97-697: The Czechoslovak government-in-exile , sometimes styled officially as the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia ( Czech : Prozatímní vláda Československa ; Slovak : Dočasná vláda Československa ), was an informal title conferred upon the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee ( Czech : Výbor Československého Národního Osvobození ; Slovak : Československý Výbor Národného Oslobodenia ), initially by British diplomatic recognition . The name came to be used by other Allied governments during
194-856: A "people's democracy" (without a formal name change) under the Ninth-of-May Constitution following the 1948 coup . ČSSR; from 1969, after the Prague Spring , consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic (ČSR) and Slovak Socialist Republic (SSR). Oblast of the Ukrainian SSR . Oblast of Ukraine . Czech language Czech ( / tʃ ɛ k / CHEK ; endonym : čeština [ˈtʃɛʃcɪna] ), historically also known as Bohemian ( / b oʊ ˈ h iː m i ə n , b ə -/ boh- HEE -mee-ən, bə- ; Latin : lingua Bohemica ),
291-1057: A breach of the Munich agreement and pledged not to acknowledge the territorial changes. Similar notes – though without reference to Munich – were sent by the USSR and the USA. Some non-Axis states, like Switzerland , Poland, and the Vatican , recognized Slovakia in March and April 1939. The Great Powers soon changed their position. In May, British diplomacy asked for (and received) a new exequatur for its former consul in Bratislava, which marked de facto recognition of Slovakia. France followed suit in July 1939. However, Czechoslovak legations kept operating in London and Paris. Some international organizations like
388-674: A building called Fursecroft, Marylebone . It was regarded as the legitimate government for Czechoslovakia throughout the Second World War by the Allies . A specifically anti-Fascist government, it sought to reverse the Munich Agreement and the subsequent German occupation of Czechoslovakia , and to return the Republic to its 1937 boundaries. As such it was ultimately considered, by those countries that recognized it,
485-409: A company of combat engineers , all commanded by Antonín Pulanich. The second group was a mobile formation that consisted of two battalions of combined cavalry and motorcycle recon troops along with nine motorized artillery batteries, all commanded by Gustav Malár. The two groups reported to the headquarters of the 1st and 3rd Slovak Infantry Divisions. The two combat groups fought while pushing through
582-635: A distinction between phonemic /l/ and /ʎ/ which survives in Slovak. 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 languages). Czech philologists studied sixteenth-century texts and advocated
679-506: A dozen additional counties in Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota and Minnesota . As of 2009, 70,500 Americans spoke Czech as their first language (49th place nationwide, after Turkish and before Swedish ). Standard Czech contains ten basic vowel phonemes , and three diphthongs. The vowels are /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /o/, and /u/ , and their long counterparts /aː/, /ɛː/, /iː/, /oː/ and /uː/ . The diphthongs are /ou̯/, /au̯/ and /ɛu̯/ ;
776-571: A more-restricted distinction between "hard" and "soft" consonants (see Phonology below). The term "Old Czech" is applied to the period predating the 16th century, with the earliest records of the high medieval period also classified as "early Old Czech", but the term "Medieval Czech" is also used. The function of the written language was initially performed by Old Slavonic written in Glagolitic , later by Latin written in Latin script . Around
873-655: A possible declaration of independence. Some of the deputies were skeptical of making such a move, among other reasons, because some worried that the Slovak state would be too small and with a strong Hungarian minority . The debate was quickly brought to a head when Franz Karmasin , leader of the German minority in Slovakia, said that any delay in declaring independence would result in Slovakia being divided between Hungary and Germany. Under these circumstances, Parliament unanimously voted to secede from Czecho-Slovakia, thus creating
970-514: 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. 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). These changes differentiated Czech from Slovak. Modern scholars disagree about whether
1067-530: A restoration of the Czechoslovak state in its pre-Munich form after the anticipated Allied victory, a false hope. Beneš determined to strengthen Czechoslovak security against future German aggression through alliances with Poland and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, however, objected to a tripartite Czechoslovak-Polish-Soviet commitment. In December 1943, Beneš's government concluded a treaty with
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#17327909174701164-421: A series of laws that are now referred to as the " Beneš decrees ". One part of these decrees dealt with the status of ethnic Germans and Hungarians in postwar Czechoslovakia, including the confiscation of their property, anticipating their future deportation (see expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia , and Hungarians in Slovakia ). However, the final agreement authorizing the forced population transfer of
