Of all the modern Slavic languages, the Bohemian was the first
cultivated. Two bishops of Merscburg, Boso towards the middle of the
tenth century, and Werner at the close of the eleventh, as also fifty
years later another German priest, Bruno, were above all active in
promoting the holy cause of Christianity by religious instruction. The
application of Latin characters to Slavic words had long been familiar
to the German priesthood; inasmuch as very early attempts had been
made to convert the subjugated Slavic tribes, scattered through the
north of Germany.
They now were applied to the Bohemian, so far as writing was requisite
for religious instruction. According to the old chronicles, there were
even some regular schools erected in those early times, one at Budecz,
near Prague, and another somewhat later in Prague itself, where Latin
was taught. Be this as it may, the Latin and German languages had an
early influence on the formation of the Bohemian. Many foreign words
were adopted and amalgamated with the language; still more were formed
from native roots, after the model of those two idioms. In later times
this capacity of the Bohemian has been greatly improved; it being one
of the few languages, which, in philosophy, theology, and
jurisprudence, have not borrowed their terminology from the Latins and
Greeks, but formed their own technical expressions for ideas received
only in part from other nations.
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