topic:
I don't want to totally hickjack the thread but I'd like to clear something. The idea that Czech and Slovak were totally dissimilar languages and only after Czechoslovakia emerged became similar is not quite right. (the "Czechs" and "Slovaks" were in the same state as early as in the 9th century in a principality called Grand Moravia, but that's another thing).
1) languages don't end at states' borders. Czech and Slovak belong to the same language family, they've always been inherently similar to a degree.
2) But all languages evolve eg. lazier pronunciation, grammar unification, grammar simplification, the need to name new things, favouring/discouriging the use of a certain dialect or sociolect... and they also evolve under the influence of other languages / in this case of Slovak it would be Russian (Eastern block), Czech and even Hungarian. (so as flanker explained, this complex development would be the reason why the emmigrants from the US were not able to understand modern Slovak so well because they were not there to experience it, their Slovak language in the US stagnated)
3) but what we can probably agree on is that in Czechoslovakia the similarities of the two languages were much more highlighted and promoted even by the government to build the national feelings of both Czechs and Slovaks together, in a textbook from 1930s Czech and Slovak were even considered only dialects of Czechoslovak language...
So, I couldn't quite work out how the languages had managed to develop together.
So, from your story, it appears that it was only during the period that Czechoslovakia existed that the languages became so, well, identical. Wow! Of course, it makes things easier if everybody in what was now a single country could understand each other. But it is amazing that a language can change so fundamentally in such a short time. Like, Czechoslovakia only existed for 80 years - that is only a couple of generations!
Thinking of English, it took nearly a millennium to get from something that is pretty-much incomprehensible to modern-day speakers to what we have today. Yet with Slovakian, it took less than a century.
CaroLiza_fan
I don't want to totally hickjack the thread but I'd like to clear something. The idea that Czech and Slovak were totally dissimilar languages and only after Czechoslovakia emerged became similar is not quite right. (the "Czechs" and "Slovaks" were in the same state as early as in the 9th century in a principality called Grand Moravia, but that's another thing).
1) languages don't end at states' borders. Czech and Slovak belong to the same language family, they've always been inherently similar to a degree.
2) But all languages evolve eg. lazier pronunciation, grammar unification, grammar simplification, the need to name new things, favouring/discouriging the use of a certain dialect or sociolect... and they also evolve under the influence of other languages / in this case of Slovak it would be Russian (Eastern block), Czech and even Hungarian. (so as flanker explained, this complex development would be the reason why the emmigrants from the US were not able to understand modern Slovak so well because they were not there to experience it, their Slovak language in the US stagnated)
3) but what we can probably agree on is that in Czechoslovakia the similarities of the two languages were much more highlighted and promoted even by the government to build the national feelings of both Czechs and Slovaks together, in a textbook from 1930s Czech and Slovak were even considered only dialects of Czechoslovak language...