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Trouble learning Czech...need help! | ||
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| shreypete Pentaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5959 days ago 90 posts - 93 votes  Speaks: English*, Hindi, Telugu, CzechB1, SpanishB2 Studies: GermanB2, FrenchA2, Dutch, Swedish | Message 1 of 14 19 October 2008 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's been almost a year and a half that I've been learning Czech. This language never ceases to get harder and
harder. I really feel like giving it up on many occasions but on the other hand, I'm currently living in Prague so it would be foolish for me to give up (as I'll be staying here for quite a long time). I would like some tips on learning this language. I am currently using: Czech Step by Step by Lida Hola Colloquial Czech by James Naughton Are there any other good learning materials that worked for others?I am able to understand a lot of czech when I hear it on the streets or the radio but for some reason, I find it very hard to speak to people in Czech. The vocabulary and the cases don't come to me quite easily when I'm trying to converse with the locals. For those of you out there who are learning czech, what is working (or has worked) for you to accomplish good speaking and comprehension skills? How are you dealing (or dealt with) this language? How do you guys retain all the vocabulary that you've learned? I'm able to remember a lot of the words and their meanings but I just can't seem to apply or rather come up with the right words at the right time (especially when speaking to the Czechs....I just get so nervous that my mind doesn't think anymore). So far, this is all that I've done: 1)Present tense 2)Past tense 3)A bit of the imperative 4)A bit of the conditional 5)Imperfective and Perfective verbs (but this still confuses me quite a bit) 6)Nominative, Accusative, Locative, Instrumental, Genitive and Vocative case (however I need to practice the locative and genitive more and still need to do learn the Genitive case, which I heard is quite similar to the Locative except for a few exceptions). 7)Tons and tons of vocabulary (which I constantly keep forgetting) Thank you so much. I appreciate it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6967 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 14 19 October 2008 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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When you do the lessons in Colloquial Czech or Czech Step-By-Step, do you do the speaking exercises that they assign to you. Talking to yourself in Czech is not the same as talking to others, but are you comfortable with hearing yourself in Czech? (let alone letting others hear your Czech?)
I've used "Communicative Czech" (Ivana Reskova) when I took intermediate Czech, but I think it's more suitable for a class. I also used "A Practical Czech Course" by Milos Sova in order to give myself some practice with writing and reading Czech. However it is old, and I did not have audio or an answer key (you can buy the textbook with all of the audio from Ohio State University's department of Foreign Language Publications) In order to adapt it to my situation of teaching Czech to myself, I did all of the course's exercises and sent my answers to a friend for corrections and other feedback. If you feel that you're too nervous about speaking, I can't think of anything more to tell you but to keep working at things and somehow get over your apprehension. If you're nervous about making grammatical mistakes while speaking, don't sweat it unless you're making a presentation on your dissertation or a speech at a conference or meeting. In informal conversation, most native speakers should be able to figure out what you're saying and will usually overlook all but the most serious errors in order not to discourage you. This doesn't mean that you should not make an effort to work towards speaking correctly in Czech, but the key is that you should try to make progress by learning from your mistakes. If you already say that you understand a fair bit of Czech, then you already have half of a conversation figured out. You should just speak as much Czech with your acquaintances no matter how broken or halting it may sound initially. How else can you develop oral fluency? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shreypete Pentaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5959 days ago 90 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi, Telugu, CzechB1, SpanishB2 Studies: GermanB2, FrenchA2, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 14 19 October 2008 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I didn't buy the CD that usually comes with the Colloquial Czech book. I do feel quite comfortable when I
speak in Czech to myself. In fact, we also do get lessons in my university (but they're quite slow paced and I'm way ahead of my classmates). The locals here have indeed complimented my "vyslavnost" to the point that they think I'm half-czech (lol). I just need to figure out a way to be able to use all the vocab. I've learned when I'm speaking to others. Thank you very much for pointing out the different resources you've used. I'll try to get a hold of "A Practical Czech Course" by Milos Sova once I'm done with Colloquial Czech. I'm still in Chapter 10 (and there are about 20 or 24 chapters in total). I usually review the stuff after I'm completed every 2-3 chapters so that I don't forget the grammatical rules and the vocabulary. I really do like the book but perhaps getting the CD will help a lot more so that I can also improve my listening skills (but I don't seem