Czech
Language combinations for translations involving Czech:
Eisenmann Übersetzungsteam provides technical translations by native speakers of Czech into and from Czech for all subject areas: economics, law, technology, medicine, advertising, IT etc.
Our subject areas range from finance to law, from technology to advertising, websites, certificates and references.
All texts are translated by experienced specialist translators of Czech into their mother tongues (Czech or German), as per the native speaker principle.
The Spread of Czech
The Czech language stems from the West Slavic branch of the Indo-Germanic language tree, and is the mother tongue of approximately 12 million people. Most of these native speakers - almost 10 million - live in the Czech Republic, where Czech is an official language. Czech is also spoken by smaller minorities in neighbouring countries (i.e. Slovakia), the USA, Canada, Western Europe and Australia.
On 1st May 2004, Czech became an official language of the European Union.
Czech pronunciation is complicated because sibilants are used, and the pronunciation of ‘r’ is difficult. Additionally, ‘r’ and ‘I’ can be separate syllables.
Particularities of Czech
Czech and Slovak differ in their written forms mostly by the character ‘r’, which only exists in Czech. Both languages are mutually easy to understand. This ‘r’ originally comes from Upper Sorbian and is pronounced nowadays after ‘t’, such as “tsch” or “c”, instead of “sch”.
Grammatically speaking, Czech is a strongly reflexive language which contains seven grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, vocative). Declinations and conjugations in Czech are carried out through endings (and/or small stem changes), the formation of which is extremely diverse and often irregular, which makes them in turn difficult to learn.
Although written with the Latin alphabet, Czech also uses diacritical symbols such as Š, ý and Ch to reproduce the sounds of the language. These symbols are treated in Czech as individual letters, thus increasing the letters in the Czech alphabet from 26 to 34.
Czech also contains short and long vowels. Furthermore, the consonants r, l and m can form syllables, which give the impression that Czech contains words which consist entirely of consonants (i.e. “blb”, meaning “idiot”). Czech also differentiates between what are known as hard, neutral and soft consonants, much in the same way as in Russian and other Slavic languages.
Czech naturally also contains various dialects, the pronunciation and grammar of which differ greatly from the High Czech (written form) spoken at official events.
Additionally, Czech contains some borrowed words of German origin, just as German contains words of Czech origin.
The Czech language is growing in significance, particularly due to the ascension of the Czech Republic into the European Union on 1st May 2004. Czech is used increasingly not only on a political level, but also by many western companies interested in the Czech market. There are even now universities in Germany which train qualified translators and interpreters in Czech - a significant indicator of Czech’s building importance.
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Updated November 2022
