Moravian language
| Moravian | |
|---|---|
| moravská nářečí | |
| Native to | Czech Republic, Slovakia |
| Region | Moravia and Czech Silesia |
|
Native speakers
|
108,000 (2011) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | czec1259 |
Map of Moravia and Czech Silesia (borders between the two regions not shown) indicating the major dialect groups:
Central Moravian dialects |
|
Central Moravian dialects
Eastern Moravian dialects
Lach dialects
Bohemian-Moravian dialects
Cieszyn Silesian speaking area
Moravian dialects (Czech: moravská nářečí, moravština) 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 (Silesian) group (which is also spoken in Czech Silesia). While the forms are generally viewed as regional variants of Czech, some Moravians (108,469 in the 2011 Census) 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 (the others being German, Polish, Rusyn, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian). Respondents who chose Bohemian–Moravian–Slovak as their main communicating language were counted in the Austrian censuses as Czechs.
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Wikipedia