Czech orthography is a system of rules for correct writing in the Czech language. It is primarily phonetic but there are some exceptions according to historical and etymological principles.

The Czech orthographic system is diacritic. The caron is added to standard Latin letters for expressing sounds which are strandge to the Latin language (but some digraphs have been kept - ch, dž). The acute accent is used for long vowels.

Exceptions

The exceptions from the phonetic principle in the Czech orthography originate in the history and etymology. The main exceptions are following:

"Soft" I and "Hard" Y

The letters i/í and y/ý are both pronounced . Y was originally pronounced as in contemporary Polish or Russian. However, in modern Czech, this difference in pronunciation has disappeared. In words of domestic origin, "soft" i is written only after "soft" or "ambiguous" consonants while "hard" y follows "hard" or "ambiguous" consonants.

Letter groups di/dí, ti/tí and ni/ní are written instead of ďi/ďí, ťi/ťí and ňi/ňí. Pronounced is denoted by dy/dý, ty/tý, ny/ný.

In words of foreign origin, di, ti, ni is pronounced as in dy, ty, ny, e.g. in diktát, dictation.

Ambiguous consonants can be followed by both i and y. In some cases, they distinguish various meanings of words, e.g. být (to be) vs. bít (to beat), mýt (to wash) vs. mít (to have). In the word roots and prefixes, y is written in enumerated words and their derivatives. Pupils must learn up these words at school. I is written in other cases
Writing i or y in endings is dependent on the declension pardigms.

Letter Ě

This letter can never be the first in a word and is pronounced according to the preceding consonant:

• Dě, tě, ně is written instead of ďe, ťe, ňe (analogically to di, ti, ni).
• Bě, pě, vě, fě is written instead of bje, pje, vje, fje. But in some words (vjezd, entry, drive-in, objem, volume), bje, vje is written because –je- is preceded by prefixes v- or ob- in such cases.
• Mě is written instead of mňe. For etymological reasons, mně is written in some words (jemný, soft -> jemně, softly).

Voicing assimilation

See also: Phonation

Voiced consonants can be pronounced voiceless, and voiceless consonants as voiced respectively, so the whole consonant group is often pronounced voiced resp. voiceless. Written voiced resp. voiceless counterparts are kept according to the etymology of the word, e.g. odpadnout (to fall away) - od- is a prefix, written /d/ is devoiced here because of the following voiceles /p/.

Final devoicing

Unlike English, voiced consonants are pronounced voiceless in the final position in words. In declension, they are voiced in cases where the words take on endings.

Compare:

led – ledy (ice – ices)

let – lety (flight – flights)

Agreement between the subject and the predicate

The predicate must be always in accordance with the subject in the sentence - in number and person (personal pronouns), and with past and passive participles also in gender.

Examples:

The mentioned example shows both past (byl, byla ...) and passive (koupen, koupena ...) 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 femine genders are prior to the neuter gender.

Examples:

muži a ženy byli - men and women were

kočky a koťata byly - cats and kittens were

my jsme byli (my = we all/men) vs. my jsme byly (my = we women) - we were

Priority of genders:

masculine animate > masculine inanimate & feminine > neuter

History

There are five periods in the development of the Czech orthographic system:

Primitive orthography. For writing sounds which are strandge to the Latin alphabet, letters presenting similar sounds were used. The oldest known written notes in Czech originate from the 11th century. The literature was written predominantly in Latin by that time.

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.

Diacritic orthography by Jan Hus. Using diacritics for long vowels ("virgula", an acute, "čárka" in Czech) and "soft" consonants ("punctus rotundus", a dot above a letter) was suggested for the fist time in "De orthographia Bohemica" around 1406. The 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 fact.

Brethren orthography. The Bible of Kralice (1579 – 1593), the first comlete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages by the Czech Brethren, became the pattern of the literal Czech language. The punctus rotundus was replaced by the caron ("háček"). There were some differences from the current orthography by that time. The digraph ſſ was used instead of š, ay, ey, au instead of aj, ej, ou, v instead of u (at the beginning of words), w instead of v, g instead of j and j instead of í (gegj = její, her). Y was written always after c, s and z (e.g. cizí, strendge, was written cyzý) and the conjunction i (as well as, and) was written y.

Modern orthography. During the period of the Czech National Renascence (end of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, Czech linguists (Josef Dobrovský et al.) codified some reforms in the othography. 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.

See also

• Czech language
• Czech alphabet
• Czech declension
• International phonetic alphabet

Languages of the Czech Republic

Pravidla českého pravopisu