Re: Lack of ambiguity in Czech, was Re: EU allumettes

Doug Dee wrote:
> Tommie Powell had written:
>
> >Actually, there are some natlangs that are very nearly
> >impossible to make ambiguous statements in (without
> >violating mandatory rules of grammar).  Czech is one
> >-- so the Czechs have become adept at sneaking
> >ambiguity into sentences by slurring key words (so that
> >listeners can imagine that something else is being said)!
>
> It's a bit cruel to make a statement like that without giving
> some examples of how Czech is supposed to manage this
> trick, or at least referring us to a book or other source.
Okay, here goes.

The Czech lands were part of the Austo-Hungarian Empire
for hundreds of years.  Until 1848, they weren't treated any
worse than the empire's other Slavic peoples.  But they
revolted in 1848 and, after their revolt was crushed, the
empire instituted draconian measures against them --
including forbidding the speaking of their language!

That attempt to abolish their language lasted about 40 years
and nearly succeeded.  Only peasants continued to speak it
(and only with close relatives, in the privacy of their homes).
So the language was reduced to about 650 words before
the empire eased up on its ban ever-so-slightly (by allowing
Czechs to form clubs to do calisthenics together, and letting
them speak Czech with each other in those "Sokol" clubs).

Czech intellectuals saw that as a golden opportunity to revive
the Czech language.  But they decided that the "new" Czech
language should be "pure Czech" -- with no borrowings from
foreign languages -- so its entire vocabulary would have be
built out of the 650 words that the peasants had preserved.

So Czech is, to a large extent, a conlang created by Czech
intellectuals through the Sokol movement in the 1890s.
And because it can express everything with variations of only
about 650 words, it's easy to find words sufficiently similar
to be mistaken for each other when they're slurred.

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