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On the Shelf: How do you say “Gazette” in…

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Okay, so this is not actually another of Andrew’s clever posts with videos showing you how to say “law” or “book” in multiple languages.

Photo by Betty Lupinacci

However, when our serials cataloger, Brian Kuhagen, showed me a title he was classifying, I immediately thought of Andrew’s posts and tying that theme (a single word in multiple languages) to our On the Shelf series.

There are many examples of multiple language titles in our collection, but in this instance we have the official gazette of the former country Czechoslovakia, which was published in three different languages:  Czech, German and Slovak.  This particular gazette was published during the period of the first Czechoslovak Republic, which existed from 1918-1939.

Pictured here is the same volume (1936) in all three languages, presumably containing identical text in each language (though apparently we never received a good many of the issues published in the Slovak language – the far right volume).

When I opened each volume to the same issue, they do indeed appear to be identical (even to my untrained eyes).

After World War II, the German version was discontinued.  And, in 1992, when Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, each new sovereign state started publishing solely in their own language.  So now we have that much more room on the shelf.

Photo by Betty Lupinacci

 

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