Orthographia bohemica

De orthographia bohemica (English: On Bohemian Orthography) is an anonymously-authored Latin work from the early 15th century, in which the Czech language was given a codified spelling.

The reformer Jan Hus is often suspected to be the work's author.

1 Provenance
2 Contents
3 Significance and impact
4 Discovery and publication
5 Preserved manuscripts
6 See also
7 Sources
- 7.1 Historical grammars
- 7.2 Orthographia Bohemica

Provenance

Jan Hus, likely author

Neither the author's identity nor the precise date of authorship are known. It has been proposed that the author is most likely Jan Hus and the year of creation somewhere between 1406 and 1412, based on historical and philological studies.

The primary purpose of De orthographia bohemica was to simplify and unify Czech orthography in order to promote literacy by making the language "clearer and easier" to read and write. Instead of representing sounds using digraphs and trigraphs, it proposed a "diacritic orthography", where one letter indicates only one sound, and different but related sounds (such as those now represented by r and ř) are distinguished by diacritics. Briefly, one can summarize the spelling changes in Orthographia Bohemica as follows:

The basic letters of the Latin alphabet (as well as the Latin digraph ch) were to be used for writing Czech, with sound values according to the medieval Latin pronunciation normal in Bohemia at the time. The only difference was that the letter c was always to be used to represent the sound /ts/, and never for /k/. d represented /d/ as in Latin, and the letter g before e and i represented /j/; in other cases g represented /ɡ/.

Ě	ě
Í	í
Ť	ť

Czech consonants that Latin did not possess would be represented by a Latin letter adorned with a diacritic dot. In particular, as Czech additionally possesses palatalized consonants and a hard l, this means that the dot indicates softness above n, d, t, c and z, and hardness for l.
Long vowels (which Latin possessed but did not indicate) were to be indicated by čárka (‘ above a, e, i and y)

To illustrate the simple and revolutionary nature of this spelling, take as an example the various ways of representing ř, compared with that seen in the grammar of Jan Gebauer. In manuscripts written before Hus, all of the following representations were in use: rz, rrz, rs, rzs, rzss, zr, sr, rzs and rzz. Long vowels were written either with no indication of the length, or written double (sometimes with the second letter written in superscript), or with any of a wide and unstandardised range of diacritical marks. One could not even assume that the same scribe would consistently use their own conventions, and their use often varied even within a single manuscript.

Significance and impact

Emmaus Monastery in Prague

Orthographia bohemica was the first known document in which such spelling reforms were suggested for a Slavic language. It is not yet fully clear where Jan Hus (if indeed he was the author) drew inspiration for this work. Considered in the context of the contemporaneous study of letters of St. Jerome by Danish scholars of Hebrew working at the Sorbonne, there was a good knowledge of such orthographic practices at the time (particularly the designation of long vowels). According to a study by F. V. Mareš, a stimulus for the project was the author's knowledge of Glagolitic, used by Croatian monks in the Emmaus Monastery (Na Slovanech) in Prague.

The significance of the document lies in the longevity and wide application of the logical system of accents. The spelling of the period in which it was written was not universally accepted. Change occurred up to the introduction of the book, particularly apparent in the issue of the so-called Náměšťské grammar in 1533; scribes, however adopted changes much more slowly than in printed books. Even in the 16th century, some printers and typesetters ignored the prescriptions of Orthographia bohemica and continued to maintain some digraphs (eg ss for /ʃ/ instead of š), but their use was considerably more uniform than before.

Discovery and publication

František Palacký, finder of the original manuscript

The manuscript for Orthographia bohemica was found by František Palacký on 13th. August 1826 in Třeboň in the south of Bohemia. The public was made aware of the existence of the work a year later, with the first issue of the newly founded journal Časopisu společnosti vlastenského Museum v Čechách ("Journal of the Society of the National Museum in Bohemia"), but its publication had to wait a further thirty years. The Latin text with translation appeared in 1857 in Slavische Bibliothek in Vienna thanks to A. V. Šember, who worked at the time at the university as Professor of Czech Language and Literature. A year later in Prague, the fifth volume of Mistra Jana Husi sebraných spisů ("Collected works of the master Jan Hus") appeared with a Czech translation and a short introduction by Václav Flajšhans, to date the latest Czech translation of this manuscript. The Latin text was published twice more: firstly the unaltered Šember translation in a new edition from Slavische Bibliothek (Amsterdam 1965), the second with German translation and commentary published in Wiesbaden in 1968 by of J. Schröpfer.

Šember's Latin text was probably taken directly from Palacký's copy of the manuscript; Schröpfer then submitted a new revised (though not flawless) publication of the manuscript. A critical evaluation comparing the preserved the Třeboň manuscript with the extant excerpts has still not released.

Preserved manuscripts

Prague Castle, location of the remaining excerpts

A manuscript of Orthographia bohemica in Jan Hus' hand has still not been found; the only complete copy of the manuscript which is available for study was written by a monk Oldřich Kříž of Třeboň (i.e. the copy found by Palacký). Its age can not be accurately determined as the copy is not dated; only at the end is written In die Leonardi, i.e. on January 6, however this may indicate either the date of completion of the original manuscript, or Oldřich Kříž's copy. In the same volume as Orthographia bohemica, however, are some more works: three of them bear the year 1459 and one 1457. The writings are not arranged chronologically however, and so they serve only as an approximate guide for determining the age of the manuscript.

In addition to the Kříž manuscript there are various excerpts deposited in the archives of Prague Castle. Anežka Vidmanová's comparative study with the manuscript of Oldřich Kříž shows that Třeboň manuscript is unreliable in many places.

Sources

This article incorporates information from this version of the equivalent article on the Czech Wikipedia.

Historical grammars

GEBAUER, Jan. Historická mluvnice jazyka českého. Díl I, Hláskosloví. ČSAV, Prague 1963.
LAMPRECHT, Arnošt. Vývoj fonologického systému českého jazyka. Universita J. E. Purkyně, Brno 1966.