Both Chinese attempts
to devise a Latinized script for Chinese and Pan-Slavic thought in Slovakia
illustrate the situation in which language planners and patriots imagine
a single national language divided into “literary dialects.” In this
situation, the suggested orthography of the national language has certain
characters and symbols only used by speakers of certain “dialects” of the
national language. The situation seems to be rather unstable, and in
both cases the proposed multi-dialectical orthographies failed: Chinese retained
a pan-dialectical character script and a single Chinese nationality whereas
the various Slavic nations have acquired separate orthographic systems. “Literary
Dialect” schemes illustrate the relationship between nation-building
and the codification of particularist orthographies.