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61-941: The Czech Armed Forces ( Czech : Armáda České republiky , lit.   'the Army of the Czech Republic';), also known as the Czech Army , is the military service responsible for the defence of the Czech Republic as part of the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic ( Czech : ozbrojené síly České republiky ) alongside the Military Office of the President of the Republic and

122-597: A battalion. The Territorial Command is responsible for the active reserves and have direct control of the 14 infantry companies that belong to regional military commands in each of the 13 regions and capital city Prague. The Army of the Czech Republic, to a large extent, currently uses equipment dating back to the times of the Warsaw Pact . During the Cold War , Czechoslovakia was a major supplier of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, military trucks and trainer aircraft –

183-635: A distinction between phonemic /l/ and /ʎ/ which survives in Slovak. With the beginning of the national revival of the mid-18th century, Czech historians began to emphasize their people's accomplishments from the 15th through 17th centuries, rebelling against the Counter-Reformation (the Habsburg re-catholization efforts which had denigrated Czech and other non- Latin languages). Czech philologists studied sixteenth-century texts and advocated

244-506: A dozen additional counties in Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota and Minnesota . As of 2009, 70,500 Americans spoke Czech as their first language (49th place nationwide, after Turkish and before Swedish ). Standard Czech contains ten basic vowel phonemes , and three diphthongs. The vowels are /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /o/, and /u/ , and their long counterparts /aː/, /ɛː/, /iː/, /oː/ and /uː/ . The diphthongs are /ou̯/, /au̯/ and /ɛu̯/ ;

305-571: A more-restricted distinction between "hard" and "soft" consonants (see Phonology below). The term "Old Czech" is applied to the period predating the 16th century, with the earliest records of the high medieval period also classified as "early Old Czech", but the term "Medieval Czech" is also used. The function of the written language was initially performed by Old Slavonic written in Glagolitic , later by Latin written in Latin script . Around

366-402: A non-military crisis. They are not intended to serve abroad, but individuals may volunteer to do so. The Reserve presents itself on events like BAHNA , a military show. Each of the active duty brigades or regiments have their own active reserve subordinate units that train with the same equipment as the professional soldiers and is part of the organisational structure usually as a 4th company in

427-514: A realistic chance of returning as a major language. However, Josef Jungmann and other revivalists used Dobrovský's book to advocate for a Czech linguistic revival. Changes during this time included spelling reform (notably, í in place of the former j and j in place of g ), the use of t (rather than ti ) to end infinitive verbs and the non-capitalization of nouns (which had been a late borrowing from German). These changes differentiated Czech from Slovak. Modern scholars disagree about whether

488-775: A result of the Munich Agreement , areas heavily populated by ethnic German speaking people were incorporated into the Third Reich and military-aged men living there were subject to being drafted into the Wehrmacht . In 1939, after the Slovak State proclaimed its independence and the remainder of Carpathian Ruthenia was occupied and annexed by Hungary , the German occupation of the Czech Lands followed and

549-489: A slow rise from low to high, quickly dropping to low on the last word or phrase. In modern Czech syntax, adjectives precede nouns, with few exceptions. Relative clauses are introduced by relativizers such as the adjective který , analogous to the English relative pronouns "which", "that" and "who"/"whom". As with other adjectives, it agrees with its associated noun in gender, number and case. Relative clauses follow

610-474: A verb; information about its subject is encoded in the verb. Enclitics (primarily auxiliary verbs and pronouns) appear in the second syntactic slot of a sentence, after the first stressed unit. The first slot can contain a subject or object, a main form of a verb, an adverb, or a conjunction (except for the light conjunctions a , "and", i , "and even" or ale , "but"). Czech syntax has a subject–verb–object sentence structure. In practice, however, word order

671-690: Is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group , written in Latin script . Spoken by over 12 million people including second language speakers, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic . Czech is closely related to Slovak , to the point of high mutual intelligibility , as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. 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

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732-636: Is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish , Kashubian , Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak . Slovak is the most closely related language to Czech, followed by Polish and Silesian . The West Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe. Czech is distinguished from other West Slavic languages by

793-408: Is a part of the otherwise professional Army of the Czech Republic. This service was created to allow the participation of citizens with a positive attitude to the military. A volunteer needs either to have completed the compulsory military service (which ended in 2004) or to attend 6 week training. Then the reservists have to serve up to three weeks a year and can be called up to serve two weeks during

