Czech language

The story of the Czech language dates back to the 11th century, when the first testimony written in Czech was published in the founding charter of the city of Litoměřice in 1057. Together with Polish and Slovak, Czech belongs to the West Slavic languages branch of the Indo-European language family.

Czech really began expanding in the Middle Ages when it was introduced in the administration while the first books written in Czech were published. Later on, thanks to humanist writers, Czech stood out as a literary language and spread outside the Polish territory into Hungary and Slovakia. A powerful language, Czech was even spoken by the Polish nobility.

After a period of recession in the 17th century, when non catholic intellectuals were forced to leave the country, Czech regained its glory in the 18th and the 19th centuries thanks to the efforts of the Czech national renaissance movement, which aimed at reviving Czech culture, language and identity. It is in those days that Czech became what it is today.

Today, Czech is spoken by 11 million people, mostly in the Czech Republic, but also in Austria, Poland, Germany, or else Slovakia, where tens of thousands of Czechs stayed after the division of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The two languages are very close, that is why Slovaks and Czechs can understand each other without difficulty.

Just like the country, which is experiencing  a booming economic growth, the Czech language seems to have a promising future. 

Classification by family:
Indo-European languages > Balto-Slavic languages > Slavic languages > West
Slavic languages > Czech