4 ms·

> The sign above the door at the primary school outside Karlstejn Castle is unreadable to a speaker of modern Czech. What? No it's not. It looks no more than ~

by troad 5mo ago

> The sign above the door at the primary school outside Karlstejn Castle is unreadable to a speaker of modern Czech. What? No it's not. It looks no more than ~100-150 years old, and is perfectly readable if you've ever seen a long s (like ſo).

lproven 5mo ago
It's really not. After a lot of searching I found... my own post from Reddit 3Y ago! https://www.reddit.com/r/czech/comments/17stwmi/can_anyone_read_the_text_above_the_door_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/czech/comments/17stwmi/can_anyone_r... It has a relatively clear photo.
- troad 5mo ago
  That's perfectly readable to me as a speaker of modern Czech, and it appears to have been readable to all the commenters on your post too. > W téchto se dozwédá sjnjch pilné robé, Bohu čjm povinné, bratřjm, wlasti, sobě. This is almost modern Czech, with j for í and w for v (which was the standard orthography for hundreds of years and would be familiar to any educated Czech). Take the most famous poem in Czech, in its original orthography from 1836: > Byl pozdnj wečer - prwnj mág > Wečernj mág - byl lásky čas. This is perfectly readable, like your sign. One of the comments claims the sign is from 1487 - I would find this extremely unlikely. The mention of vlast (homeland) is suggestive of the era of the National Awakening (19th century), as is the orthography, font, and diacritics. (And the overall theme of education for God and country seems pretty anachronistic for 1487.) If we go back in time, to say the Kralická Bible (1593), we're still well within the realm of readable text to modern Czechs: > Na Počátku stwořil Bůh nebe a zemi. Země pak byla nesličná a pustá: a tma byla nad propastj: a Duch Božj wznássel se nad wodami. Y řekl Bůh: Buď swětlo: Y bylo swětlo. Let's go back all the way to the earliest Slavic texts, about 1300 years ago, which largely predate Czech altogether: > Iskonï bě slovo. Ï slovo bě u boga. Ï bogъ bě slovo. A modern Czech would understand most of this, with the probable exception of iskonï ([na] konci, but used here to refer to the beginning). They would probably miss the exact tense being used for bě, but guess that it's a copula (they might see it as a portmanteau of bylo and je, which is close enough). This is probably comparably difficult for a Czech as say Chaucer is for an English speaker (ie not terribly), except it is half a millennium earlier than Chaucer. Your overall point about language change has merit, but not all languages have changed at the same exact rate. Balto-Slavic languages are relatively conservative as a group (many linguists were very taken with Lithuanian when it was first noticed within Western academia, as it is so conservative that it has considerable utility in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European itself). This is probably more detail than you wanted - I hope it's interesting and helpful. :)
  - lproven 5mo ago
