The Language Introduction

The Czech Republic is a landlocked central European country surrounded by no less than five countries: Poland on the north, the Slovak Republic on the east, Hungary and Austria on the south, and the Federal Republic of Germany on the west.

The Czech Republic is about the size of New York State (area: 127,896 sq. km. or 49,381 sq. mi.). Its capital, Prague, has a population of 1,3 million. The Czech Republic consists of two major areas: Bohemia and Moravia.

The official language is Czech. The official language of the Slovak Republic is Slovak. Both languages are very similar and every Czech speaker understands Slovak and vice versa. Both are Slavic languages, closely related to Polish and Russian.

With a structure very different from German or English, Czech is a highly inflecfed language with many case endings, suffixes, and a complex set of verb endings.

However, there are several redeeming features to Czech for the non-native speaker. For example, it has only five vowels, which in pronunciation can have long or short duration. Its consonants differ a little from those of English, but most are not difficult to pronounce.

In Czech, the accent is always on the first syllable of the word. Moreover Czech verbs have only two or three tenses, which is quite different from the many tenses (twelve) of English.

In English, there are few endings: one example is the use of -s or -es for the plural of nouns; another is the use of -s for the third person singular in verbs. In contrast, Czech is a highly inflected language, with five of the nine word categories in Czech having their own sets of endings, reflecting case (grammatical usage), number (singular or plural), gender, or person.