People from Nitra might see their dream of being officially called 'Nitrančania' - instead of the current codified form 'Nitrania' - come true if three newly elected Sieť councillors to Nitra city council keep their election promise, TASR learnt on Tuesday.
"[the word] Nitran is only known as a type of salami”, complain many people from Nitra. “We'll launch a new initiative aimed at changing the rules of the Slovak language ... From the point of legislation, it's possible to change the existing rules of the codified language, they aren't unalterable. The opinion of linguists can't be viewed as superior to the will of the majority of Nitra inhabitants”, stated the election programme of Dominika Tekeliová, Ján Greššo Jr. and Ľuboš Török. A petition to change the rules of codified Slovak concerning the collective name for Nitra inhabitants was launched three years ago. The organisers drew up the petition quite thoroughly, asking the Culture Ministry and the Ľudovít Štúr Linguistics Institute to change the rules of codified Slovak by adding a third suffix '-ančan' in the singular to the two existing suffixes for inhabitants of towns and villages: '-an' and '-can'. Linguists rejected the notion, however, stating that an additional suffix introduced from a local dialect would mess up the entire suffix system of the official Slovak language.
