Talk:spisovný

What is spisovná čeština

In the following I will try to clarify what spisovný refers to in the phrase spisovná čeština. In phrases like spisovná angličtina, the meaning is likely to be slightly different.

Two meanings of spisovný can be distinguished: 1) of or characteristic of written and printed speech; 2) as officially codified or as codified for official use. The meanings overlap but are not the same. Meaning 1 is the one given in PSJC and SSJC. Meaning 2 is the one given by Internetová jazyková příručka in Slovníček – vybrané pojmy and by Nový encyklopedický slovník češtiny.

Multiple sources indicate that spisovná čeština includes neutral, archaic, literary and hovorový (spoken? colloquial?) Czech, but hovorová čeština does not mean what the surface morphology of hovor-ový suggests: it does not mean "Czech as spoken". Since, Czech is often spoken in what is known as obecná čeština, and that stands in contrast to hovorová čeština. What these sources exclude from spisovná čeština is obecná čeština (common Czech?, vernacular Czech?), dialectal Czech, slang and argot.

The question arises to what extent spisovná čeština is a real thing and a phenomenon observable by a Martian linguist and to what extent it is an artificial regulatory construction. One contrast that a Martian observer can readily draw is between Czech as used in writing and speech on one hand, such as černý and dělají, and the forms of the same words and inflected forms that belong to obecná čeština or to a dialect and are used in speech, such as černej and dělajou. There is no doubt that černej, modrej and krásnej are part of spoken Czech that almost never occur in printed Czech, except as part of speech attributed to characters and the like. Other distinctions such as ranking of words as hovorový vs. obecný by the dictionaries are nowhere close to being so clear-cut and neutrally observable.

The English Wiktionary does not separate obecná čeština from hovorová čeština, using the labels informal and colloquial for both. There is no analogue of the distinction in English, as far as I know; there is no hovorová angličtina vs. obecná angličtina. The contrast between spisovná čeština and obecná čeština arose as a result of Czech dictionaries originally documenting a form of Czech that hardly anyone in Bohemia spoke, the result being that the spoken obecná čeština in Bohemia (as contrasted to Moravia) does not match the official standard for written Czech, a curious situation indeed. A Martian observer could note that most Bohemians do not naturally speak "correct" Czech. Thus, the English Wiktionary labeling fails to help the Czech users distinguish spisovná čeština from nespisovná čeština, by failing to mark the mentioned distinction.

Czech Wiktionary has distinct categories cs:Kategorie:Výrazy obecného jazyka/čeština and cs:Kategorie:Hovorové výrazy/čeština. One can note that both cs:Kategorie:Hovorové výrazy and cs:Kategorie:Výrazy obecného jazyka have subcategories for multiple languages. There is cs:Kategorie:Výrazy obecného jazyka/angličtina, but I have no idea what it means. cs:Kategorie:Hovorové výrazy/čeština is probably unreliable as for official labeling as hovorový. For instance, it contains autobusák, which ASSC labels as kolokviální and thus nespisovný, which does not match hovorový. Some of the labeling as hovorový there probably took place without authoritative sources, and it is authoritative sources that those who care to distinguish hovorový from obecný seem to care about a lot.

Distinct labels for hovorový and obecný are used by SSJC and PSJC. For example, cukrovkář is labeled by SSJC as ob., thereby being outside of spisovná čeština, whereas bíbr is labeled by SSJC as hovor., and thereby part of spisovná čeština. ASSC uses the term kolokviální rather than hovorový or obecný; for instance, they label čůrat as "kolokv. vyš." = "kolokviální vyšší"" and label bíbr the same. ASCS distinguishes kolokviání vyšší from kolokviální.

Slovník spisovného jazyka českého would, by definition, contain only spisovná čeština. Alas, if spisovná čeština excludes terms labeled as ob. in the dictionary, this cannot be so, and the name of the dictionary is a misnomer.

Some consider words missing from Pravidla českého pravopisu to be thereby not part of spisovná čeština. Pravidla is a word list, featuring no definitions, serving to verify "correct" spelling. For these people, a form absent from Pravidla is nespisovný even if it is present in other dictionaries without being labeled. The examples above of cukrovkář and bíbr fit this notion: cukrovkář, labeled by SSJC as ob., is absent, while bíbr, labeled by SSJC as hovor., is present. The limitation of this enumerative approach to defining spisovná is that the word list cannot be realistically expected to cover all neutrally (non-colloquially) formed and used words and names. The notion that the quality of being spisovný is determined by enumeration by an authority treats the term spisovná čeština as if it were a proper noun, not a common noun: common nouns are defined in terms of qualities, not as enumerations. Both definitions "of or pertaining to written and printed language" and "suitable for official communication" are non-enumerative. In placing a word on the official word list, the authority is expected to engage in linguistic fact finding as part of the process, not merely an arbitrary stipulation of the form "we said so, therefore". Some particular classes of this limitation:

• Some attested scientific neologisms, based on international scientific terminology, are not covered.
• Some neutrally formed attested derived words are not covered. Words suffixed in -ovský are a case in point: masarykovský is well attested and neutrally formed, yet absent from Pravidla, which has aristotelovský and aristofanovský. Pravidla does not have kantovský, hegelovský and most other members of Category:Czech terms suffixed with -ovský. Both kantovský and hegelovský are in SSJC and ASCS, though. (But Pravidla has hegelovec.) There is nothing colloquial or non-neutral about suffixing with -ovský: it is a predictable, regular and neutral process of formation of -ian/-ean words from base proper nouns. Similarly, not all well attested -ský words are covered, and there is nothing colloquial or incorrect about -ský.
• Proper names are generally poorly covered. The word list covers Ostrava and Mississippi (place names), Aristofanes (person name), Lysistrata and Dekameron (work names), Sirius (star name) and Martin (first name), but it does not cover Lhotka (village name), and Novák (surname). The word list is not intended to cover all that is covered by other word lists, such as official lists of recommended geographic names, databases of surnames, etc. Since the set of proper names is so huge and is not the typical core material for dictionaries, it is unrealistic to expect the central linguistic authority to maintain an authorized list of all of them, thereby duplicating other reference works.

Links:

• SPISOVNÁ ČEŠTINA in Nový encyklopedický slovník češtiny, czechency.org - identifies spisovná čeština as being a regulated part of the language; this stands in contrast to the meaning "of or characteristic of written speech"
• Slovníček – vybrané pojmy, prirucka.ujc.cas.cz
• Útvary českého jazyka (spisovná a nespisovná čeština), zs-mozartova.cz - indicated spisovná čeština to be codified, and excludes from it dialectal Czech, obecná čeština, language of professions (what does it mean? no examples are given), slang (defined as restricted to a group of users) and argot (defined as the speech of those at the margins of society, arguably a species of slang).
• čeština, slovnikcestiny.cz - identifies hovorová čeština as part of spisovná čeština and obecná čeština as part of nespisovná čeština.
• spisovný, nechybujte.cz - identifies hovorová čeština as part of spisovná čeština and obecná čeština as part of nespisovná čeština
• Pravidla českého pravopisu, nechybujte.cz

Dan Polansky (talk) 09:26, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Expanded. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:52, 11 September 2022 (UTC)