    It's fascinating, and thank you. My Czech was terrible -- maybe just approaching B1 level when I left 3 years ago -- and it was not comprehensible to me. But it wasn't to my friend and to my (now) wife when we visited, so I took a photo and showed it to my colleagues at work and friends in the pub. Similarly, still my favourite Czech sentence is the one that terrified me before I moved there: Blb vlk pln žbrnd zdrhl hrd z mlh Brd skrz vrch Smrk v čtvrť srn Krč. I memorised this (poorly) but had great fun showing it to people when I got there. Almost nobody could parse it at all. Now, I'm an above-average English speaker. I am a very fast reader, and at school, I could cope with Chaucer just fine. Once I got my internal ear to hear it, it just made sense to me. (Beowulf, no.) But I was the only one in my class. I can follow poetic and heavily distorted English fairly well, and it's a handy skill for a (former) professional English teacher. But I think I can follow more than most. I certainly can't follow the ZŠ Karlstejn Czech, nor your poetic examples. I am very poor in the language. (It is my 6th foreign language, but they are all very very weak. But saying that, I've put more effort into Czech than all the rest put together, with little to show for it.) I think you over-estimate the abilities of ordinary Czechs!
    - troad 5mo ago
      That's very cool. Don't knock yourself - congratulations on reaching a good level in such a fiendish language. My own SO hovers between A2 and B1 after many years, so I absolutely appreciate how frustrating Czech can be. > Blb vlk pln žbrnd zdrhl hrd z mlh Brd skrz vrch Smrk v čtvrť srn Krč. I do enjoy this one. It's all the more amusing in that it only uses fairly common vocab (though somewhat stylised inflection). Speaking of parsing, you may be aware of the perfectly valid English sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". Or the sentence "The horse raced past the barn fell". If not, enjoy. :) > I think you over-estimate the abilities of ordinary Czechs! Very possibly! I think two of the examples I provided (the poem Máj and the quote from the Kralická bible) would genuinely be comprehensible to most Czechs, but I might be being too generous with the Karlštejn quote. If I render it into standard orthography, give or take some endings I had to guess by squinting at the image on my phone, it comes out as: > V těchto se dozvídá síních pilné robě, Bohu čím povinné, bratřím, vlasti, sobě. Reordered to simplify the structure, and with glosses, you can probably make it out: > V těchto [in these] síních [halls] se pilné [diligent] robě [child; archaic] dozvídá [learns, finds out], čím [that which is] povinné [compulsory] Bohu [dative, i.e. to/for God], bratřím [to/for brothers], vlasti [to/for the homeland], sobĕ [to/for oneself]. There is some basic vocab here (Bůh, bratr, vlast), some intermediate vocab (dozvědět se, pilné), and one clear-cut archaism (robě). The overall structure is quite poetic and somewhat inorganic - e.g. the separation of těchto and síních in "V těchto se dozvídá síních" is unnatural, and makes me think of scholastic Latin. I'm honestly not sure how an ordinary person might read this. I think if it were in standard orthography, it would probably be fairly readable, but if you layer pre-modern orthography on top of the structural acrobatics and archaisms, you're probably right that the average person may struggle. Čapek uses pre-modern orthography (e.g. gegj for její) for stylistic effect ('ye olde... ') in small sections of Válka s mloky, and modern editions do not generally transcribe these sections into modern orthography, so I think there is at least the implication that a literate Czech ought to be able to read it. To what extent that expectation has a relationship to reality I'm honestly unsure. The Czechs can be (far too) normative when it comes language, as you probably know, so perhaps the literati insist it be printed as is, and everyone else is just too scared to admit they can no longer read it. :P

