Casinos supporting Czech language

One of the most common of the West Slavic languages, Czech, almost went extinct at one point. Old Czech stems from a sort of proto-Czech language that originated in the 6th century and was developed by a Slavic tribe led by a hero, legend claims, named "Čech," from whom the name derives. By the 1200s, Old Czech was a fully-fledged language and spoken widely throughout Eastern Europe, stretching as far as Russia. It flourished in the land of Bohemia, most of which is known as the Czech Republic today.

Old Czech started to die out when Germans began to immigrate into Bohemia and brought their language with them. After the Hapsburg Dynasty won the Thirty Years War against Bohemia, culminating at the Battle of White Mountain, the new German rulers made the Czechs into serfs and dismantled their printing industry, slowly choking out the language.

During the Age of Enlightenment, the Czech people regained a sense of national pride and with it, a revival of their language. Now it is not only not on the verge of extinction, it is spoken by approximately 10 million natives, mostly in the Czech Republic. There are relatively few dialects, with most people speaking something very close to Common Czech today.