LANGUAGE.

The official language of the Czech Republic is Czech. It is spoken by approx. 10.6 million people. Czech falls within the West Slavic language group and therefore is similar to Polish, as well as Russian and Croatian. The Czech ranks among the most complicated languages in the world. Tourists will usually make themselves understood in English and quite often also in German or Russian. The deaf are advised to use, if possible, Italian or Austrian sign language, since these are closest to Czech sign language.

Some curious things about this language are that they can pronounce words containing no vowels at all. And surprisingly, they use them quite often. For example, “prst” means “finger”, čtvrt is “quarter“ and krk means “neck”. Although the Czech Republic is a relatively small country, there are several considerably different dialects. So you may quite easily witness a situation when two confused Czechs will not understand what people from around Olomouc are saying to them.

A typical feature of  the Czech language is the strong influence of German, for example in its word-stock and in their geographical names. Another typical feature of the Czech language is the use of diacritics -small hooks (carons) and acute accents (dashes) written above the letters. These symbols indicate pronunciation and simplify spelling. The deaf are advised to use, if possible, Italian or Austrian sign language, since these are closest to Czech sign language.

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