On the Need for Practical Knowledge of Slavic Languages, or Pre-War Polish Language Textbooks for the Czechs

Abstract

The paper presents an excerpt from the ongoing research of the beginnings of teaching Polish in Czechia. Its main focus is to analyse two textbooks for learning Polish by Iza Šaunová, designed for Czech students and published in the 1930s. The first one is called Polština pro každého (Prague 1930), the second – Mluvnice jazyka polského (Prague 1934), written by Šaunová together with a great Polish Slavicist, T. Lehr-Spławiński. The paper discusses both the structure of analysed publications, the contents, as well as applied teaching methods. Presented textbooks and their authors thus provide insight not only into the history of teaching Polish in Czechia, but also into the Czech and Polish relations in the pre-war times.