After more than a year and a half, the main language we talk is still English. And although it is no problem in most of the situations, there are many times when it would be so useful to be at least able to communicate in the other language...The problem is, that we are both far away from communicating on a comfortable level in either German or Czech, so we always end up speaking English. So many people say that learning Czech is not easy (and Jan would most probably agree as well). Starting with pronunciation, ending with grammar. Is it really true? How long is it necessary to learn Czech to be able to communicate in it and how long to master it? And how different is Czech from German?
First, a bit of reality. First words which Jan tried to say in Czech were "volské oko" (sunny side up egg, fried egg) one and a half year ago. When he tried to tell it to Google, Google voice recognition thought that he said: "britská kočka" (British cat). So from that time on, kids started to call the fried egg "britská kočka" ("Mum, I would like to eat British cat" became an everyday joke).
Based on the ranking of languages which says how long (theoretically) it might take to learn the given language for a native English speaking person, the Czech language is ranked as 4th category together with Hebrew, Persian, Russian and so on (approx. 44 weeks). On contrary, the German language falls into the 2nd category (30 weeks). In the 1st category are, for example, Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish (23 weeks). In the 3rd category are Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili (36 weeks) and in the last, 5th category are Korean, Mandarin, Arabic or Japanese language with an estimate of 88 weeks to learn. (https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/17786513/How-difficult-is-Czech)
This finding might seem a bit discouraging, but let's start with someone who doesn't think that the Czech language would be that difficult. Guy, who tried to learn the Czech language in 3 months and was very successful in it Why Czech isn't as hard to learn as you think (yeah, I know, it is a polyglot, so for a normal human it might be way more challenging, but anyway his findings are really interesting and encouraging). The main thing which he points out and which makes learning the Czech language simple, is the fact, that it is a phonetic language (compared to French or English, similar to Spanish). Furthermore, the Czech language although it was always fighting against compound words (as in German language), builds on top of roots of words which are getting additional prefixes and suffixes. So if you learn how these work, you can create a lot of new words and you don't have to learn each of them separately: "In fact, prefix + root combinations multiply. So if you understand the vague sense associated with the main prefixes do, na, nad(e), ne, o(b), od(e), pa, po, popo, pod, pro, pře, před, při, roz, s(e), spolu, u, v(e), vy, vz, z, za and combine less than half of them with say 10 roots that they may work with, then for the price of learning 20 word-meanings, you actually get 10×10=100 words thanks to all the possible combinations!!".
On top of this, there are some nice tools to help you. The guy recommends slovnik.cz, but I would definitely recommended slovnik.seznam.cz, which is the best Czech online dictionary and it still beats Google translator on all levels, although google is really improving every day and sometimes it is worth to compare both of them. Other thing which he recommends is to check a webpage czechmatediary, which is mainly written in both Czech and English.
But if you want to start to learn some first Czech words, you don't want to carry a vocabulary or language book with you, there is a really nice app, which might help you to start. It is Duolingo and it very recently introduced also the Czech language https://www.duolingo.com/course/cs/en/Learn-Czech-Online. It is free and quite fun and lessons are quite cool, although it might seem a bit slow. I tried to use it for German, Jan tries it for Czech and it is the best online thing we found.
Every now and then we find out that German and Czech is actually quite similar (so far the most useful seems to be word "auto" which we can both use to protect kids lives when we walk along a street and want to warn them). Czech historians would say that it is no wonder because after the battle of White mountain in 1620, the Germanisation of politics was very strong. The German language was favored during the government of Habsburgs in Czech countries for a long time and although there was the national revival (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_National_Revival) at the end of 18th century and in the 19th century and purists in the 19th century tried to clean the Czech language from all germanisms and find Czech equivalents or think up new Czech words, many words remained to be used. Furthermore, at the beginning of the 20th century, many Germans were living on Czech borders and although nationalism was very strong after the world war, not all of the used words vanished. I was wondering if there is any list of the words which are actually germanisms and which came to Czech language from the German language. Then I found this nice master thesis, where is a very long list of germanisms with its German equivalents (and real Czech synonyms): https://is.muni.cz/th/e32ng/Diplomka_-_hotovo.pdf?so=nx. Starting from the page 41 is a list of them based on the topic. Some of them are not very used, but others are very common: bunkr, flinta, kanon, drát (Draht), plech (Blech), kasa (Kasse), inzerát, mince (Munze), šunt (Schundt), cukr (Zucker), mošt (Most), dort (Torte), špek (Speck), špenát (Spinat), kapuce (Kaputze), lampa (Lampe), vana (Wanne), mušle (Muschel), šnek (Schnecke), knajpa, bagr (Bagger), biflovat (buffeln), blinkr (Blinker), hergot! (Herrgott), fuj! (pfui!)....
And there are many other similar words like Tasche (taška), Ziel (cíl), Auto (auto), mussen (muset), Brille (brýle), Flasche (flaška), ...
