Czech Language Review
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| Introduction | | Usefulness | The usefulness of Czech is limited to Czech Republic and Slovakia. As in many countries in Central Europe, ESL teaching is widespread and many young adults and teenagers speak at least some English. Many older Czechs speak varying degrees in German. Given the proximity to Austria and Germany, German is still a useful language for Czechs who work in tourism and commerce. Those who had come of age during the communist period also learned Russian as part of the mandatory imposition of Soviet culture during the Cold War. However, it is understandable that many Czechs refuse to speak Russian because of the association with the oppressive days of communism and Soviet-led crushing of the Czech uprising against communism in August 1968. Because of the close linguistic tie to Slovak, standard Czech and standard Slovak are still mutually intelligible for most adults. This intelligbility was reinforced during the days of a federated and later communist Czechoslovak state through much of the 20th century when Czech and Slovak were designated as the official languages. Official communications, literature and broadcasts were accessible to Czechs and Slovaks in both of these languages. It was quite easy for citizens to develop a strong passive knowledge of the other language. In addition, Slovak dialects were strongly influenced by Czech as Czech was the literary language of the Slovaks for a few centuries until the 18th or 19th century. With the breakup of Czechoslovakia into separate Czech and Slovak republics in 1993, the degree of mutual intelligibility is fading however. Many Czech teenagers and children now have more difficulty understanding Slovak than people who had grown up during Czechoslovakia's existence. Much the same is occuring in Slovakia with Slovak teenagers and children having increasing difficulty in understanding Czech. In a more general sense, a knowledge of Czech is a useful base to learn other Slavonic languages. In Czech you will encounter typically Slavonic grammatical and lexical specialities. See the appropriate section below for more information. | | | | | Chic factor | Like Hungarian and Budapest, a knowledge of Czech is linked to Prague - that magic destination of a tourist's itinerary. In spite of this association, many Czechs do not regard their language as a major language for foreigners. As such, they will be pleasantly surprised if you take the time to learn some Czech or tell them that you want to learn Czech. They will be very tolerant of your mistakes and won't hesitate to help you learn, or if necessary switch to a language that you both know (e.g. English, German) While it may not convey the same sense of mystery or perhaps menace to a Westerner as a knowledge of its linguistic cousin: Russian (think KGB and dominating Soviet Olympic athletes), a knowledge of Czech is a rather unusual attribute for a Westerner. Perhaps seeing a Czech newspaper headline with its consonant clusters and diacritic marks would strike any English speaker as exotic. ;-) | | Countries | Czech Republic (official), spoken by Czech immigrants and ethnic Czechs in Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Austria, Ukraine, Canada and the United States. | | Speakers | Approximately 12 million in total. Of those about 10 million live in the Czech Republic. | | Economic importance | "The Czech Republic is one
of the most stable and prosperous of the post-Communist states of Central and
Eastern Europe. Growth in 2000-04 was supported by exports to the EU, primarily
to Germany, and a strong recovery of foreign and domestic investment. Domestic
demand is playing an ever more important role in underpinning growth as interest
rates drop and the availability of credit cards and mortgages increases. Current
account deficits of around 5% of GDP are beginning to decline as demand for
Czech products in the European Union increases. Inflation is under control.
Recent accession to the EU gives further impetus and direction to structural
reform. In early 2004 the government passed increases in the Value Added Tax
(VAT) and tightened eligibility for social benefits with the intention to bring
the public finance gap down to 4% of GDP by 2006, but more difficult pension and
healthcare reforms will have to wait until after the next elections.
Privatization of the state-owned telecommunications firm Český Telecom is
scheduled to take place in 2005. Intensified restructuring among large
enterprises, improvements in the financial sector, and effective use of
available EU funds should strengthen output growth." (courtesy CIA World Fact
Book - updated as of May 17, 2005). With Germany
as one of its neighbours and its largest trading partner, it is not surprising
that the Czech Republic has been the recipient of substantial investment flows.
