Czech alphabet

The Czech alphabet consists of 42 letters (or more precisely - graphemes):

A, Á, B, C, Č, D, Ď, E, É, Ĕ, F, G, H, Ch, I, Í, J, K, L, M, N, Ň, O, Ó P, Q, R, Ř, S, Š, T, Ť, U, Ú, Ů, V, W, X, Y, Ý, Z, Ž

Most of the diacritic letters were brought into the alphabet by a reform of Jan Hus at the beginning of the 15th century to replace the digraphs and trigraphs used to write down Czech sounds that had no equivalent in the Latin alphabet. During the 16th century, the letter "Ů", indicating the long U (i.e. having the same meaning as "Ú" but written in different context), has been added to the list. The only digraph that was left in the alphabet is "Ch", being ordered between the "H" and "I" letters, indicating the sound similar to the German "ch" or the Russian "Х";

The acute accent letters (Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý) and Ů indicate long vowels. They have the same alphabetical ordering as their non-diacritic counterparts. The hacek "ˇ" indicates a palatalization of the appropriate base letter. The letters Č, Ř, Š, and Ž are ordered behind their corresponding base letters; the other letters with haceks have the same alphabetical ordering as their non-diacritic counterparts.

In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet:

External links

Czech Language