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48-404: Situated on the eastern shore of the river Spree , it is bounded by the streets Rathausstraße , Spandauer Straße and Mühlendamm . The neighborhood itself is named for the eponymous deconsecrated Nikolaikirche ( 'St. Nicholas Church' ) at its heart. This is Berlin's oldest church and was dedicated to Saint Nicholas . The two settlements of Old Berlin as well as Cölln on the other side of

96-540: A museum . On the other side of the Poststraße is the Knoblauchhaus from 1760, with a neoclassical façade from the 19th century. One of the few preserved historic original buildings, it was the residence of the notable Knoblauch family with members like the architect Eduard Knoblauch or the physicist Karl-Hermann Knoblauch . It is home of a Biedermeier museum, the oldest civic museum of Berlin. On

144-635: 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

192-506: 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/ ;

240-571: 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

288-514: 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

336-489: 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

384-643: A stretch of about 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of and flowing through Fürstenwalde, the river forms part of the Oder-Spree Canal . On this reach, and on the reach west of the confluence with the River Dahme at Köpenick, the river forms part of secondary commercial link between Berlin and the River Oder and hence Poland . The canal diverges from the Spree just east of Fürstenwalde and later joins

432-474: 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

480-753: 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

528-636: 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

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576-634: 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

624-743: Is a river in Germany and the Czech Republic . With a length of approximately 400 kilometres (250 mi), it is the main tributary of the Havel River. The Spree is much longer than the Havel, which it flows into at Berlin - Spandau ; the Havel then flows into the Elbe at Havelberg . The river rises in the Lusatian Highlands , in the Lusatian part of Saxony , where it has three sources:

672-422: 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

720-576: Is an island in the Spree. In 2004 the Badeschiff floating swimming pool opened on the Spree in Berlin. Small craft, such as punts , are widely used in wetlands of the Spreewald. Larger craft can reach as far upstream as Leibsch, although the upper reaches are relatively shallow and are generally only used by leisure craft. Some intermediate reaches are unnavigable and by-passed by canals. For

768-432: 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

816-629: 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

864-575: 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

912-792: Is the main river of Berlin, Brandenburg, Lusatia, and the settlement area of the Sorbs , who call the river Sprjewja ; the name derives ultimately from Proto-Germanic * spreutaną "to spring forth". For a very short distance close to its sources, the Spree constitutes, as Spréva , the border between Germany and the Czech Republic . The Spree's longest tributaries are Dahme (confluence in Berlin- Köpenick ) and Schwarzer Schöps ( Čorny Šepc ; confluence in Boxberg/O.L. - Sprey  [ de ] ), other well-known tributaries (since they are Berlin rivers) are Panke and Wuhle . It rises in

960-499: 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

1008-733: 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

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1056-622: 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

1104-675: The Lusatian Mountains and flows north through Bautzen and Spremberg . In the Spreewald the river passes through the towns of Lübbenau , Lübben and Leibsch . Just below Leibsch, the Dahme Flood Relief Canal diverts water from the Spree to run into the River Dahme at Märkisch Buchholz . The Spree continues north from Leibsch before flowing into the Neuendorfer See at the northern edge of

1152-742: 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

1200-406: 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 ,

1248-528: 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

1296-437: The River Dahme at the (lake) Seddinsee . In Berlin, the Spree forms part of a dense network of navigable waterways, many of which are artificial, and which provide a wide choice of routes. Several important commercial harbors can be found on this network, and tugs and barges move sand, grain, bricks, and beer. Tour boats tour the central section of the Spree and its adjoining waterways on a frequent basis. Many people died in

1344-547: The Spree during the Cold War while trying to cross the Berlin Wall , including children who drowned when rescuers were not allowed to enter the river to save them. 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 ),

1392-845: The Spree is where it is best known. It flows through the city centre of Berlin to join the River Havel in Spandau , one of Berlin's western boroughs, which itself ultimately merges with the Elbe to enter the sea in Cuxhaven , after flowing through Hamburg . On its route through Berlin, the river passes Berlin Cathedral ( Berliner Dom ), the Reichstag and the Schloss Charlottenburg . The renowned Museum Island ( Museumsinsel ), with its collection of five major museums ,

1440-569: The Spree originated along an old trade route, the Mühlendamm ('Mills Dam'), a ford where the river could be easily crossed. The Nikolaikirche , originally a late Romanesque basilica , was erected about 1230. The area around the church with its medieval alleys in the main had been preserved throughout the centuries, until it was destroyed by air raids and the Battle of Berlin during World War II . At Berlin's 750th anniversary in 1987

1488-592: The Spreewald. From the Neundorfer See it then flows in an easterly direction to the Schwielochsee , and then in a northerly and westerly direction to the town of Fürstenwalde . From Fürstenwalde the river continues to flow westwards, through the Dämeritzsee and Müggelsee , to Köpenick in the southeastern part of Berlin , where it is joined by its tributary, the River Dahme. The final reach of

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1536-1000: The banks of the Spree stands the red sandstone Kurfürstenhaus ('House of the Prince-elector '), erected in 1897 at the site of an older building, where John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg died on December 23, 1619. As he believed a White Lady haunted the Stadtschloss ('City Palace'), he had fled to the home of his valet before dying there. 52°31′00″N 13°24′26″E  /  52.51667°N 13.40722°E  / 52.51667; 13.40722 Spree (river) The Spree ( / ʃ p r eɪ , s p r eɪ / S(H)PRAY , German: [ʃpʁeː] ; Sorbian languages : Sprjewja , Lower Sorbian: [ˈsprʲɛwʲa] , Upper Sorbian: [ˈspʁʲɛwʲa] ; Czech : Spréva [ˈsprɛːva] ; in Lower Sorbian also called Rěka )

1584-434: 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

1632-427: 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

1680-405: 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

1728-477: 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

1776-787: The historical one called Spreeborn in the village of Spreedorf  [ de ] , the water-richest one in Neugersdorf , and the highest elevated one in Eibau . The Spree then flows northwards through Upper and Lower Lusatia , where it crosses the border between Saxony and Brandenburg . After passing through Cottbus , it forms the Spree Forest ( German : Spreewald ), a large inland delta and biosphere reserve. It then flows through Lake Schwielochsee before entering Berlin, as Müggelspree  [ de ] ( pronounced [ˈmʏɡl̩ˌʃpʁeː] ). The Spree

1824-535: The house-building was restored in a peculiar mixture of reconstructed historic houses and concrete slab Plattenbau blocks, giving the area an unmistakable appearance. Today the small area is famous for its traditional German restaurants and bars. Beside Saint Nicholas' Church, the best-known building of the quarter is the Ephraim-Palais , built in 1766 for Veitel-Heine Ephraim , the financier of King Frederick II of Prussia . The Rococo façade at

1872-489: The intersection of Mühlendamm and Poststraße became famous as Berlin's "finest corner", until the house was demolished in 1936 for the laying out of the enlarged Mühlendamm street. Parts of the façade were stored in the western outskirts of Berlin, West Berlin authorities delivered them to East Berlin 's magistrate in 1982 to support the reconstruction. The palace was rebuilt between 1983 and 1987, about 12 meters (39 ft) away from its original site. Today, it serves as

1920-494: 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

1968-844: 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

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2016-504: 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/

2064-582: 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

2112-441: 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

2160-465: 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

2208-424: 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

2256-686: 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

2304-529: 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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