Editing Czech language (section)

===Mutual intelligibility with Slovak===
Czech and Slovak have been considered [[mutual intelligibility|mutually intelligible]]; speakers of either language can communicate with greater ease than those of any other pair of West Slavic languages.<ref name="Golubovic">{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1007/s11185-015-9150-9|title = Mutual intelligibility between West and South Slavic languages|journal = Russian Linguistics|volume = 39|issue = 3|pages = 351–373|year = 2015|last1 = Golubović|first1 = Jelena|last2 = Gooskens|first2 = Charlotte|doi-access = free|url = https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/25093608/golubovic_and_gooskens_2015.pdf}}</ref> Following the 1993 [[dissolution of Czechoslovakia]], mutual intelligibility declined for younger speakers, probably because Czech speakers began to experience less exposure to Slovak and vice versa.{{sfn|Short|2009|p=306}} A 2015 study involving participants with a mean age of around 23 nonetheless concluded that there remained a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages.<ref name="Golubovic" /> Grammatically, both languages share a common syntax.<ref name="tuebingen"/>

One study showed that Czech and Slovak [[lexicon]]s differed by 80 percent, but this high percentage was found to stem primarily from differing orthographies and slight inconsistencies in morphological formation;<ref>{{Harvnb|Esposito|2011|p=82}}</ref> Slovak morphology is more regular (when changing from the [[nominative case|nominative]] to the [[locative case]], ''[[Prague|Pra'''h'''a]]'' becomes ''Pra'''z'''e'' in Czech and ''Pra'''h'''e'' in Slovak). The two lexicons are generally considered similar, with most differences found in colloquial vocabulary and some scientific terminology. Slovak has slightly more borrowed words than Czech.<ref name="tuebingen"/>

The similarities between Czech and Slovak led to the languages being considered a single language by a group of 19th-century scholars who called themselves "Czechoslavs" (''Čechoslované''), believing that the peoples were connected in a way which excluded [[German Bohemians]] and (to a lesser extent) [[Hungarian people|Hungarians]] and other Slavs.<ref>{{Harvnb|Maxwell|2009|pp=101–105}}</ref> During the [[First Czechoslovak Republic]] (1918–1938), although "Czechoslovak" was designated as the republic's official language, both Czech and Slovak written standards were used. Standard written Slovak was partially modeled on literary Czech, and Czech was preferred for some official functions in the Slovak half of the republic. Czech influence on Slovak was protested by Slovak scholars, and when Slovakia broke off from Czechoslovakia in 1938 as the [[Slovak Republic (1939–1945)|Slovak State]] (which then aligned with [[Nazi Germany]] in [[World War II]]), literary Slovak was deliberately distanced from Czech. When the [[Axis powers]] lost the war and Czechoslovakia reformed, Slovak developed somewhat on its own (with Czech influence); during the [[Prague Spring]] of 1968, Slovak gained independence from (and equality with) Czech,<ref name="tuebingen"/> due to the transformation of Czechoslovakia from a unitary state to a federation. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, "Czechoslovak" has referred to improvised [[pidgin]]s of the languages which have arisen from the decrease in mutual intelligibility.<ref name="cscs">{{cite web|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240751085|publisher=International Journal of the Sociology of Language|last=Nábělková|first=Mira|title=Closely-related languages in contact: Czech, Slovak, "Czechoslovak"|date=January 2007|access-date=August 18, 2014|url-access=subscription }}</ref>