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Czech
čeština, český jazyk
Native to	Czech Republic
Ethnicity	Czechs
Native speakers	10.7 million (2015)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic West Slavic Czech–Slovak Czech
Writing system	Latin script (Czech alphabet) Czech Braille
Official status
Official language in	Czech Republic European Union
Recognised minority language in	Austria[2] Bosnia and Herzegovina[2] Croatia[2] Poland[3] Romania[2] Slovakia[2]
Regulated by	Institute of the Czech Language (of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	cs
ISO 639-2	cze (B) ces (T)
ISO 639-3	ces
Glottolog	czec1258
Linguasphere	53-AAA-da < 53-AAA-b...-d (varieties: 53-AAA-daa to 53-AAA-dam)
IETF	cs[4]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Czech (; Czech čeština [ˈtʃɛʃcɪna]), historically also Bohemian^[5] (;^[6] lingua Bohemica in Latin), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script.^[5] Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of high mutual intelligibility, as well as to Polish to a lesser degree.^[7] Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German.

The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main non-standard variety, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of the Czech Republic. The Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are also classified as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak.

Czech has a moderately-sized phoneme inventory, comprising ten monophthongs, three diphthongs and 25 consonants (divided into «hard», «neutral» and «soft» categories). Words may contain complicated consonant clusters or lack vowels altogether. Czech has a raised alveolar trill, which is known to occur as a phoneme in only a few other languages, represented by the grapheme ř.

Classification[edit]

Czech is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is the most closely related language to Czech, followed by Polish and Silesian.^[8]

The West Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe. Czech is distinguished from other West Slavic languages by a more-restricted distinction between «hard» and «soft» consonants (see Phonology below).^[8]

History[edit]

Medieval/Old Czech[edit]

The term «Old Czech» is applied to the period predating the 16th century, with the earliest records of the high medieval period also classified as «early Old Czech», but the term «Medieval Czech» is also used. The function of the written language was initially performed by Old Slavonic written in Glagolitic, later by Latin written in Latin script.

Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, settling on the eastern fringes of the Frankish Empire. The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries. The diversification of the Czech-Slovak group within West Slavic began around that time, marked among other things by its use of the voiced velar fricative consonant (/ɣ/)^[9] and consistent stress on the first syllable.^[10]

The Bohemian (Czech) language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the late 13th and early 14th century and administrative documents first appear towards the late 14th century. The first complete Bible translation, the Leskovec-Dresden Bible, also dates to this period.^[11] Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were also produced outside universities.^[12]

Literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. Jan Hus contributed significantly to the standardization of Czech orthography, advocated for widespread literacy among Czech commoners (particularly in religion) and made early efforts to model written Czech after the spoken language.^[11]

Early Modern Czech[edit]

There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century. In the 16th century, the division between Czech and Slovak becomes apparent, marking the confessional division between Lutheran Protestants in Slovakia using Czech orthography and Catholics, especially Slovak Jesuits, beginning to use a separate Slovak orthography based on Western Slovak dialects.^[13][14]

The publication of the Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 (the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages) became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries as it was used as a model for the standard language.^[15]

In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the only official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt (of predominantly Protestant aristocracy) which was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620, the Protestant intellectuals had to leave the country. This emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years’ War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, especially among the upper classes.^[16]

Modern Czech[edit]

The modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century.^[17] By then the language had developed a literary tradition, and since then it has changed little; journals from that period have no substantial differences from modern standard Czech, and contemporary Czechs can understand them with little difficulty.^[18] Sometime before the 18th century, the Czech language abandoned a distinction between phonemic /l/ and /ʎ/ which survives in Slovak.^[19]

With the beginning of the national revival of the mid-18th century, Czech historians began to emphasize their people’s accomplishments from the 15th through the 17th centuries, rebelling against the Counter-Reformation (the Habsburg re-catholization efforts which had denigrated Czech and other non-Latin languages).^[20] Czech philologists studied sixteenth-century texts, advocating the return of the language to high culture.^[21] This period is known as the Czech National Revival^[22] (or Renaissance).^[21]

During the national revival, in 1809 linguist and historian Josef Dobrovský released a German-language grammar of Old Czech entitled Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache (Comprehensive Doctrine of the Bohemian Language). Dobrovský had intended his book to be descriptive, and did not think Czech had a realistic chance of returning as a major language. However, Josef Jungmann and other revivalists used Dobrovský’s book to advocate for a Czech linguistic revival.^[22] Changes during this time included spelling reform (notably, í in place of the former j and j in place of g), the use of t (rather than ti) to end infinitive verbs and the non-capitalization of nouns (which had been a late borrowing from German).^[19] These changes differentiated Czech from Slovak.^[23] Modern scholars disagree about whether the conservative revivalists were motivated by nationalism or considered contemporary spoken Czech unsuitable for formal, widespread use.^[22]

Adherence to historical patterns was later relaxed and standard Czech adopted a number of features from Common Czech (a widespread, informally used interdialectal variety), such as leaving some proper nouns undeclined. This has resulted in a relatively high level of homogeneity among all varieties of the language.^[24]

Geographic distribution[edit]

Czech is spoken by about 10 million residents of the Czech Republic.^[16][25] A Eurobarometer survey conducted from January to March 2012 found that the first language of 98 percent of Czech citizens was Czech, the third-highest proportion of a population in the European Union (behind Greece and Hungary).^[26]

As the official language of the Czech Republic (a member of the European Union since 2004), Czech is one of the EU’s official languages and the 2012 Eurobarometer survey found that Czech was the foreign language most often used in Slovakia.^[26] Economist Jonathan van Parys collected data on language knowledge in Europe for the 2012 European Day of Languages. The five countries with the greatest use of Czech were the Czech Republic (98.77 percent), Slovakia (24.86 percent), Portugal (1.93 percent), Poland (0.98 percent) and Germany (0.47 percent).^[27]

Czech speakers in Slovakia primarily live in cities. Since it is a recognized minority language in Slovakia, Slovak citizens who speak only Czech may communicate with the government in their language to the extent that Slovak speakers in the Czech Republic may do so.^[28]

United States[edit]

Immigration of Czechs from Europe to the United States occurred primarily from 1848 to 1914. Czech is a Less Commonly Taught Language in U.S. schools, and is taught at Czech heritage centers. Large communities of Czech Americans live in the states of Texas, Nebraska and Wisconsin.^[29] In the 2000 United States Census, Czech was reported as the commonest language spoken at home (besides English) in Valley, Butler and Saunders Counties, Nebraska and Republic County, Kansas. With the exception of Spanish (the non-English language most commonly spoken at home nationwide), Czech was the most common home language in more than a dozen additional counties in Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota and Minnesota.^[30] As of 2009, 70,500 Americans spoke Czech as their first language (49th place nationwide, after Turkish and before Swedish).^[31]

Phonology[edit]

Vowels[edit]