by troad 5mo ago

lproven 5mo ago

It's really not. After a lot of searching I found... my own post from Reddit 3Y ago! https://www.reddit.com/r/czech/comments/17stwmi/can_anyone_read_the_text_above_the_door_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/czech/comments/17stwmi/can_anyone_r... It has a relatively clear photo.

troad 5mo ago
That's perfectly readable to me as a speaker of modern Czech, and it appears to have been readable to all the commenters on your post too. > W téchto se dozwédá sjnjch pilné robé, Bohu čjm povinné, bratřjm, wlasti, sobě. This is almost modern Czech, with j for í and w for v (which was the standard orthography for hundreds of years and would be familiar to any educated Czech). Take the most famous poem in Czech, in its original orthography from 1836: > Byl pozdnj wečer - prwnj mág > Wečernj mág - byl lásky čas. This is perfectly readable, like your sign. One of the comments claims the sign is from 1487 - I would find this extremely unlikely. The mention of vlast (homeland) is suggestive of the era of the National Awakening (19th century), as is the orthography, font, and diacritics. (And the overall theme of education for God and country seems pretty anachronistic for 1487.) If we go back in time, to say the Kralická Bible (1593), we're still well within the realm of readable text to modern Czechs: > Na Počátku stwořil Bůh nebe a zemi. Země pak byla nesličná a pustá: a tma byla nad propastj: a Duch Božj wznássel se nad wodami. Y řekl Bůh: Buď swětlo: Y bylo swětlo. Let's go back all the way to the earliest Slavic texts, about 1300 years ago, which largely predate Czech altogether: > Iskonï bě slovo. Ï slovo bě u boga. Ï bogъ bě slovo. A modern Czech would understand most of this, with the probable exception of iskonï ([na] konci, but used here to refer to the beginning). They would probably miss the exact tense being used for bě, but guess that it's a copula (they might see it as a portmanteau of bylo and je, which is close enough). This is probably comparably difficult for a Czech as say Chaucer is for an English speaker (ie not terribly), except it is half a millennium earlier than Chaucer. Your overall point about language change has merit, but not all languages have changed at the same exact rate. Balto-Slavic languages are relatively conservative as a group (many linguists were very taken with Lithuanian when it was first noticed within Western academia, as it is so conservative that it has considerable utility in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European itself). This is probably more detail than you wanted - I hope it's interesting and helpful. :)
- lproven 5mo ago
  It's fascinating, and thank you. My Czech was terrible -- maybe just approaching B1 level when I left 3 years ago -- and it was not comprehensible to me. But it wasn't to my friend and to my (now) wife when we visited, so I took a photo and showed it to my colleagues at work and friends in the pub. Similarly, still my favourite Czech sentence is the one that terrified me before I moved there: Blb vlk pln žbrnd zdrhl hrd z mlh Brd skrz vrch Smrk v čtvrť srn Krč. I memorised this (poorly) but had great fun showing it to people when I got there. Almost nobody could parse it at all. Now, I'm an above-average English speaker. I am a very fast reader, and at school, I could cope with Chaucer just fine. Once I got my internal ear to hear it, it just made sense to me. (Beowulf, no.) But I was the only one in my class. I can follow poetic and heavily distorted English fairly well, and it's a handy skill for a (former) professional English teacher. But I think I can follow more than most. I certainly can't follow the ZŠ Karlstejn Czech, nor your poetic examples. I am very poor in the language. (It is my 6th foreign language, but they are all very very weak. But saying that, I've put more effort into Czech than all the rest put together, with little to show for it.) I think you over-estimate the abilities of ordinary Czechs!
  - troad 5mo ago
    That's very cool. Don't knock yourself - congratulations on reaching a good level in such a fiendish language. My own SO hovers between A2 and B1 after many years, so I absolutely appreciate how frustrating Czech can be. > Blb vlk pln žbrnd zdrhl hrd z mlh Brd skrz vrch Smrk v čtvrť srn Krč. I do enjoy this one. It's all the more amusing in that it only uses fairly common vocab (though somewhat stylised inflection). Speaking of parsing, you may be aware of the perfectly valid English sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo". Or the sentence "The horse raced past the barn fell". If not, enjoy. :) > I think you over-estimate the abilities of ordinary Czechs! Very possibly! I think two of the examples I provided (the poem Máj and the quote from the Kralická bible) would genuinely be comprehensible to most Czechs, but I might be being too generous with the Karlštejn quote. If I render it into standard orthography, give or take some endings I had to guess by squinting at the image on my phone, it comes out as: > V těchto se dozvídá síních pilné robě, Bohu čím povinné, bratřím, vlasti, sobě. Reordered to simplify the structure, and with glosses, you can probably make it out: > V těchto [in these] síních [halls] se pilné [diligent] robě [child; archaic] dozvídá [learns, finds out], čím [that which is] povinné [compulsory] Bohu [dative, i.e. to/for God], bratřím [to/for brothers], vlasti [to/for the homeland], sobĕ [to/for oneself]. There is some basic vocab here (Bůh, bratr, vlast), some intermediate vocab (dozvědět se, pilné), and one clear-cut archaism (robě). The overall structure is quite poetic and somewhat inorganic - e.g. the separation of těchto and síních in "V těchto se dozvídá síních" is unnatural, and makes me think of scholastic Latin. I'm honestly not sure how an ordinary person might read this. I think if it were in standard orthography, it would probably be fairly readable, but if you layer pre-modern orthography on top of the structural acrobatics and archaisms, you're probably right that the average person may struggle. Čapek uses pre-modern orthography (e.g. gegj for její) for stylistic effect ('ye olde... ') in small sections of Válka s mloky, and modern editions do not generally transcribe these sections into modern orthography, so I think there is at least the implication that a literate Czech ought to be able to read it. To what extent that expectation has a relationship to reality I'm honestly unsure. The Czechs can be (far too) normative when it comes language, as you probably know, so perhaps the literati insist it be printed as is, and everyone else is just too scared to admit they can no longer read it. :P