to have too much of a problem with that; just speaking). I have a few specific questions and I would be grateful if you could answer them: 1) What exactly does "bych" translate to? I read that this is the conditional tense and it's similar to the subjunctive mood used in Romance languages (eg. Studoval bych, ale nemam c'as protoz'e musim se divat na televizi. Does this translate to "I would study, but I don't have enough time because I have to watch T.V.) 2) Similarly what do "kdyby" and "kdybych" translate to? 3) What the best way to learn the difference between masculine inanimates and animates. In the beginning, I didn't really find the need to distinguish between the two because when I was studying the nominative and accusative, it didn't seem very essential (as only masculine animate nouns change their ending in accusative). But later, as I got to the locative and genitive (and soon Dative), the distinction between the two genders seems to be quite essential. 4) Are there any good sites or books that drill the cases and grammar in general through exercises? 5) I still don't get the difference between imperfective and perfective verbs. I mean I do know that imperfective verbs used when denoting an incomplete, ongoing activity whereas perfective verbs denote a complete, one-tine activity. But how does this work with verbs like "holit se and obholit se" or "kupovat and koupit"?? I mean how does one visualize what's an ongoing activity and what's not (because I'm just used to the extensive tense system used in Romance and Germanic languages to denote this aspect but the Czech verb aspect system is just baffles me!) 6) What's the difference between "se" and "si'....are they both used for reflexive verbs? That's all for now. Thank you once again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6967 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 14 19 October 2008 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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1) bych means "I would" or "I were" and it could be translated into either the subjunctive or conditional in French. It depends on the context. Your translation is correct.
2) kdyby means "if" when attached to conditional or subjunctive conditions. The full lineup of kdyby (using "byt" to be as an example) in standard Czech is as follows: kdybych byl = If I were... kdybys byl = If you were... kdyby byl = If he were... kdybychom byli = If we were... kdybyste byli = If you were... kdyby byli = If they were... (All of these examples assume masculine subjects. The ones for feminine or neuter subjects differ from masculine ones by changes to the forms "byl"/"byli" but retain the forms "kdybych", "kdybys", etc.) Therefore "kdybych" is the form of conditional/subjunctive "if" that is used when talking about the 1st person singular ("I") (There is another form of "if" that is translated by "jestli"). 3) The general difference between masculine inanimate and animate nouns separates nouns that denote male animals (including humans) from those that denote objects that are grammatically masculine. However there are some gray areas (e.g. microscopic creatures can be declined as inanimate or animate). I used that principle of "male animals versus everything else" and about 85% of the time I got the choice of animate/inanimate declension for masculine nouns correct on the first try. I still make mistakes with it but overall I'm slowly learning about the gray areas. For me at least this approach has worked best. 4) I don't know of any text other than Milos Sova's book that has a certain amount of drills. I suspect that there are drill books for Czech, but you may have to search carefully in a Czech bookshop. Try also a bookshop's section for schoolchildren since publishers print a lot of workbooks and drillbooks that are meant for children so that they can get extra practice for entrance examinations. I've seen drillbooks for primary school mathematics, so I can imagine there being drillbooks on Czech grammar for primary school students. There is an experimental website by the University of Chicago that has online exercises for cases (divided into three levels) and is a supplement to the book "The Case Book for Czech". http://languages.uchicago.edu/casebooks/ [Click on the Czech casebook and it will eventually lead to a screen that allows access to the online exercises] 5) The difference between imperfective and perfective verbs is as you describe it. The main difference is whether the action is happens once in a defined interval of time to its completion, or happens over a prolonged period and not necessarily to completion. Imperfective "holit se" is used to describe an act of shaving that is happening in the present, or happens in the past or future as a prolonged or incomplete activity. Perfective "oholit se" can never describe an act of shaving that is happening in the present. It can only describe an act of shaving that is complete (i.e. you shaved everything off, or at least shaved to your satisfaction) in the future or past. e.g. - Dnes se holím (I'm shaving today - There's no comment on whether you will finish, or whether you will complete the task of shaving. You're just describing what you're doing now.) - Vcera jsem se holil (I was shaving yesterday - There's no comment on whether you finished the job or did it to your satisfaction. The only thing that we can deduce is that sometime yesterday you spent an undefined length of time shaving) - Zitra budu se holit (I will be shaving tomorrow - There's no comment on whether you will finish the job or do it to your satisfaction. The only thing that we can deduce is that sometime tomorrow you will spend an undefined length of time