Standard Czech contains ten basic vowel phonemes, and three diphthongs. The vowels are /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /o/, and /u/, and their long counterparts /aː/, /ɛː/, /iː/, /oː/ and /uː/. The diphthongs are /ou̯/, /au̯/ and /ɛu̯/; the last two are found only in loanwords such as auto «car» and euro «euro».^[32]

In Czech orthography, the vowels are spelled as follows:

• Short: a, e/ě, i/y, o, u
• Long: á, é, í/ý, ó, ú/ů
• Diphthongs: ou, au, eu

The letter ⟨ě⟩ indicates that the previous consonant is palatalised (e.g. něco /ɲɛt͡so/). After a labial it represents /jɛ/ (e.g. běs /bjɛs/); but ⟨mě⟩ is pronounced /mɲɛ/, cf. měkký (/mɲɛkiː/).^[33]

Consonants[edit]

The consonant phonemes of Czech and their equivalent letters in Czech orthography are as follows:^[34]

	Labial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩		ɲ ⟨ň⟩
Plosive	voiceless	p ⟨p⟩	t ⟨t⟩		c ⟨ť⟩	k ⟨k⟩
voiced	b ⟨b⟩	d ⟨d⟩		ɟ ⟨ď⟩	(ɡ) ⟨g⟩
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s ⟨c⟩	t͡ʃ ⟨č⟩
voiced		(d͡z)	(d͡ʒ)
Fricative	voiceless	f ⟨f⟩	s ⟨s⟩	ʃ ⟨š⟩		x ⟨ch⟩
voiced	v ⟨v⟩	z ⟨z⟩	ʒ ⟨ž⟩			ɦ ⟨h⟩
Trill	plain		r ⟨r⟩
fricative		r̝ ⟨ř⟩
Approximant		l ⟨l⟩		j ⟨j⟩

Czech consonants are categorized as «hard», «neutral», or «soft»:

• Hard: /d/, /ɡ/, /ɦ/, /k/, /n/, /r/, /t/, /x/
• Neutral: /b/, /f/, /l/, /m/, /p/, /s/, /v/, /z/
• Soft: /c/, /ɟ/, /j/, /ɲ/, /r̝/, /ʃ/, /t͡s/, /t͡ʃ/, /ʒ/

Hard consonants may not be followed by i or í in writing, or soft ones by y or ý (except in loanwords such as kilogram).^[35] Neutral consonants may take either character. Hard consonants are sometimes known as «strong», and soft ones as «weak».^[36] This distinction is also relevant to the declension patterns of nouns, which vary according to whether the final consonant of the noun stem is hard or soft.^[37]

Voiced consonants with unvoiced counterparts are unvoiced at the end of a word before a pause, and in consonant clusters voicing assimilation occurs, which matches voicing to the following consonant. The unvoiced counterpart of /ɦ/ is /x/.^[38]

The phoneme represented by the letter ř (capital Ř) is very rare among languages and often claimed to be unique to Czech, though it also occurs in some dialects of Kashubian, and formerly occurred in Polish.^[39] It represents the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill (IPA: [r̝]), a sound somewhere between Czech r and ž (example: «řeka» (river) (help·info)),^[40] and is present in Dvořák. In unvoiced environments, /r̝/ is realized as its voiceless allophone [r̝̊], a sound somewhere between Czech r and š.^[41]

The consonants /r/, /l/, and /m/ can be syllabic, acting as syllable nuclei in place of a vowel. Strč prst skrz krk («Stick [your] finger through [your] throat») is a well-known Czech tongue twister using syllabic consonants but no vowels.^[42]

Stress[edit]

Each word has primary stress on its first syllable, except for enclitics (minor, monosyllabic, unstressed syllables). In all words of more than two syllables, every odd-numbered syllable receives secondary stress. Stress is unrelated to vowel length; both long and short vowels can be stressed or unstressed.^[43] Vowels are never reduced in tone (e.g. to schwa sounds) when unstressed.^[44] When a noun is preceded by a monosyllabic preposition, the stress usually moves to the preposition, e.g. do Prahy «to Prague».^[45]

Grammar[edit]

Czech grammar, like that of other Slavic languages, is fusional; its nouns, verbs, and adjectives are inflected by phonological processes to modify their meanings and grammatical functions, and the easily separable affixes characteristic of agglutinative languages are limited.^[46]
Czech inflects for case, gender and number in nouns and tense, aspect, mood, person and subject number and gender in verbs.^[47]

Parts of speech include adjectives, adverbs, numbers, interrogative words, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.^[48] Adverbs are primarily formed from adjectives by taking the final ý or í of the base form and replacing it with e, ě, y, or o.^[49] Negative statements are formed by adding the affix ne- to the main verb of a clause,^[50] with one exception: je (he, she or it is) becomes není.^[51]

Sentence and clause structure[edit]

Czech pronouns, nominative case

Person	Singular	Plural
1.	já	my
2.	ty vy (formal)	vy
3.	on (masculine) ona (feminine) ono (neuter)	oni (masculine animate) ony (masculine inanimate, feminine) ona (neuter)

Because Czech uses grammatical case to convey word function in a sentence (instead of relying on word order, as English does), its word order is flexible. As a pro-drop language, in Czech an intransitive sentence can consist of only a verb; information about its subject is encoded in the verb.^[52] Enclitics (primarily auxiliary verbs and pronouns) appear in the second syntactic slot of a sentence, after the first stressed unit. The first slot can contain a subject or object, a main form of a verb, an adverb, or a conjunction (except for the light conjunctions a, «and», i, «and even» or ale, «but»).^[53]

Czech syntax has a subject–verb–object sentence structure. In practice, however, word order is flexible and used to distinguish topic and focus, with the topic or theme (known referents) preceding the focus or rheme (new information) in a sentence; Czech has therefore been described as a topic-prominent language.^[54] Although Czech has a periphrastic passive construction (like English), in colloquial style, word-order changes frequently replace the passive voice. For example, to change «Peter killed Paul» to «Paul was killed by Peter» the order of subject and object is inverted: Petr zabil Pavla («Peter killed Paul») becomes «Paul, Peter killed» (Pavla zabil Petr). Pavla is in the accusative case, the grammatical object of the verb.^[55]

A word at the end of a clause is typically emphasized, unless an upward intonation indicates that the sentence is a question:^[56]

• Pes jí bagetu. – The dog eats the baguette (rather than eating something else).
• Bagetu jí pes. – The dog eats the baguette (rather than someone else doing so).
• Pes bagetu jí. – The dog eats the baguette (rather than doing something else to it).
• Jí pes bagetu? – Does the dog eat the baguette? (emphasis ambiguous)

In parts of Bohemia (including Prague), questions such as Jí pes bagetu? without an interrogative word (such as co, «what» or kdo, «who») are intoned in a slow rise from low to high, quickly dropping to low on the last word or phrase.^[57]

In modern Czech syntax, adjectives precede nouns,^[58] with few exceptions.^[59] Relative clauses are introduced by relativizers such as the adjective který, analogous to the English relative pronouns «which», «that» and «who»/»whom». As with other adjectives, it agrees with its associated noun in gender, number and case. Relative clauses follow the noun they modify. The following is a glossed example:^[60]

Declension[edit]

In Czech, nouns and adjectives are declined into one of seven grammatical cases which indicate their function in a sentence, two numbers (singular and plural) and three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter). The masculine gender is further divided into animate and inanimate classes.

Case[edit]

A nominative–accusative language, Czech marks subject nouns of transitive and intransitive verbs in the nominative case, which is the form found in dictionaries, and direct objects of transitive verbs are declined in the accusative case.^[61] The vocative case is used to address people.^[62] The remaining cases (genitive, dative, locative and instrumental) indicate semantic relationships, such as noun adjuncts (genitive), indirect objects (dative), or agents in passive constructions (instrumental).^[63] Additionally prepositions and some verbs require their complements to be declined in a certain case.^[61] The locative case is only used after prepositions.^[64] An adjective’s case agrees with that of the noun it modifies. When Czech children learn their language’s declension patterns, the cases are referred to by number:^[65]

Some prepositions require the nouns they modify to take a particular case. The cases assigned by each preposition are based on the physical (or metaphorical) direction, or location, conveyed by it. For example, od (from, away from) and z (out of, off) assign the genitive case. Other prepositions take one of several cases, with their meaning dependent on the case; na means «onto» or «for» with the accusative case, but «on» with the locative.^[66]

This is a glossed example of a sentence using several cases:

Gender[edit]

Czech distinguishes three genders—masculine, feminine, and neuter—and the masculine gender is subdivided into animate and inanimate. With few exceptions, feminine nouns in the nominative case end in -a, -e, or a consonant; neuter nouns in -o, -e, or -í, and masculine nouns in a consonant.^[67] Adjectives, participles, most pronouns, and the numbers «one» and «two» are marked for gender and agree with the gender of the noun they modify or refer to.^[68] Past tense verbs are also marked for gender, agreeing with the gender of the subject, e.g. dělal (he did, or made); dělala (she did, or made) and dělalo (it did, or made).^[69] Gender also plays a semantic role; most nouns that describe people and animals, including personal names, have separate masculine and feminine forms which are normally formed by adding a suffix to the stem, for example Čech (Czech man) has the feminine form Češka (Czech woman).^[70]

Nouns of different genders follow different declension patterns. Examples of declension patterns for noun phrases of various genders follow:

Case	Noun/adjective
Big dog (m. anim. sg.)	Black backpack (m. inanim. sg.)	Small cat (f. sg.)	Hard wood (n. sg.)
Nom.	velký pes (big dog)	černý batoh (black backpack)	malá kočka (small cat)	tvrdé dřevo (hard wood)
Gen.	bez velkého psa (without the big dog)	bez černého batohu (without the black backpack)	bez malé kočky (without the small cat)	bez tvrdého dřeva (without the hard wood)
Dat.	k velkému psovi (to the big dog)	ke černému batohu (to the black backpack)	k malé kočce (to the small cat)	ke tvrdému dřevu (to the hard wood)
Acc.	vidím velkého psa (I see the big dog)	vidím černý batoh (I see the black backpack)	vidím malou kočku (I see the small cat)	vidím tvrdé dřevo (I see the hard wood)
Voc.	velký pse! (big dog!)	černý batohu! (black backpack!)	malá kočko! (small cat!)	tvrdé dřevo! (hard wood!)
Loc.	o velkém psovi (about the big dog)	o černém batohu (about the black backpack)	o malé kočce (about the small cat)	o tvrdém dřevě (about the hard wood)
Inst.	s velkým psem (with the big dog)	s černým batohem (with the black backpack)	s malou kočkou (with the small cat)	s tvrdým dřevem (with the hard wood)

Number[edit]

Nouns are also inflected for number, distinguishing between singular and plural. Typical of a Slavic language, Czech cardinal numbers one through four allow the nouns and adjectives they modify to take any case, but numbers over five require subject and direct object noun phrases to be declined in the genitive plural instead of the nominative or accusative, and when used as subjects these phrases take singular verbs. For example:^[71]

English	Czech
one Czech crown was…	jedna koruna česká byla…
two Czech crowns were…	dvě koruny české byly…
three Czech crowns were…	tři koruny české byly…
four Czech crowns were…	čtyři koruny české byly…
five Czech crowns were…	pět korun českých bylo…

Numbers decline for case, and the numbers one and two are also inflected for gender. Numbers one through five are shown below as examples. The number one has declension patterns identical to those of the demonstrative pronoun ten.^[72][73]

	1	2	3	4	5
Nominative	jeden (masc) jedna (fem) jedno (neut)	dva (masc) dvě (fem, neut)	tři	čtyři	pět
Genitive	jednoho (masc) jedné (fem) jednoho (neut)	dvou	tří or třech	čtyř or čtyřech	pěti
Dative	jednomu (masc) jedné (fem) jednomu (neut)	dvěma	třem	čtyřem	pěti
Accusative	jednoho (masc an.) jeden (masc in.) jednu (fem) jedno (neut)	dva (masc) dvě (fem, neut)	tři	čtyři	pět
Locative	jednom (masc) jedné (fem) jednom (neut)	dvou	třech	čtyřech	pěti
Instrumental	jedním (masc) jednou (fem) jedním (neut)	dvěma	třemi	čtyřmi	pěti

Although Czech’s grammatical numbers are singular and plural, several residuals of dual forms remain, such as the words dva («two») and oba («both»), which decline the same way. Some nouns for paired body parts use a historical dual form to express plural in some cases: ruka (hand)—ruce (nominative); noha (leg)—nohama (instrumental), nohou (genitive/locative); oko (eye)—oči, and ucho (ear)—uši. While two of these nouns are neuter in their singular forms, all plural forms are considered feminine; their gender is relevant to their associated adjectives and verbs.^[74] These forms are plural semantically, used for any non-singular count, as in mezi čtyřma očima (face to face, lit. among four eyes). The plural number paradigms of these nouns are a mixture of historical dual and plural forms. For example, nohy (legs; nominative/accusative) is a standard plural form of this type of noun.^[75]

Verb conjugation[edit]

Czech verbs agree with their subjects in person (first, second or third), number (singular or plural), and in constructions involving participles, which includes the past tense, also in gender. They are conjugated for tense (past, present or future) and mood (indicative, imperative or conditional). For example, the conjugated verb mluvíme (we speak) is in the present tense and first-person plural; it is distinguished from other conjugations of the infinitive mluvit by its ending, -íme.^[76] The infinitive form of Czech verbs ends in -t (archaically, -ti or -ci). It is the form found in dictionaries and the form that follows auxiliary verbs (for example, můžu tě slyšet—»I can hear you»).^[77]

Aspect[edit]

Typical of Slavic languages, Czech marks its verbs for one of two grammatical aspects: perfective and imperfective. Most verbs are part of inflected aspect pairs—for example, koupit (perfective) and kupovat (imperfective). Although the verbs’ meaning is similar, in perfective verbs the action is completed and in imperfective verbs it is ongoing or repeated. This is distinct from past and present tense.^[78] Any verb of either aspect can be conjugated into either the past or present tense,^[76] but the future tense is only used with imperfective verbs.^[79] Aspect describes the state of the action at the time specified by the tense.^[78]

