TIMED PRACTICE · Čeština
Czech typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Czech typing speed
Czech uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 9 characters beyond a-z — ý, á, ě, ž, í and more.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 45 common Czech words — 30 distinct characters in all, averaging 3.5 written units per word. A test can run for a fixed duration or a fixed number of words, with punctuation and numbers optional. Words are drawn at random each time, so no two runs are the same and there is nothing to memorise. The result reports net speed, accuracy, how steady you were across the run, and the five keys you got wrong most often.
One number is worth carrying into the first session. About 65% of the letters in these Czech words come from just ten characters. Get those ten genuinely automatic — not merely findable — and the rest of the layout stops being the thing standing between you and a readable sentence.
If you already touch type English, most of Czech transfers on the first session. What does not transfer is the 9 characters this bank reaches for beyond a-z — ý, á, ě, ž, í and č, and the rest of the set — and they are not decoration: leave them off and the word is misspelled. A large minority of words in this bank needs at least one.
The temptation in Czech is to skip the accents while drilling and add them later. It does not work — the accent is part of the motion, and a hand that has practised the word without it has practised a different word. Drill them from the start, awkward as the first week is.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 45
- Distinct characters
- 30
- Average word
- 3.5 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Czech practice words
- ý9
- á3
- ě3
- ž3
- í2
- č1
- ď1
- ř1
- š1
Counted across the 45 practice words. 47% of them need at least one.
klidné ruce najdou domácí řadu bez nutnosti dívat seDiacritics on the number row
The Czech layout is QWERTZ, and it does something that startles people coming from English: the number row carries the accented letters — ě, š, č, ř, ž, ý, á, í, é — as unshifted keys. Digits require shift.
This is a defensible trade in a language where those letters are far more frequent than numerals, and it is intensely annoying for anyone typing numbers. Most Czech typists learn the number pad or switch layouts for data entry.
The háček, the small v-shaped mark, is handled by a dead key for the letters that do not get their own position. Slovak uses a closely related layout with its own set of letters, including the ĺ and ŕ that Czech does not have.
Questions about typing in Czech
Do I need a Czech keyboard?
No. The characters beyond a-z in these practice words — ý, á, ě, ž, í and č and others — are reachable on the keyboard you already own once the right layout is selected in your operating system's settings. Some layouts give them their own keys, others build them from a modifier; either way the hardware is unchanged.
How long should a Czech typing test be?
Longer than you would like. A 15-second test measures your sprint and flatters you; over two minutes your sustainable speed shows up, along with the fact that concentration runs out. If you want one number that describes you rather than your best moment, take the longer one.
Why does my score change so much between attempts?
Partly the draw and partly you. No two runs of the Czech typing test use the same words — they are sampled fresh from the bank each time, so one attempt can hand you a friendlier set than the next — and concentration varies more than most people credit. Take three and look at the middle one rather than the best.
How is typing speed measured here?
In words per minute, where a "word" is a fixed five characters rather than an actual word. That convention is what makes a WPM figure comparable between languages whose real words are very different lengths. The number reported is net WPM: uncorrected mistakes are subtracted, so it reflects text you actually produced correctly.
Which Czech keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 9 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 45 practice words between them use 30 of those 35, so 5 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Czech?
45 of the most common words in Czech, drawn at random. They use 30 distinct characters between them and average 3.5 written units each, with the longest running to about 7. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Czech hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 47% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 9 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No, and it is free either way. Every lesson, drill, test and game works signed out, with your progress kept in this browser. An account adds three things only: your progress and settings follow you to another device, your streak survives clearing your browser data, and you can appear on the leaderboards under a name you choose.
Also in Czech: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Filipino. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Keyboard shortcuts worth learningThe text-editing shortcuts almost nobody learns are the ones that pay. What they are on each platform, how to learn them, and why they belong to typing.
- The home rowASDF and JKL; are where every touch typist's hands return. What the home row is, why the bumps are there, and how to drill it properly.
- How hard is each script to type? Every keyboard here, measuredThirty-five keyboards, four things counted about each: how many keys they define, how much of the language they reach, and how large its character set is.