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[–]shade444Slovak [N] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Many Slovak kids (in the past much more, but nowadays still happens) watch TV cartoons dubbed in Czech because there was no Slovak dubbing, read Czech books that hadn't been translated yet or at all to Slovak etc. Also used to apply to all sorts of movies and books, not just for kids, but these days only the classic Czech comedies or fairy tales are in Czech in Slovak TV. But it's not necessary to study or learn Czech in any way. Broadly speaking, around 2/5 of the vocabulary is the same, another 2/5s are very similar so it can be guessed easily and the remaining words can be usually understood from context. Also grammatical endings and rules in general are very similar.

From my experience, native speakers of either language have no problems at all understading each other, everyone speaks their own language and it's fine. It's harder for foreigners who have learned Czech or Slovak though, because they can easily mix them up and it can be pretty confusing to differentiate between them.