The verbs of most aspect pairs differ in one of two ways: by prefix or by suffix. In prefix pairs, the perfective verb has an added prefix—for example, the imperfective psát (to write, to be writing) compared with the perfective napsat (to write down). The most common prefixes are na-, o-, po-, s-, u-, vy-, z- and za-.^[80] In suffix pairs, a different infinitive ending is added to the perfective stem; for example, the perfective verbs koupit (to buy) and prodat (to sell) have the imperfective forms kupovat and prodávat.^[81] Imperfective verbs may undergo further morphology to make other imperfective verbs (iterative and frequentative forms), denoting repeated or regular action. The verb jít (to go) has the iterative form chodit (to go regularly) and the frequentative form chodívat (to go occasionally; to tend to go).^[82]

Many verbs have only one aspect, and verbs describing continual states of being—být (to be), chtít (to want), moct (to be able to), ležet (to lie down, to be lying down)—have no perfective form. Conversely, verbs describing immediate states of change—for example, otěhotnět (to become pregnant) and nadchnout se (to become enthusiastic)—have no imperfective aspect.^[83]

Tense[edit]

Conjugation of být in future tense

Person	Singular	Plural
1.	budu	budeme
2.	budeš	budete
3.	bude	budou

The present tense in Czech is formed by adding an ending that agrees with the person and number of the subject at the end of the verb stem. As Czech is a null-subject language, the subject pronoun can be omitted unless it is needed for clarity.^[84] The past tense is formed using a participle which ends in -l and a further ending which agrees with the gender and number of the subject. For the first and second persons, the auxiliary verb být conjugated in the present tense is added.^[85]

In some contexts, the present tense of perfective verbs (which differs from the English present perfect) implies future action; in others, it connotes habitual action.^[86] The perfective present is used to refer to completion of actions in the future and is distinguished from the imperfective future tense, which refers to actions that will be ongoing in the future. The future tense is regularly formed using the future conjugation of být (as shown in the table on the left) and the infinitive of an imperfective verb, for example, budu jíst—»I will eat» or «I will be eating».^[79] Where budu has a noun or adjective complement it means «I will be», for example, budu šťastný (I will be happy).^[79] Some verbs of movement form their future tense by adding the prefix po- to the present tense forms instead, e.g. jedu («I go») > pojedu («I will go»).^[87]

Mood[edit]

Conditional form of koupit (to buy)

Person	Singular	Plural
1.	koupil/a bych	koupili/y bychom
2.	koupil/a bys	koupili/y byste
3.	koupil/a/o by	koupili/y/a by

Czech verbs have three grammatical moods: indicative, imperative and conditional.^[88] The imperative mood is formed by adding specific endings for each of three person–number categories: -Ø/-i/-ej for second-person singular, -te/-ete/-ejte for second-person plural and -me/-eme/-ejme for first-person plural.^[89] Imperatives are usually expressed using perfective verbs if positive and imperfective verbs if negative.^[90] The conditional mood is formed with a conditional auxiliary verb after the participle ending in -l which is used to form the past tense. This mood indicates hypothetical events and can also be used to express wishes.^[91]

Verb classes[edit]

Most Czech verbs fall into one of five classes, which determine their conjugation patterns. The future tense of být would be classified as a Class I verb because of its endings. Examples of the present tense of each class and some common irregular verbs follow in the tables below:^[92]

Orthography[edit]

Czech has one of the most phonemic orthographies of all European languages. Its alphabet contains 42 graphemes, most of which correspond to individual phonemes,^[93] and only contains only one digraph: ch, which follows h in the alphabet.^[94] The characters q, w and x appear only in foreign words.^[95] The háček (ˇ) is used with certain letters to form new characters: š, ž, and č, as well as ň, ě, ř, ť, and ď (the latter five uncommon outside Czech). The last two letters are sometimes written with a comma above (ʼ, an abbreviated háček) because of their height.^[96] Czech orthography has influenced the orthographies of other Balto-Slavic languages and some of its characters have been adopted for transliteration of Cyrillic.^[97]

Czech orthography neatly reflects vowel length; long vowels are indicated by an acute accent or, occasionally with ů, a ring. Long u is usually written ú at the beginning of a word or morpheme (úroda, neúrodný) and ů elsewhere,^[98] except for loanwords (skútr) or onomatopoeia (bú).^[99] Long vowels and ě are not considered separate letters in the alphabetical order.^[100] The character ó exists only in loanwords and onomatopoeia.^[101]

Czech typographical features not associated with phonetics generally resemble those of most European languages that use the Latin script, including English. Proper nouns, honorifics, and the first letters of quotations are capitalized, and punctuation is typical of other Latin European languages. Ordinal numbers (1st) use a point, as in German (1.). The Czech language uses a decimal comma instead of a decimal point. When writing a long number, spaces between every three digits, including those in decimal places, may be used for better orientation in handwritten texts. The number 1,234,567.89101 may be written as 1234567,89101 or 1 234 567,891 01.^[102] In proper noun phrases (except personal and settlement names), only the first word and proper nouns inside such phrases are capitalized (Pražský hrad, Prague Castle).^[103][104]

Varieties[edit]

The modern literary standard and prestige variety, known as «Standard Czech» (spisovná čeština) is based on the standardization during the Czech National Revival in the 1830s, significantly influenced by Josef Jungmann’s Czech–German dictionary published during 1834–1839. Jungmann used vocabulary of the Bible of Kralice (1579–1613) period and of the language used by his contemporaries. He borrowed words not present in Czech from other Slavic languages or created neologisms.^[105] Standard Czech is the formal register of the language which is used in official documents, formal literature, newspaper articles, education and occasionally public speeches.^[106] It is codified by the Czech Language Institute, who publish occasional reforms to the codification. The most recent reform took place in 1993.^[107] The term hovorová čeština (lit. «Colloquial Czech») is sometimes used to refer to the spoken variety of standard Czech.^[108]

The most widely spoken vernacular form of the language is called «Common Czech» (obecná čeština), an interdialect influenced by spoken Standard Czech and the Central Bohemian dialects of the Prague region. Other Bohemian regional dialects have become marginalized, while Moravian dialects remain more widespread and diverse, with a political movement for Moravian linguistic revival active since the 1990s.

