polish side of the border.

Bohemian-Moravian dialects

Bohemian-Moravian dialects, or South-eastern Bohemian dialects, spoken in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands in western Moravia around Dačice, Jihlava and Žďár nad Sázavou are a transitional group between dialects of Bohemia and Moravia, sharing some features in common with Common Czech and others more in common with Central Moravian.

Linguistic features

Phonology

Moravian dialects preserve numerous archaic phonological features that are no longer used in contemporary Czech, but can still be found in many other Slavic languages. The following tables list selected cognates, pointing out the archaisms and showing their equivalents in the other languages:

Absence of the Czech ′a > e vowel shift

CzechMoravianSlovakPolishUpper SorbianLower SorbianRussianUkrainianSlovenianPrekmurje dialectSerbo-CroatianEnglish
našenašanašanaszanašanašaнаша наша našanašanašaour
ovceovcaovcaowcawowcawójcaовца вівця ovcaovcaovcasheep
zmijezmijazmijażmijazmijazmijaзмея змія ——zmijaviper; snake
mořemořamoramorzamorjamórjaморя море morjamourjamorasea
koněkoňakoňakoniakonjakonjaконя коня konjakonjakonjahorse
polepolapoľapolapolapólaполя поля poljapolápolja'field

Absence of the Czech ′u > i vowel shift

CzechMoravianSlovakPolishUpper SorbianLower SorbianRussianUkrainianSlovenianPrekmurje dialectSerbo-CroatianEnglish
dušidušudušudušudušuдушу душу dušodüšodušusoul
uliciulicuulicuулицу вулицю ulicovulicoulicustreet
chcichcuchcucuхочу хочу ćuI want
mořimořumorumorzumorjumórjuморю морю morjumourjimorusea
polipolupoľupolupolupóluполю полю poljupolipoljufield
jijujujujuеё її jojonju/ju/je'her

Retaining the -šč- group

CzechMoravianSlovakPolishUpper SorbianRussianUkrainianSlovenianPrekmurje dialectKajkavianSerbo-CroatianEnglish
ještěeščeeštejeszcze hišćeещё щe šeeščejošće, išćejošstill, yet

Retaining palatal consonants

Grammar

While Moravian grammar tends to be similar to Czech grammar, there are some defining features. For instance, Moravian dialects apply a uniform pattern to the 3rd person plural ending of class IV -it verbs, and class III -et verbs, which in standard Czech traditionally varied in an unintuitive fashion:
Standard Czech Haná dialectMoravian-Slovak dialectmeaning
prosí prosijóprosijúthey beg
trpí trpijó, trpějótrpijú, trpějúthey suffer
sázejí sázijó, sázejósázijú, sázejúthey sow

Moravian dialects also occasionally use prepositions in a different fashion to Standard and Common Czech, usually mirroring usage in Slovak or Polish.

Standardisation

Since the end of the 20th century, the private association Moravian Language Institute, founded by waiter and amateur linguist Jan Kozohorský, has made attempts to standardise a literary Moravian language. The movement has been criticised by linguistics professors at Masaryk University in Brno as controversial and with strong political undertones.