Slovaks in Czechia Czechs in Slovakia

The article gives an overview of the relations of Czechs and Slovaks and their languages under various points of view. The first part concentrates on an external view of the history of both nations, the migration between the two countries and demographic data, and the legal situation. It is shown that for most of history the political and cultural influence of Czech on Slovak was much stronger than the other way around. The types of migration also differed since Czechs went to Slovakia as teachers, clerks, etc., whereas the Slovak immigration to Czechia concentrated on workers. The legal situation of the two languages was asymmetric until 1938; real equality began only in 1968. Since the division of Czechoslovakia there are quite a lot of regulations on language use in Slovakia (though they concern Czech only to some extent) and so far no regulations in the Czech republic. The second part of the paper is concerned with the presence of written and spoken Czech texts in Slovakia and Slovak texts in Czechia. Written Czech texts have always played an important role in Slovakia and continue to do so in a diminished form today; Slovak texts came to Czechia mainly in the short period of equality within one state. Spoken Czech texts are present in Slovakia in the media, in films, etc., and the same is true to a lesser extent for Slovak texts in Czechia. Mixed texts, which were characteristic for the time between 1968 and 1992, have nearly disappeared, with the exception of information on packages, which is often written in both languages for economic reasons. The third part of the paper deals with linguistic issues such as the mutual intelligibility of the two languages and the real influence of Czech on Slovak and vice versa. The mutual intelligibility, which can be explained by the close relationship of the two languages, is nevertheless variable and to a great extent dependent on the experiences of the individual speaker. In everyday life members of each nation use thei