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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Czech
One
of Europe’s favorite cities, Prague is arguably
the center of the Czech language despite a long
period of German domination under
Austrian
colonial rule.
Language
information: Czech is the official language of the Czech Republic (an area that formerly
was referred to as “Bohemia”). It is also widely used
in Slovakia and in other neighboring countries, as well as in Australia and
in the Americas. Czech has absorbed many German influences, partly because
of age-old contacts with neighboring Germany and Austria, and partly because
its territory used to be
one
of the Austro-Hungarian colonies in which German predominated.
Czech is closely
related to Slovak, and close coexistence of the two before the splitting up of Czechoslovakia
has added mutual influences and shared vocabulary. However, mutual comprehension
between the two is by no means perfect, and the two have rather distinctive features.
Like Slovak,
Czech distinguishes long and short vowels on the phonemic level, this being a
group-specific feature.
Besides National Standard Czech, there are three major Czech dialects groups,
each
with
its
own
koine
(interdialectical
variety):
Bohemian
of Bohemia or Czechia (Czech Čechy,
Polish Bohemia or Czechy właściwe, German Böhmen or Tschechei)
Moravian
of Moravia (Czech Morava, Polish Morawy,
German Mähren)
Cieszyn/Teshin
(Těšín) Silesian
of the Czech-administered parts of Silesia (Czech Slezsko, Polish Śląsk, Silesian Polish Ślonsk or Ślunsk, German Schlesien)
Genealogy: Indo-European > Slavic > West > Czecho-Slovak
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