Editing Czech language (section)

=== Modern Czech ===
[[File:Jan Vilímek - Josef Dobrovský.jpg|thumb|right|[[Josef Dobrovský]], whose writing played a key role in reviving Czech as a written language|alt=In a detailed pencil sketch, a middle-aged man in a suit looks idly into the distance.]]
{{see also|Czech National Revival}}
Modern standard Czech originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century.<ref>{{Harvnb|Chloupek|Nekvapil|1993|p=92}}</ref> By then the language had developed a literary tradition, and since then it has changed little; journals from that period contain no substantial differences from modern standard Czech, and contemporary Czechs can understand them with little difficulty.<ref>{{Harvnb |Chloupek |Nekvapil|1993|p=95}}</ref> At some point before the 18th century, the Czech language abandoned a distinction between phonemic /l/ and /ʎ/ which survives in Slovak.<ref name="Maxwell 2009 106"/>

With the beginning of the national revival of the mid-18th century, Czech historians began to emphasize their people's accomplishments from the 15th through 17th centuries, rebelling against the [[Counter-Reformation]] (the Habsburg re-catholization efforts which had denigrated Czech and other non-[[Latin language|Latin]] languages).<ref>{{Harvnb|Agnew |1994 |p=250}}</ref> Czech [[Philology|philologists]] studied sixteenth-century texts and advocated the return of the language to [[high culture]].<ref name="Agnew 1994 251–252">{{Harvnb|Agnew|1994|pp=251–252}}</ref> This period is known as the Czech National Revival<ref name="Wilson 2010 18">{{Harvnb|Wilson|2009|p=18}}</ref> (or Renaissance).<ref name="Agnew 1994 251–252"/>

During the national revival, in 1809 linguist and historian [[Josef Dobrovský]] released a German-language grammar of Old Czech entitled ''Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache'' ('Comprehensive Doctrine of the Bohemian Language'). Dobrovský had intended his book to be [[descriptive linguistics|descriptive]], and did not think Czech had a realistic chance of returning as a major language. However, [[Josef Jungmann]] and other revivalists used Dobrovský's book to advocate for a Czech linguistic revival.<ref name="Wilson 2010 18"/> Changes during this time included spelling reform (notably, ''í'' in place of the former ''j'' and ''j'' in place of ''g''), the use of ''t'' (rather than ''ti'') to end infinitive verbs and the non-capitalization of nouns (which had been a late borrowing from German).<ref name="Maxwell 2009 106">{{Harvnb|Maxwell|2009|p=106}}</ref> These changes differentiated Czech from Slovak.<ref>{{Harvnb|Chloupek|Nekvapil|1993|p=96}}</ref> Modern scholars disagree about whether the conservative revivalists were motivated by nationalism or considered contemporary spoken Czech unsuitable for formal, widespread use.<ref name="Wilson 2010 18"/>

Adherence to historical patterns was later relaxed and standard Czech adopted a number of features from Common Czech (a widespread informal interdialectal variety), such as leaving some proper nouns undeclined. This has resulted in a relatively high level of homogeneity among all varieties of the language.<ref>{{Harvnb|Chloupek|Nekvapil|1993|pp=93–95}}</ref>