Acta Musealia

For Nothing Gets so Forgotten as a Dialect (František Bartoš)

Department of dialectology of the Institute for Czech language of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic follows both the development and the current situation of dialects of Czech national language. The department completed a six-tome Czech Language Atlas, which is the basis for researching the current spoken language. They are now working on the Dictionary of Local Names in Moravia and Silesia, which represents an extensive set of local names embedded in local speech, and prepare publication of a so far the most comprehensive lexicographic work bearing on Czech language: National Dictionary of Czech Language Dialects. Every year they also organise dialect surveys, which show that discontinuation of dialects or dialect elements in current standard speech in Moravia is not as sudden as it was supposed. Nor interdialectic common Czech language, that is, Czech language spoken in the area of Bohemia is widely different. The article demonstrates historical links of the language development to everyday standard communication and illustrates the current situation with several maps from the Czech Language Atlas, which indicate the thus far live Czech-Moravian opposites in the area of vocabulary.

Keywords: Czech studies, dialectology, development of dialects, standard speech in Bohemia and Moravia