The Czech alphabet is a version of the Latin script, used when writing Czech. Its basic principles are "one sound, one letter" and the addition of diacritical marks above letters to represent sounds alien to Latin. The alphabets of several other East European languages (Slavic, Baltic, but also others, such as Estonian) are based on the Czech alphabet, omitting or adding characters according to their needs. The most notable exception is Polish, which developed its own Roman script independently. The Czech alphabet is also the standard script of Akademija Nauk, used when transliterating Slavic Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and others).
The alphabet consists of 42 graphemes:
The letters Q and W are used exclusively in foreign words, and are replaced with Kv and V once the word becomes "naturalized"; the digraphs dz and dž are also used mostly for foreign words and do not have a separate place in the alphabet.
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Most of the diacritic letters were added to the alphabet through reforms brought about by Jan Hus at the beginning of the 15th century to replace the digraphs and trigraphs used to write Czech sounds that had no equivalent in the Latin alphabet (the Polish language still uses this previous orthography). During the 16th century, the letter "Ů" (historically an "Ó" but now pronounced as "Ú") was added to the list. The only digraph left in the alphabet is "Ch", being ordered between the "H" and "I", indicating the sound similar to the German "ch" or the Russian "Х" [x]). It is considered a single letter – in some crosswords it takes only one square and in certain instances of vertical writing (as on shop signs) it stays together. The prevalence of single-square ch in crosswords declined somewhat with the widespread use of computers in the Czech Republic.[1]
The acute accent (čárka) letters (Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý) and the kroužek letter Ů all indicate long vowels. They have the same alphabetical ordering as their non-diacritic counterparts. When there is no difference besides accentuation, the accented letters are to be sorted after the unaccented ordered by the complexity of the accent. Therefore in a sorted list of wordforms, kura (of a Gallus) comes before kúra (treatment), which in turn comes before kůra (tree bark). The háček (ˇ) indicates historical palatalization of the base letter. The letters Č, Ř, Š, and Ž currently represent postalveolar consonants and are ordered behind their corresponding base letters; while Ď, Ň, Ť represent palatal consonants and have the same alphabetical ordering as their non-diacritic counterparts.
| Letter | Name | IPA value |
|---|---|---|
| A a | á | /a/ |
| Á á | dlouhé á | /aː/ |
| B b | bé | /b/ |
| C c | cé | /ts/1 |
| Č č | čé | /tʃ/1 |
| D d | dé | /d/ |
| Ď ď | ďé | /ɟ/ |
| E e | é | /ɛ/ |
| É é | dlouhé é | /ɛː/ |
| * Ě ě | ije, é s háčkem |
/ɛ/, /jɛ/ |
| F f | ef | /f/ |
| G g | gé | /ɡ/ |
| H h | há | /ɦ/² |
| Ch ch | chá | /x/² |
| I i | í, měkké í |
/ɪ/ |
| Í í | dlouhé í, dlouhé měkké í |
/iː/ |
| J j | jé | /j/ |
| K k | ká | /k/ |
| L l | el | /l/ |
| M m | em | /m/ |
| N n | en | /n/ |
| Ň ň | eň | /ɲ/ |
| O o | ó | /o/ |
| Ó ó | dlouhé ó | /oː/ |
| P p | pé | /p/ |
| Q q | kvé | /kv/ |
| R r | er | /r/ |
| Ř ř | eř | /r̝/³ |
| S s | es | /s/ |
| Š š | eš | /ʃ/ |
| T t | té | /t/ |
| Ť ť | ťé | /c/ |
| U u | ú | /u/ |
| Ú ú | dlouhé ú, ú s čárkou |
/uː/ |
| * Ů ů | ů s kroužkem | /uː/ |
| V v | vé | /v/ |
| W w | dvojité vé | /v/ |
| X x | iks | /ks/ |
| Y y | ypsilon, krátké tvrdé í |
/ɪ/ |
| Ý ý | dlouhé ypsilon, dlouhé tvrdé í |
/iː/ |
| Z z | zet | /z/ |
| Ž ž | žet | /ʒ/ |
* – the letters Ě and Ů are practically never capitalized; because they cannot occur at the beginning of any word. These rather synthetic forms are only used in the small caps writing style, e.g. in newspaper headlines.
In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet, among them: