Czech Lexical Influence on Mikławš Jakubica’s New Testament Translation (1548)

Abstract

Czech Lexical Influence on Mikławš Jakubica’s New Testament Translation (1548)

This article is devoted to Czech lexical borrowings in the Lower Sorbian translation of the New Testament of 1548. M. Jakubica used the Czech Bible for the translation, which significantly affected the lexical basis for this historical document. The main purpose of the article is to study lexical influences of Czech, which should be distinguished from the lexical influence of Polish. The results of the study show that Polish lexical influence was minimal, while the Czech lexical influence, by contrast, was quite strong. M. Jakubica borrowed Czech words from a variety of lexical-semantic groups, including conjunctions and prepositions. The translator created his own words by using loans from Czech.