Czech Letters & Accents

The Czech alphabet is usually counted as 42 letters: the 26 of English, fifteen letters with accents (á č ď é ě í ň ó ř š ť ú ů ý ž) and the digraph ch, which Czech treats as one letter. Q, W and X turn up almost only in foreign words and names, such as watt or xylofon.

Not every accented letter is sorted separately. In a Czech dictionary č, ř, š and ž each get their own section right after c, r, s and z, and ch comes after h, so chata (cottage) is listed after hrad (castle) and hůl (stick), not among the c words. The letters with a čárka or kroužek, and ď ť ň ě, are sorted together with their plain letter.

Czech spelling is largely sound-based but not one-to-one: i and y represent the same vowel sound, and consonants can change pronunciation in context. Once you know the marks, examples such as čeština (Czech), řeka (river), město (town) and kůň (horse) are predictable.

Czech accent marks: čárka, háček and kroužek

The čárka (little line, the acute accent) on á é í ó ú ý makes a vowel long. It is not a stress mark: Czech stresses the first syllable of every word, so the čárka can sit anywhere. Length alone changes the word: byt is a flat and být means to be, dal is he gave and dál means further, rada is advice and ráda means glad.

The kroužek (little ring) appears only on ů, which sounds exactly like ú. In native words, ú is normally written at the start of a word or compound member, or after a prefix (úterý, Tuesday; neúspěch, failure), while ů is used elsewhere (dům, house; domů, home). Loanwords can have medial ú, as in túra (hike) and manikúra (manicure). The ring is a trace of an old o: dům was once pronounced dóm, and the o is still there in domu and doma, just as kůň has koně.

The háček (little hook, the caron) softens a consonant: č is the ch of church, š the sh of ship, ž the s of measure, ň the ny of canyon, and ď and ť are a d and t said with the tongue pressed against the palate, as in ďábel (devil) and chuť (taste). On small ď and ť (and Slovak ľ) the hook is printed as a short stroke that looks like an apostrophe; it is still the háček, and typing d' with an apostrophe instead is a mistake. The capitals Ď and Ť show the full hook.

ě is not a different vowel; it is an e that changes the consonant before it. After d, t and n it softens them: děti (children) sounds like ďeťi. After b, p, v and f it adds a y sound: běh (run) is said bjeh. After m it adds ň: město (town) is mňesto. And ř is the famous one: a trilled r and a ž-like hiss at the same time, the sound in Dvořák and tři (three). It is found in almost no other language, and Czech children are often the last to master it.

Czech quotation marks and punctuation: „ “ ‚ ‘ » «

Czech opens a quotation low and closes it high: „Dobrý den,“ řekla. The opening mark „ sits on the line and the closing mark “ is the one English uses to open a quote, so English “ ” or straight " " quotes look wrong in a Czech text. A quotation inside a quotation uses the single pair ‚ ‘: „Říkal ‚ahoj‘ a odešel.“

Books and magazines sometimes use chevrons instead, pointing inward toward the quoted words: »Dobrý den«, the reverse of the French « ». A dash between words is the spaced en dash –: Praha – Brno, to je on – Petr.

Numbers follow European custom: a decimal comma (3,14), a space between thousands (1 000 000) and a full stop after ordinals, so 21 October 2026 is written 21. října 2026 or 21. 10. 2026. Prices take the abbreviation Kč (koruna česká, Czech crown) after the number: 250 Kč. Kč has no single Unicode character; it is written with the letters K and č.

How to type Czech letters on a keyboard

Czech keyboard layout: the Czech layout is QWERTZ (Y and Z swap places), and its number row gives the accented letters without Shift: + ě š č ř ž ý á í é on the keys from 1 to 0, with the digits on Shift. ú is on the key right of P and ů on the key right of L. The key left of Backspace is a dead key: press it and then a vowel for the čárka, or Shift + it (ˇ) and then a letter for the háček, which is how you get ď, ť and ň. With Caps Lock on, the number row gives capitals Ě Š Č Ř Ž. On Windows, add it under Settings → Time & language → Language & region; there is also a Czech (QWERTY) variant.

Windows without the Czech layout: Alt codes on the number pad cover only the čárka letters: á Alt+0225, é 0233, í 0237, ó 0243, ú 0250, ý 0253; Á 0193, É 0201, Í 0205, Ó 0211, Ú 0218, Ý 0221. The háček letters and ů have no Alt+0 code in Western Windows; in Word type the hex code and press Alt+X: č 010D, ř 0159, š 0161, ž 017E, ě 011B, ů 016F, ď 010F, ť 0165, ň 0148 (capitals: Č 010C, Ř 0158, Š 0160, Ž 017D, Ě 011A, Ů 016E, Ď 010E, Ť 0164, Ň 0147).

Mac: add the Czech input source in System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources, or use the ABC – Extended layout, where Option + V then a letter adds a háček (č ř š ž ě ň ď ť) and Option + E then a vowel adds the čárka. Phones: add the Czech keyboard in Gboard or the iPhone keyboard settings; long-press a letter to choose its accented forms. HTML: č ř š ž ě ď ť ň ů á ý, or numeric codes such as ř for ř.

Where Czech is spoken, and the languages close to it

CLDR estimates around 13 million Czech speakers: about 10.6 million in Czechia 🇨🇿 and about 2.6 million in Slovakia 🇸🇰, where Czech is widely understood after a shared Czechoslovak state that lasted, with a wartime break, from 1918 to the end of 1992. Czechia pays in Czech crowns (Kč) and has not adopted the euro; Slovakia has used the euro € since 2009. Both countries have their own collections of flags, emoji and symbols.

Czech is a West Slavic language. Its closest relative is Slovak, so close that Czechs and Slovaks talk to each other each in their own language; Slovak shares the háček and čárka and adds ä, ô, ľ, ĺ and ŕ (see the Slovak collection). Polish, the other large West Slavic language, writes sounds close to Czech č and š as cz and sz, and a sound close to Czech ž as ż or rz; standard Polish has no direct equivalent to Czech ř (see the Polish collection).

The háček travelled far from Bohemia. Croatian, Slovene, Slovak, Lithuanian and Latvian all write č, š and ž, and Croatian adopted them in the 1830s, when Ljudevit Gaj modelled his spelling reform on Czech.