01Czech is a fusional language.
Its nouns and adjectives, pronouns and numerals undergo a complex system of declension that accounts for case (7), number ( singular and plural), gender (3), animacy, and even whether words end in hard, neutral, or soft consonants.
• Verbs are conjugated for tense, number, and gender, and also display aspect.
• Word order is very flexible.
02The oldest Czech literary monuments go back to the second half of the thirteenth century.
03There are 25 consonants in Czech. Words consisting entirely of consonants are common: krk ("neck"); prst ("finger"); smrk ("pine tree"); smrt ("death"). Words beginning with five consonants are not unknown: čtvrť ("quarter") and čtvrtek ("Thursday"). The letter ⟨ř⟩ is said to be one of the most difficult letters to pronounce in the world.
04 Some Czech words have become part of the vocabulary of English as well as of other languages, e.g. "dollar" - from tolar (German: Thaler), the Czech name for the silver coin mined in Bohemia in the 16th century, "robot" - from Czech robota ("labour", "drudgery"), introduced in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. from the 1920s, or "semtex" - a plastic explosive named after Semtín, part of the city of Pardubice.
05The recommendations on standard Czech of the Institute of the Czech Language of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic are viewed as binding by the educational system, newspapers and others, although this has no legal basis.
What does Czech sound like? Listen to a Czech radio station.