Old Czech

The Old Czech is a tongue that was speaked of 800 to 1592.

History

Earliest records

The earliest written records of Czech date to the 12th to 13th century, in the form of personal names, glosses and short notes.

The oldest known complete Czech sentence is a note on the foundation charter of the Litoměřice chapter at the beginning of the 13th century:

Pauel dal geſt ploſcoucih zemu / Wlah dalgeſt dolaſ zemu iſuiatemu ſcepanu ſeduema duſnicoma bogucea aſedlatu

(in transcription: Pavel dal jest Ploškovcích zeḿu. Vlach dal jest Dolás zeḿu i sv́atému Ščepánu se dvěma dušníkoma Bogučeja a Sedlatu.)

The earliest texts were written in primitive orthography, which used the letters of the Latin alphabet without any diacritics, resulting in ambiguities, such as in the letter c representing the k /k/, c /ts/ and č /tʃ/ phonemes. Later during the 13th century, the digraph orthography begins to appear, although not systematically. Combinations of letters (digraphs) are used for recording Czech sounds, e.g. rs for ř.

Large changes take place in Czech phonology in the 12th and 13th centuries. Front and back variants of vowels are removed, e.g. ’ä > ě (ie) and ’a > ě (v’a̋ce > viece 'more', p’äkný > pěkný 'nice'). In the morphology, these changes deepened the differences between hard and soft noun types (sedláka 'farmer (gen.)' ↔ oráčě 'ploughman (gen.)'; města 'towns' ↔ mor’ě 'seas'; žena 'woman' ↔ dušě 'soul') as well as verbs (volati 'to call' ↔ sázěti 'to plant out'). The hard syllabic l changed to lu (Chlmec > Chlumec, dĺgý > dlúhý 'long'), as opposite to soft l’. The change of g to [ɣ], and later to [ɦ], had been in progress since the 12th century. Later assibilation of palatalized alveolars (t’ > c’, d’ > dz’ and r’ > rs’) occurred. However, c’ and dz’ disappeared later, but the change of r’ > rs’ > ř became permanent.

14th century

In the 14th century, Czech began to penetrate various literary styles. Official documents in Czech exist at the end of the century. The digraph orthography is applied. The older digraph orthography: ch = ch; chz = č; cz = c; g = j; rs, rz = ř; s = ž or š; w = v; v = u; zz = s; z = z; ie, ye = ě; the graphemes i and y are interchangeable. The vowel length is not usually denoted, doubled letters are used rarely. Obligatory regulations did not exist. This is why the system was not always applied precisely. After 1340, the later digraph orthography was applied: ch = ch; cz = c or č; g = j; rs, rz = ř; s = s or š; ss = s or š; w = v; v = u; z = z or ž, syllable-final y = j; ie, ye = ě. The graphemes i and y remain interchangeable. The punctuation mark is sometimes used in various shapes. Its function is to denote pauses.

The changes of ’u > i (kl’úč > klíč 'key') and ’o > ě (koňóm > koniem '(to) horses') took place. The so-called main historical depalatalization, initiated in the 13th century, was finished. Palatalized (softened) consonants either merged with their hard counterparts or became palatal (ď, ť, ň). The depalatalization did not temporarily concern hard and soft l, which merged to one middle l later at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. In this context, the phoneme ě [ʲe] disappeared. The short ě either changed to e or was dissociated to j + e (pěna [pjena] 'foam') before labial consonants in the pronunciation. The long ě was diphthongized to ie (chtieti 'to want', čieše 'goblet', piesek 'sand'). At the pronunciation of v was probably bilabial (as preserved in some Eastern-Bohemian dialects in syllable-final positions: diwnej 'peculiar', stowka 'a hundred'), but in the 14th century, the articulation was adapted to the unvoiced labiodental f. Prothetic v- has been added to all words beginning with o- (voko instead of oko 'eye') in the Bohemian dialects since this period.

In morphology, the future tense of imperfective verbs was fixed. The type budu volati 'I will call' became preferred to other types (chc’u volati 'I want to call', jmám volati 'I have to call', and budu volal 'I will have called'). The contrastive feature of imperfectiveness was also stabilized. The perfectivization function of prefixes and the imperfectivization function of suffixes are applied. As a consequence of this, aorist and imperfect start disappearing little by little and are replaced by the perfect (now called preterite, since it became the only past tense in Czech). The periphrastic passive voice is formed.

Hussite period

Book of Ezekiel 36:26 from the 1417 Bible of Olomouc

The period of the 15th century from the beginning of Jan Hus's preaching activity to the beginning of Czech humanism. The number of literary language users enlarges. Czech fully penetrates the administration.

Around 1406, a reform of the orthography was suggested in De orthographia bohemica, a work attributed to Jan Hus – the so-called diacritic orthography. For recording of soft consonants, digraphs are replaced by a dot above letters. The acute is used to denote the vowel length. The digraph ch and the grapheme w are preserved. The interchangeability of the graphemes i and y is cancelled. The suggestion is a work of an individual person, therefore this graphic system was accepted slowly, the digraph orthography was still in use.

As a consequence of the loss of palatalization, the pronunciation of y and i merged. This change resulted in the diphthongization of ý > ej in Common Czech (the widespread Bohemian interdialect). There are also some other changes in this period: the diphthongization of ú > ou (written au, the pronunciation was probably different than today), the monophthongization of ie > í (miera > míra 'measure') and uo > ú. The diphthong uo was sometimes recorded as o in the form of a ring above the letter u, which resulted in the grapheme ů (kuoň > kůň). The ring has been regarded as a diacritic mark denoting the length since the change in pronunciation.

The contrast of animateness in masculine inflection is not still fully set, as it is not yet applied to animals (vidím pána 'I see a lord'; vidím pes 'I see a dog'). Aorist and imperfect have disappeared from literary styles before the end of the 15th century.