Official Status
Czech is widely spoken by most inhabitants of the Czech Republic. As given by appropriate laws, courts and authorities can enact and write out documents and judgements in the Czech language (also, financial authorities in the Slovak language). Czech can also be used in all official proceedings in Slovakia as granted by Article 6 of Slovak Minority Language Act 184/1999 Zb.
According to article 37, paragraph 4 of Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms people who do not speak Czech have the right to get an interpreter in a court of law. Instructions for use in Czech must be added to all marketed goods. The right to one's own language is guaranteed by the Constitution for all national and ethnic minorities.
Czech is also one of the 23 official languages in the European Union (since May 2004).
Read more about this topic: Czech Language
Famous quotes containing the words official and/or status:
“We were that generation called “silent,” but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period’s official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate.”
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