Orð og tunga - 01.06.2016, Blaðsíða 126

116 Orð og tunga
In Czechoslovakia under Communist Party rule, no need was seen for
major changes, in the name of “democratization” of language (i.e., re-
ferring to language as common property of all people – in particular
the working class). In the sphere of loanwords,
the contribution of Russian has been meagre […] even in are-
as such as military terminology, where more loanwords might
be expected. On the contrary, although the offi cial att itude
was hostile, as early as the 1960s one could see many loans
from English, in particular in the registers of pop-music, sport
and (later) computing. (Nestupný & Nekvapil 2006:67)
3 Organized language management concerning
foreign words in Czech
3.1 General remarks
Czech does not easily accept loanwords. This is due to its typologi-
cal profi le, rather than to purist language policies (Neustupný &
Nekvapil 2006:66). For political and geographical reasons, the Czech
language has had the most intensive contact with German. The two
languages even share some features (the structure of the lexicon and
phraseology), although they belong to diff erent branches of the Indo-
European family. However, in Standard Czech, most of the direct bor-
rowings from German were replaced by Czech words during a wave
of purism in the 19th century.
Since WWI, there has been no such “hunt” against loanwords as,
for example, in Icelandic. There are many loans and, in particular,
there is no hesitation in accepting them if they are based on the Greek
or Latin lexical tradition. This was proven in Cizí slova v českém jazyce
[Loanwords in Czech] (1971), a comprehensive research survey ask-
ing how Czechs used loanwords and what their att itude towards them
was. Most respondents found that loanwords were used too much in
the mass media, although they tolerated their presence in scientifi c
literature. 60 percent approved of the use of words originating from
Latin and Greek. Most respondents believed that borrowings were
an inevitable, though negative, phenomenon, and almost all of them
believed that replacing the existing borrowings with new domestic
words would not bring any benefi t (Cizí slova v českém jazyce 1971:23).
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