ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the existing discrepancy between the two levels of Czech, written and spoken. Czech grammatical terms have been infiltrated into the text as well, for those who go on to encounter them in their further studies, hear them from their teachers or from Czechs while visiting or living in the country. Standard written Czech differs in various, at times rather obvious, respects from most Czechs’ everyday spoken language. Seventeenth-century Czech writings, such as those of Comenius, and even earlier texts, are very accessible to present-day Czech readers. Czech is the language of daily communication for the 10.7 million people living in the Czech Republic. Czech belongs to the Indo-European group of languages, along with English, German and other Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages. Slovak is the most contiguous with Czech. Czechs can understand Slovak without having had to learn it and vice versa; Slovaks can easily understand and read Czech.