1261-489: A slow rise from low to high, quickly dropping to low on the last word or phrase. In modern Czech syntax, adjectives precede nouns, with few exceptions. Relative clauses are introduced by relativizers such as the adjective který , analogous to the English relative pronouns "which", "that" and "who"/"whom". As with other adjectives, it agrees with its associated noun in gender, number and case. Relative clauses follow
1358-797: A study trip in Slovak lands where ethnic Germans were present and reported to Himmler that the Slovak Germans were in danger of disappearing. Pancke recommended that action should be taken to fuse the racially valuable part of the Slovaks into the German minority and remove the Romani and Jewish populations. He stated that this would be possible by "excluding" the Hungarian minority of the country and by settling some 100,000 ethnic German families in Slovakia. The racial core of this Germanization policy
1455-474: A verb; information about its subject is encoded in the verb. Enclitics (primarily auxiliary verbs and pronouns) appear in the second syntactic slot of a sentence, after the first stressed unit. The first slot can contain a subject or object, a main form of a verb, an adverb, or a conjunction (except for the light conjunctions a , "and", i , "and even" or ale , "but"). Czech syntax has a subject–verb–object sentence structure. In practice, however, word order
1552-753: Is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group , written in Latin script . Spoken by over 12 million people including second language speakers, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic . Czech is closely related to Slovak , to the point of high mutual intelligibility , as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order . Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German . The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in
1649-636: Is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish , Kashubian , Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak . Slovak is the most closely related language to Czech, followed by Polish and Silesian . The West Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe. Czech is distinguished from other West Slavic languages by
1746-578: Is a recognized minority language in Slovakia, Slovak citizens who speak only Czech may communicate with the government in their language in the same way that Slovak speakers in the Czech Republic also do. Immigration of Czechs from Europe to the United States occurred primarily from 1848 to 1914. Czech is a Less Commonly Taught Language in U.S. schools, and is taught at Czech heritage centers. Large communities of Czech Americans live in
1843-422: Is also relevant to the declension patterns of nouns, which vary according to whether the final consonant of the noun stem is hard or soft. Voiced consonants with unvoiced counterparts are unvoiced at the end of a word before a pause, and in consonant clusters voicing assimilation occurs, which matches voicing to the following consonant. The unvoiced counterpart of /ɦ/ is /x/. The phoneme represented by
1940-432: Is flexible and used to distinguish topic and focus , with the topic or theme (known referents) preceding the focus or rheme (new information) in a sentence; Czech has therefore been described as a topic-prominent language . Although Czech has a periphrastic passive construction (like English), in colloquial style, word-order changes frequently replace the passive voice. For example, to change "Peter killed Paul" to "Paul
2037-629: Is one of the EU's official languages and the 2012 Eurobarometer survey found that Czech was the foreign language most often used in Slovakia. Economist Jonathan van Parys collected data on language knowledge in Europe for the 2012 European Day of Languages . The five countries with the greatest use of Czech were the Czech Republic (98.77 percent), Slovakia (24.86 percent), Portugal (1.93 percent), Poland (0.98 percent) and Germany (0.47 percent). Czech speakers in Slovakia primarily live in cities. Since it
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#17327909174702134-575: Is realized as its voiceless allophone [r̝̊], a sound somewhere between Czech r and š . The consonants /r/, /l/, and /m/ can be syllabic , acting as syllable nuclei in place of a vowel. Strč prst skrz krk ("Stick [your] finger through [your] throat") is a well-known Czech tongue twister using syllabic consonants but no vowels. Each word has primary stress on its first syllable , except for enclitics (minor, monosyllabic, unstressed syllables). In all words of more than two syllables, every odd-numbered syllable receives secondary stress. Stress
2231-499: Is unrelated to vowel length; both long and short vowels can be stressed or unstressed. Vowels are never reduced in tone (e.g. to schwa sounds) when unstressed. When a noun is preceded by a monosyllabic preposition, the stress usually moves to the preposition, e.g. do Prahy "to Prague". Czech grammar, like that of other Slavic languages, is fusional ; its nouns, verbs, and adjectives are inflected by phonological processes to modify their meanings and grammatical functions, and