These varieties of the language (Standard Czech, spoken/colloquial Standard Czech, Common Czech, and regional dialects) form a stylistic continuum, in which contact between varieties of a similar prestige influences change within them.^[109]

Common Czech[edit]

The main Czech vernacular, spoken primarily in Bohemia including the capital Prague, is known as Common Czech (obecná čeština). This is an academic distinction; most Czechs are unaware of the term or associate it with deformed or «incorrect» Czech.^[110] Compared to Standard Czech, Common Czech is characterized by simpler inflection patterns and differences in sound distribution.^[111]

Common Czech is distinguished from spoken/colloquial Standard Czech (hovorová čeština), which is a stylistic variety within standard Czech.^[112][113] Tomasz Kamusella defines the spoken variety of Standard Czech as a compromise between Common Czech and the written standard,^[114] while Miroslav Komárek calls Common Czech an intersection of spoken Standard Czech and regional dialects.^[115]

Common Czech has become ubiquitous in most parts of the Czech Republic since the later 20th century. It is usually defined as an interdialect used in common speech in Bohemia and western parts of Moravia (by about two thirds of all inhabitants of the Czech Republic). Common Czech is not codified, but some of its elements have become adopted in the written standard. Since the second half of the 20th century, Common Czech elements have also been spreading to regions previously unaffected, as a consequence of media influence. Standard Czech is still the norm for politicians, businesspeople and other Czechs in formal situations, but Common Czech is gaining ground in journalism and the mass media.^[111] The colloquial form of Standard Czech finds limited use in daily communication due to the expansion of the Common Czech interdialect.^[112] It is sometimes defined as a theoretical construct rather than an actual tool of colloquial communication, since in casual contexts, the non-standard interdialect is preferred.^[112]

Common Czech phonology is based on that of the Central Bohemian dialect group, which has a slightly different set of vowel phonemes to Standard Czech.^[115] The phoneme /ɛː/ is peripheral and usually merges with /iː/, e.g. in malý město (small town), plamínek (little flame) and lítat (to fly), and a second native diphthong /ɛɪ̯/ occurs, usually in places where Standard Czech has /iː/, e.g. malej dům (small house), mlejn (mill), plejtvat (to waste), bejt (to be).^[116] In addition, a prothetic v- is added to most words beginning o-, such as votevřít vokno (to open the window).^[117]

Non-standard morphological features that are more or less common among all Common Czech speakers include:^[117]

• unified plural endings of adjectives: malý lidi (small people), malý ženy (small women), malý města (small towns) – standard: malí lidé, malé ženy, malá města;
• unified instrumental ending -ma in plural: s těma dobrejma lidma, ženama, chlapama, městama (with the good people, women, guys, towns) – standard: s těmi dobrými lidmi, ženami, chlapy, městy. In essence, this form resembles the form of the dual, which was once a productive form, but now is almost extinct and retained in a lexically specific set of words. In Common Czech the ending became productive again around the 17th century, but used as a substitute for a regular plural form.^[118]
• omission of the syllabic -l in the masculine ending of past tense verbs: řek (he said), moh (he could), pích (he pricked) – standard: řekl, mohl, píchl.
• tendency of merging the locative singular masculine/neuter for adjectives with the instrumental by changing the locative ending -ém to -ým and then shortening the vowel: mladém (standard locative), mladým (standard instrumental) > mladým (Common Czech locative), mladym (Common Czech instrumental) > mladym (Common Czech locative/instrumental with shortening).^[119]

Examples of declension (Standard Czech is added in italics for comparison):

		Masculine animate	Masculine inanimate	Feminine	Neuter
Sg.	Nominative	mladej člověk mladý člověk	mladej stát mladý stát	mladá žena mladá žena	mladý zvíře mladé zvíře
Genitive	mladýho člověka mladého člověka	mladýho státu mladého státu	mladý ženy mladé ženy	mladýho zvířete mladého zvířete
Dative	mladýmu člověkovi mladému člověku	mladýmu státu mladému státu	mladý ženě mladé ženě	mladýmu zvířeti mladému zvířeti
Accusative	mladýho člověka mladého člověka	mladej stát mladý stát	mladou ženu mladou ženu	mladý zvíře mladé zvíře
Vocative	mladej člověče! mladý člověče!	mladej státe! mladý státe!	mladá ženo! mladá ženo!	mladý zvíře! mladé zvíře!
Locative	mladým člověkovi mladém člověkovi	mladým státě mladém státě	mladý ženě mladé ženě	mladým zvířeti mladém zvířeti
Instrumental	mladym člověkem mladým člověkem	mladym státem mladým státem	mladou ženou mladou ženou	mladym zvířetem mladým zvířetem
Pl.	Nominative	mladý lidi mladí lidé	mladý státy mladé státy	mladý ženy mladé ženy	mladý zvířata mladá zvířata
Genitive	mladejch lidí mladých lidí	mladejch států mladých států	mladejch žen mladých žen	mladejch zvířat mladých zvířat
Dative	mladejm lidem mladým lidem	mladejm státům mladým státům	mladejm ženám mladým ženám	mladejm zvířatům mladým zvířatům
Accusative	mladý lidi mladé lidi	mladý státy mladé státy	mladý ženy mladé ženy	mladý zvířata mladá zvířata
Vocative	mladý lidi! mladí lidé!	mladý státy! mladé státy!	mladý ženy! mladé ženy!	mladý zvířata! mladá zvířata!
Locative	mladejch lidech mladých lidech	mladejch státech mladých státech	mladejch ženách mladých ženách	mladejch zvířatech mladých zvířatech
Instrumental	mladejma lidma mladými lidmi	mladejma státama mladými státy	mladejma ženama mladými ženami	mladejma zvířatama mladými zvířaty

mladý člověk – young man/person, mladí lidé – young people, mladý stát – young state, mladá žena – young woman, mladé zvíře – young animal

Bohemian dialects[edit]

Apart from the Common Czech vernacular, there remain a variety of other Bohemian dialects, mostly in marginal rural areas. Dialect use began to weaken in the second half of the 20th century, and by the early 1990s regional dialect use was stigmatized, associated with the shrinking lower class and used in literature or other media for comedic effect. Increased travel and media availability to dialect-speaking populations has encouraged them to shift to (or add to their own dialect) Standard Czech.^[120]

The Czech Statistical Office in 2003 recognized the following Bohemian dialects:^[121]

• Nářečí středočeská (Central Bohemian dialects)
• Nářečí jihozápadočeská (Southwestern Bohemian dialects)

• Podskupina chodská (Chod subgroup)
• Podskupina doudlebská (Doudleby subgroup)

• Nářečí severovýchodočeská (Northeastern Bohemian dialects)

• Podskupina podkrknošská (Krkonoše subgroup)

Moravian dialects[edit]

The Czech dialects spoken in Moravia and Silesia are known as Moravian (moravština). In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, «Bohemian-Moravian-Slovak» was a language citizens could register as speaking (with German, Polish and several others).^[122] In the 2011 census, where respondents could optionally specify up to two first languages,^[123] 62,908 Czech citizens specified Moravian as their first language and 45,561 specified both Moravian and Czech.^[124]

Beginning in the sixteenth century, some varieties of Czech resembled Slovak;^[13] the southeastern Moravian dialects, in particular, are sometimes considered dialects of Slovak rather than Czech. These dialects form a continuum between the Czech and Slovak languages,^[125] using the same declension patterns for nouns and pronouns and the same verb conjugations as Slovak.^[126]

The Czech Statistical Office in 2003 recognized the following Moravian dialects:^[121]

• Nářečí českomoravská (Bohemian–Moravian dialects)
• Nářečí středomoravská (Central Moravian dialects)

• Podskupina tišnovská (Tišnov subgroup)

• Nářečí východomoravská (Eastern Moravian dialects)

• Podskupina slovácká (Moravian Slovak subgroup)
• Podskupina valašská (Moravian Wallachian subgroup)

• Nářečí slezská (Silesian dialects)

Sample[edit]

In a 1964 textbook on Czech dialectology, Břetislav Koudela used the following sentence to highlight phonetic differences between dialects:^[127]

Standard Czech:	Dej mouku ze mlýna na vozík.
Common Czech:	Dej mouku ze mlejna na vozejk.
Central Moravian:	Dé móko ze mléna na vozék.
Eastern Moravian:	Daj múku ze młýna na vozík.
Silesian:	Daj muku ze młyna na vozik.
Slovak:	Daj múku z mlyna na vozík.
English:	Put the flour from the mill into the cart.

