Talk:-ej

Standard x non-standard Czech

Forms of adjectives ending with -ej such as malej, velkej, zlej are generally not considered to be a part of standard Czech vocabulary (unlike the forms malý, velký, zlý). As far as I know, they are not viewed as such by Czech native speakers, and also major Czech dictionaries do not include them into standard Czech. They are usually included into the vocabulary of the so called obecná čeština (common Czech is probably the best translation, though the word common can be misleading, meaning also simply "frequent". Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:16, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

They are the standard way Czechs actually speak. The Czech dictionaries you have in mind are not ones of standard Czech bur rather of official written Czech. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:57, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

To make the issue accessible to an English speaker: calling colloquial Czech non-standard Czech is like calling colloquial English, e.g. "guy", non-standard English. I would like to see the native English speaker who thinks "guy" to be non-standard English only because it is colloquial. One point of disanalogy is that malej is really only colloquial in its inflectional suffix and not in any other way, but I do not see that it matters. Colloquial is not non-standard. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:02, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Now, Czech dictionaries SSJC and PSJC actually do include colloquial forms. The reason why they do not include malej is not because it is colloquial but because it is not lexical but merely inflectional. Almost any adjective ending in -ý can be rendered colloquial by changing the ending to -ej; this is not something a dictictionary limited by paper space is interested in documenting on lemma level. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:49, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that the problem si more complicated (see e. g. here or here), but after I have spent more than an hour going through various sources I admit that the view of yours is one of possible views. Because it is not a crucial thing IMO, I decided not to quarrel ‎about it more. I would just not call the adjectives ending with -ej just colloquial, but common instead, since colloquial Czech is usually understood to be on the verge of "spisovná" and "nespisovná čeština" (see e. g. Slovník nespisovné češtiny, 2009, page 10), while these endings are really far from "spisovná čeština" (whatever the correct English translation of the term is). Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:23, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

The term "spisovná" approaches being nonsense. PSJC did not use the term, AFAICS. Sentences that use the term (not those that mention it) border on being meaningless. If "spisovná" means anything, it means "as found in writing" as contrasted to "as found in speech". That would be why a dictionary of "spisovná" čeština would contain colloquialisms as long as they are found in writing. But then, the English Wiktionary is one of "spisovná" English, since only forms attested in writing are being documented. I am not really able to have a truly meaningful discussion using the term "spisovná". I do not know whether "dobrej" is "spisovná" Czech; it is attested in writing, after all. A term that I think is very serviceable is "official". That's why I used the term "official written" in the entry. "official" means, as used in official documents, such as laws, contracts, police records, and such. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:46, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

But let's assume I am wrong about the near-meaninglessness, or at least nebulosity, of "spisovná". What is the definition of the term "spisovná"? If not definition, what are the detection criteria for the term "spisovná"? What is a clear example of "spisovná", what is a clear example of "nespisovná" and what is an example of a borderline case? --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:48, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

One more note. I seem to understand now that you are translating "spisovná" as "standard", following the lead of the two links that you posted above. Also Google translate offers "standard" as a translation of "spisovná". I think that the translation is approximate at best, but I am even more curious than before what "spisovná" really means, and would be grateful for having some of the above questions answered. Like, are any entries from Category:Czech vulgarities included in "spisovná"? Like, is "prdel" part of "spisovná"? -Dan Polansky (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that the expression "spisovná čeština" is used in at least two senses. First of them is defined e. g. in the mentioned Slovník nespisovné češtiny: "Spisovná čeština je kodifikovaný útvar českého národního jazyka, který plní národně reprezentativní funkci. Užívá se v oficiální komunikaci, vědeckých pracích, úředních dokumentech apod.", which is close to your understanding in the first contributions on this page. However, many people apply it also to non-official usage. I know some people who are proud that they allegedly always speak spisovně (which they try to do no matter of the level of the officiallity of the situation). In this sense the expression refers neither to the used means of communication (i. e. written, in official documents etc.) nor to the formalness of the situation, but to the supposed "correctness" and general social acceptibility of the language used.

