62-673: The Dancing House ( Czech : Tančící dům ), or Ginger and Fred , is the nickname given to the Nationale-Nederlanden building on the Rašínovo nábřeží ( Rašín Embankment) in Prague , Czech Republic . It was designed by the Croatian -Czech architect Vlado Milunić in cooperation with Canadian -American architect Frank Gehry on a vacant riverfront plot. The building was designed in 1992. The construction, carried out by BESIX ,
124-572: A currency peg , then the ČNB can show you how to do it". The Czech Republic planned to adopt the euro in 2010, but its government suspended that plan indefinitely in 2005. Although the country is economically well positioned to adopt the euro, there is considerable opposition to the move within the Czech Republic. According to a survey conducted in April 2014, only 16% of the Czech population
186-414: A complete listing, see Commemorative coins of the Czech Republic . The first Czech banknotes were issued on 8 February 1993 and consisted of Czechoslovak notes with adhesive stamps affixed to them. Only the 100 Kčs, 500 Kčs and 1,000 Kčs notes were overstamped, the lower denominations circulated unchanged during this transitional period. Each stamp bears a Roman and Arabic numeral identifying
248-635: 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
310-506: 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/ ;
372-571: 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
434-514: 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
496-548: A respected architect in the Czechoslovak milieu, conceived an idea for a project at the place and discussed it with his neighbour, the then little-known dissident Havel. A few years later, during the Velvet Revolution , Havel became a popular leader and was subsequently elected president of Czechoslovakia. Thanks to his authority, the idea to develop the site grew. Havel eventually decided to have Milunić survey
558-489: 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
620-463: A square of buildings from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the Dancing House has two main parts. The first is a glass tower that narrows at half its height and is supported by curved pillars; the second runs parallel to the river and is characterized by undulating mouldings and unaligned windows. Dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are represented in the structure. A tower made of rock
682-474: 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
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#1732776042851744-753: 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
806-636: 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
868-570: 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
930-422: 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
992-432: 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
1054-513: Is one of the European Union 's eight currencies, and the Czech Republic is legally bound to adopt the euro in the future. The official name in Czech is koruna česká (plural koruny české , though the zero-suffixed genitive plural form korun českých is used on banknotes and coins of value 5 Kč or higher). The ISO 4217 code is CZK and the local acronym is Kč, which
1116-629: 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
1178-475: Is placed after the numeric value (e.g., "50 Kč") or sometimes before it (as is seen on the 10-koruna coin). One crown is made up of 100 hellers (abbreviated as "h", official name in Czech: singular : haléř , nominative plural : haléře , genitive plural : haléřů – used with numbers higher or equal to 5 – e.g. 3 haléře, 8 haléřů ), but hellers have now been withdrawn from circulation, and
1240-575: 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
1302-457: Is set on a property of great historical significance. Its site was the location of an apartment building destroyed by the U.S. bombing of Prague in 1945. The plot and structure lay decrepit until 1960, when the area was cleared. The neighboring plot was co-owned by the family of Václav Havel , who spent most of his life there. As early as 1986 (during the Communist era ), Vlado Milunić , then
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#17327760428511364-499: 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
1426-399: Is used to represent Fred. This tower also includes a metal head. A tower made of glass is used to represent Ginger. This design was driven mainly by aesthetic considerations: aligned windows would make evident that the building has two more floors, although it is the same height as the two adjacent nineteenth century buildings. The windows have protruding frames, such as those of paintings, as
1488-681: 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
1550-622: 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
1612-742: 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
1674-476: The millennium . In 1993 and 1994, coins were minted in Winnipeg and Hamburg , then in the Czech Republic. The 10 Kč and 50 Kč coins were designed by Ladislav Kozák [ cs ] (1934–2007). Since 1997, sets for collectors are also issued yearly with proof-quality coins. Also, a tradition exists of issuing commemorative coins – including silver and gold coins – for numismatic purposes. For
1736-406: 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 ,
1798-418: The 50 h coins by 31 August 2008 due to their diminishing purchasing power and circulation. However, financial amounts are still written with the accuracy of 1-haléř (CZK 0.01); prices in retail shops are usually multiples of CZK 0.10. When cash transactions are made, the amount is rounded to the nearest integer. In 2000, the 10 Kč and 20 Kč coins were minted with different obverses to commemorate
1860-409: The 500 Kč and 5,000 Kč in 2009 and finally ending with the issuance of the 100 Kč and 200 Kč notes in 2018. In practice, the 5000 Kč is not commonly found in circulation due to them being prone to misuse or illicit activity (e.g., money laundering ). At the end of December 2023, there were 26 million of those banknotes in circulation. In contrast, the next-highest denomination,
1922-528: 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
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1984-566: The Czechoslovak koruna in 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia . It first consisted of overstamped 20 Kčs, 50 Kčs, 100 Kčs, 500 Kčs, and 1,000 Kčs banknotes, and a new series was properly introduced in 1993. In November 2013, the Czech National Bank (ČNB) intervened to weaken the exchange rate of the koruna through a monetary stimulus to stop the currency from excessive strengthening. This
2046-475: The building, causing the rooms inside to also be asymmetric. The commercial areas of the building are in the lobby and the first floor. The six floors above are used primarily as office spaces. The ninth floor housed a restaurant. Since the building takes a slim shape, and the building is split into two parts vertically, the office space is limited. To make the most of the space, architect Jiřičná used design elements common in ships and incorporated small hallways into
2108-608: The classical city of Prague. The deconstructivist design is controversial because the house disrupts the Baroque , Gothic , and Art Nouveau buildings for which Prague is famous. The style, shape, heavy asymmetry, and material are considered out of place by some critics and civilians. 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 ),