Mutual intelligibility with Slovak[edit]

Czech and Slovak have been considered mutually intelligible; speakers of either language can communicate with greater ease than those of any other pair of West Slavic languages.^[128] Following the 1993 dissolution of Czechoslovakia, mutual intelligibility declined for younger speakers, probably because Czech speakers began to experience less exposure to Slovak and vice versa.^[129] A 2015 study involving participants with a mean age of around 23 nonetheless concluded that there remained a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages.^[128] Grammatically, both languages share a common syntax.^[13]

One study showed that Czech and Slovak lexicons differed by 80 percent, but this high percentage was found to stem primarily from differing orthographies and slight inconsistencies in morphological formation;^[130] Slovak morphology is more regular (when changing from the nominative to the locative case, Praha becomes Praze in Czech and Prahe in Slovak). The two lexicons are generally considered similar, with most differences found in colloquial vocabulary and some scientific terminology. Slovak has slightly more borrowed words than Czech.^[13]

The similarities between Czech and Slovak led to the languages being considered a single language by a group of 19th-century scholars who called themselves «Czechoslavs» (Čechoslované), believing that the peoples were connected in a way which excluded German Bohemians and (to a lesser extent) Hungarians and other Slavs.^[131] During the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938), although «Czechoslovak» was designated as the republic’s official language, both Czech and Slovak written standards were used. Standard written Slovak was partially modeled on literary Czech, and Czech was preferred for some official functions in the Slovak half of the republic. Czech influence on Slovak was protested by Slovak scholars, and when Slovakia broke off from Czechoslovakia in 1938 as the Slovak State (which then aligned with Nazi Germany in World War II), literary Slovak was deliberately distanced from Czech. When the Axis powers lost the war and Czechoslovakia reformed, Slovak developed somewhat on its own (with Czech influence); during the Prague Spring of 1968, Slovak gained independence from (and equality with) Czech,^[13] due to the transformation of Czechoslovakia from a unitary state to a federation. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, «Czechoslovak» has referred to improvised pidgins of the languages which have arisen from the decrease in mutual intelligibility.^[132]

Vocabulary[edit]

Czech vocabulary derives primarily from Slavic, Baltic and other Indo-European roots. Although most verbs have Balto-Slavic origins, pronouns, prepositions and some verbs have wider, Indo-European roots.^[133] Some loanwords have been restructured by folk etymology to resemble native Czech words (e.g. hřbitov, «graveyard» and listina, «list»).^[134]

Most Czech loanwords originated in one of two time periods. Earlier loanwords, primarily from German,^[135] Greek and Latin,^[136] arrived before the Czech National Revival. More recent loanwords derive primarily from English and French,^[135] and also from Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. Many Russian loanwords, principally animal names and naval terms, also exist in Czech.^[137]

Although older German loanwords were colloquial, recent borrowings from other languages are associated with high culture.^[135] During the nineteenth century, words with Greek and Latin roots were rejected in favor of those based on older Czech words and common Slavic roots; «music» is muzyka in Polish and музыка (muzyka) in Russian, but in Czech it is hudba.^[136] Some Czech words have been borrowed as loanwords into English and other languages—for example, robot (from robota, «labor»)^[138] and polka (from polka, «Polish woman» or from «půlka» «half»).^[139]

Example text[edit]

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Czech:

Všichni lidé rodí se svobodní a sobě rovní co do důstojnosti a práv. Jsou nadáni rozumem a svědomím a mají spolu jednat v duchu bratrství.^[140]

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.^[141]

See also[edit]

• Czech Centers
• Czech name
• Czech Sign Language
• Swadesh list of Slavic words

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

• Agnew, Hugh LeCaine (1994). Origins of the Czech National Renascence. University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0-8229-8549-5.
• Dankovičová, Jana (1999). «Czech». Handbook of the International Phonetic Association (9th ed.). International Phonetic Association/Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-63751-0.
• Cerna, Iva; Machalek, Jolana (2007). Beginner’s Czech. Hippocrene Books. ISBN 978-0-7818-1156-9.
• Chloupek, Jan; Nekvapil, Jiří (1993). Studies in Functional Stylistics. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-90-272-1545-1.
• Eckert, Eva (1993). Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech Sociolinguistics. Editions Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-5183-490-1.
• Esposito, Anna (2011). Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication and Enactment: The Processing Issues. Springer Press. ISBN 978-3-642-25774-2.
• Hajičová, Eva (1986). Prague Studies in Mathematical Linguistics (9th ed.). John Benjamins Publishing. ISBN 978-90-272-1527-7.
• Harkins, William Edward (1952). A Modern Czech Grammar. King’s Crown Press (Columbia University). ISBN 978-0-231-09937-0.
• Komárek, Miroslav (2012). Dějiny českého jazyka (in Czech). Brno: Host. ISBN 978-80-7294-591-7.
• Kortmann, Bernd; van der Auwera, Johan (2011). The Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide (World of Linguistics). Mouton De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-022025-4.
• Koudela, Břetislav; et al. (1964). Vývoj českého jazyka a dialektologie (in Czech). Československé státní pedagogické nakladatelství.
• Liberman, Anatoly; Trubetskoi, Nikolai S. (2001). N.S. Trubetzkoy: Studies in General Linguistics and Language Structure. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-2299-3.
• Mann, Stuart Edward (1957). Czech Historical Grammar. Helmut Buske Verlag. ISBN 978-3-87118-261-7.
• Mathesius, Vilém (2013). A Functional Analysis of Present Day English on a General Linguistic Basis. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-90-279-3077-4.
• Maxwell, Alexander (2009). Choosing Slovakia: Slavic Hungary, the Czechoslovak Language and Accidental Nationalism. Tauris Academic Studies. ISBN 978-1-84885-074-3.
• Naughton, James (2005). Czech: An Essential Grammar. Routledge Press. ISBN 978-0-415-28785-2.
• Pansofia (1993). Pravidla českého pravopisu (in Czech). Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR. ISBN 978-80-901373-6-3.
• Piotrowski, Michael (2012). Natural Language Processing for Historical Texts. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. ISBN 978-1-60845-946-9.
• Qualls, Eduard J. (2012). The Qualls Concise English Grammar. Danaan Press. ISBN 978-1-890000-09-7.
• Rothstein, Björn; Thieroff, Rolf (2010). Mood in the Languages of Europe. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-90-272-0587-2.
• Short, David (2009). «Czech and Slovak». In Bernard Comrie (ed.). The World’s Major Languages (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 305–330.
• Scheer, Tobias (2004). A Lateral Theory of Phonology: What is CVCV, and why Should it Be?, Part 1. Walter De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-017871-5.
• Stankiewicz, Edward (1986). The Slavic Languages: Unity in Diversity. Mouton De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-009904-1.
• Sussex, Rolan; Cubberley, Paul (2011). The Slavic Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. ISBN 978-0-521-29448-5.
• Tahal, Karel (2010). A grammar of Czech as a foreign language. Factum.
• Wilson, James (2009). Moravians in Prague: A Sociolinguistic Study of Dialect Contact in the Czech. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-3-631-58694-5.

