Czech orthography has influenced the orthographies of other Balto-Slavic languages and some of its characters have been adopted for transliteration of Cyrillic Czech ( CHEK; endonym: čeština [ˈtʃɛʃcɪna] ), historically known as Bohemian ( boh-HEE-mee-ən, bə-; Latin: lingua Bohemica), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 12 million people including second-language speakers, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of high mutual intell Czech has one of the most phonemic orthographies of all European languages. Its alphabet contains 42 graphemes, most of which correspond to individual phonemes, and only contains one digraph: ch, which follows h in the alphabet. The characters q, w and x appear only in foreign words. The háček (ˇ) is used with certain letters to form new characters: š, ž, and č, as well as ň, ě, ř, ť, and ď (the latter five uncommon outside Czech). The last two letters are sometimes written with a comma above (ʼ, an abbreviated háček) because of their height. Czech orthography has influenced the orthographies of other Balto-Slavic languages and some of its characters have been adopted for transliteration of Cyrillic. Czech orthography reflects vowel length; long vowels are indicated by an acute accent or, in the case of the character ů, a ring. Long u is usually written ú at the beginning of a word or morpheme (úroda, neúrodný) and ů in the middle, except for loanwords (skútr) or onomatopoeia (bú). Long vowels and ě are not considered separate letters in the alphabetical order. The character ó exists only in loanwords and onomatopoeia. Czech typographical features not associated with phonetics generally resemble those of most European languages that use the Latin script, including English. Proper nouns, honorifics, and the first letters of quotations are capitalized, and punctuation is typical of other Latin European languages. Or Czech is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is the most closely related language to Czech, followed by Polish and Silesian. The West Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe. Czech is distinguished from other West Slavic languages by a The term "Old Czech" is applied to the period predating the 16th century, with the earliest records of the high medieval period also classified as "early Old Czech", but the term "Medieval Czech" is also used. The function of the written language was initially performed by Old Slavonic written in Glagolitic, later by Latin written in Latin script. Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, settling on the eastern fringes of the Frankish Empire. The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries. The diversification of the Czech-Slovak group within West Slavic began around that time, marked among other things by its use of the voiced velar fricative consonant (/ɣ/) and consistent stress on the first syllable. The Bohemian (Czech) language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the late 13th and early 14th century and administrative documents first appear towards the late 14th century. The first complete Bible translation, the Leskovec-Dresden Bible, also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were also produced outside universities. Literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. Jan Hus contributed significantly to the standardization of Czech orthography, advocated for widespread literacy among Czech commoners (particularly in religion) and made early efforts to model written Czech after the spoken language. Czech has one of the most phonemic orthographies of all European languages. Its alphabet contains 42 graphemes, most of which correspond to individual phonemes, and only contains one digraph: ch, which follows h in the alphabet. The characters q, w and x appear only in foreign words. The háček (ˇ) is used with certain letters to form new characters: š, ž, and č, as well as ň, ě, ř, ť, and ď (the latter five uncommon outside Czech). The last two letters are sometimes written with a comma above (ʼ, an abbreviated háček) because of their height. Czech orthography has influenced the orthographies of other Balto-Slavic languages and some of its characters have been adopted for transliteration of Cyrillic. Czech orthography reflects vowel length; long vowels are indicated by an acute accent or, in the case of the character ů, a ring. Long u is usually written ú at the beginning of a word or morpheme (úroda, neúrodný) and ů in the middle, except for loanwords (skútr) or onomatopoeia (bú). Long vowels and ě are not considered separate letters in the alphabetical order. The character ó exists only in loanwords and onomatopoeia. Czech typographical features not associated with phonetics generally resemble those of most European languages that use the Latin script, including English. Proper nouns, honorifics, and the first letters of quotations are capitalized, and punctuation is typical of other Latin European languages. Ordinal numbers (1st) use a point, as in German (1.). The Czech language uses a decimal comma instead of a decimal point. When writing a long number, spaces between every three digits, including those in decimal places, may be used for better orientation in handwritten texts. The number 1,234,567.89101 may be written as 1234567,89101 or 1 234 567,891 01. In proper noun phrases (except personal and settlement names), only the first word and proper nouns inside such phrases are capitalized (Pražský hrad, Prague Castle).

Sebastian Kempgen, Peter Kosta, Tilman Berger, Karl Gutschmidt. orthographies of two languages . The present - day ... consistent under the influence of literary works ( including the new translation of the Bible from 1784-1802 ) ... The present second volume completes the handbook Die slavischen Sprachen "The Slavic languages. Ein internationales Handbuch zu ihrer Struktur, ihrer Geschichte und ihrer Erforschung. An International Handbook of their History, their Structure and their Investigation". While the general conception is continued, the present volume now contains articles concerning inner and outer language history as well as problems of sociolinguistics, contact linguistics, standardology and language typology.

... Slavic languages written in Roman script , because the letter combination cz occurs among Slavic orthographies ... general transcription practices peremptorily as not being based on any ... consistency in general transcription practices ...