Army Slavic Explained

Army Slavic
Also Known As:	German: Armee-Slawisch
Creator:	Austro-Hungarian Army
Era:	18671918
Family:	select vocabulary
Setting:	Military communication
Map:	File:Slavs in Austria Hungary.svg
Mapcaption:	The extent of Slavic people in Austria-Hungary (1910)

Army Slavic (German: Armee-Slawisch) was a pidgin^[1] consisting of about eighty key words, mostly of Czech origin. It was developed to help overcome language barriers in Austria-Hungary and was in use until the end of World War I.

Part of the reason for the existence of this specialized language was that, while German and Hungarian were official languages, half of the soldiery was recruited from areas that spoke various Slavic languages. In all, there were eleven different official languages to contend with. While efforts were made to keep soldiers grouped by language, mixed language units still occurred.

Sources

• Book: Deak, Istvan . 1989 . Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848-1918 . Oxford University Press . 100.
• Scheer . Tamara . 2020 . Language diversity and loyalty in the Habsburg army, 1868-1918 . Habilitation Thesis . University of Vienna . en . 10.25365/thesis.65387 . 11353/10.1393884 . 184 . free . free.
• Book: Walter, John . 1999 . Central Powers' Small Arms of World War One . Crowood Press . 1-86126-124-1.

See also

• • Controlled natural language
• Toki Pona

Notes and References

1. Book: Deák . István . Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848-1918 . 1990 . Oxford University Press . Oxford, United Kingdom . 100 . 978-0-19-504505-5 . 31 May 2023.