shaving) - Zitra se oholím (I will shave tomorrow - We deduce from this sentence that you will shave in the tomorrow, and will do so to completion (and presumably to your satisfaction). You will spend a defined period of time shaving and will have time to move onto other tasks tomorrow.) - Vcera jsem se oholil (I shaved yesterday - We deduce from this sentence that you shaved yesterday and did so to completion (and presumably to your satisfaction). You spent a defined period of time shaving and had time to move onto other tasks yesterday.) The best thing that I can say about imperfective and perfective verbs is just to keep using them and see how they're used by Czechs. Don't get hung up with making too many comparisons to Germanic or Romance languages since the Slavonic concept of verbal aspect doesn't neatly overlap with the tenses that those former two language families uses. 6) "Se" and "si" are reflexive pronouns akin to the French "se" or the German "sich". "Se" is the particle used for accusative ("holit se" literally means "to shave oneself") while "si" is the pronoun used for the dative ("dat si" literally means "to give to oneself") The appearance of these reflexive pronouns don't neatly match Romance or Germanic concepts of reflexive action so don't make too many comparisons and learn the idiomatic uses of Czech reflexive verbs. (e.g. "jak se máte?" - "how are you?" literally means "how do you have yourself?"; "užij si víkend!" - "enjoy your weekend!" literally means "enjoy to yourself the weekend!") 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5853 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 5 of 14 19 October 2008 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Here are a couple of examples On se predstavil ucitelce (He introduced himself to the teacher) On si predstavil ucitelku (He imagined what the teacher would look like) On se oholil (He shaved himself) On si oholil bradu (He shaved his chin) On si rekl ze tam pujde (He told it to himself that he would go there) Jak se rekne Cesky "train" (How do you say train in Czech. In this case "se" is used to express the passive) Vsechno si pripravil nez odjel (He got everything ready before he left) Pripravil se na vylet ( He got ready for a the trip) Other examples where se is used to denote the passive Tady se nesmi kourit (smoking is not allowed here) Muze se tady parkovat? (Is parking allowed here?) Edited by John Smith on 20 October 2008 at 1:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shreypete Pentaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5959 days ago 90 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi, Telugu, CzechB1, SpanishB2 Studies: GermanB2, FrenchA2, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 14 20 October 2008 at 2:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you so much Chung and John Smith (I assume you're a native speaker of Czech??)
To Chung; How long did you take to master this language (or Slovak as your profile points out)? In fact Slovak seems to be a much more "regular" language when it comes to tenses and declension endings...at least that's what a Slovakian friend of mine told me. I thought German and French were hard, but they're nothing when compared to the complexity of the Czech language....although many Czechs here do seem to appreciate the fact that one is trying hard to learn their language (if only they wouldn't speak so fast despite the fact that I ask them to speak slowly" Thank you once again. I do have some other quesitons to ask but at the present I'm trying to finish up the conditional mood and then move onto adverbs and adjectives. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5853 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 7 of 14 20 October 2008 at 3:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, I am a native Czech speaker. If you have anymore questions I would be glad to help.
By the way what nationality are you? Your profile says you are a native speaker of English but you seem to be speak quite a few Indian languages. I'm asking because a lot of Indian languages like Hindi are IMO harder to learn than Czech for a native English speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shreypete Pentaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5959 days ago 90 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi, Telugu, CzechB1, SpanishB2 Studies: GermanB2, FrenchA2, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 14 20 October 2008 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey there John Smith, indeed I am Indian. However, we speak English at hone and that was the first language I
had learnt. I only started learning indian languages (my mother tongue Kiristav) much later (when I was 7 years old). I come from a Portuguese-Indian family so we mostly speak English at home (as do other anglo-indian families). Yes, Indian languages are quite hard but since I learnt them at a young age, it wasn't so bad. I still can't speak some of the indian languages fluently (despite having taken tons and tons of classes) but I do try to put in the effort whenever I visit my family and relatives. It's also quite a pity that I never learnt portuguese (in fact my dad comes from a portuguese indian background--from a state called Goa in India) but my mom comes from an Iranian indian background. So we all just stick to English when conversing as all the other languages that we know are not mutually intelligible. Thank for your help. I'm going to have many more questions in the future and I shall definitely post them up on this forum. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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