Army Slavic

Army Slavic (Armee-Slawisch) was a pidgin consisting of about eighty key words, mostly of Czech origin. It was developed to help overcome language barriers in Austria-Hungary and was in use until the end of World War I.

Part of the reason for the existence of this specialized language was that, while German and Hungarian were official languages, half of the soldiery was recruited from areas that spoke various Slavic languages. In all, there were eleven different official languages to contend with. While efforts were made to keep soldiers grouped by language, mixed language units still occurred.