Indeed, the Škoda brand is now partially owned by Volkswagen. | | Travel | The Czech Republic is one of the most popular touristic destination in
Central Europe. Among the highlights are: - Prague (it's a maginificent city and a giant tourist trap at the same time -
beware of pickpocketers and scams)
- Český Krumlov (a beautiful town in
the south that has beautiful small-town architecture. It's also a tourist trap)
- Karlový Vary (mineral springs and spa used for centuries)
- Plzeň (home of Pilsner Urquell - enough said)
- Kutná Hora (a bit like Český
Krumlov with its beautiful medieval architecture. It doesn't seem to have as
many tourists as Český Krumlov which keeps the crowding town.)
- Brno (an
underrated city with a beautiful cathedral, castle and mummies...)
- Olomouc (a mini version of Praha without hordes of tourists. It has a
large trinity column on the main square and its town hall has an elaborate set
of astronomical instruments and clocks.)
- Castles (Šternberk, Pražský hrad, Karlštejn, Konopiště, Hluboka, etc. If you think
France has chateaux, come to the Czech Republic to see some beautiful 'hrady'
| | Variations | Standard Czech is taught in schools and used for official purposes ("spisovná čeština" ~ written Czech), while Common Czech ("obecná čeština" ~ general Czech) is often used in conversation. The use of Common Czech seems more noticeable in Bohemia (western part of the country) than in Moravia (eastern part of the country). Standard Czech uses the dialect of Prague as its base. There are also dialects of Czech that differ from both Standard and Common Czech. In the west, are the Bohemian dialects (of which the one in Prague is but one) while in Moravia there are three distinct groups: Central Moravian, Moravsko-Slovensky which is spoken near the border with Slovakia, and Lachian which is spoken on the northeastern border with Poland. We can view the zone of West Slavonic languages as a dialectal continuum. The Bohemian dialects tend to merge gradually into the Moravian dialects as one travels eastward. In turn, these Moravian dialects gradually merge either intoWestern Slovak dialects as one travels further east into Slovakia, or into Silesian dialects of Polish as one travels northward through Moravia into Poland. | | Culture | A knowledge of Czech will
give you access to some outstanding literature. Milan Kundera and Franz Kafka
are two of the more well-known authors in Czech literature. Naturally, many of
the more popular works have been translated into English. "Kafka and
Kundera are both great authors who represent Czech culture but Čapek and Seifert
(Nobel Prize winner) might be more representative of the Czech language. Kafka
actually only wrote in German (being a German speaking Jew living in Prague) and
Kundera is as French as Czech now (his last books were written in French and
never translated into Czech)." (quote courtesy lenkadv) Some fine
composers also originate from Bohemia and Moravia. Outstanding examples are
Antonín Dvořák (Symphony No. 9, "From the New World"; Slavonic Dances 1-16),
Bedřich Smetana (Vltava (or 'Moldau' in German) - a symphonic poem of the Vltava
river from his cycle 'Má Vlast' ("My Homeland.")) and Leoš Janáček (Sinfonietta;
Glagolithic Mass; Lachian Dances; opera 'Jenůfa') | | | | | | Back to top ¦ Languages Profiles | | | | Difficulties | | | | | Difficulty | For English speakers, the greatest difficulties in my opinion are: - Verbal aspect
- Verbs of motion
- Syntax
- Nominal and adjectival declension
- Vocabulary
| | Pronunciation | Like Slovak, stress in Czech is fixed on the first
syllable of words. Vowels can be long or short. Therefore, 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o'
and 'u' each have a lengthened counterpart. There is a distinction between
'soft' and 'hard' consonants. In turn, this distinction is important not only in
pronunication but grammar as well. For example: Mám cizí
knihu = I have a foreign book ('cizí' is 'soft', and the accusative
feminine form of 'cizí' is identical to the nominative form among others)
vs. Mám zelenou knihu = I have a green book.('zelená' is 'hard'
and the accusative feminine form of 'zelená' is 'zelenou') In spite of
this, Czech pronunication is rather simple despite the intimdating appearence to
