Moravian dialects in the context of Moravians (ethnic group)

Czech (/tʃɛk/ CHEK; endonym: čeština [ˈtʃɛʃcɪna] ), historically known as Bohemian (/boʊˈhiːmiən, bə-/ boh-HEE-mee-ən, bə-; Latin: lingua Bohemica), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 12 million people including second language speakers, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of high mutual intelligibility, as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin 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 mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The most widely spoken non-standard variety, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of Bohemia. The Moravian dialects spoken in Moravia and Czech Silesia are considerably more varied than the dialects of Bohemia.

Moravian Wallachia (Czech: Moravské Valašsko, or simply Valašsko; Romanian: Valahia Moravă) is a mountainous ethnoregion located in the easternmost part of Moravia in the Czech Republic, near the Slovak border, roughly centered on the cities Vsetín, Valašské Meziříčí and Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. The name Wallachia used to be applied to all the highlands of Moravia and the neighboring Silesia, although in the 19th century a smaller area came to be defined as ethno-cultural Moravian Wallachia. The traditional dialect represents a mixture of elements from the Czech and Slovak languages, and has a distinct lexicon of Romanian origin relating to the pastoral economy of the highlands. The name originated from the term "Vlach", the exonym of Romanians.

The Czech–Slovak languages (or Czecho-Slovak languages) are a subgroup branched from the West Slavic languages comprising the Czech and Slovak languages.

Most varieties of Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible, forming a dialect continuum (spanning the intermediate Moravian dialects) rather than being two clearly distinct languages; standardised forms of these two languages are, however, easily distinguishable and recognizable because of disparate vocabulary, orthography, pronunciation, phonology, suffixes and prefixes. The eastern Slovak dialects are more divergent and form a broader dialect continuum with the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic, most notably Polish.

Moravians (Czech: Moravané or colloquially Moraváci, outdated Moravci) are a Czech ethnographic group from the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, who speak the Moravian dialects of Czech or Common Czech or a mixed form of both. They are not a separate ethnicity instead, a subgroup of the ethnic Czech people, as is recognized by most Moravians but a part of the group's population 'ethnically' identifies as 'Moravian', registered in Czech censuses since 1991. The figure has fluctuated and in the 2011 census, 6.01% of the Czech population declared Moravian as their 'ethnicity'. Smaller pockets of people declaring Moravian 'ethnicity' are also native to neighboring Slovakia.