Purismus und Spracherneuerung
Purism and language renewal

Summary/Abstract: This paper claims the Central European language reform movements in the late 18th century and in the mid-19th century showed a number of similarities with regard to both their aims and their methods. Their main characteristic feature was the endeavor to purify the mother tongue and to introduce new words for elements of foreign (primarily Greek or Latin) specialized terminologies belonging to general education or serving at least as skills needed for orientation. This was a fundamental dilemma: to use Latin as the language of international cultural and academic relations or to give preference to mother tongues spoken by only certain language communities. Do the mother-tongue terms hinder the contacts with the international scientific world? An interesting solution of this dilemma based on some common ideas can be found in the works of Czech, Hungarian, and Croatian language reformers.

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