The Czech language
The Czech language (becomes outdated: böhmische language) belongs to the West-Slavic branch of the indogermanischen family of languages.
The Czech is spoken from about 12 million people as a mother tongue (state: 1999) on which about 10 millions live in Czechia where it is the officialese. Since the 1st of May, 2004 Czech is also an officialese of the EU. The science which deals with the Czech language is the Bohemistik.
In Czech and In Slovak are clear mutually. In writing both languages are easier distinguishable by the letters ř, ě and ů which there are in the Czech, but not in the Slovak (for the debate see below). However, there are in the Slovak the letters ä, ľ, ŕ and ĺ, the consonant combinations dz and d ž and the diphthongs ia, ie, iu and ô from which there is not d ž in the Czech only very seldom and the others at all.
By the common history and connection in Czechoslovakia Slovaks and Czechs understand each other relatively easily, indeed, the younger generation which has been socialised after the separation of Slovakia and Czechia linguistically already does itself a little heavier. Still today of that in spite of official documents are automatically recognised into respective language mutually between Czechia and Slovakia and the right to use the other language in the office traffic is granted legally even explicitly like at the moment of the common state, namely in minority linguistic law 184/1999 Zb. in Slovakia and in Verwaltungordnugsgesetz 500/2004 Sb. in Czechia. Gustáv Slamečka, minister of transport in the Czech caretaker government of Jan Fischer and Slovak citizen, the Slovak language uses during the exercise of his office. TV contributions into in each case other language are emitted of course untranslated one.
A more exact treatment of the differences between both languages is found in the article differences between the Czech ones and the Slovak language.
The debate of the Czech is valid into German as difficult, because of the sibilants and ř, because of in every position distinct h and because of syllables without with r and l. E.g., becomes the local name Brno (Ger.: Brünn) zweisilbig spoken. This is illustrated with pleasure by the „sentence absolutely free of vowel“ Strč prst skrz krk (Ger.: Put the finger by the neck!).
