The Language Consulting Centre began operating in 1936. In that year, the Society for Slavic Linguistics in Prague and the editorial office of the Our Language journal established a special section with the approval of the Third Division of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts. The purpose of the new section was to “provide, for a modest fee, advice and assistance with language inquiries to all interested parties” (Our Language, 4–5/1936, pg. 119). Today, the Language Consulting Centre is operated by the Department of Language Cultivation of the CLI of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Since its establishment, the Language Consulting Centre of the Czech Language Institute has been the only Czech studies academic office in the Czech Republic providing systematic language consultations and language expertise to a broad array of Czech language users.
Interest in language consultations from members of the the public has grown significantly since the CLI has had a presence on the Internet. In 1998–2010, more than 73,000 written inquiries were answered (sent by e-mail and post). The number of phone language consultation requests was even higher than the number of written requests. The Language Consulting Centre advises people on writing, pronunciation, inflection, tenses, word meanings, etymology, word use in a particular context, sentence construction, stylistics, etc.
Language inquiries also provide the Language Consulting Centre staff with an important and authentic source of information about customary language usage. Staff members learn which language phenomena interest language users, which areas are in the foreground of users’ concern and which remain marginal to their interest, which they find troubling, where they feel uncertain and what changes in language are expressed in their inquiries (fluctuations, variations, doublets, etc.). Questions, comments, requests and suggestions sent in by the public have become an important source of information for scientific work and for development and intermittent expansion of the website, particularly the Interesting Questions section and the Internet Language Reference Book.
Language education and popularisation are important parts of the Language Consulting Centre’s work. The staff give lectures for the lay and academic public, work with TV and radio stations and collaborate with a number of newspapers and periodicals.