The vulgarities that you mentioned would be considered to belong into nespisovná čeština in both of these two senses. Similarly, Hana Molnarová writes in Slovník nespisovné češtiny: "K substandardu (which she uses as a synonym for "nespisovná čeština") náleží také vulgární a obscénní slovní zásoba...". --Jan Kameníček (talk) 02:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much. The above suggests that the word "spisovný" has little linguistic value. The circumstance that "spisovný" is sometimes translated as "standard" is unfortunate as long as it is used to mean "as codified for official or representative function", as per the definition you qouted in Czech. Such a definition is fundamentally non-linguist, letting a group of elects stipulate for us what is and what is not "spisovný" while giving us close to no criteria. Such a definition leads to authoritarianism: the term "spisovná" ends up with with very little of anything like intension and is defined by its extension, i.e. the full list of items belonging to it; in the end, to tell whether a term is "spisovná", the user of the language has to look it up at a comprehensive list of "spisovný" terms published by the elects. People end up claiming that a term is not "spisovný" since it is not in the list of approved terms.

I found your notes on "some people" also interesting; their use of the word can even less be used as a basis for lexicographical labeling than the 1st sense you mention, but it is an interesting fact of usage of the word "spisovný" and of the psychology of these people.

Given the above, do you agree to switch, in the mainspace of -ej, from "standard" to "official written" or "official", to prevent misleading the reader? --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:24, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Some links:

• spisovný in Příruční slovník jazyka českého, 1935–1957
• spisovný in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého, 1960–1971, 1989
• Slovník nespisovné češtiny - o knize at slangy.cz
• Slovník nespisovné češtiny - O češtině, hlavně o té nespisovné at slangy.cz

--Dan Polansky (talk) 10:12, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I think that the value of the term is among others given also by the frequency of the term in lingustic and other usage, and this frequency is very high. Czech readers of dictionaries expect to be noted when some word is not spisovné.

I understand that you disagree with the way how spisovný is defined, i. e. as codified by an authority in a set of accepted terms and forms, but disagreeing is the maximum that we can (or should) do about it. This attitude has a long tradition in the Czech language, accepted by the majority of speakers, and has a big influence on the practical use of the Czech language. I think that a similar attitude of standardization was adopted in some other languages as well, though I do not know many details about it. Our goal is to describe the way the language is used, not to correct it, and if the speakers of the language distinguish between spisovná and nespisovná vocabulary, accepting the above described codification attitude, our dictionary should reflect it.

In the context of -ej I agree to switch to "official". Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. These so-called "linguists" work in the prescriptivist continental tradition, whereas the English Wiktionary is a descriptivist dictionary. I pointed out the linguistic weakness of the term, especially the apparent lack of real intension; pointing out that the term is often used does not salvage the term from doing a poor job from the scientific perspective.

The suffix -ej is used to create colloquial, actually spoken language, not some sort of argot on the margin of use. The suffix -ej is more commonly used in the actually spoken Czech than suffix -ý. Suffix -ý is only found in dialects and in the artificial language of these "educated" people you referred to.

Furthermore, we cannot really use the word "spisovný" to label things here; we have to use an English word. The English word "standard" does not do the job. You have to show that the word "standard" will not mislead the user of the dictionary, and this you have failed to do, from what I can see. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Re: "disagreeing is the maximum that we can (or should) do": That looks like nonsense. I can remove the misleading term "standard" from -ej, so I do have the option. It is the option of upholding the descriptivist scientific tradition in this descriptivist Angloamerican dictionary. I have defended this descriptivist tradition that tries to describe things as they actually are before, and I know it will get increasingly harder as more Czechs brought up via such masterpieces of language teaching as "diktát" arive. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:37, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Finally, SSJC--Slovník spisovného jazyka českého--contains vulgarities[1], although not all of them. Then which is it, are vulgarities spisovné or not? These users of the word "spisovný" are a joke, and I absolutely don't believe that speaker of Czech at large make an actual distinction between spisovný and nespisovný that a Martian linguist could observe. Neutral vs. colloquial, yes, neutral vs. vulgar, yes, neutral vs. slang, yes, spisovný vs. nespisovný, humbug. Even dictionaries do not use labels "spisovný" and "nespisovný" as a lexicographical label on their entry level. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:53, 23 January 2016 (UTC)