A Short History of the Slovak Language
1. Early History
Slovak is the language used in the Slovak Republic (Slovakia), which became an independent state on January 1, 1993.
Slovak is a Slavic language, and as such belong to the Indo-European language family. The language of the earliest Slavs was not written down, and has not been preserved in documents. As a spoken language it doubtless consisted of varieties or regional dialects. There are few references to the Slavs in the writings of Greek and Roman historians. The ancestors of the present-day Slovaks settled the Danubian Basin, possibly at the end of the fifth and certainly by the beginning of the sixth century. During the ninth century (in this territory) came into being the Great Moravian Empire.
In 863 Michael III the Bysantine Emperor, by the request prince of Great Moravia Rastislav, send the brothers Constantine and Methodius to propagate Christianity in the Slavic language. The brothers spoke the South Slavic dialect. Constantine created an alphabet for the Slavic language. In 906 - destruction the Great Moravian Empire
During the tenth to the fourteenth centuries Latin was used as the liturgical, literary, administrative and judicial language in the Hungarian state. By this time the Czech language was being used for legal and administrative purposes by the Slovaks, who did not know German or Latin. After the establishment of Charles University in Prague (1348) Slovaks went there to be educated. One of the reasons that Czech was accepted as the written language was that there was no outstanding political, cultural or economic center which would have provided the nucleus for the development of a Slovak literary language, while Czech had becom a fully developed literary language.
Luther's Reformation, which reached Slovakia in the third decade of the sixteenth century, further strengthened the use of Czech among Slovak Lutherans.
The Jesuit University of Trnava was founded in 1635. In the second half of the seventeenth century a printing press was set up at the university. The Jesuits used a language which is called Jesuit Slovak and was based on the speech of the educated people in West Slovakia (Cultural West Slovak). Another regional language was formed in the central Slovak region during the second half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries - Cultural Central Slovak.
2. Language Standardization
Literary activity in the Slovak language flourished during the second half of the seventeenth century and continued into the next centurry.
The first collection of religious songs for Slovak Lutherans was publised in 1636, and for Catholics in 1655.
In 1783 a two-volume adventure novel in Slovak was published by Jozef Ignác Bajza.
Anton Bernolák (1762 - 1813), a Catholic priest, codified the Slovak language(latter called bernolakovcina) which had been in use among Catholic Slovaks during preceding century.
The decision to establish a Slovak literary language on the basis of the Central Slovak dialect was made in 1843 by Ľudovit Štúr (1815 - 1856).He was a professor at the Lutheran Lyceum in Bratislava. Štur was educated as a philologist at the German University of Jena. In 1852 Martin Hattala wrote "A Concise Slovak Grammar". That was the basis for modern Slovak.
In 1844 the Hungarian Diet replaced Latin with Magyar, which became the official language in the Hungarian state including Slovakia.
In the 1850s and 1860s the new Slovak literary language was introduced into some schools. By the sixties the center of Slovak political and cultural activity had moved to the central Slovak town - Turčiansky Svätý Martin (St. Martin). There was founded in 1863 Matica slovenská.
In 1890 Samo Czambel published "Slovak Orthography". However his most important contribution was "A Handbook of the Slovak Literary Language" (1902).
Slovak (along with Czech) became an official language in the Czechoslovak Republic (1918).
In 1931 was published "The Rules of Slovak Orthography" by the orthographic commission of the Matica slovenská. "The Rules..." was revised in 1940. The Rules was simplified in 1953. The six-volume Dictionary of the Slovak Language was published in the years 1959 - 1968.
Literature :
L.B.Hammer - I.Ripka, Speech of American Slovaks, Veda 1994