Czech orthography


Czech orthography is a system of rules for correct writing in the Czech language.
The modern Czech orthographic system is diacritic, having evolved from an earlier system which used many digraphs. The caron is added to standard Latin letters to express sounds which are foreign to the Latin language. The acute accent is used for long vowels.
The Czech orthography is considered the model for many other Slavic languages using the Latin alphabet; Slovak orthography being its direct revised descendant, while the Croatian Gaj's Latin alphabet and its Slovene alphabet descendant system are largely based on it. All of them make use of similar diacritics and also have a similar, usually interchangeable, relationship between the letters and the sounds they are meant to represent.

Alphabet

The Czech alphabet consists of 42 letters.
LetterName
A aá
Á ádlouhé á
á s čárkou
B bbé
C ccé
Č ččé
D ddé
Ď ďďé
E eé
É édlouhé é
é s čárkou
Ě ěije,
é s háčkem
F fef
G ggé
H hhá
Ch chchá
I ií,
měkké i
Í ídlouhé í,
dlouhé měkké í
í s čárkou
měkké í s čárkou
J jjé
K kká
L lel
M mem
N nen
Ň ňeň
O oó
Ó ódlouhé ó
ó s čárkou
P ppé
Q qkvé
R rer
Ř řeř
S ses
Š šeš
T tté
Ť ťťé
U uú
Ú údlouhé ú,
ú s čárkou
Ů ůů s kroužkem
V vvé
W wdvojité vé
X xiks
Y yypsilon,
krátké tvrdé ý
Ý ýdlouhé ypsilon,
dlouhé tvrdé ý
ypsilon s čárkou
tvrdé ý s čárkou
Z zzet
Ž žžet

The letters Q, W and X are used exclusively in foreign words, and the former two are replaced with Kv and V once the word becomes "naturalized"; the digraphs dz and dž are also used mostly for foreign words and do not have a separate place in the alphabet.

Orthographic principles

Czech orthography is primarily phonemic because an individual grapheme usually corresponds to an individual phoneme. However, some graphemes and letter groups are remnants of historical phonemes which were used in the past but have since merged with other phonemes. Some changes in the phonology have not been reflected in the orthography.
GraphemeIPA Notes
a
á
e
é
ě, /jɛ/Marks palatalization of preceding consonant; see usage rules [|below]
iPalatalizes preceding,, or ; see usage rules below
íPalatalizes preceding,, or ; see usage rules below
o
óOccurs mostly in words of foreign origin.
u
úSee usage rules below
ůSee usage rules below
ySee usage rules below
ýSee usage rules below

Voicing assimilation

All the obstruent consonants are subject to voicing or devoicing ; spelling in these cases is morphophonemic. An exception is the cluster, in which the is voiced to only in Moravian dialects, while in Bohemia the is devoiced to instead. Devoicing changes its articulation place: it becomes. After unvoiced consonants is devoiced: for instance, in 'three', which is pronounced. Written voiced or voiceless counterparts are kept according to the etymology of the word, e.g. odpadnout - od- is a prefix; written is devoiced here because of the following voiceless.
For historical reasons, the consonant is written k in Czech words like kde or kdo. This is because the letter g was historically used for the consonant. The original Slavic phoneme changed into in the Old-Czech period. Thus, is not a separate phoneme in words of domestic origin; it occurs only in foreign words.

Final devoicing

Unlike in English but like German and Russian, voiced consonants are pronounced voicelessly in the final position in words. In declension, they are voiced in cases where the words take on endings.
Compare:

"Soft" I and "Hard" Y

The letters ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are both pronounced, while ⟨í⟩ and ⟨ý⟩ are both pronounced. ⟨y⟩ was originally pronounced as in contemporary Polish. However, in the 14th century, this difference in standard pronunciation disappeared, though it has been preserved in some Moravian dialects. In words of native origin "soft" ⟨i⟩ and ⟨í⟩ cannot follow "hard" consonants, while "hard" ⟨y⟩ and ⟨ý⟩ cannot follow "soft" consonants; "neutral" consonants can be followed by either vowel:
Softž, š, č, ř, c, j, ď, ť, ň
Neutralb, f, l, m, p, s, v, z
Hardh, ch, k, r, d, t, n, g

When ⟨i⟩ or ⟨í⟩ are written after ⟨d, t, n⟩ in native words, these consonants are soft, as if they were written ⟨ď, ť, ň⟩. That is, the sounds are written ⟨di, dí, ti, tí, ni, ní⟩ instead of ⟨ďi, ďí, ťi, ťí, ňi, ňí⟩, e.g. in čeština. The sounds are denoted, respectively, by ⟨dy, dý, ty, tý, ny, ný⟩. In words of foreign origin, ⟨di, ti, ni⟩ are pronounced ; that is, as if they were written ⟨dy, ty, ny⟩, e.g. in diktát, dictation.
Historically the letter ⟨c⟩ was hard, but this changed in the 19th century. However, in some words it is still followed by the letter ⟨y⟩: tác – tácy.
Because neutral consonants can be followed by either ⟨i⟩ or ⟨y⟩, in some cases they distinguish homophones, e.g. být vs. bít, mýt vs. mít. At school pupils must memorize word roots and prefixes where ⟨y⟩ is written; ⟨i⟩ is written in other cases. Writing ⟨i⟩ or ⟨y⟩ in endings is dependent on the declension patterns.

