Názory Daniela Adama z Veleslavína na český jazyk
Daniel Adam of Veleslavín’s views on the Czech language

Summary/Abstract: The paper is devoted to the views of Daniel Adam of Veleslavin (1546–1599) on the Czech language as captured in the prefaces to the books he published in his Prague printing house. On the one hand, Veleslavin considered Czech to be a language equal in quality and potency to other languages – Latin, Greek, German. At the same time, he considered it necessary to further develop the Czech language, especially by acquiring quality translations from foreign languages into Czech and by creating language books (dictionaries, grammars) that would serve especially students. He laments the fact that few people are involved in this care of the Czech language, as it is a socially unrewarding activity. In his characteristics of the Czech language, Daniel Adam of Veleslavin follows the earlier apologies of the Czech language written from the end of the 15th century and during the 16th century by Viktorin Kornel of Všehrd, Mikuláš Konáč of Hodiškov, Václav Pisecký, Řehoř Hrubý of Jelení and Jan Blahoslav. In this paper we analyse the expressions used by these personalities in their texts to evaluate the Czech language, which were also adopted by Daniel Adam of Veleslavin in his prefaces.

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