We promised you an article on Czech and Slovak…so here you go :)

Earlier in the week we told you a bit about the history of Czechoslovakia and promised you an article on our languages. Even though we’re no longer one country, one of the reasons we’ve still got such a strong bond is thanks to our two languages.

How similar are Czech and Slovak?

Czech and Slovak are both West Slavic languages, and are very closely related to Polish. Be careful with that, though, because of the number of false friends (you may have heard that very innocent sounding sentences in Polish have an extremely rude meaning in Czech and Slovak)!

Although very similar, Czech and Slovak are still two different languages. If you speak one fluently, you shouldn’t have a problem understanding the other. People who lived in Czechoslovakia will remember when there were both Czech and Slovak politicians, and they’d watch both Czech and Slovak TV programmes, so they were so used to hearing and having to understand both. Young people nowadays say that they’re finding it a bit harder to understand each other, but considering Slovak music is very popular here in the Czech Republic and vice versa, they are still exposed to both languages.

Dialects

In both the Czech Republic and Slovakia you’ll come across regional dialects you can’t find in English. In the Czech Republic, there are 3 main dialects – standard Czech, Bohemian and Moravian. The closer to the Czech and Slovak border you get, the closer the languages become, so you’ll find that Moravian is very similar to Slovak. Czech is also a lot harder than Slovak, which is a very soft-sounding language.

Alphabetical differences

If you’re struggling to tell Czech and Slovak apart, your biggest clue is going to be the difference in accented letters. The letters ř, ě and ů only exist in Czech, whereas ô, ä, and ľ can only be found in Slovak.

Grammar

Both Czech and Slovak are known for their complex grammar. Gramatically they have the same structure, but the main difference is that Czech has 7 cases whereas Slovak only has 6 as it’s missing the vocative case. Although Czechs and Slovaks will be able to read eachothers language, they’ll have problems with writing because of the differences in case endings etc.

Want to learn some phrases? 😀

If you’d like more information about anything Czech or Slovak related (especially translations!) get in touch and we’ll be happy to help 🙂

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