What do czechoslovakian people speak

Despite the similarities between Czech and Slovak, their literary languages emerged at different times. Both languages use the Roman alphabet, but the alphabets differ slightly. In addition to the two literary languages, a number of dialects are spoken throughout the country.

Everyday speech among villagers especially older people , for example, will usually be in dialect, whereas in urban areas the dialects are losing their foothold, especially among the educated. The Slovak literary language as it is known today was not established until the nineteenth century, although Slovak in its different dialects had been spoken for many centuries. At various times, Latin the official language of Hungary for a time , Hungarian, and Czech had been used as the literary language of the Slovaks.

As with Czech, it was the mid-nineteenth century surge of nationalism that finally saw the widespread adoption earlier efforts had limited success of what is today's literary language, based on the central dialects. Change in Slovak, as in all other languages, is an ongoing process. Words, phrases, and idioms fall out of use, while others come in to replace them. Some of today's new words are formed from Slovak elements, but many are borrowed, primarily from English and Russian.

The Russian words are part and parcel of the political and economic systems and serve to reinforce connections between the two government systems. English words come into the language mostly in the fields of science and technology display for a computer display , but also in everyday speech sexbomba for sex symbol.

These are most often words for which there are no terms in Slovak. What worries some purists is that foreign words are replacing some perfectly good Slovak words, e.

And did you know that the famous writer Franz Kafka spoke Czech? Or that Czech ranks among the most complicated languages in the world? Tourists will usually make themselves understood in English and quite often also in German or Russian. The deaf are advised to use, if possible, Italian or Austrian sign language, since these are closest to Czech sign language.

Czech is one of the most complicated languages in the world , as classified by scientists from the U. Defense Language Institute. Similarly, as Finnish, Russian, Bengali, and Thai. Franz Kafka, a German language novelist, was fluent in Czech because he lived in Prague.

Czech is also the mother tongue of the famous writer Milan Kundera , who lives in France. If however you wish to give it a go, slightly purse your lips, keep the teeth together, place the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth and vibrate it. The sound you are looking for is something like a horse neighing or a motorbike starting up.

Soon after, intellectuals, who had initially resisted the German language, followed suit. Even Czech actors began to perform in German as an official mandate. Czech became a mere dialect, and would have slipped into oblivion had it not been for some unassuming pieces of wood. The act of building puppets has long been a form of protest for the Czech people. Seventeenth-Century wood-carvers, who were more versed in sculpting Baroque seats for churches than human facsimiles, started making puppets for the actors of Bohemia soon after Ferdinand II came to power, as puppets were the only remaining entities that had the right to speak Czech in public places.

While the rest of the country and its people adhered to the newly imposed German language, wandering actors and puppet-masters spoke through the puppets in their native Slavic tongue. Most puppets are still made from wood and hang on strings like their predecessors. They dangle in shop windows, looking out as if begging onlookers to take them home and bring them to life.