Translation of Biblical (and Other Religious) Texts into "Moravian Slavic" in a Forgotten Print from 1851: the First Report
Abstract
The article is devoted to a practically completely unknown and rare, very hard-to-find book called Žaltář (Psalter), published in Hranice in Moravia in 1851. It contains part of the breviary (matutinum) on the Nativity of the Lord and other religious texts.
The author (or translator from Latin) was the now completely forgotten Moravian priest and amateur historian and philologist Josef Hrdina (1781-1852). The book is interesting mainly because of its language, which the author calls "Moravian Slavic" (moravská slověnščina).
The article presents the "first report" on the book, its author and his translation technique, and on the language, which is significantly different from standard Czech. It is a partially artificial language formation with a high proportion of all-Moravian dialectal elements and with a certain noticeable "patina" based on East Moravian elements.
The book is perhaps a testimony of a practical attempt to form a cultural microlanguage applicable ideally for the whole of Moravia, possibly also including areas of Silesian dialects. An important fact is that this "Moravian-Slavic" language is used here in the texts of the religious sphere of communication, for the most part even in the texts of the highest prestige - the biblical texts.