854-570: Is a recognized minority language in Slovakia, Slovak citizens who speak only Czech may communicate with the government in their language in the same way that Slovak speakers in the Czech Republic also do. Immigration of Czechs from Europe to the United States occurred primarily from 1848 to 1914. Czech is a Less Commonly Taught Language in U.S. schools, and is taught at Czech heritage centers. Large communities of Czech Americans live in

915-422: Is also relevant to the declension patterns of nouns, which vary according to whether the final consonant of the noun stem is hard or soft. Voiced consonants with unvoiced counterparts are unvoiced at the end of a word before a pause, and in consonant clusters voicing assimilation occurs, which matches voicing to the following consonant. The unvoiced counterpart of /ɦ/ is /x/. The phoneme represented by

976-432: Is flexible and used to distinguish topic and focus , with the topic or theme (known referents) preceding the focus or rheme (new information) in a sentence; Czech has therefore been described as a topic-prominent language . Although Czech has a periphrastic passive construction (like English), in colloquial style, word-order changes frequently replace the passive voice. For example, to change "Peter killed Paul" to "Paul

1037-629: Is one of the EU's official languages and the 2012 Eurobarometer survey found that Czech was the foreign language most often used in Slovakia. Economist Jonathan van Parys collected data on language knowledge in Europe for the 2012 European Day of Languages . The five countries with the greatest use of Czech were the Czech Republic (98.77 percent), Slovakia (24.86 percent), Portugal (1.93 percent), Poland (0.98 percent) and Germany (0.47 percent). Czech speakers in Slovakia primarily live in cities. Since it

1098-575: Is realized as its voiceless allophone [r̝̊], a sound somewhere between Czech r and š . The consonants /r/, /l/, and /m/ can be syllabic , acting as syllable nuclei in place of a vowel. Strč prst skrz krk ("Stick [your] finger through [your] throat") is a well-known Czech tongue twister using syllabic consonants but no vowels. Each word has primary stress on its first syllable , except for enclitics (minor, monosyllabic, unstressed syllables). In all words of more than two syllables, every odd-numbered syllable receives secondary stress. Stress

1159-499: Is unrelated to vowel length; both long and short vowels can be stressed or unstressed. Vowels are never reduced in tone (e.g. to schwa sounds) when unstressed. When a noun is preceded by a monosyllabic preposition, the stress usually moves to the preposition, e.g. do Prahy "to Prague". Czech grammar, like that of other Slavic languages, is fusional ; its nouns, verbs, and adjectives are inflected by phonological processes to modify their meanings and grammatical functions, and

1220-666: The 13th and 14th , with a supervisory headquarters at Trenčín in the Slovak part of the country. During the Cold War , the ČSLA was equipped primarily with Soviet arms, although certain arms like the OT-64 SKOT armored personnel carrier, the L-29 Delfín and L-39 Albatros aircraft, the P-27 Pancéřovka antitank rocket launcher, the vz. 58 assault rifle or the Uk vz. 59 machine gun were of Czechoslovak design. After

1281-552: The 1948 Communist Coup , the Czechoslovak People's Army with over 200,000 active personnel and some 4,500 tanks formed one of the pillars of the Warsaw Pact military alliance. Following the Velvet Revolution and dissolution of Czechoslovakia , the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999. The conscription was abolished in 2004, leading to transformation into a modern professional army inspired mostly by

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1342-551: The Aero L-39 Albatros , Aero L-159 Alca and Let L-410 Turbolet have been produced domestically as well. At the beginning of 2019, the Czech Ministry of Defence announced its modernization program, consisting of acquiring 210 new modern IFVs as a replacement for the aging BVP-2 . MoD approached four manufacturers: BAE Systems ( CV90 ), GDELS ( ASCOD ), Rheinmetall ( Lynx ) and PSM ( Puma ). The cost of

1403-604: The British Armed Forces and USMC example. Today, the Czech Army has 28.000 professional personnel and 4.200 members of active reserves. Additionally, any citizen can voluntarily join a five-week basic training without becoming a soldier or join advanced shooting training with their privately owned firearms and become a member of militia -style Designated Reserves . A law adopted in June 2023 stipulates that

1464-708: The Castle Guard . The army consists of the General Staff , the Land Forces , the Air Force and support units. Czech Army's main historical legacy and inspiration stems from the 15th century Hussite militia , which is credited with numerous warfare advancements, including introduction of firearms to field battles as well as the wagon fort strategy , called vozová hradba in Czech. Modern history precedes

1525-783: The Constitution gives all substantive constitutional authority over the use of the armed forces to the Parliament . In fact, the only specific thing the constitution allows the President to do with respect to the military is to appoint its generals – but even this must be done with the signature of the Prime Minister. Structure of the Czech Armed Forces consists of two main parts and other commands: Active Reserve (in Czech Aktivní záloha )

1586-751: The Czechoslovak Legion in France , which had been established in 1914, took oath and received a battle banner in Darney , France , thus preceding the official declaration of Czechoslovak independence by four months. There were also 50 000 legion soldiers in Russia at that time. The military achievements of the Czechoslovak legions on the French , Italian and especially Russian front became one of

1647-681: The Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 (the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages) became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries as it was used as a model for the standard language. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the only official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt (of predominantly Protestant aristocracy) which

1708-622: The Leskovec-Dresden Bible , also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were also produced outside universities. Literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation . Jan Hus contributed significantly to the standardization of Czech orthography , advocated for widespread literacy among Czech commoners (particularly in religion) and made early efforts to model written Czech after

1769-643: The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed after the negotiations with Emil Hácha . The Protectorate's government possessed its own armed force, the Government Army (6,500 men), tasked with public security and rearguard duties. On the other side of the conflict, a number of Czechoslovak units and formations served with the Polish Army ( Czechoslovak Legion ), the French Army ,

1830-588: The Royal Air Force , the British Army (the 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade ), and the Red Army ( I Corps ). Four Czech and Slovak-manned RAF squadrons were transferred to Czechoslovak control in late 1945. From 1954 until 1989, the Army was known as the Czechoslovak People's Army (ČSLA). Although the ČSLA, as formed in 1945, included both Soviet- and British-equipped/trained expatriate troops,

1891-742: 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 most widely spoken non-standard variety , known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague , but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of Bohemia . The Moravian dialects spoken in Moravia and Czech Silesia are considerably more varied than

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1952-406: The voiced velar fricative consonant (/ɣ/) and consistent stress on the first syllable. The Bohemian (Czech) language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the late 13th and early 14th century and administrative documents first appear towards the late 14th century. The first complete Bible translation ,

2013-548: The "Western" soldiers had been purged from the ČSLA after 1948 when the communists took power . The ČSLA offered no resistance to the invasion mounted by the Soviets in 1968 in reaction to the " Prague Spring ", and was extensively reorganized by the Soviets following the re-imposition of communist rule in Prague. Of the approximately 201,000 personnel on active duty in the ČSLA in 1987, about 145,000, or about 72 percent, served in

2074-569: The 1918 Czechoslovak declaration of independence with formal establishment of the Czechoslovak Legion fighting on the side of the Entente powers during the WW1 . Following the Munich Agreement , the country was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Army was reconstituted in exile, fighting on the side of Allies of World War II in the European as well as Mediterranean and Middle East theatre . After

2135-528: The 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, settling on the eastern fringes of the Frankish Empire . The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries. The diversification of the Czech-Slovak group within West Slavic began around that time, marked among other things by its use of

2196-633: The Air Force in 1997, to 63,601 in 1999, and to 35,000 in 2005. At the same time, the forces were modernized and reoriented towards a defensive posture. In 2004, the army transformed itself into a fully professional organization and compulsory military service was abolished. The Army maintains an active reserve. The Czech Republic is a member of the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe . In March 1999,

2257-465: The Czech Republic can be said to be ceremonial to one degree or another, especially since the President has relatively few powers independent of the will of the Prime Minister . One of those is the status as commander in chief of the military; no part of these duties can take place but through the assent of the Prime Minister. In matters of war, he is in every sense merely a figurehead , since

2318-675: The Czech Republic joined NATO . Since 1990, the ACR and the Czech Armed Forces have contributed to numerous peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, including IFOR , SFOR , and EUFOR Althea in Bosnia , Desert Shield / Desert Storm , Afghanistan , Kosovo , Albania , Turkey , Pakistan and with the Coalition forces in Iraq . Current deployments (2019): Many of the duties of the President of

2379-580: The Czech Republic. This includes firearms of the Česká zbrojovka Uherský Brod , namely the CZ 75 pistol, CZ Scorpion Evo 3 submachine gun, and CZ 805 BREN and BREN 2 assault rifles. Moreover, the Czech Army is equipped with about 3,000 T810 and T815 vehicles of various modifications produced by the Czech Tatra Trucks company. Tatra Defence Vehicle factory ensures licensed production of Pandur II and Titus armoured vehicles. Aircraft such as

2440-433: The bulk of military exports went to its Comecon partners. Replacement of aging or obsolete equipment, or making it at least compliant with NATO standards, is urgently required. Modernization plans include acquisition of new multi-role helicopters, transport aircraft, infantry fighting vehicles, air defence radars and missiles. If possible, the Czech Ministry of Defence selects products that are manufactured or co-produced in

2501-434: The conservative revivalists were motivated by nationalism or considered contemporary spoken Czech unsuitable for formal, widespread use. Adherence to historical patterns was later relaxed and standard Czech adopted a number of features from Common Czech (a widespread informal interdialectal variety), such as leaving some proper nouns undeclined. This has resulted in a relatively high level of homogeneity among all varieties of

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2562-427: The dialects of Bohemia. Czech has a moderately-sized phoneme inventory, comprising ten monophthongs , three diphthongs and 25 consonants (divided into "hard", "neutral" and "soft" categories). Words may contain complicated consonant clusters or lack vowels altogether. Czech has a raised alveolar trill , which is known to occur as a phoneme in only a few other languages, represented by the grapheme ř . Czech

2623-405: The easily separable affixes characteristic of agglutinative languages are limited. Czech inflects for case, gender and number in nouns and tense, aspect, mood , person and subject number and gender in verbs. Parts of speech include adjectives, adverbs , numbers, interrogative words , prepositions , conjunctions and interjections . Adverbs are primarily formed from adjectives by taking

2684-578: The fall of communism during the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Czechoslovak People's Army was renamed back to the Czechoslovak Army and was completely transformed as well. The Army of the Czech Republic was formed after the Czechoslovak Armed Forces split after the 31 December 1992 peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia . Czech forces stood at 90,000 in 1993. They were reduced to around 65,000 in 11 combat brigades and

2745-477: The final ý or í of the base form and replacing it with e , ě , y , or o . Negative statements are formed by adding the affix ne- to the main verb of a clause, with one exception: je (he, she or it is) becomes není . Because Czech uses grammatical case to convey word function in a sentence (instead of relying on word order , as English does), its word order is flexible. As a pro-drop language , in Czech an intransitive sentence can consist of only

2806-532: The ground forces (commonly referred to as the army ). About 100,000 of these were conscripts. There were two military districts, Western and Eastern . A 1989 listing of forces shows two Czechoslovak armies in the west, the 1st Army at Příbram with one tank division and three motor rifle divisions, the 4th Army at Písek with two tank divisions and two motor rifle divisions. In the Eastern Military District, there were two tank divisions,

2867-494: The language. Czech is spoken by about 10 million residents of the Czech Republic . A Eurobarometer survey conducted from January to March 2012 found that the first language of 98 percent of Czech citizens was Czech, the third-highest proportion of a population in the European Union (behind Greece and Hungary ). As the official language of the Czech Republic (a member of the European Union since 2004), Czech

2928-844: The last two are found only in loanwords such as auto "car" and euro "euro". In Czech orthography, the vowels are spelled as follows: The letter ⟨ ě ⟩ indicates that the previous consonant is palatalized (e.g. něco /ɲɛt͡so/ ). After a labial it represents /jɛ/ (e.g. běs /bjɛs/ ); but ⟨mě⟩ is pronounced /mɲɛ/, cf. měkký ( /mɲɛkiː/ ). The consonant phonemes of Czech and their equivalent letters in Czech orthography are as follows: Czech consonants are categorized as "hard", "neutral", or "soft": Hard consonants may not be followed by i or í in writing, or soft ones by y or ý (except in loanwords such as kilogram ). Neutral consonants may take either character. Hard consonants are sometimes known as "strong", and soft ones as "weak". This distinction

2989-504: The letter ř (capital Ř ) is very rare among languages and often claimed to be unique to Czech, though it also occurs in some dialects of Kashubian , and formerly occurred in Polish. It represents the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill ( IPA : [r̝] ), a sound somewhere between Czech r and ž (example: "řeka" (river) ), and is present in Dvořák . In unvoiced environments, /r̝/

