300 members (1990–1992)
55-486: The Federal Assembly ( Czech : Federální shromáždění , Slovak : Federálne zhromaždenie ) was the highest organ of state power of Czechoslovakia from 1 January 1969 until the amendment of the state constitution on 23 April 1990. From 23 April 1990 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December 1992, it functioned as the state's federal legislature . Chapter 3 of the 1960 Constitution of Czechoslovakia recognized it as "the supreme organ of state power and
110-578: A character similar to similar alliances in the Communist bloc. All member parties accepted the "leading role" of the KSČ as a condition of their continued existence. After the 1948 coup, the member parties were: The nonsocialist members of the Front were allowed to maintain their existence. Some sources say that it was just an act by KSČ to keep up an appearance of plurality. However, no one could take part in
165-635: 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
220-506: 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/ ;
275-571: 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
330-643: A preferential vote. The Post-Velvet Revolution electoral law, used to elect the last two assemblies, provided that both houses of the Federal Assembly would be elected by party-list proportional representation in multi-member electoral districts which correspond to the regions of each Republic. Seats for each Republic were allocated among its electoral districts on the basis of the votes actually cast in each. Voters must choose only one political party to vote for, but they may use up to four preferential votes for particular candidates of that party, which affect
385-514: 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
440-521: A single list from the National Front ( Národní fronta ), an all-encompassing patriotic organization dominated by the Communists. Great pressure was brought to bear on citizens to turn out at the polls, and those who dared to cross out the name of the single Front-approved candidate on the ballot risked severe reprisals. Under these circumstances, elections were almost always a formality, with
495-489: 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
550-474: 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
605-528: A year, in the spring and fall. Legislation presented to the assembly at these sessions had to be approved by both chambers and in some cases required a majority vote by both the Czech and the Slovak deputies in the Chamber of Nations. Constitutionally, the Federal Assembly was vested with great lawmaking powers, and had exclusive jurisdiction in all matters of foreign policy, fundamental matters of domestic policy,
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#1732772971503660-753: 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
715-636: 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
770-634: 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
825-422: 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
880-432: 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
935-629: 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
990-575: 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
1045-499: 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
1100-606: The Czech National Council and Slovak National Council . In other Communist states, there were similar coalitions with identical names (in East Germany ) or similar names, ( Poland , Bulgaria , and Vietnam ). After the 1948 coup, the National Front was converted into a broad-based patriotic organization that controlled nearly all organized activity in the country, excluding only religion. Thus
1155-506: The Hagenbach-Bischoff quota . After an election each chamber met to select its own Praesidium consisting of three to six members. Together, the chambers elected the forty-member Presidium of the Federal Assembly, which served as the legislative authority when the assembly was not in session. A joint session of the Federal Assembly selected its chairman and vice chairman. The Federal Assembly met in regular session at least twice
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#17327729715031210-681: 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
1265-622: 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
1320-655: The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under direct Nazi rule, while Slovakia ostensibly became independent. At the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia was included in the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union . Postwar Czechoslovakia was organized according to a program worked out by the KSČ (whose leaders were in exile in Moscow), and Edvard Beneš , representing the government-in-exile in London—these being
1375-550: The Slovak Socialist Republic . The Chamber of Nations had 150 members, 75 from each republic. Deputies were selected through popular elections and served five year terms of office; all members of both houses served concurrently. However, before the Velvet Revolution — and thus, in all but the last two assemblies — there was only one party to vote for, National Front , and it was impossible to give
1430-742: 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
1485-406: 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 ,
1540-528: 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
1595-473: The Front list winning well over 99 percent of the vote. Only after the Velvet Revolution did the Assembly assume actual power. The Assembly building was originally a stock exchange, designed by Jaroslav Rössler and completed in 1938. The space proved insufficient, and after a design competition Karel Prager was appointed to add an extension. He added a modern glass, metal and stone structure around and over
1650-506: The Front was extended to include mass organizations that were not political parties. Among the other member organizations which were made full members were: All these groups were given the standard Communist organization, and Party members held all controlling positions in these, even as they did not send elected deputies to parliament. This ensured that no secular organization could exist wholly independent of KSČ leadership. These groups permeated workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. As with