2328-669: The Axis when its leaders signed the Tripartite Pact . In 1942, the country deported 58,000 Jews (two-thirds of the Slovak Jewish population) to German-occupied Poland, paying Germany 500 Reichsmarks each. After an increase in the activity of anti-Nazi Slovak partisans , Germany invaded Slovakia, triggering a significant uprising in 1944. The Slovak Republic was abolished after the Soviet liberation in 1945, and its territory
2425-617: The Czech resistance groups demanded, based on German Nazi terror during occupation, the "final solution of the German question" ( Czech : konečné řešení německé otázky ) which would have to be "solved" by deportation of the ethnic Germans to Germany and Austria . These demands were adopted by the Government-in-Exile, which sought the support of the Allies for this proposal, beginning in 1943. The Government-in-Exile promulgated
2522-611: The German minority . However, those two parties formed part of a coalition with the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party; for all intents and purposes, Slovakia was a one-party state. The state advocated excluding women from the public sphere and politics. While promoting "natural" maternal duties of women, the regime aimed to restrict women's space to the privacy of family life. Slovakia's pro-natalist programs limited access to previously available birth-control methods and introduced harsher punishments for already criminalized abortions. Although
2619-656: The Jews from participation in public life and later supported their deportation to concentration camps erected by Germany on occupied Polish territory . The only political parties permitted were the dominant Hlinka's Slovak People's Party and two smaller openly fascist parties, these being the Hungarian National Party which represented the Hungarian minority and the German Party which represented
2716-733: The Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 (the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages) became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries as it was used as a model for the standard language. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the only official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt (of predominantly Protestant aristocracy) which
2813-815: The League of Nations or the International Labour Union still considered Czechoslovakia their member, but some – like the Universal Postal Union – admitted Slovakia. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, the British and French consulates in Slovakia were closed, and the territory was declared under occupation. However, in September 1939, the USSR recognized Slovakia, admitted a Slovak representative, and closed
2910-516: The Left , and the opposition. By a decree issued on October 29, 1938, the Hlinka Guard was designated as the only body authorized to give its members paramilitary training, and it was this decree that established its formal status in the country. Hlinka guardsmen wore black uniforms and a cap shaped like a boat, with a woolen pompom on top, and they used the raised-arm salute. The official salute
3007-622: The Leskovec-Dresden Bible , also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were also produced outside universities. Literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation . Jan Hus contributed significantly to the standardization of Czech orthography , advocated for widespread literacy among Czech commoners (particularly in religion) and made early efforts to model written Czech after
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3104-633: The Nowy Sącz and Dukla Mountain Passes , advancing towards Dębica and Tarnów in the region of southern Poland. The Slovak military participated in the war on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union . The Slovak Expeditionary Army Group of about 45,000 entered the Soviet Union shortly after the German attack . This army lacked logistic and transportation support, so a much smaller unit,
3201-579: The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . The success of this mission, Operation Anthropoid , caused Britain and Free France (itself a government-in-exile) to formally repudiate the Munich Agreement , thus conferring de jure legitimacy on the Beneš government as the continuation of the First Republic. The government's continued health now depended on Allied military victory. Beneš hoped for
3298-742: The high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival . The most widely spoken non-standard variety , known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague , but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of Bohemia . The Moravian dialects spoken in Moravia and Czech Silesia are considerably more varied than
3395-406: The voiced velar fricative consonant (/ɣ/) and consistent stress on the first syllable. The Bohemian (Czech) language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the late 13th and early 14th century and administrative documents first appear towards the late 14th century. The first complete Bible translation ,
3492-735: The 17th Army through July 1941, including at the Battle of Uman . At the beginning of August 1941, the Slovak Mobile Command was dissolved, and instead, two infantry divisions were formed from the Slovak Expeditionary Army Group. The Slovak 2nd Division was a security division , but the Slovak 1st Division was a front-line unit that fought in the campaigns of 1941 and 1942, reaching the Caucasus area with Army Group B . The Slovak 1st Division then shared