3050-432: The main arguments that the Czechoslovak pro-independence leaders, especially for T. G. Masaryk in America, could use to gain the support for the country's independence by the Allies of World War I . In 1938, servicemen of the Czechoslovak Army and the State Defense Guard fought in an undeclared border war against the German-backed Sudetendeutsches Freikorps as well as Polish and Hungarian paramilitary forces. As

3111-561: The military expenditures shall not be lower than 2% of country's GDP , starting from 2024. The military history of the Czech people dates back to the Middle Ages and the creation of the Duchy of Bohemia and the Kingdom of Bohemia . During the Hussite Wars , Jan Žižka became a military leader of such skill and eminence that the Hussite legacy became an important and lasting part of the Czech military traditions. Official military names since 1918: The Czechoslovak Armed Forces were originally formed on 30 June 1918 when 6,000 members of

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3172-522: The noun they modify. The following is a glossed example: Chc-i want- 1SG navštív-it visit- INF universit-u, university- SG . ACC , na on kter-ou which- SG . F . ACC chod-í attend- 3SG Czechoslovak Legion in France Clemenceau and Masaryk suggested transportation of T. G. Masaryk legions from Russia to France of s. c. "North trip" (by North sea) as first (the first realization 15 October 1917 from Archangelsk). An autonomous Czechoslovak army

3233-609: The program is expected to exceed 50 billion CZK . In May 2022 the Czech Ministry of Defence announced it will get 15 Leopards 2A4 from Germany as an exchange for Czech tanks that will be given to Ukraine to help defend against Russian invasion and will purchase up to 50 modern 2A7+ variants later. Different types of Czech Army uniforms: Czech language Czech ( / tʃ ɛ k / CHEK ; endonym : čeština [ˈtʃɛʃcɪna] ), historically also known as Bohemian ( / b oʊ ˈ h iː m i ə n , b ə -/ boh- HEE -mee-ən, bə- ; Latin : lingua Bohemica ),

3294-439: The return of the language to high culture . This period is known as the Czech National Revival (or Renaissance). During the national revival, in 1809 linguist and historian Josef Dobrovský released a German-language grammar of Old Czech entitled Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache ('Comprehensive Doctrine of the Bohemian Language'). Dobrovský had intended his book to be descriptive , and did not think Czech had

3355-408: The right of Czechs and Slovaks to independence, and the next day both regiments took an oath of allegiance in presence of the French president, Raymond Poincaré , as well as Czechoslovak independence movement officials, including Edvard Beneš . Today, 30 June is celebrated as the "Day of Czech Armed Forces ". In 1918 a Czechoslovak brigade, under command of the French general Philippe, consisting of

3416-441: The spoken language. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century. In the 16th century, the division between Czech and Slovak becomes apparent, marking the confessional division between Lutheran Protestants in Slovakia using Czech orthography and Catholics, especially Slovak Jesuits, beginning to use a separate Slovak orthography based on Western Slovak dialects. The publication of

3477-413: The states of Texas , Nebraska and Wisconsin . In the 2000 United States Census , Czech was reported as the most common language spoken at home (besides English ) in Valley , Butler and Saunders Counties , Nebraska and Republic County, Kansas . With the exception of Spanish (the non-English language most commonly spoken at home nationwide), Czech was the most common home language in more than

3538-424: The upper classes. Modern standard Czech originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. By then the language had developed a literary tradition, and since then it has changed little; journals from that period contain no substantial differences from modern standard Czech, and contemporary Czechs can understand them with little difficulty. At some point before the 18th century, the Czech language abandoned

3599-401: Was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620, the Protestant intellectuals had to leave the country. This emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years' War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, especially among

3660-412: Was established from 19 December 1917 by decree of the French government. On 12 January 1918 the 21st Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment was formed in the town of Cognac . It fought as part of the French 53rd Infantry Division. On 20 May 1918 the 22nd Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment was created, initially fighting as part of the French 134th Infantry Division. On 29 June the government of France officially acknowledged

3721-529: Was killed by Peter" the order of subject and object is inverted: Petr zabil Pavla ("Peter killed Paul") becomes "Paul, Peter killed" ( Pavla zabil Petr ). Pavla is in the accusative case , the grammatical object of the verb. A word at the end of a clause is typically emphasized, unless an upward intonation indicates that the sentence is a question: In parts of Bohemia (including Prague ), questions such as Jí pes bagetu? without an interrogative word (such as co , "what" or kdo , "who") are intoned in

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