Letter Ě

The letter ⟨ě⟩ is a vestige of Old Czech palatalization. The originally palatalizing phoneme /ě/ became extinct, changing to or, but it is preserved as a grapheme which can never appear in the initial position.
There are two ways in Czech to write long : ⟨ú⟩ or ⟨ů⟩. ⟨ů⟩ cannot occur in an initial position, while ⟨ú⟩ occurs almost exclusively in the initial position or at the beginning of a word root in a compound.
Historically, long ⟨ú⟩ changed into the diphthong ⟨ou⟩ , though not in word-initial position in the prestige form. In 1848 ⟨ou⟩ at the beginning of word-roots was changed into ⟨ú⟩ in words like to reflect this. Thus, the letter ⟨ú⟩ is written at the beginning of word-roots only: úhel, trojúhelník, except in loanwords: skútr.
Meanwhile, historical long ⟨ó⟩ changed into the diphthong ⟨uo⟩. As was common with scribal abbreviations, the letter ⟨o⟩ in the diphthong was sometimes written as a ring above the letter ⟨u⟩, producing ⟨ů⟩, e.g. kóň > kuoň > kůň, like the origin of the German umlaut. Later, the pronunciation changed into, but the grapheme ⟨ů⟩ has remained. It never occurs at the beginning of words: dům, domů.
The letter ⟨ů⟩ now has the same pronunciation as the letter ⟨ú⟩, but alternates with a short ⟨o⟩ when a word is inflected, thus showing the historical evolution of the language.

Agreement between the subject and the predicate

The predicate must be always in accordance with the subject in the sentence - in number and person, and with past and passive participles also in gender. This grammatical principle affects the orthography – it is especially important for the correct choice and writing of plural endings of the participles.
Examples:
GenderSg.Pl.English
masculine animatepes byl koupenpsi byli koupenia dog was bought/dogs were bought
masculine inanimatehrad byl koupenhrady byly koupenya castle was bought/castles were bought
femininekočka byla koupenakočky byly koupenya cat was bought/cats were bought
neuterměsto bylo koupenoměsta byla koupenaa town was bought/towns were bought

The mentioned example shows both past and passive participles. The accordance in gender takes effect in the past tense and the passive voice, not in the present and future tenses in active voice.
If the complex subject is a combination of nouns of different genders, masculine animate gender is prior to others and the masculine inanimate and feminine genders are prior to the neuter gender.
Examples:
Priority of genders:

Punctuation

The use of the full stop, the colon, the semicolon, the question mark and the exclamation mark is similar to their use in other European languages. The full stop is placed after a number if it stands for ordinal numerals, e.g. 1. den – the 1st day.
The comma is used to separate individual parts in complex-compound sentences, lists, isolated parts of sentences, etc. Its use in Czech is different from English. Subordinate clauses must be always separated from their principal clauses, for instance. A comma is not placed before a, i, ani and nebo when they connect parts of sentences or clauses in copulative conjunctions. It must be placed in non-copulative conjunctions. A comma can, however, occur in front of the word a if the former is part of comma-delimited parenthesis: Jakub, můj mladší bratr, a jeho učitel Filip byli příliš zabráni do rozhovoru. Probírali látku, která bude u zkoušky, a též, kdo na ní bude. A comma also separates subordinate conjunctions introduced by compostide conjunctions a proto and a tak.
Examples:
Quotation marks. The first one preceding the quoted text is placed to the bottom line:
Other types of quotation marks: ‚‘ »«
Apostrophes are used rarely in Czech. They can denote a missing sound in non-standard speech, but it is optional, e.g. řek' or řek.

Capital letters

The first word of every sentence and all proper names are capitalized. Special cases are:
In the 9th century, Glagolitic script was used, during the 11th century it was replaced by Latin script.
There are five periods in the development of the Czech Latin-based orthographic system:
;Primitive orthography : For writing sounds which are foreign to the Latin alphabet, letters with similar sounds were used. The oldest known written notes in Czech originate from the 11th century. The literature was written predominantly in Latin in this period. Unfortunately, it was very ambiguous at times, with c, for example, being used for c, č, and k.
;Digraphic orthography : Various digraphs were used for non-Latin sounds. The system was not consistent and it also did not distinguish long and short vowels. It had some features that Polish orthography has kept, such as cz, rz instead of č, ř, but was still crippled by ambiguities, such as spelling both s and š as s/ss, z and ž as z, and sometimes even c and č both as cz, only distinguishing by context. Long vowels such as á were sometimes written double as aa. Other features of the day included spelling j as g and v as w, as the early modern Latin alphabet had not by then distinguished j from i or v from u.
;Diacritic orthography : Introduced probably by Jan Hus. Using diacritics for long vowels and "soft" consonants was suggested for the first time in "De orthographia Bohemica" around 1406. Diacritics replaced digraphs almost completely. It was also suggested that the Prague dialect should become the standard for the Czech language. Jan Hus is considered to be the author of that work but there is some uncertainty about this.
;Brethren orthography : The Bible of Kralice, the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages by the Czech Brethren, became the model for the literary form of the language. The punctus rotundus was replaced by the caron. There were some differences from the current orthography, e.g. the digraph ſſ was used instead of š; ay, ey, au instead of aj, ej, ou; v instead of u ; w instead of v; g instead of j; and j instead of í. Y was written always after c, s and z and the conjunction i was written y.
;Modern orthography : During the period of the Czech National Renaissance, Czech linguists codified some reforms in the orthography. These principles have been effective up to the present day. The later reforms in the 20th century mostly referred to introducing loanwords into the Czech language and their adaptation to the Czech orthography.

Computer encoding

In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet, among them: