Even Greener Pastures

I've been asked by no one less than the Global Moderator herself to shed some light on this because in my italki profile, I say that I teach both Standard and Common Czech. So what's the difference?

Standard Czech is the codified, "proper" language used in media, formal documents, non-fiction literature etc. It was standardised and codified during the Czech National Revival in the late 18th - early 19th century. It's called National Revival because we were so heavily Germanised at the time and the Czech language had been almost entirely eradicated from state administration, schools, literature etc.

Common Czech (sometimes erroneously referred to as Colloquial Czech) is not just a set of colloquialisms. It is an actual dialect (interdialect really) that is spoken in Bohemia, the western half of the Czech Republic, including the capital, Prague. It is not codified but its "rules" or tendencies have been described in literature and are fairly consistent. It is how people speak absolutely everywhere within the area, unless in a very formal situation. If Standard Czech were used in an informal setting, say at a pub in Prague, it would be considered awkward or inappropriate. The difference between Standard and Common Czech is quite big, and is mostly of morphological or phonological nature. Certain letters are added or omitted and certain suffixes (word endings) change, depending on gender, number and grammatical case. Standard Czech: "s mladými lidmi" changes to "s mladejma lidma" ("with young people"). The real colloquial language can affect whole words ("dům" vs "barák" = a house).

The problem is that the eastern part of the country happens to really like Standard Czech - they still have dialects there but very different to Common Czech and I'd say more subtle - and often really dislike Common Czech. They use Standard Czech even in informal settings without it sounding awkward. Teachers who come from those areas will automatically teach their students Standard Czech which is fine if their students visit the same town they live in. If they go to Prague without any knowledge of Common Czech, they will be lost. Not only will they sound awkward, they will not understand what others are saying. That's why I explain this to my students and let them decide, whether they want Standard Czech only or both. It usually depends on whether they're actually planning on visiting the country or not. Those who already live here, usually ask for "Prague" Czech automatically.

It's a very unique situation and it cannot be compared to how countries with multiple small dialects function. Having one "Common" language that half (possibly even more) of the population speak 90% of the time is something worth mentioning to potential students, in my opinion.

Nikola, is common Czech also a written language?
In which language do contemporary authors write?
What about Milan Kundera before he started to write in French? Was it standard Czech for the Unbearable Lightness of Being?
And sorry for my ignorance, is Slovak a completely different language ?

@Sofia
It depends on what you mean by written. It can be written because Czech is phonetically consistent and it's very clear how to write any kind of word. Most people prefer making the extra effort when writing text messages, by using Standard Czech because it looks better. I'm a rebel and I write the way I speak when I message my friends. I know quite a few people who do the same.
Another thing worth mentioning is that it's more like a spectrum/scale. When I explain it to my students, I draw a line with a book on one end and a beer glass on the other, representing the two extremes, and explain that words can be anywhere along that line and many are neutral and therefore will never sound inappropriate.
I just checked and the Unbearable Lightness of Being seems to be written entirely in Standard Czech, including direct speech.
Even though Standard Czech remains the main language in literature, contemporary authors use Common Czech a lot. You can find it in poetry, plays and direct speech in fiction. If the main character is also the narrator, it is not unusual for the whole novel to be written in Common Czech.
And yes, Slovak is a completely different language, not dissimilar, but it shares many features with other Slavic languages such as Russian that Czech doesn't. Before we became Czechoslovakia, we didn't actually have that much in common with Slovakia (so my Slovakian student reminded me recently, LOL - this is someone outside italki so we discuss politics and religion as we please).

Nikola, that is really interesting and unique. In Switzerland we have Swiss German dialects that are spoken in every day life but the written language learned at school is Hochdeutsch, the standard German. Newspapers, literature use the standard German. The exact same phenomenon is present in the whole Arabic world.

So it is quite unique to have two versions of the same language spoken and written in such a relative small territory.

I thought that Slovak and Czech were similar. I realize I have still many things to learn.

Hochdeutsch is the equivalent of Standard Czech and Common Czech is as if half of the people in the country spoke the same dialect. But don't get me wrong, teachers at school will still correct you if you try using it, and writing an essay in it is a no go. So the rules are similar, it's just that people do it anyway

I can imagine that it must be some kind of act of resistance.
Probably the Swiss German didn’t do it due to the diversity of their dialects and the wish to be culturally integrated in a bigger germanophone context.