those unaccustomed to acute accents, hooks, open dots, ř and a few consonants
that act like vowels (e.g. prst = finger - pronounced something like English
'perst' but the 'er' sound is quite short. Think of the English word 'bird',
it's pronounced like 'brd' rather than 'beerd') | | Grammar | Like other Slavonic languages, Czech has elaborate inflections for its nouns
and adjectives. For nouns and adjectives, there are seven
cases :
nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental and vocative There are three numbers : singular, dual and plural. However, the dual is
present only in a few instances of declension. In other words, there is neither
a complete nominal and adjectival declension in the dual nor dual personal
pronouns (e.g. 'we two', 'you two') as in Slovenian. There are three genders : masculine, feminine and neuter with the masculine divided further into
animate and inanimate categories in the declensions of the nominative and
accusative. There are four moods : infinitive, indicative, conditional
and imperative. There are two voices : active and passive. Because of Czech's inflective nature, personal pronouns are usually
omitted unless the speaker wishes to emphasize the subject of a sentence. In
addition, syntax can be rather free compared to English as much of the relevant
grammatical information of a sentence is revealed in the inflections, suffixes
and prefixes of the words. Syntax usually depends on the focus or nuance that a
speaker wishes to convey. There are a few rules regarding syntax however: - Reflexive pronoun goes in the second position except
when used in the past tense
'Češu se doma' = 'I comb myself at home' (in general, as part
of a routine) 'Já se doma češu' = 'I comb myself at home' (emphasizing the
fact that it is *I* who *DOES* comb himself regularly at home) - The personal marker of the past tense always goes in
the second position
Češal jsem se doma = I was combing myself at home (in general, as part
of a routine) Ja jsem se češal doma = I was combing myself at home
(emphasizing the fact that it was *I* who was regularly combing himself at home) - Adjectives precede the nouns that they describe. In
addition, adjectives must agree with the nouns that they describe.
český voják =
Czech soldier (masculine animate nominative singular) velký sešit = big
notebook (masculine inanimate nominative singular) česká dívka = Czech
girl (feminine nominative singular) červené auto = red car (neuter
nominative singular) čeští vojáci = Czech soldiers (masculine animate
nominative plural) velké sešity = big notebooks (masculine inanimate
nominative plural) české dívky = Czech girls (feminine nominative
plural) čeverná auta = red cars (neuter nominative plural)
| | Vocabulary | Although both English and Czech are Indo-European
languages, Czech vocabulary is not very transparent to an English speaker. It shares many words, however,
with both its Slavic brethren and German. dva = two
tři = three
čtyři = four (it's a distant link - only a linguist
can explain how the 'čt-' is connected to 'f-' in 'four'.)
pět = five
mléko = milk
voda = water
bratr = brother
sestra = sister
syn = son
žena = woman (cf. English 'queen' - it's a
distant cognate)
žít = to live (cf. English 'quick' - it's a distant
cognate)
sníh = snow
ty / vy = you (singular), you (plural)
noc = night
hodina = hour (cf. English 'good' - it's a distant
cognate)
nos = nose
zítra = tomorrow
dnes = today
včera = yesterday There are many German loanwords as Bohemia and Moravia
have been strongly influenced by German culture since the Middle Ages. For
example: rytieř = knight (cf. German 'Reiter'), knoflik = button (cf. German 'knopf'), brýle < /EM > = eyeglasses (cf. German 'Brille')
Many loanwords (especially
modern ones) come from English, such as tým (team), puk (hockey puck), internet, tramvaj (tramway, streetcar) | | Spelling | Czech spelling is quite
phonetic. There is devoicing when a voiced consonant (one with a slight 'buzz')
is at the end of a word or is immediately before a devoiced consonant (one
without a slight 'buzz') This devoicing is not reflected in spelling. For
example: hezký = nice (pronounced 'heski' since voiced 'z' precedes
unvoiced 'k'. Therefore, the 'z' sound turns into the 's' sound)
lev = lion (pronounced 'lef' since voiced 'v' is at the end of the word.