1705-607: The chamber names used during the Interwar period . An alternative proposal suggested transforming the Chamber of People into a unicameral Federal Assembly, and replacing the Chamber of Nations with a Bundesrat -style Federal Council ( Federální rada ). The Chamber of the People reflected a system of proportional representation: in 1992 it included 99 deputies from the Czech Socialist Republic and 51 deputies from
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1760-596: The city of Košice , recently liberated by Soviet troops. The model of government was adopted from similar French tripartisme . The Slovak People's Party was banned due to its collaboration with the Nazis. The government decided not to allow the re-creation of other pre-war democratic parties, such as the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants , due to its lead of the Party of National Unity . The National Front
1815-434: 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
1870-427: 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
1925-405: 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
1980-652: The economic plan, and supervision of the executive branch of government. Before 1989, however, as in other Communist states, its function was largely confined to rubber-stamping measures placed before it by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). Czechoslovak Laws passed under Communism were drafted in advance by the Presidium of the KSČ and presented to the Federal Assembly, which almost always approved them unanimously. The democratic centralist principle extended to elections as well. Voters were presented with
2035-477: 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
2090-539: The final order of the candidates on the party list. To obtain seats, a party was required to obtain at least 5% of the Republic-wide votes in either of the Republics. The allocation of seats was made in two stages – first, seats were allocated within each electoral district using the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota . The remainders were then used to allocate any seats left unfilled on a republic-wide basis, again using
2145-494: 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
2200-844: 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
2255-504: 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/
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2310-423: 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 National Front (Czechoslovakia) The National Front ( Czech : Národní fronta ; Slovak : Národný front ), also known as the National Front of Czechs and Slovaks
2365-549: The political process without KSČ approval. The other parties were structured just like the Communists, with a secretariat, central committee, and Presidium. Despite their actual impotence and subservience, they retained significant memberships through the entire Communist era. In 1984, the CPP had about 66,000 members, and the CNSP had about 17,000 members. Voters were presented with a single list of National Front-approved candidates, which
2420-582: 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
2475-545: The sole statewide legislative body." The Federal Assembly was divided into two equal chambers, the Chamber of People ( Sněmovna lidu ; other translation House of People) and the Chamber of Nations ( Sněmovna národů ; other translation House of Nations). Following the Velvet revolution , proposals were made to rename the two chambers into the Chamber of Deputies ( Poslanecká sněmovna ) and the Senate ( Senát ) respectively, restoring
2530-441: 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
2585-465: 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
2640-846: The top of the original building. The project was both expensive and controversial. Between 1995 and 2008, The Federal Assembly Building housed the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty . As of 2015, it houses the Federal Assembly National Museum. Prager's design has since been copied elsewhere, for example in what is now the Bank of Georgia headquarters in Tbilisi. 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 ),
2695-560: The two most important groups seeking the reconstitution of the country. Part of the program was the formation of a popular anti-Nazi coalition of parties. Negotiations began in December 1943 in Moscow. The KSČ and the non-Communist parties had very different ideas about this. This coalition was established as the "National Front" in April 1945, when a Czechoslovak government came into being in
2750-424: 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
2805-411: Was a political coalition created in 1943 serving as united front of political parties for liberation of Czechoslovakia, after 1948 organized solely by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia . It was the vehicle for control of all political and social activity by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). As World War II began, Czechoslovakia disappeared from the map of Europe. The Czech lands became
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#17327729715032860-686: 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
2915-679: Was dominated by the socialist parties: KSČ (which held key ministerial officies), KSS and ČSSD. The Communists viewed the National Front as a permanent entity, while the remaining parties considered it a temporary coalition until normal conditions would arise in Czechoslovakia. Many quarrels arose between the KSČ and the remaining parties of the National Front in the transitory period 1945–1948. The KSČ definitively seized power in Czechoslovakia on 25 February 1948. The other parties were quickly purged of their more courageous elements, and also dropped their original ideologies. The Front took on
2970-529: 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
3025-592: Was usually approved by margins of well over 99 percent against fewer than one percent who either rejected the list or cast blank or spoiled ballots. Non-KSČ candidates were represented, but seats were allocated in accordance with a set quota that guaranteed a large Communist majority. In 1969, the country was re-organized as a federation of the Czech Socialist Republic and Slovak Socialist Republic. Separate National Front organizations for each federal component were set up, which nominated candidates for
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