Czech and Slovak languages Many foreigners are curious how similar those languages are and how much do we understand each other. They understand each other well, when it comes to elderly generations. They watched both, Czech and Slovak programmes and often visited Slovak/Czech part of Czechoslovakia. Not so younger generations (people under 30). Slovaks tend to understand Czech, as many films or books are at their disposal only in Czech version or number of copies in Slovak is limited, so they help themselves this way. However, younger Czechs, especially from Bohemian part, tend not to be exposed to Slovak language, so there are some people who poorly understand Slovak. I used to have difficulty with reading in Slovak in the beginning. Slovak is much softer compared to Czech, so that amount of soft letters was confusing for me, but now I am accustomed with it. Needless to say, that Slovaks apply the laws to protect their language. For example, Czech is so widespread there, that even some fairy tales are in Czech and not in Slovak. Therefore, the law says that all programmes for children under 12 must be translated even from Czech. For elderly children and for adults, Czech is excluded from that obligation, if those translations (e.g. from English) are dated before 31.12.2007 or the programme is originally Czech one. I do not know that laws exactly, but there are possible fines for not translating programme or documents to Slovak in some occasions even from Czech. In the Czech Republic we do not translate Slovak language at all and we do not have any language laws, beside the law saying that all products must have information in Czech, but it is not important whether Czech comes first or last. In Slovakia, the laws say, that Slovak language must be the first, with the exclusion of areas, where any minority is higher that 20%. In this case, the language of that minority may come first if that community is taking place any event.