Basic information on the spoken languages:

The Czech language forms together with Slovak, Polish, and Sorbian, the western branch of the Slavic languages. Slovak, the language of Slovakia, closely resembles Czech. Both languages used the Czech literary language, until the middle of the 19th century, when a separate Slovak literary language, based on a dialect of central Slovakia, was created. In current usage, the two languages show only slight phonetic and syntactic differences. Slovak has a somewhat more archaic sound system, whereas Czech is somewhat more conservative in its inflections.

Czech differs from some other Slavic languages in the characteristic sentence intonation, the first-syllable word accent, the absence of elision, the use of the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic, the exceptionally free word order, and the prominence given to vocalic r and l. The quality of a ringing, staccato speech distinguishes it from other West Slavic languages.

Before the 11th century Czechs wrote in Old Church Slavonic, the first Slavic literary language, which had been developed by Saints Cyril and Methodius for missionary work in Greater Moravia (now Slovakia and the eastern region of the Czech Republic). In the 11th century two important linguistic events took place: in the West, including Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, Latin replaced Old Church Slavonic for church and literary use, and the regional Slavic dialects began to develop into separate languages. After centuries in which Czech was a despised and suppressed peasant tongue, the 14th-century Bohemian religious reformer Jan Hus standardized Czech spelling. His stature as a national hero endowed the peasant vernacular he used with a new dignity. The work of Hus was consolidated and advanced during the 15th and 16th centuries by the Unity of Brethern, a Protestant sect later known as the Moravian Brethern. The writings of this sect stabilized the Czech language and determined its future as a literary languagee. Except for the growth of vocabulary, the Czech language has not changed significantly since the 16th century.

Virtually the entire adult population of the Czech Republic is literate. Education is compulsory for all children between the ages of 6 and 16, and most children also attend kindergarten. In the early 1990s about 1.115.000 students were enrolled in primary schools, and some 319.000 students attended general secondary, vocational, and teacher-training schools. More than 114.000 attended nearly two dozen higher educational facilities.

On 18-12-97 the Czech Republic has ratified the European Framework Convention of National Minorities.

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