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Comment by Toutouxc | Hacker News Reader

> There is the language for one thing.

> having an singular language

What's that?

Yeah - If singular means distinct, and even setting aside Slovak, then Czech is part of the West Slavic language family and my Polish-speaking partner says there is a degree of mutual intelligibility.

Yes, they sound very similar, but (because of historical reasons) the spelling is quite different (multiple letters in Polish vs accents/diacritics in Czech).

They probably sound as similar to each other as German does to Danish.

I'd say that's roughly correct. Czech and Slovak have a different sound, melody.

Czechs and Slovaks tend to underestimate the differences, because they largely understand each other. But that's to a large degree thanks to a large amount of interchange and exposure. These days, many young Czechs without exposure to Slovak often understand only very little Slovak.

Czecho-Slovakia was a multicultural country with more than one language in common use. This was arguably one of the shortcomings that led to its WWII era capitulation.

First, he OP specifically mentions "the Czechs", as in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia.

Second, languages had nothing to do with it. There was an idea that sacrificing a part of Czechoslovakia will be enough to keep Hitler at bay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement).

Which Czech part, Bohemia, Moravia, Czech Silesia, or ...? Was it the "regions with German-speaking majority"?

Languages had everything to do with it. "Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia, defying claims of the German-speaking inhabitants that regions with German-speaking majority should be included in the Republic of German-Austria."

But German, the language, was spoken pretty much everywhere (thanks to the Austro-Hungarian legacy).

The German-speaking inhabitants, that is a whole different story.

OK, now you're backpedaling and muddying the waters. Language and customs are the most prominent aspects of a cultural identity.

English is spoken pretty much everywhere. What's your point?

Shortcomings? What is up with these military strategic analysis that imply that Chechoslovakia could do anything but getting different degrees of crushed between Germany, Hungary and Poland?

I've noticed an uptick in recent years of people who believe the multiculturalism is harmful to a society's survival. This is extremely popular with American right wingers who would like to limit immigration or segregate people by races.

One of my favorite examples of a multi-ethnic state in Europe (kind of biased since I have some ancestry from there) is the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. That lasted a good long while with a mix of Balts, West Slavs, and East Slavs.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth being a federation was hardly a mix. Also, despite the union's somewhat long existence, it was the union's multiculturalism that arguably led to its demise.

No sir, there was a mix. Any time you see a Lithuanian surname with "-auskas" it's because of exposure to Polish culture. There were tons of Poles in Vilnius. And Lithuanian aristocracy became rulers of Poland, starting with Jogaila.

But the most ridiculous thing is that multiculturalism killed it. It was partitioned by foreign imperial powers, eg. split between Russia and Germanic powers.

I would also argue that Poland being culturally dominant in the union, and eventually translating it to political dominance (of e.g. Roman Catholics over Eastern Orthodox) severely diminished the original GDL multiculturalism, which was much more pluricentric and religiously tolerant.

And that, arguably, was one of the causes of its eventual demise - e.g. would Ukraine have rebelled if they didn't perceive themselves as second-class citizens in Rzeczpospolita? And if it didn't, would Russia be able to eventually take over half of Poland?

Read this https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1930-1938-th...

It might shape your view a bit

Not really, the Brits underestimated the Germans and Central Europe in general was sacrificed on the altar of presumingly keeping the war out of the West.

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