Orthographia Bohemica

Product detailed description

This book contains an edition of a 15th-century Latin treatise which, without the author's name and without a title, has survived in a single complete, though not perfect, copy and in one extract.

The Orthographia Bohemica, as this text has been conventionally referred to by its contents since it was discovered in the 19th century, is a remarkable expression of linguistic reflection, a recommendation on how to use diacritics to adapt the repertoire of Latin letters for the effective writing of Czech.

The volume offers several presentations of the text. It contains reproductions of the manuscript from the collection of copies of the priest Kříž of Telč and a brief manuscript extract, a diplomatic transcription intended as an aid to reading the manuscript, a standardized critical edition of the Latin text (ed. Kateřina Voleková), a translation of the treatise into Czech (translated by Ondřej Koupil) and into English (translated by Marcela Koupilová and David Livingstone).
The introduction to the edition, written by Kateřina Voleková and Michal Dragoun, is published in Czech and English. The book was written at the Institute of the Czech Language of the CAS as a result of the Czech Republic Grant Agency project No. 16-00598S Orthographia Bohemica and the Namesti Linguistic Series (Philological Analysis and Critical Editions). It follows the Grammatica Bohemica series published by KLP - Koniasch Latin Press. It is published simultaneously with the first edition, the so-called náměstí Grammar B. Optát, P. Gzel and V. Philomatha.