Why is ř described as unique worldwide?

The letter ř represents the raised (laminal) alveolar non-sonorant trill, a sound found in essentially no other living language. It is famously the hardest Czech sound for learners and is unique to Czech, which is why it gets special mention.

How many letters are in the Czech alphabet?

The Czech alphabet has 42 letters when you count every accented form and the digraph ch as a separate letter. This includes the 26 base Latin letters plus the háček, čárka, and kroužek variants and ch.

What are the three Czech diacritic marks?

The háček or caron (ˇ) seen on č, ř, š, ž; the čárka or acute (´) marking long vowels á, é, í, ó, ú, ý; and the kroužek or ring (˚) found only on ů, another long u. Each changes pronunciation, not just decoration.

What is the Unicode code point for ř?

Lowercase ř is U+0159 (LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH CARON) and uppercase Ř is U+0158. Its HTML entity is ř for the lowercase form. You can copy both directly from this reference.

Is ch really one letter?

Yes. In Czech, ch is a single letter of the alphabet positioned after h, not a combination of c and h. It has no single Unicode code point, so it is stored as the two characters c and h but treated as one unit in sorting and spelling.

Czech Alphabet Reference

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The Czech alphabet extends the Latin script with three diacritic marks and the digraph ch, giving 42 letters in total. Among them is ř, which represents a sound found in virtually no other language. This reference lists every letter with its Unicode code point, HTML entity, and a short note.

How it works

Each entry pairs the uppercase and lowercase glyph with its metadata. The diacritics group the letters into three families:

háček / caron (ˇ):  č ď ě ň ř š ť ž
čárka / acute (´):  á é í ó ú ý
kroužek / ring (˚): ů
digraph:            ch  (one letter, after h, no single code point)

The search box filters across the glyph, its name, and its Unicode value, so you can find a character by typing caron, 0159, or simply ř.

Tips and notes

The famous ř (U+0159) is the raised alveolar trill — distinct from the rolled r of Spanish — and is the letter learners struggle with most. Note that both ú and ů are long u sounds: ú appears at the start of words and after prefixes, while ů appears inside and at the end. The digraph ch has no dedicated code point and is stored as two characters, but Czech treats it as a single letter for spelling, crosswords, and sorting.