Therefore, the 'v' sound turns into the 'f' sound) Czech uses the Roman
alphabet with its own twists for English speakers. The Czech letters not found
in English are: á, é, ě, í, ó, ú, ů, ý || č, ď, ľ, ň, ŕ, ř, š, ť,
ž | | Time needed | According to FSI, it takes
approximately 1100 class hours to achieve professional speaking
and reading proficiency in Czech. Naturally, the time needed will vary
on each person's level of motivation, access to material and environment. Given
such factors, the time needed to acheive professional speaking and reading
proficiency in Czech can take as little as a year to as many as
infinity. | | | | | | Back to top ¦ Languages Profiles | | | | Ressources | | Books | Teach Yourself Czech (David Short)
It
comes with two CDs or cassettes and a textbook. What I enjoyed most about
this course was that it had lively dialogues and useful grammar information. It
also comes with exercises for each chapter with answers at the back of the book.
It also has a chapter that touches on the differences between formal and
colloquial Czech. What I enjoyed least about this course was that its
presentation of grammar was somewhat unstructured and could intimidate the
learner at first. In the interest of keeping lively dialogues, it's natural that
the language used would have relatively complex structures for a beginner and
some idioms. The grammar section of each chapter would focus on the grammatical
aspects of each set of dialogues. It would have been desirable if the textbook
had included more exercises. Colloquial Czech (James Naughton)
It comes with two CDs or cassettes and a textbook. What I enjoyed about
this course was that it had good dialogues (perhaps not as lively as those used
in Pontifex's course) and useful grammar information. It also comes with
exercises for each chapter with answers at the back of the book. It also devotes
a chapter each to formal and colloquial Czech respectively. Compared to
Short's course, 'Colloquial Czech' has a somewhat better presentation of grammar
since the dialogues are designed in a way to emphasize the grammar or theme of a
given chapter. It would have been desirable if the textbook had included more
exercises. As a first step, Colloquial Czech would probably be a slightly better
starting point for the absolute beginner because of its better presentation. FSI Czech FAST course (textbook by Radovan Pletka) It comes
with twelve CDs or cassettes and a textbook/workbook. What I enjoyed about
this course was that it had practical dialogues and succint grammar information.
It also comes with exercises for each chapter. Most of the exercises are oral
and consist of repeating what the speaker says. There are some exercises where
you fill in the blanks while listening to the dialogues. Compared to
Short's and Naughton's courses, the FAST course is quite dry and more
utilitarian. However, if you want a course with the most audio, this is the
probably the best that you can get. Even though the FAST course's introduction
mentions that it is meant for people who need a crash course in Czech and cannot
get access to the full FSI basic Czech course (44 weeks), I have never been able
to find this full Czech course. A Practical Czech Course For English
Speaking Students (Miloš Sova) It is a textbook with 48 chapters (530
pages - including appendices with excerpts from Czech novels and outline of
grammar.) What I enjoyed most about this course was that it has lots of
exercises and that it builds your knowledge gradually. In addition, it's full of
useful grammatical information, albeit it notes that some of the constructions
that it illustrates and explains are rarely used in colloquial Czech. It focuses
on providing a good understanding of formal Czech rather than colloquial Czech. Compared to more modern textbooks, Sova's textbook is old (published in
1962) and full of outdated dialogues (e.g. it still talks of the Czechoslovak
Socialist Republic, some of the assigned texts are subtle boosts of
socialism/communism.). More importantly for someone learning on his or her own,
the textbook has no answer key (apparently there is a separate book with answers
to all of the exercises, but I haven't found it yet). It's better to use it in a
classroom setting since some of the exercises are oral and you will need a
teacher or fellow student to help you with exercises where you create your own
dialogues. English-Czech/Czech-English Dictionary (Josef Fronek)
(Published by Leda)
This is a larger and better overall two-way
dictionary than Poldauf et al.'s version. In Fronek's dictionary, most entries
contain commonly-used translations of phrasal verbs between English and Czech
complete with the appropriate grammatical cases. It also indicates whether a
verb is perfective or imperfective. As a bonus, it also has grammatical tables
illustrating the nominal and adjectival declensions and verb conjugations.
