ABSTRACT
Czech written records go back to the tenth century. Between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, the language underwent a rapid development. Literary Czech crystallized on the basis of fourteenth-century Central Bohemian dialects. It was significantly influ enced by the work of the Czech thinker and religious reformer Jan Hus (born c. 1 372, burnt at the stake 1415), who was rector of Prague University. Lexical codification of the lan guage took place in the sixteenth century. The modem language shows an internal stratifi cation into literary Czech (universally used in writing and, in a spoken form, in public com munication) and conversational Czech, with original local dialects having coalesced into interdialects. The most widespread of these is known as obecrui cestina or 'common Czech ' . The spoken form of literary Czech has now adopted some of the features of obecrui ce!tina and is consequently showing greater flexibility than standard literary Czech.
