The Czech language belongs to the West Slavic group of the family of Indo-European languages. It is the (only) official language of the Czech Republic and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. In the Czech Republic, about 10.7 million people speak Czech as their mother tongue. Including people who speak Czech as a second language, the number of speakers of the Czech language in the world reaches approximately 13.2 million.

The Czech language developed from Old Church Slavonic at the end of the 9th century. It was influenced by Latin and German. Since the 14th century, Czech has been the language of a continuous stream of literary production, although, as a consequence of the integration of the Bohemian provinces into the Habsburg Empire, it was used rather infrequently for higher literary purposes for the greater part of the 18th century. The language has been recorded, described, and analyzed in a number of grammars (the first Czech grammar was published in 1533) and dictionaries (the early dictionaries, written in verse, originated in the 2nd half of the 14th century). Modern written standard Czech is directly based on the standardization elaborated during the Czech National Revival in the beginning of the 19th century.

The Czech language was introduced into the Department of Modern European Languages at the University of Delhi in the 1970s. Since that time, the Department of Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Studies at the University of Delhi has been the exclusive educational institution offering courses of the Czech language in India. Every year, around 50 students enroll in Czech language courses at three different levels, where they learn through a combination of direct, communicative, and contrastive method (between English and Hindi) with the help of modern technology, workshops, movie screenings, social networks, etc. After the completion of all three courses, students should be able to work or study in the Czech language independently.

Aside from language studies, students regularly participate in different cultural events related to the Czech language, mostly in close cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Delhi. In the year 2003, the Department of the Czech language initiated the film festival “Little Europe” which annually presents European movies on different topics accompanied by a series of workshops to students of the University of Delhi. The festival is organized with the financial and logistic support of the Embassy of the Czech Republic and opened by a speech of the Ambassador of the Czech Republic. The department library has literature on various aspects of Czech language and culture; students can study the work of prominent Czech writers and poets, e.g. K. Čapek, J. Hašek, M. Kundera, V. Havel, J. Škvorecký, I. Klíma and B. Hrabal, among others.

In 2004, the Czech Republic entered the European Union, with its free-market economy, which has widened the scope of trade with India. The need for specialists in the language among Czech and Indian companies as well as language institutions is proliferating. The Czech higher education system maintains high quality education and offers interesting opportunities to foreign students. Czech universities provide a range of scholarships. For studying in English programmes, students have to pay fees (which are rather low in comparison with other European countries), but studies are free of charge for foreign students who are able to study in Czech. (The required level for studying in Czech at different universities varies from B1 to B2, according to the CEFR.) In 2020, the number of foreign students studying in the Czech Republic was 50,121, and keeps growing as the offer of study programmes and courses taught in foreign languages increases. When enrolling in English programmes, it is advisable to learn communicative Czech as well, so as to be able to communicate with locals and cope with bureaucratic requirements.  

Each year, students of the Czech language at the University of Delhi may apply for scholarships for the Summer School of Slavonic Studies in the Czech Republic, an intensive 3-to-4-week Czech language course at different levels.

For the enquiries related to studies of Czech at University of Delhi contact Czech Visiting Lecturer Tamara Bartková via e-mail tambartkova@seznam.cz