Almost all entries are linked to a pattern in the section with grammatical
tables. This dictionary would be the undisputed master among
medium-sized English-Czech-English dictionaries if it weren't for one serious
flaw. Namely, it rarely indicates the perfective-imperfective pairs for the
verbal entries. For example it's useful that the dictionary indicates 'napsat'
as a perfective verb meaning 'to write'. However, the dictionary does not
mention that its imperfective counterpart is 'psat'. As such, a learner will
have a problem in finding the correct verb to use in a sentence. Avoid
foreign booksellers or Amazon if possible as they usually charge a substantial
premium on this dictionary (in North America, this dictionary costs about $68
Cdn. or $55 US). Try instead to buy the dictionary in Czech Republic or
Slovakia. In Czech Republic, this dictionary costs approximately 800 Czech
crowns (roughly $40 Cdn./$33 US). English-Czech/Czech-English Dictionary (Ivan Poldauf et al.) (10th ed. published by WD Publications or
Hippocrene Books)
Compared to the dictionary by Fronek, Poldauf et al.'s
offering isn't the best overall one. It doesn't show as many examples of idioms
in the entries and some of the English translations are a little unusual.
However, it has one redeeming feature that makes it worthwhile. Poldauf et al.'s
Czech-English section shows the imperfective-perfective pair of verbs in the
same entry. This is an invaluable aid for English-speaking learners who have no
idea which version of the verb to use. If the compilers didn't include this
piece of information in the entries, the learner would on average have a 50%
probability of choosing the incorrect verb for use in a sentence. So
far, the best solution that I have devised is to use Fronek's dictionary for
most situations (number 5) in this list). However, when it comes to deciding
whether I should use an imperfective or perfective verb, I then turn to Poldauf
et al.'s dictionary (or the much larger 'Comprehensive Czech-English dictionary'
which is also edited by Poldauf) Avoid foreign booksellers or Amazon if
possible as they usually charge a substantial premium on this dictionary (in
North America, this dictionary costs roughly $45 Cdn. or $37 US). Try instead to
buy the dictionary in Czech Republic or Slovakia. In Czech Republic, this
dictionary costs approximately 600 Czech crowns (roughly $30 Cdn./$25 US). | | | | | Links | - A basic profile of Czech (the source of about half of this profile's material)
- The king of all
sites for those who want to learn Czech, with lots
of information, exercises, articles, reviews on learning materials. It even has
a link to an online Slovak textbook and workbook for those who want to learn
that language.
- This page has an interesting link to Czech dialects and
other Slavonic languages from a Czech perspective:
- For a website
on language difficulty for native speakers of English
- For a wide-ranging site on many aspects of the language (e.g. grammar,
education, professional organizations, media)
- For those who want
some information on the Moravian Czech dialects, here are a few sites (for the
first two, it's better if you can understand some Czech) : this site concentrates on the dialect spoken in Brno -
on the left there is a link 'slovník hantecu' which means 'dictionary of Hantec
[dialect]'), (this one has a dictionary
of standard Czech and words in the various Moravian dialects and this nice site on the
Lachian dialect spoken in Northeastern Moravia. It's especially interesting if
you also know some Polish and/or Slovak.
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