Differences between Slovak and Czech languages

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Linguistically, the Czech and Slovak languages form a language continuum, eastern Slovak dialects then blend into the Rusyn language. Czech exists in two different forms (excluding the Moravian dialects): literary Czech and colloquial Czech. The standard Slovak language is closer to literary Czech, especially in phonology and morphology. The differences between parts of the vocabulary of some Slovak dialects are rather big, comparable to the differences between standard Slovak and Czech. The description below sums the main differences between standard Slovak and Czech.

  • Slovak graphemes that do not exist in the Czech language are ä, ľ, ĺ, ŕ and ô (see Pronunciation). Czech graphemes that do not exist in the Slovak language are: ě, ř and ů.
  • Slovak has the following phonemes which Czech does not have: /ʎ/, /rː/, /lː/, /æ/ (this one only in higher-style standard Slovak, or some dialects), and the diphthongs /i̯a/, /i̯e/, /i̯u/, /u̯ɔ/; and on the contrary, Czech has /r̝/.
  • Czech uses peculiar pitch contour, not present in Slovak (or Moravian dialects).
  • The Slovak, unlike Czech, uses palatalization more frequently (that is, is phonetically "softer")
  • The phonetic assimilation and a kind of "liaison" are much stronger in the Slovak language
  • The Slovak grammar:
    • is somewhat simpler (that is more regular) than Czech literary language grammar, since the present-day Slovak language standard has been codified only in the 19th century. However the colloquial Czech makes some more simplifications, especially merging case suffixes.
    • has different declension and conjugation endings and paradigms
    • has 6 morphological cases (see Slovak declension) - the vocative (officially not considered a separate grammatical case anymore) is almost lost, while the Czech vocative is well alive
  • Some basic Slovak is similar to the Czech language, and a few (almost) identical words have different meaning. The differences are mostly of simple historical origin (for example the word hej mentioned below was used in Great Moravia). As for professional terminology, except for biology (esp. all names of animals and plants), the Czech terminology was mostly taken over (in Slovakized form) for practical reasons. The Czech-Slovak Dictionary of Different Terms (1989, Prague) contains some 11.000 entries (without professional terminology):
    • Examples of basic different words are: to speak (SK hovoriť – CZ mluvit), yeah (SK hej – CZ jo), if (SK ak – CZ jestli, jestliže, -li), Good bye (SK do videnia – CZ na shledanou), January (SK január – CZ leden), cat (SK mačka – CZ kočka), to kiss (SK bozkať – CZ líbat), now (SK teraz – CZ teď, nyní), goods (SK tovar – CZ zboží), he/she/it is not (SK nie je - CZ není) and so forth.
    • Examples of typical small differences: endings (SK -cia, -dlo, -ť, -om – CZ -c(i)e, -tko, -t, -em), expressions (SK treba, možno – CZ je třeba, je možné / je možno), prepositions (SK na – CZ k, pro) . . .
    • Examples of words with different meanings : SK topiť (to melt) – CZ topit (to heat), SK horký (bitter) – CZ horký (hot) . . .
  • The Czech language has no equivalents for many Slovak words and vice versa. Examples of no Czech equivalents: prepositions (popod, ponad, sponad. . . ), verbs (ľúbiť, povynechávať, skackať, siakať,. . . ), nouns (kúrňava, kaštieľ, hoľa, grúň). . ., pronouns (dakto, voľakto, henten,. . . ) etc.
  • The Czech language does not have the Rhythmical Rule (see Pronunciation)
  • Slovak uses the passive voice formed like in English less than the Czech, and prefers the passive voice formed using the reflexive pronoun sa (like in Romance languages) instead
  • Slovak has many dialects, while in the Czech Republic, many dialects have disappeared, especially in the Bohemian part of the Czech Republic.