Slovaks

Slovaks, a branch of the Slavs (q.v.), who dwell in the mountainous districts of north-west Hungary, and number in all about 2,000,000. They are a race of peasants, and live by cultivating the soil. In religion they are partly Lutherans, partly Roman Catholics. These people formed a constituent part of the ancient kingdom of Moravia, but have been incorporated among the subject-lands of the Hungarian crown since the beginning of the 11th century. Their language is little more than a dialect of Czech, the speech of the Bohemians. Down to the end of the 18th century the Slovaks used Czech as their written or book language, but since that period certain patriotic writers—more notably the poets Holly, Chalupka, and Sladkovitch, the philologists Bernolak and Hattala, and the novelist Tomaschik—have tried to create a pure written Slovak literature. Their efforts have met, however, with considerable opposition from both the Hungarians and the Bohemians.