Czech Republic Languages

The Czech language is the official language in the Czech Republic. It is from the West Slavic family of languages and specifically from the Czech-Slovak group. It is so close to the Slovak language that the two are mutually intelligible, that is, speakers of the two languages can understand each other with little effort. It goes back to the 10th Century when along with other Slavic languages, it separated from the Ancient Slavic. There are a total of 14 different dialects within the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia. The language is based on the Latin alphabet and has 42 letters with some of the letters having accents.

Czech is spoken by about 96% of the population. A census conducted in 2011 reported the following breakdown of ethnic groups in the population: 64% Czech, 5% Moravian, 1.4% Slovaks, 0.4% Poles, 0.2% Germans, 0.1% Silesians and 26% who did not specify their nationality. The country also has about 440,000 foreigners of whom Ukrainians make up the most at 140,000 followed by Slovaks, Polish, Vietnamese, and Russians.

The Czech language is among the most difficult languages to learn for foreigners, with complicated conjugations and pronunciation. English speakers may find the process of learning Czech particularly hard as there are not words who share root words.

The Czech Republic also officially recognizes the following 14 minorities; Slovaks, Russians, Romanis, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Croatians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Poles, Serbians, Rusyns, Serbians, Vietnamese, and Germans. This means that these minorities are allowed to use their languages to communicate with authorities, and if the authority is unable to understand the language, then it is upon it to get a translator at its own expense. They can even have their children taught in these languages at school. These are minority groups who have lived within the territory for a long time.