So I still have a hope that one day, we can have a family dinner in German and in Czech language and when my dreams start to be even more vivid, I think about the possibility that one day, we might go together to a theatre in our own language...Ok, stop dreaming and start to prepare for a short conversation on the stairs with a neighbor :).
First, a bit of reality. First words which Jan tried to say in Czech were "volské oko" (sunny side up egg, fried egg) one and a half year ago. When he tried to tell it to Google, Google voice recognition thought that he said: "britská kočka" (British cat). So from that time on, kids started to call the fried egg "britská kočka" ("Mum, I would like to eat British cat" became an everyday joke).
Based on the ranking of languages which says how long (theoretically) it might take to learn the given language for a native English speaking person, the Czech language is ranked as 4th category together with Hebrew, Persian, Russian and so on (approx. 44 weeks). On contrary, the German language falls into the 2nd category (30 weeks). In the 1st category are, for example, Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish (23 weeks). In the 3rd category are Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili (36 weeks) and in the last, 5th category are Korean, Mandarin, Arabic or Japanese language with an estimate of 88 weeks to learn. (https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/17786513/How-difficult-is-Czech)
This finding might seem a bit discouraging, but let's start with someone who doesn't think that the Czech language would be that difficult. Guy, who tried to learn the Czech language in 3 months and was very successful in it Why Czech isn't as hard to learn as you think (yeah, I know, it is a polyglot, so for a normal human it might be way more challenging, but anyway his findings are really interesting and encouraging). The main thing which he points out and which makes learning the Czech language simple, is the fact, that it is a phonetic language (compared to French or English, similar to Spanish). Furthermore, the Czech language although it was always fighting against compound words (as in German language), builds on top of roots of words which are getting additional prefixes and suffixes. So if you learn how these work, you can create a lot of new words and you don't have to learn each of them separately: "In fact, prefix + root combinations multiply. So if you understand the vague sense associated with the main prefixes do, na, nad(e), ne, o(b), od(e), pa, po, popo, pod, pro, pře, před, při, roz, s(e), spolu, u, v(e), vy, vz, z, za and combine less than half of them with say 10 roots that they may work with, then for the price of learning 20 word-meanings, you actually get 10×10=100 words thanks to all the possible combinations!!".
On top of this, there are some nice tools to help you. The guy recommends slovnik.cz, but I would definitely recommended slovnik.seznam.cz, which is the best Czech online dictionary and it still beats Google translator on all levels, although google is really improving every day and sometimes it is worth to compare both of them. Other thing which he recommends is to check a webpage czechmatediary, which is mainly written in both Czech and English.
But if you want to start to learn some first Czech words, you don't want to carry a vocabulary or language book with you, there is a really nice app, which might help you to start. It is Duolingo and it very recently introduced also the Czech language https://www.duolingo.com/course/cs/en/Learn-Czech-Online. It is free and quite fun and lessons are quite cool, although it might seem a bit slow. I tried to use it for German, Jan tries it for Czech and it is the best online thing we found.
Every now and then we find out that German and Czech is actually quite similar (so far the most useful seems to be word "auto" which we can both use to protect kids lives when we walk along a street and want to warn them). Czech historians would say that it is no wonder because after the battle of White mountain in 1620, the Germanisation of politics was very strong. The German language was favored during the government of Habsburgs in Czech countries for a long time and although there was the national revival (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_National_Revival) at the end of 18th century and in the 19th century and purists in the 19th century tried to clean the Czech language from all germanisms and find Czech equivalents or think up new Czech words, many words remained to be used. Furthermore, at the beginning of the 20th century, many Germans were living on Czech borders and although nationalism was very strong after the world war, not all of the used words vanished. I was wondering if there is any list of the words which are actually germanisms and which came to Czech language from the German language. Then I found this nice master thesis, where is a very long list of germanisms with its German equivalents (and real Czech synonyms): https://is.muni.cz/th/e32ng/Diplomka_-_hotovo.pdf?so=nx. Starting from the page 41 is a list of them based on the topic. Some of them are not very used, but others are very common: bunkr, flinta, kanon, drát (Draht), plech (Blech), kasa (Kasse), inzerát, mince (Munze), šunt (Schundt), cukr (Zucker), mošt (Most), dort (Torte), špek (Speck), špenát (Spinat), kapuce (Kaputze), lampa (Lampe), vana (Wanne), mušle (Muschel), šnek (Schnecke), knajpa, bagr (Bagger), biflovat (buffeln), blinkr (Blinker), hergot! (Herrgott), fuj! (pfui!)....
And there are many other similar words like Tasche (taška), Ziel (cíl), Auto (auto), mussen (muset), Brille (brýle), Flasche (flaška), ...
So I still have a hope that one day, we can have a family dinner in German and in Czech language and when my dreams start to be even more vivid, I think about the possibility that one day, we might go together to a theatre in our own language...Ok, stop dreaming and start to prepare for a short conversation on the stairs with a neighbor :).
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