2170-434: 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
2232-451: The denomination of the banknote to which it is affixed (C and 100, D and 500, M and 1,000). Subsequent issues of the 1,000 Kč note replaced the adhesive stamp with a printed image of same. A newly designed series of banknotes in denominations of 20 Kč, 50 Kč, 100 Kč, 200 Kč, 500 Kč, 1,000 Kč and 5,000 Kč were introduced later in 1993 and are still in use at present – except for 20 Kč, 50 Kč and
2294-406: The designer intended for them to have a three-dimensional effect. The winding mouldings on the façade also serve to confuse perspective and diminish contrast with the surrounding buildings. The Czech-British architect Eva Jiřičná designed most of the interior. The building is 9 floors tall and consists of two floors underground. The layout of each of the floors varies due to the asymmetric shape of
2356-427: 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
2418-405: 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
2480-476: The eighth floor and an art gallery in the building. The general shape of the building is now featured on a gold 2,000 Czech koruna coin issued by the Czech National Bank . The coin completes a series called "Ten Centuries of Architecture". The Dancing House won Time magazine's design contest in 1997. The Dancing House was also named one of the five most important buildings in the 1990s by Architekt Magazine . The Dancing House has been called inappropriate in
2542-477: 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
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2604-424: The first versions of 1,000 Kč and 5,000 Kč notes, since the security features of 1,000 Kč and 5,000 Kč notes were upgraded in the subsequent issues (The 2,000 Kč note, which was introduced in 1996, is still valid in all versions, with and without the new security features). These banknotes, designed by Oldřich Kulhánek , feature renowned Czech persons on the obverse and abstract compositions on
2666-578: The idea because of the small square footage, but the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry accepted the invitation. Because of the bank's excellent financial state at the time, it was able to offer almost unlimited funding for the project. Starting with their first meeting in 1992 in Geneva , Gehry and Milunić began to develop Milunić's original idea of a building consisting of two parts, static and dynamic ("yin and yang"), which were to symbolize
2728-413: The interior of the building. The total interior of the building is 3,796 sqm. In 2016, over the course of five months, two floors of the building were renovated and converted into a 21-room hotel by Luxury Suites s.r.o. The hotel also has apartments available in each of the towers named after Fred and Ginger. The Ginger & Fred Restaurant now operates on the seventh floor, and there is now a glass bar on
2790-431: 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
2852-844: 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
2914-504: 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/
2976-419: 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 Czech koruna The koruna , or crown ( sign : Kč ; code : CZK , Czech : koruna česká ), has been the currency of the Czech Republic since 1993. The koruna
3038-582: 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
3100-470: The reverse. Modern protective elements can be found on all banknotes. In 2007, the Czech National Bank started issuing new upgraded banknotes with upgraded security features. These include a new colour-shifting security thread, additional watermarks and EURion constellations. The first denomination to be issued with the new features was the 2,000 Kč, followed by the 1,000 Kč in 2008,
3162-409: The site, hoping for it to become a cultural center, though this was not the result. The Dutch insurance company Nationale-Nederlanden ( ING Bank from 1991 to 2016) agreed to sponsor the construction of a house onsite. The superbank chose Milunić as the lead designer and asked him to partner with another world-renowned architect to approach the process. The French architect Jean Nouvel turned down
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#17327760428513224-503: The smallest unit of physical currency is 1 Kč. In 1892, the Austro-Hungarian krone replaced the gulden at the rate of two kronen to one gulden (which is also the reason why the 10 Kč coin had been nicknamed pětka or "fiver" - and has been in use in informal conversation up until nowadays). The name was suggested by the emperor, Franz Joseph I of Austria . After Austria-Hungary dissolved in 1918, Czechoslovakia
3286-441: 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
3348-465: 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
3410-399: The transition of Czechoslovakia from a communist regime to a parliamentary democracy. The style is known as deconstructivist ("new-baroque" to the designers) architecture due to its unusual shape. The "dancing" shape is supported by 99 concrete panels, each a different shape and dimension. On the top of the building is a large twisted structure of metal nicknamed Medusa . In the middle of
3472-424: 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
3534-524: Was completed four years later in 1996. Gehry originally called the house Ginger and Fred (after the dancers Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire – the house resembles a pair of dancers), but the nickname Ginger & Fred is now mainly used for the restaurant located on the seventh floor of the Dancing House Hotel. Gehry himself later discarded his own idea, as he was "afraid to import American Hollywood kitsch to Prague". The "Dancing House"
3596-686: 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
3658-603: Was in favour of replacing the koruna with the euro. As reported by an April 2018 survey by CVVM (Public Opinion Research Center), this value has remained at nearly identical levels over the past four years , with only 20% of the Czech population above 15 years old supporting euro adoption. The coins of the Czech koruna increase in size and weight with value. In 1993, coins were introduced in denominations of 10, 20 and 50 haléřů (h), 1 Kč, 2 Kč, 5 Kč, 10 Kč, 20 Kč and 50 Kč. The 10 h and 20 h coins were taken out of circulation by 31 October 2003 and
3720-529: 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
3782-533: Was meant to support the Czech economy, mainly focused on export, but people were unhappy about this step because it was set up before Christmas, which led to raising the prices of imported goods. In late 2016, the ČNB stated that the return to conventional monetary policy was planned for mid-2017. After higher-than-expected inflation and other figures, the national bank removed the cap at a special monetary meeting on April 6, 2017. The koruna avoided significant volatility and City Index Group stated: "If you want to drop
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#17327760428513844-467: Was the only successor state to retain the name of its imperial-era currency. In the late 1920s, the Czechoslovak koruna was the hardest currency in Europe. During the Second World War , the currency on the occupied Czech territory was artificially weakened. The Czechoslovak crown was restored after the war. It underwent a highly controversial monetary reform in 1953. The Czech koruna replaced
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