page_title: Czech language
section_title: Common Czech
hierarchical_section_title: Czech language / Varieties / Common Czech
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of languages and dialects of Central and Eastern Europe.
context_page_description: Czech, historically also Bohemian, is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of mutual intelligibility to a very high degree, as well as Polish. Like other Slavic languages, Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German.
  The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main non-standard variety, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of the Czech Republic. The Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are also classified as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak.
context_section_description: The main Czech vernacular, spoken primarily in and around Prague but also throughout the country, is known as Common Czech (obecná čeština). This is an academic distinction; most Czechs are unaware of the term or associate it with deformed or "incorrect" Czech. Compared to Standard Czech, Common Czech is characterized by simpler inflection patterns and differences in sound distribution.
  Common Czech is distinguished from spoken/colloquial Standard Czech (hovorová čeština), which is a stylistic variety within standard Czech. Tomasz Kamusella defines the spoken variety of Standard Czech as a compromise between Common Czech and the written standard, while Miroslav Komárek calls Common Czech an intersection of spoken Standard Czech and regional dialects.
  Common Czech has become ubiquitous in most parts of the Czech Republic since the later 20th century. It is usually defined as an interdialect used in common speech in Bohemia and western parts of Moravia (by about two thirds of all inhabitants of the Czech Republic). Common Czech is not codified, but some of its elements have become adopted in the written standard. Since the second half of the 20th century, Common Czech elements have also been spreading to regions previously unaffected, as a consequence of media influence. Standard Czech is still the norm for politicians, businesspeople and other Czechs in formal situations, but Common Czech is gaining ground in journalism and the mass media. The colloquial form of Standard Czech finds limited use in daily communication due to the expansion of the Common Czech interdialect. It is sometimes defined as a theoretical construct rather than an actual tool of colloquial communication, since in casual contexts, the non-standard interdialect is preferred.
  Common Czech phonology is based on that of the Central Bohemian dialect group, which has a slightly different set of vowel phonemes to Standard Czech. The phoneme /ɛː/ is peripheral and usually merges with /iː/, e.g. in malý město (small town), plamínek (little flame) and lítat (to fly), and a second native diphthong /ɛɪ̯/ occurs, usually in places where Standard Czech has /iː/, e.g. malej dům (small house), mlejn (mill), plejtvat (to waste), bejt (to be). In addition, a prothetic v- is added to most words beginning o-, such as votevřít vokno (to open the window).
  Non-standard morphological features that are more or less common among all Common Czech speakers include:
  unified plural endings of adjectives: malý lidi (small people), malý ženy (small women), malý města (small towns) – standard: malí lidé, malé ženy, malá města;
  unified instrumental ending -ma in plural: s těma dobrejma lidma, ženama, chlapama, městama (with the good people, women, guys, towns) – standard: s těmi dobrými lidmi, ženami, chlapy, městy. In essence, this form resembles the form of the dual, which was once a productive form, but now is almost extinct and retained in a lexically specific set of words. In Common Czech the ending became productive again around the 17th century, but used as a substitute for a regular plural form.
  omission of the syllabic -l in the masculine ending of past tense verbs: řek (he said), moh (he could), pích (he pricked) – standard: řekl, mohl, píchl.
  tendency of merging the locative singular masculine/neuter for adjectives with the instrumental by changing the locative ending -ém to -ým and then shortening the vowel: mladém (standard locative), mladým (standard instrumental) > mladým (Common Czech locative), mladym (Common Czech instrumental) > mladym (Common Czech locative/instrumental with shortening) 
  Examples of declension (Standard Czech is added in italics for comparison):
  mladý člověk – young man/person, mladí lidé – young people, mladý stát – young state, mladá žena – young woman, mladé zvíře – young animal
caption: A map of the languages of Central and Eastern Europe. Within the Czech Republic, Common Czech is represented by dark yellow (C1) and Moravian dialects by medium yellow (C2) and light green (C3).
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