Czech Alphabet

The Czech alphabet (Česká abeceda) is a modified  Latin alphabet 0041–007A used for writing the Czech language.

Like most Western European nations, the Czechs have historically used the Latin alphabet to write their language. Some sounds had no corresponding letters, so they were represented using digraphs and trigraphs (combinations of two and three letters). Medieval authors did this according to their own preferences since there were no standardized writing rules. The first systematic proposal was made by Jan Hus in 1406 in an orthographic treatise. He suggested using letters with diacritics instead of digraphs. Gradually, this form of writing gained popularity, and letters with circles and hooks were incorporated into the Czech alphabet.

The Czech script served as a model for developing Latinization systems for other Slavic languages, including Hungarian, Croatian (“gajica”), Belarusian (“latinitsa”), Ukrainian, and Russian.

The modern Czech alphabet consists of 42 letters. Long vowels are indicated with an acute accent ˊ . The letter U with a circle above it Ȗ serves the same purpose. Historical palatalization (softening of consonants) is indicated with a caron ˇ , a distinctive feature of the Czech alphabet. Currently, only one digraph is used — Ch. It is considered an independent letter and is placed in the alphabet between H and I. However, in Unicode, it is not represented as a single symbol.