External links[edit]

• Ústav pro jazyk český – Czech Language Institute, the regulatory body for the Czech language (in Czech)
• Czech National Corpus
• Czech Monolingual Online Dictionary
• Online Translation Dictionaries
• Czech Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary’s Swadesh-list appendix)
• Online Czech Grammar and Exercises

Czenglish. Have you ever heard this term? It’s been a hot topic lately, mostly due to the vigorous power of the internet and social media. Nowadays, everybody loves YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and…influencers!

Although you won’t find a lot of similarities between Czech and English (with the exception of words derived from Latin), English is seeping into the Czech language more and more. 

By the way, the phenomenon of English words used in Czech is not as new as it might seem! I was watching a Czech comedy from 1938 a couple of days ago, and one of the first scenes is a perfect example of Czenglish used in real life: Já changuju subject? Ty changuješ subject! (“I am changing the subject? You are changing the subject!”). We like using English words. We adopt them, lovingly decline and conjugate them, adjust the pronunciation to our liking, and make them our own.

Yup, it’s very convenient to speak more languages because (besides other, more prominent and useful advantages) it gives you the option to pick your favorite words and use them as you please! I am guilty of using English words in Czech convos, and it makes my grandma very confused at times!

There are also words that you probably consider English…which are actually Czech!

Let’s get into it! In this article, we’ll look at Czech words you’ve been using without realizing it, Czenglish, and Czech words of English origin.

I’ll make sure I never make this mistake again.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Czenglish
2. Czenglish Examples
3. Loanwords vs. Czenglish: List of English Words in the Czech Language
4. Foreign Brands, Titles, and Names in Czech
5. Czech Words in English: Did You Know?
6. How CzechClass101.com Can Help You Learn Czech in a Fun Way

Introduction to Czenglish

The term ‘Czenglish’ was first introduced in 1989 by Don Sparling, a Canadian professor at the Masaryk University in Brno (1977-2009), who’s also the author of English or Czenglish?

So, what is the definition of Czenglish?

➢ Czenglish is a version of the English language spoken by Czech learners of English. It is heavily influenced by Czech vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, or syntax.

Czenglish mistakes might include a wide variety of “abominations,” such as:

Incorrect pronunciation

For example:

• /θ/ is often pronounced as [s], [t], or [f].
  • “Thing” in Czech sounds more like “sink,” “tink,” or “fink.”
• /ð/ is often pronounced as [d].
  • “They” is pronounced “dey.”
• /r/ has the typical rolling rumble to it.

Voiced consonants pronounced as unvoiced

Voiced consonants (B, D, G, J, L, M, N, Ng, R, Sz, Th as in “they,” V, W, Y, and Z) are made by vibrating the vocal cords. Unvoiced consonants…yes, you guessed it! Your vocal cords can take a break while pronouncing these: Ch, F, K, P, S, Sh, T, and Th (as in “thing”).

Czech natives, however, often pronounce them incorrectly. Which is no biK deal, but it sounds funny. I’m sure you’ve hearT a lot of Dose. Am I rrrright?

Omission of articles

It’s no wonder Czechs make this mistake, as there are no articles in the Czech language. Most Czech natives find them…redundant. Why bother, when it’s just a few letters (or even a single one)? Another thing you might encounter while talking to Czechs is the use of “some” in place of an indefinite article.

Literal translations

This is a big one. And given the stark difference between the Czech and English word order, there’s a good chance you’ll get lost in translation quite often.

Czenglish Examples

This part should be easy to write since I’m the “uncrowned queen of Czenglish” and sometimes it’s hard for my mouth to keep up with my mind, so…here it goes.

• “Basic school”

  Got it? Basic school is the literal translation of základní škola (“elementary school”). I’ve heard this one way too many times to ever forget it. Základní means “basic” in Czech.

• “She said me that my English is great!” 

  Řekla mi, že moje angličtina je skvělá!

  While in English, you might say “She said to me that my English is great,” omitting prepositions is very common in word-for-word translations. It can lead to some very funny situations…

• “I am watching on TV.” 

  Dívám se na televizi.

  Generally speaking, the Czech language uses prepositions where English doesn’t, and vice-versa. Na means “on.”

• “Riding on bike” 

  Jet na kole.

  This is a perfect example of preposition errors in literal translations.

• “I can English.” 

  Umím anglicky.

  Mluvit means “to speak.” In Czech, we don’t say: Umím mluvit anglicky.

• A: “Hey, I don’t like it.” / B: “Me too.” 

  A: “Hele, nelíbí se mi to.” / B: “Mně taky.”

  Shrug. That’s how Czech works, folks!

• Using the word “please” instead of “ask”

  Oh my gosh, this mistake can actually be pretty embarrassing because “to please” has a very different meaning in English, and it’s similar to the Czech potěšit (“to make happy”). Not cute.

  Poprosit (“to ask”) is derived from the word prosím (“please”), and for the average Czech, it totally makes sense to “please you to do something.”

  To give you an example, the sentence Poprosil mě, abych něco řekl (“He asked me to say something”) would be incorrectly translated as “He pleased me to say something” (Potěšil mě, abych něco řekl).

I suppose you’ll want to avoid such mistakes in Czech! That’s why you should check out our list of 100 Core Czech Words and Key Czech Phrases!

Some Czenglish words sound adorable.

Loanwords vs. Czenglish: List of English Words in the Czech Language

Loanwords are “borrowed” from English without significant changes and tend to be easily understood by native English speakers.  

This phenomenon has grown in popularity due to YouTube and social media, and we often use social media-related terms without changing them. However, we apply declension and conjugation in order to make them work in a Czech sentence.

We do use heavily altered (or even pure Czech) words when talking about technology, though. Check them out here.

Young Czechs use a lot of English words, mostly due to social media and influencers.