3589-527: The 1939 borders of the Slovak State, and 85 percent had declared Slovak nationality on the 1938 census. Minorities included Germans (4.8 percent), Czechs (2.9 percent), Rusyns (2.6 percent), Hungarians (2.1 percent), Jews (1.1 percent), and Romani people (0.9 percent). Seventy-five percent of Slovaks were Catholics. Most of the remainder belonged to the Lutheran and Greek Catholic churches. 50% of
3686-528: The 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, settling on the eastern fringes of the Frankish Empire . The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries. The diversification of the Czech-Slovak group within West Slavic began around that time, marked among other things by its use of
3783-553: The First Republic. However, as Beneš was the key to getting military support from the well-trained Czechoslovak Army , France was in fact the first nation to conclude a treaty with the committee. 2 October 1939 agreement between France and Beneš allowed for the reconstitution of the Czechoslovak army on French territory. Ultimately, units of the First Division of the Czechoslovak Army fought alongside their hosts in
3880-547: The Germans was not reached until 2 August 1945 at the end of the Potsdam Conference . Edvard Beneš (October 1939–2 April 1945) Jan Šrámek (21 July 1940 – 5 April 1945) ČSR; boundaries and government established by the 1920 constitution . Annexed by Nazi Germany . ČSR; included the autonomous regions of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Annexed by Hungary (1939–1945). ČSR; declared
3977-578: The Jews!". Vatican undersecretary Domenico Tardini complained: "Everyone understands that the Holy See cannot stop Hitler. But who can understand that it does not know how to rein in a priest?" By the end of the Holocaust, more than two-thirds of the Jews living in Slovakia had been murdered. The Slovak Republic was divided into 6 counties and 58 districts. The extant population records are from
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4074-547: The Netherlands, and Sweden, as well as some beyond Europe (like Ecuador, Costa Rica, Liberia). In some cases, Czechoslovak legations were closed (e.g., in Switzerland), but some countries opted for a somewhat ambiguous stand. The states that maintained their independence ceased recognizing Slovakia in the late stages of World War II. However, some (e.g., Spain ) permitted operations of semi-diplomatic representation until
4171-556: The Second World War as they subsequently recognised it. The committee was originally created by the former Czechoslovak President, Edvard Beneš in Paris , France, in October 1939. Unsuccessful negotiations with France for diplomatic status, as well as the impending Nazi occupation of France , forced the committee to withdraw to London in 1940. The Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile offices were at various locations in London but mainly at
4268-448: The Slovak Mobile Command (Pilfousek Brigade), was formed from units selected from this force; the rest of the Slovak army was relegated to rear-area security duty. The Slovak Mobile Command was attached to the German 17th Army (as was the Hungarian Carpathian Group also) and shortly thereafter given over to direct German command, the Slovaks lacking the command infrastructure to exercise effective operational control. This unit fought with
4365-499: The Slovak Republic" elected for five years, was the highest legislative body (no general elections took place, however), and the "State Council" performed the duties of a senate. The government, which had eight ministries, was the executive body. The Slovak Republic was an authoritarian regime where German pressure resulted in the adoption of many elements of Nazism . Some historians characterized Tiso's regime as clerical fascism . The government issued many antisemitic laws prohibiting
4462-437: The Slovak Republic's geographical extent in the areas of Orava and Spiš , absorbing previously Polish-controlled territory. In July 1940, at the Salzburg Conference , the Germans forced a reshuffle of the Slovak cabinet by threatening to withdraw their protection guarantees. On 24 November 1940, Slovakia joined the Axis when its leaders signed the Tripartite Pact . The Slovak- Soviet Treaty of Commerce and Navigation
4559-577: The Slovak Republic, and appointed Vojtech Tuka as Prime Minister. After 1942, President Tiso was also styled Vodca ("Leader"), an imitation of German Führer . Mainly as a Catholic priest, he was moral and natural authority for the majority of Slovaks. Tiso collaborated with Germany in deportations of Jews, deporting many Slovak Jews to extermination and concentration camps in Germany and German-occupied Poland , while some Jews in Slovakia were murdered outright. Deportations were executed from 25 March 1942 until 20 October 1942. In August 1942, after
4656-405: The South-East. Jozef Tiso began his career as a Catholic priest in Austro-Hungary . As such, he operated primarily in the Hungarian language. Yet, immediately after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of Czechoslovakia , Tiso transformed himself into a Slovak nationalist and career politician. After declaration of Slovak independence from Czecho-Slovak Republic , Tiso
