The Czech landscape is exceedingly varied. Bohemia, to the west, consists of a basin drained by the Elbe (Czech: Labe) and the Vltava (or Moldau) rivers, surrounded by mostly low mountains. Moravia, the eastern part of the country, is also quite hilly. It is drained mainly by the Morava River, but it also contains the source of the Oder River (Czech: Odra). Water from the landlocked Czech Republic flows to three different seas: the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, the territory of the Czech Republic can be subdivided into four ecoregions: the Central European mixed forests, Pannonian mixed forests, Western European broadleaf forests and Carpathian montane conifer forests.
Czech is a Slavic language. There are around ten to twelve million native speakers, and it is the only official language in the Czech Republic, spoken by 96% of the population.
The abundant usage of so-called diacritical marks is characteristic for Czech, i.e. hooks over certain letters and accents indicate the length of vowels, which often change the meaning of whole words.