Indo-European · ISO 639-3 ces · cs
Czech Language čeština
Czech is an Indo-European language spoken by about 11 million people in 2 countries. It is an official language of Czechia. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Czech is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
About the Czech language
Czech (čeština) is spoken by about 11 million people, which makes it the 112th most spoken language in the world — just behind Rundi (11 million) and ahead of Norwegian Bokmål (11 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Czech-Slovak group within the Balto-Slavic branch.
Where is Czech spoken?
Czech is used in 2 countries. The largest communities live in Czechia (11 million) and Slovakia (2.6 million). More than half of the population speaks it in Czechia — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Czech: Czechia 98% (11 million) and Slovakia 47% (2.6 million).
Czech is an official language in 1 country: Czechia.
Writing system and status
Czech is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Slovak, Polish, Kashubian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 cs, ISO 639-3 ces.
Frequently asked questions about Czech
How many people speak Czech?
Where is Czech spoken?
In which countries is Czech an official language?
What language family does Czech belong to?
What is Czech called in Czech?
Is Czech an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.