Czechoslovak

Czechoslovak is the West Slavic dialect continuum of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, flanked by its cousin Sorbian in Lusatia. Its dialects emerged from common West Slavic between the 900s and 1100s, after the Magyar invasion of the 890s broke up the Great Moravian realm.

Czech and Slovak first appear in writing in the 1200s and 1300s; by the late 1300s Czech was used in official documents. The Kralice Bible, printed in Moravia between 1579 and 1593, fixed the model for standard Czech. In 1615 the Bohemian diet tried to make Czech the kingdom's sole official language, only for the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt to open an age of German dominance.

Slovak, long written in Czech forms, received a written standard in the nineteenth century through Ludovit Stur's codification. Sorbian was pressed back by German settlement and official discrimination from the 1200s onward, and Reformation Bible translations gave it literary form.