Statue of J.N. Hurban (source: Petitpress)
FESTIVITIES marking the 170th anniversary of the codification of the Slovak language took place on July 14 in the municipality of Hlboké in the Senica District, where Jozef Miloslav Hurban met with his peers to codify the language.
The celebration included a festive morning mass in the Evangelical Church, and a ceremony at the Burial Mound of J.M. Hurban at the local cemetery, as well as the planting of a symbolic linden tree.
At the parish in Hlboké (located in the western-Slovak region of Záhorie) where Hurban was priest, a meeting took place between July 11 and 16, 1843, during which Hurban, Ľudovít Štúr and Michal Miloslav Hodža codified the official Slovak language and agreed on how to gradually introduce it into daily life. They used the central-Slovak dialect as its base.
On July 17, they brought their results to writer Ján Hollý at his parish in Dobrá Voda. Hollý and Jozef Bernolák were part of a group whose prior attempt to codify the Slovak language failed. They based their efforts on the western-Slovak dialect, which may explain their failure, given that this dialect was considered to be difficult to understand in other regions of Slovakia.