4753-438: The Soviets. Beneš's interest in maintaining friendly relations with the Soviet Union was motivated also by his desire to avoid Soviet encouragement of a postwar communist coup in Czechoslovakia. Beneš worked to bring Czechoslovak communist exiles in the United Kingdom into cooperation with his government, offering far-reaching concessions, including nationalization of heavy industry and the creation of local people's committees at
4850-402: The adoption of the Constitution ), and the Slovak Republic (Slovak: Slovenská Republika ) from 21 July 1939 to its end in April 1945. The country is often referred to historically as the First Slovak Republic (Slovak: prvá Slovenská Republika ) to distinguish it from the contemporary (Second) Slovak Republic , Slovakia, which is not considered its legal successor state . "Slovak State"
4947-434: The conservative revivalists were motivated by nationalism or considered contemporary spoken Czech unsuitable for formal, widespread use. 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
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#17327909174705044-697: The creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , he had various plans for Slovakia. The Hungarians initially misinformed German officials that the Slovaks wanted to join Hungary. Germany decided to make Slovakia a separate puppet state under German influence and a potential strategic base for German attacks on Poland and other regions. On 13 March 1939, Hitler invited Monsignor Jozef Tiso (the Slovak ex- prime minister who had been deposed by Czechoslovak troops several days earlier) to Berlin and urged him to proclaim Slovakia's independence. Hitler added that if Tiso had not consented, he would have allowed events in Slovakia to take place effectively, leaving it to
5141-427: The dialects of Bohemia. Czech has a moderately-sized phoneme inventory, comprising ten monophthongs , three diphthongs and 25 consonants (divided into "hard", "neutral" and "soft" categories). Words may contain complicated consonant clusters or lack vowels altogether. Czech has a raised alveolar trill , which is known to occur as a phoneme in only a few other languages, represented by the grapheme ř . Czech
5238-405: The easily separable affixes characteristic of agglutinative languages are limited. Czech inflects for case, gender and number in nouns and tense, aspect, mood , person and subject number and gender in verbs. Parts of speech include adjectives, adverbs , numbers, interrogative words , prepositions , conjunctions and interjections . Adverbs are primarily formed from adjectives by taking
5335-431: The exiled government of Czechoslovakia. Claiming that his 1938 resignation had been under duress, Beneš named himself president. Longtime People's Party leader Jan Šrámek became prime minister. By the end of 1939, though, France and Britain had extended it the right to conclude international treaties – France on 13 November and Britain on 20 December 1939 – but did not yet see those treaties as having been concluded in
5432-428: The fate of the German southern forces, losing their heavy equipment in the Kuban bridgehead , then being badly mangled near Melitopol in southern Ukraine. In June 1944, the remnant of the division, no longer considered fit for combat due to low morale, was disarmed, and the personnel were assigned to construction work. This fate had already befallen the Slovak 2nd Division earlier for the same reason. The Hlinka Guard
5529-477: The final ý or í of the base form and replacing it with e , ě , y , or o . Negative statements are formed by adding the affix ne- to the main verb of a clause, with one exception: je (he, she or it is) becomes není . Because Czech uses grammatical case to convey word function in a sentence (instead of relying on word order , as English does), its word order is flexible. As a pro-drop language , in Czech an intransitive sentence can consist of only
5626-461: The final stages of the Battle of France . It was the failure of the Allied military forces in this battle which most directly helped the ambitions of the Beneš Committee. With the fall of France, the views of the newly appointed prime minister Winston Churchill took predominance over the concerns of the waning Third Republic. He was very much clearer than his predecessor Chamberlain with respect to Czechoslovak affairs, and quickly recognized Beneš as
5723-558: The first Slovak state in history. Jozef Tiso was appointed the first Prime Minister of the new republic. The next day, Tiso sent a telegram (composed the previous day in Berlin) announcing Slovakia's independence, asking the Reich to take over the protection of the newly minted state. The request was readily accepted. Germany and Italy immediately recognized the emergent Slovak state a few weeks later. Britain and France refused to do so; in March 1939, both powers sent diplomatic notes to Berlin protesting developments in former Czechoslovakia as
5820-579: The hitherto operational Czechoslovak legation in Moscow. Official Soviet-Slovak diplomatic relations were maintained until the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in 1941, when Slovakia joined the invasion on Germany's side, and the USSR recognized the Czechoslovak government-in-exile ; Britain recognized it one year earlier. In all, 27 states either de jure or de facto recognized Slovakia. They were either Axis countries (like Romania, Finland, Hungary) or Axis-dominated semi-independent states (like Vichy France , Manchukuo ) or neutral countries like Lithuania,
