When Czech MPs this month voted to allow women to drop feminised surnames, it sparked a new culture war between liberals and conservatives. Currently, the suffix -ova is added to their husband's family name - but women could soon be allowed to drop it. The motion to give women the choice passed by a slim majority of 91 of MPs in the lower house, during a larger debate over amendments to a law on identity cards. If the Senate, the upper chamber, accepts the motion then legal changes will come into effect next January. It is believed it will be accepted, with the Czech interior minister, Jan Hamacek, already voicing his support for the change. Even before it's been definitively decided upon it has sparked fresh division in an already polarised society, pitting traditionalists and progressives against each other. Speaking to Euronews, Ondrej Profant, an MP for the opposition Pirate Party and the other sponsor of the bill in parliament, said that the proposed change to the law would simply extend a right already available to some Czech women.

The Vltava River flows through the capital city Prague, and is the waterway around which the city has developed over the past years. Remember this is only a very basic level introduction to Czech culture and the people; it cannot account for the diversity within Czech society and is not meant in any way to stereotype all Czech people you may meet! The national flag of the Czech Republic is the same as the flag of the former Czechoslovakia. Upon the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in , the Czech Republic kept the flag while Slovakia adopted its own.

Czech is closely related to Slovak , to the point of high mutual intelligibility , [7] as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin [9] and German. The Czech—Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech—Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to midth century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main non-standard variety , known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague , but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of the Czech Republic.