Czech Alphabet

The Czech alphabet is a version of the Latin script, used when writing Czech. Its basic principles are "one sound, one letter" and the addition of diacritical marks above letters to represent sounds alien to Latin. The alphabets of several other Central and Northern European languages (Slavic, Baltic) are based on the Czech alphabet, omitting or adding characters according to their needs. The most notable exception is Polish, which developed its own Roman script independently. The Czech alphabet is also the standard script used by linguists for transliterating Slavic Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and others).

The alphabet consists of 42 graphemes:

A, Á, B, C, Č, D, Ď, E, É, Ě, 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

The letters Q and W are used exclusively in foreign words, and are replaced with Kv and V once the word becomes "naturalized"; the digraphs dz and dž are also used mostly for foreign words and do not have a separate place in the alphabet.