5917-478: The impending invasion planned for September 1939, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) requested the assistance of Slovakia. Although the Slovak military was only six months old, it formed a small mobile combat group consisting of several infantry and artillery battalions. Two combat groups were created for the campaign in Poland alongside the Germans. The first group was a brigade-sized formation that consisted of six infantry battalions, two artillery battalions, and
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#17327909174706014-431: The language. Czech is spoken by about 10 million residents of the Czech Republic . A Eurobarometer survey conducted from January to March 2012 found that the first language of 98 percent of Czech citizens was Czech, the third-highest proportion of a population in the European Union (behind Greece and Hungary ). As the official language of the Czech Republic (a member of the European Union since 2004), Czech
6111-844: The last two are found only in loanwords such as auto "car" and euro "euro". In Czech orthography, the vowels are spelled as follows: The letter ⟨ ě ⟩ indicates that the previous consonant is palatalized (e.g. něco /ɲɛt͡so/ ). After a labial it represents /jɛ/ (e.g. běs /bjɛs/ ); but ⟨mě⟩ is pronounced /mɲɛ/, cf. měkký ( /mɲɛkiː/ ). The consonant phonemes of Czech and their equivalent letters in Czech orthography are as follows: Czech consonants are categorized as "hard", "neutral", or "soft": Hard consonants may not be followed by i or í in writing, or soft ones by y or ý (except in loanwords such as kilogram ). Neutral consonants may take either character. Hard consonants are sometimes known as "strong", and soft ones as "weak". This distinction
6208-419: The late 1950s. The United States never recognized Slovak independence. It remained consistent in their initial approach, as they never recognized the Munich Agreement , the extinction of Czechoslovakia , or any territorial changes made to Czechoslovak territory in the period 1938–1939. From the beginning, the Slovak Republic was under the influence of Germany. The so-called "protection treaty" ( Treaty on
6305-414: The legal continuation of the First Czechoslovak Republic . Seeing the end of the First Czechoslovak Republic as a fait accompli , Edvard Beneš resigned as president one week after the Munich Agreement ceded the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany . He initially fled to London. On 15 February 1939, he arrived in Chicago ; he became visiting professor at the University of Chicago , where he took refuge in
6402-404: The letter ř (capital Ř ) is very rare among languages and often claimed to be unique to Czech, though it also occurs in some dialects of Kashubian , and formerly occurred in Polish. It represents the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill ( IPA : [r̝] ), a sound somewhere between Czech r and ž (example: "řeka" (river) ), and is present in Dvořák . In unvoiced environments, /r̝/
6499-406: The majority of Slovak Jews had been sent to German-occupied Poland and it became clear that the deportees were being systematically murdered, Tiso gave a speech in Holič in which he called for Slovaks to "cast off your parasite [the Jews]" and justified continuing deportations of Jews from Slovakia. On 30 August, Hitler commented "It is interesting how this little Catholic priest Tiso is sending us
6596-474: The mercies of Hungary and Poland. During the meeting, Joachim von Ribbentrop passed on a report claiming that Hungarian troops were approaching the Slovak borders. Tiso refused to make such a decision himself, after which he was allowed by Hitler to organize a meeting of the Slovak parliament ("Diet of the Slovak Land"), which would approve Slovakia's independence. On 14 March, the Slovak parliament convened and heard Tiso's report on his discussion with Hitler and
6693-415: The name of the Czechoslovak Republic". British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden gave such assent on 18 July 1941. The United States and the Soviet Union were effectively forced to do the same later in the year, as Slovakia declared war on the two countries. With an Axis government both firmly and formally in place in Bratislava , the only friendly government left to recognize by the later half of 1941
6790-399: The name of the Czechoslovak Republic. It was in fact France itself that proved the greatest obstacle to accepting the committee as a full government-in-exile . The government of Édouard Daladier was ambivalent towards the ambitions of the Committee and of Czechoslovakia in general. Though he had publicly seen the appeasement of Hitler as the road to war, Daladier ultimately capitulated to
6887-443: The noun they modify. The following is a glossed example: Chc-i want- 1SG navštív-it visit- INF universit-u, university- SG . ACC , na on kter-ou which- SG . F . ACC chod-í attend- 3SG Slovak Republic (1939%E2%80%931945) The ( First ) Slovak Republic ( Slovak : (Prvá) Slovenská republika ), until 21 July 1939 known as the Slovak State (Slovak: Slovenský štát ),
