Czech (Četina)
Czech belongs to the western group of Slavic languages, along with Slovak, Polish, and Serbian. More loosely it is related to the languages forming the east Slavic group (Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian) and the southern Slavic group (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene, Serbian, and Croatian).
Czech has about 10 million speakers in the Czech Republic and about 200 000 speakers in other countries, mostly emigrants and children of emigrants who left the country in sizable migrations around World War I, World War II, and the years 1948 and 1968. Many Czech speakers can be found especially in the United States, but also in Austria, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Croatia, in Western Romania, in Australia, and Canada. Several tens of thousands of Czechs have continued to live in the Slovak Republic after the split of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992.
Typologically, Czech represents a rather strong example of inflectional. Due to the fact that inflectional endings express two or three functions at the same time, the grammatical information in the Czech words is somewhat condensed. Thus, the Czech word forms tend to be of medium length (7-8 letters distributed into 2-3 syllables). To help distinguish the functions of endings and to help resolve the almost inevitable homonymy, Czech has evolved 4 gender distinctions in nouns (masculine inanimate, masculine animate, feminine and neutre).
Usually, the internal structure of Czech words is made up of several morphemes, typically of a single root and prefixes and/or suffixes. Derivation is rather rich in nouns, as there are several hundred suffixes in use, and slightly less in adjectives, while verbs, on the other hand, abound in prefixes (up to some 20 for the same verbal stem).
Going down to the morpheme structure, more particularly to the root, Czech is very high on the list of languages with rich consonant clusters. Thus, words like zvláť (especially) are by no means exceptional.
Czech belongs to the western group of Slavic languages, along with Slovak, Polish, and Serbian. More loosely it is related to the languages forming the east Slavic group (Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian) and the southern Slavic group (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene, Serbian, and Croatian).
Czech has about 10 million speakers in the Czech Republic and about 200 000 speakers in other countries, mostly emigrants and children of emigrants who left the country in sizable migrations around World War I, World War II, and the years 1948 and 1968. Many Czech speakers can be found especially in the United States, but also in Austria, Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Croatia, in Western Romania, in Australia, and Canada. Several tens of thousands of Czechs have continued to live in the Slovak Republic after the split of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992.
Typologically, Czech represents a rather strong example of inflectional. Due to the fact that inflectional endings express two or three functions at the same time, the grammatical information in the Czech words is somewhat condensed. Thus, the Czech word forms tend to be of medium length (7-8 letters distributed into 2-3 syllables). To help distinguish the functions of endings and to help resolve the almost inevitable homonymy, Czech has evolved 4 gender distinctions in nouns (masculine inanimate, masculine animate, feminine and neutre).
Usually, the internal structure of Czech words is made up of several morphemes, typically of a single root and prefixes and/or suffixes. Derivation is rather rich in nouns, as there are several hundred suffixes in use, and slightly less in adjectives, while verbs, on the other hand, abound in prefixes (up to some 20 for the same verbal stem).
Going down to the morpheme structure, more particularly to the root, Czech is very high on the list of languages with rich consonant clusters. Thus, words like zvláť (especially) are by no means exceptional.