Do Czechs and Slovaks no longer speak each other's language?

It's almost eleven years since Czechoslovakia split into two separate countries, and until the split, Czechs and Slovaks had little difficulty understanding each other. But now things are slowly beginning to change. A generation of Czech children has grown up with no real exposure to Slovak - and visa versa -, and when the two countries join the EU, interpreters might even be used for official talks. Radio Prague's Rob Cameron has been speaking to Roderick Jones, who's in charge of recruiting Czech translators for the European Commission.

"It is certainly true that Czechs and Slovaks of a given age will understand both pretty much automatically, just because they were used to doing it for years and years until Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. But youngsters, for example teenagers, who are not so much exposed to the other language, now find more and more that it is indeed a foreign language."

This change has happened in the space of just eleven years. What will things be like in a hundred?

"The trend will continue. I think unless there is some particular political development which involves the two countries being much closer together, it is likely that in a generation or two, Czech or Slovak will be considered as foreign languages by the respective speakers of one or the other."

I've seen a newspaper report quoting an unnamed Czech official saying that interpreters will probably be used to translate between Czech and Slovak when the two countries join the EU in May 2004. Does that strike you as credible?

"It is fair to say that to a very large extent the interpretation is not going to be necessary. One sees this very often already now between languages such as Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, even though Norway of course is not a member state of the European Union. I think very few Danes would bother listening to a Danish interpreter working from a Norwegian speaker. However, there is another aspect to the interpreting situation which I referred to which I think is very important. In some meetings there will be a multiplicity of languages. Either for practical reasons - people really need the languages - and also on some occasions for statutory reasons - because legal texts are being adopted in the languages of the member states - the interpretation has to be there."