6984-516: The official policy of the Nazi regime was in favor of an independent Slovak Republic dependent on Germany and opposed to any annexations of Slovak territory, Heinrich Himmler 's SS considered ambitious population policy options concerning the German minority of Slovakia , which numbered circa 130,000 people. In 1940, Günther Pancke , head of the SS RuSHA ("Race and Settlement Office"), undertook
7081-471: The population were employed in agriculture. The state was divided in six counties ( župy ), 58 districts ( okresy ) and 2659 municipalities. The capital, Bratislava, had over 140,000 inhabitants. The state continued the legal system of Czechoslovakia, which was modified only gradually. According to the Constitution of 1939, the "President" (Jozef Tiso) was the head of the state, the "Assembly/Diet of
7178-591: The president of a government-in-exile after the fall of France. Nevertheless, the Committee still felt somewhat insecure about this recognition, because it specifically mentioned Beneš as president, but did not explicitly link Beneš to the previously existing government. Thus, they pressed the British in April 1941 for even greater clarity. On the 18th of that month, they sent a letter to the British requesting that their agreements "be concluded, as before September, 1938, in
7275-544: The protective relationship between Germany and the Slovak State ), signed on 23 March 1939, partially subordinated its foreign, military, and economic policy to that of Germany. The German Wehrmacht established the so-called " Protective Zone " ( German : Schutzzone ) in Western Slovakia in August 1939. Following Slovak participation in the invasion of Poland in September 1939, border adjustments increased
7372-582: The return of the language to high culture . This period is known as the Czech National Revival (or Renaissance). 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 , and did not think Czech had
7469-616: The same community that had once buoyed his predecessor and friend, Tomáš Masaryk . While there, he was urged to quickly return to Europe to organize some kind of government-in-exile. He therefore returned to Europe in July to live in Paris along with several other key players in his former administration. After World War II formally began, the group became known as the Czech National Liberation Committee and immediately began to seek international recognition as
7566-457: The same time: On 23 March 1939, Hungary, having already occupied Carpatho-Ukraine , attacked from there, and the newly established Slovak Republic was forced to cede 1,697 square kilometres (655 sq mi) of territory with about 70,000 people to Hungary before the onset of World War II. Slovakia was the only Axis nation other than Germany to take part in the Invasion of Poland . With
7663-441: The spoken language. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century. In the 16th century, the division between Czech and Slovak becomes apparent, marking the confessional division between Lutheran Protestants in Slovakia using Czech orthography and Catholics, especially Slovak Jesuits, beginning to use a separate Slovak orthography based on Western Slovak dialects. The publication of
7760-465: The states of Texas , Nebraska and Wisconsin . In the 2000 United States Census , Czech was reported as the most common language spoken at home (besides English ) in Valley , Butler and Saunders Counties , Nebraska and Republic County, Kansas . With the exception of Spanish (the non-English language most commonly spoken at home nationwide), Czech was the most common home language in more than
7857-424: The upper classes. Modern standard Czech originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. 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. At some point before the 18th century, the Czech language abandoned
7954-525: The war's end. In March 1945, he gave key cabinet positions to Czechoslovak communist exiles in Moscow . During the latter years of the war, Beneš worked toward resolving the German minority problem and received consent from the Allies for a solution based on a postwar transfer of the Sudeten German population . Especially after the Nazi reprisals for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich , most of
8051-419: The wishes of Neville Chamberlain . After the war came, he and his government dithered over whether the Soviet or Nazi threat was the greater. Likewise, though he extended recognition to the committee as a non-governmental agency, his government was non-committal to Beneš himself, and saw many possibilities for a post-war Czechoslovakia. One of its principal reservations about giving governmental status to Beneš,
8148-628: Was " Na stráž !" ("On guard!"). Throughout its existence, the Hlinka Guard competed with the Hlinka party for primacy in ruling the country. In 1941 Hlinka Guard shock troops were trained in SS camps in Germany, and the SS attached an adviser to the guard. At this point many of the guardsmen who were of middle-class origin quit, and thenceforth the organization consisted of peasants and unskilled laborers , together with various doubtful elements. A social message
8245-607: Was a paramilitary organization of the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party . It was created in 1938, and it was built according to the Nazi model. Even though there was an attempt to establish it as an organization with compulsory membership for all adult citizens (except Jews) in 1939, this idea was soon changed, and membership in the Guard was voluntary. The Hlinka Guard was Slovakia's state police and most willingly helped Hitler with his plans. It operated against Jews , Czechs , Hungarians ,
8342-528: Was a partially-recognized clerical fascist client state of Nazi Germany which existed between 14 March 1939 and 4 April 1945 in Central Europe . The Slovak part of Czechoslovakia declared independence with German support one day before the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia . It controlled most of the territory of present-day Slovakia , without its current southern parts, which were ceded by Czechoslovakia to Hungary in 1938. The state
8439-804: Was created in May 1942 to stop further Hungarian expansion. It can be compared to the Little Entente . The state's most difficult foreign policy problem involved relations with Hungary, which had annexed one-third of Slovakia's territory by the First Vienna Award of 2 November 1938. Slovakia tried to achieve a revision of the Vienna Award, but Germany did not allow it. There were also constant quarrels concerning Hungary's treatment of Slovaks living in Hungary. 2.6 million people lived within
8536-686: Was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620, the Protestant intellectuals had to leave the country. This emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years' War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, especially among
8633-466: Was initially Prime Minister from 14 March 1939 until 26 October 1939. Tiso not only supported Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, but also contributed Slovak troops, which the Germans rewarded by allowing Slovakia to annex 300 square miles of Polish territory. On 1 October 1939, Tiso officially became chairmen of the Slovak People's Party . On 26 October, he became President of
8730-529: Was killed by Peter" the order of subject and object is inverted: Petr zabil Pavla ("Peter killed Paul") becomes "Paul, Peter killed" ( Pavla zabil Petr ). Pavla is in the accusative case , the grammatical object of the verb. A word at the end of a clause is typically emphasized, unless an upward intonation indicates that the sentence is a question: In parts of Bohemia (including Prague ), questions such as Jí pes bagetu? without an interrogative word (such as co , "what" or kdo , "who") are intoned in
8827-512: Was reintegrated into the recreated Third Czechoslovak Republic . The current Slovak Republic does not consider itself a successor state of the wartime Slovak Republic, instead a successor to the Czechoslovak Federal Republic . However, some nationalists celebrate 14 March as a day of independence. The official name of the country was the Slovak State (Slovak: Slovenský štát ) from 14 March to 21 July 1939 (until
8924-600: Was signed at Moscow on 6 December 1940. Slovakia declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941 and on 25 November 1941 signed anti-communist the Anti-Comintern Pact . The Slovak military participated in the war on the Eastern Front since Operation Barbarossa . In 1942, Slovakia declared war on the United Kingdom and the United States . The Croatian–Romanian–Slovak friendship proclamation
9021-460: Was that of Beneš. The remaining legal question was whether the Beneš government was actually a continuation of the First Republic, or a successor without solid constitutional underpinnings. This doubt was erased by the spring of 1942. Following almost six months of planning behind enemy lines, Czechoslovak Allied operatives in Bohemia fatally wounded Reinhard Heydrich , the dictator at the head of
9118-557: Was the fact of the murky situation in the then-independent Slovakia (which was a satellite state of the German Empire). The French government of the winter of 1939–1940 felt that Beneš was not necessarily speaking for all Czechoslovaks, based on the relatively fluid situation in Slovakia. France's diplomacy towards Beneš was therefore agile. It avoided any direct expression of support for the Beneš Committee's desire to return to
9215-586: Was the first formally independent Slovak state in history. Bratislava was declared the capital city. A one-party state governed by the far-right Hlinka's Slovak People's Party , the Slovak Republic is primarily known for its collaboration with Nazi Germany, which included sending troops to the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941. In 1940, the country joined
9312-647: Was to be gained from the Hlinka Guard , which was to be further integrated into the SS shortly. The Red Army entered Slovakia from multiple sides at once. The units of the 1st Ukrainian Front together with the members of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps crossed the Dukla Pass after Battle of the Dukla Pass on 6 October 1944. Units of the 2nd Ukrainian Front and the Romanian Army came from
9409-405: Was used colloquially, but "First Slovak Republic" was used even in encyclopedias written during the post-war Communist period. After the Munich Agreement , Slovakia gained autonomy inside Czecho-Slovakia (as former Czechoslovakia had been renamed) and lost its southern territories to Hungary under the First Vienna Award . As Hitler was preparing a mobilization into Czech territory and
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