Here are some commonly used English words in Czech:

• Blog / blogging / blogovat (“to blog”) 
  • the noun is declined as masculine inanimate
• Lobbing 
  • masculine inanimate
• Barman (“bartender”)
  • masculine animate
  • This one only works in masculine, though. We like to be super-specific with grammatical gender, so the feminine version is barmanka.
• Blok (“block”), blokovat (“to block”)
  • masculine inanimate
• Sendvič (“sandwich”)
  • masculine animate
• Galon (“gallon”)
  • masculine inanimate
• Klub (“club” as in “facility”)
  • masculine inanimate
• Svetr (“sweater” or “jumper”)
  • masculine inanimate
• Followers / followeři 
  • masculine animate
• Views 
  • not declined
• Stories (as in “Insta stories”) 
  • not declined
• Intro 
  • neuter
• Trailer (as in a movie trailer)
  • masculine inanimate
• Internet 
  • masculine inanimate
• Web (pronounced with a “v”) 
  • masculine inanimate
• Chat (when referring to an online conversation) 
  • masculine inanimate
• Email 
  • masculine inanimate
• Smartphone 
  • masculine inanimate
• Spoiler 
  • masculine inanimate
• Korporát (“corporate”)
• Brainstorming 
  • masculine inanimate
• Mainstream 
  • masculine inanimate
• Steak 
  • masculine inanimate
• Filet (“fillet”)
  • masculine inanimate
• Cheesecake 
  • masculine inanimate
• Cupcake 
  • masculine inanimate
• Cookie 
  • neuter
• Brownie 
  • neuter
• Manager 
  • masculine animate
• Management / Marketing 
  • masculine inanimate
• Business 
  • masculine inanimate

Please note:

➢ All loanwords, even those that remain unchanged, are pronounced the Czenglish way and you might not recognize them when you hear them…

Just sayin’.

You might have noticed that a lot of these borrowed words are office- or work-related. But you’ll still need to know some Czech vocabulary to talk about your workplace! 

Foreign Brands, Titles, and Names in Czech

There is one thing that technically doesn’t belong to Czenglish, but I get asked about it A LOT.

Angela MerkelOVÁ

Sigourney WeaverOVÁ

Anna BoleynOVÁ

In Czech and other Slavic languages, the suffix -ová is added to the last names of all females. Back in the day, it literally meant “belonging to…,” and somehow, it never went away. Are you wincing now?

Lately, more women choose to go by their husband’s last name without the -ová, which means they have to literally lie to the authorities when applying for their new documents. You have to confirm that you’re either going to move abroad or have married a foreigner in order to be allowed to choose your own name. I’m not kidding.

There’s one advantage to this whole “belonging to” thing: it makes it clear whether a person is male or female immediately.

Now back to Czenglish!

Do we translate foreign titles? Yup. Some of them. Any rules? No.

Look:

• Star Wars – Hvězdné války (literal translation, same meaning)
• Pretty Woman – Pretty woman 
• Misson: Impossible – Mission: Impossible
• Inception – Počátek (literal translation is “beginning,” but vnuknutí [meaning “suggestion”] would be more accurate)

However, titles are created based on specific instructions from Hollywood headquarters before the creators have seen the actual movie, which definitely makes the job harder.

Hvězdné války – Yoda.

P.S.: We also omit the ‘90210’ from Beverly Hills, 90210 and pronounce Nike as Nik.

By the way, if you’re going to the movies in the Czech Republic, check out our specialized movie vocab list first!

Czech Words in English: Did You Know?

There are words you probably consider English, but…

Bohemisms or Czechisms are words derived from the Czech language, and many of them originate in Latin. Let’s look at a couple of English words from Czech you’ve heard at least once before:

Robot

This word was first coined by the Czech playwright, novelist, and journalist Karel Čapek (1880-1938), who introduced it in his 1920 sci-fi play, R.U.R., or Rossum’s Universal Robots. It’s derived from the old Slavonic word robota, which literally means “forced labor.”

Čapek first named these creatures laboři, but didn’t really like it. At the suggestion of his brother, artist and author Josef Čapek, he later opted for roboti (“robots”).

Robot or labor?

In case you’re interested: The play is pretty awesome, and there’s an English version as well. It’s pretty ironic that R.U.R. was his least favorite work. 

By the way, Čapek was close friends with the first Czechoslovak president, a passionate democrat (although he wasn’t directly involved in politics), and strictly against totalitarian regimes. Some of his works were considered “subversive,” and as such, were hated by the rising Nazi party. He died of the flu in December 1938.

Polka

This popular folk dance (and the word used to describe it) originated in the mid-nineteenth century. It’s drawn from the word půlka (“half”), and refers to the short half-steps and rhythm of the dance.

The word became widely popular in the major European languages in the early 1840s.

How CzechClass101.com Can Help You Learn Czech in a Fun Way

That’s it, guys! I hope you enjoyed this article and learned something new! Did any of the words we listed surprise you? 

If you’re taking your Czech learning seriously, you could grab a Czech grammar book or learn online (the latter of which is way more convenient).

CzechClass101.com will make learning Czech easy, exciting, and fun. With us, it’s not about endless memorizing or thick textbooks. Learn Czech with us and make progress faster than you could imagine!

What can you find here?

• English-to-Czech translation and pronunciation tips/tricks
• Over 630 audio and video lessons
• Vocabulary learning tools
• Spaced repetition flashcards
• Detailed PDF lesson notes

Sign up now—it’s free!

The official language of the Czech Republic (and, of course, its capital), is Czech. You will not find many foreigners speaking the language, which is only spoken in Czechia and is very difficult to learn. Nevertheless, you do not need to worry about not being able to understand and make yourself understood during your visit to Prague, because you can easily communicate in English there.

Czechs (including, of course, Praguers) are a nation belonging to the West Slavic ethnic group. The official language of Prague is thus Czech (“čeština” in Czech). It is a West Slavic language (influenced a lot by Latin and German), very difficult to learn, and used officially nowhere else in the World. The Czech language is very similar to the Slovakian language (used in the neighbouring Slovakian Republic). Many words are adopted from English into the modern Czech language.

History of the Czech Language

The Czech language developed from common West Slavic at the end of the 1st millennium. It was only in the 14th century when the language started to be used in literature and official communication. The king of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV had the Bible translated to Czech around this time.

At the turn of the 14th and 15th century, the famous religious reformer Jan Hus started to advocate a reformation of the Czech language, which resulted in using diacritic marks in the future. After the defeat of the Czech uprising of the estates (the historical period of 1618-1620, during which the social class of estates fought against the Hapsburg reign), the Czech language was in decline until the end of the 18th century, when the Czech National Revival started, upgrading the language and strongly supporting its use.

The modern Czech language is very rich, interesting, and complicated. Czech grammaffur is fusional: its nouns, verbs, and adjectives are inflected by phonological processes to modify their meanings and grammatical functions. Nouns and adjectives are declined in seven different grammatical cases.

Languages Spoken in Prague

Since Prague is multi-cultural and many expatriates from various countries live here, you can hear a lot of different languages in the Czech Republic’s capital. There are almost 200 thousand foreigners living in Prague. The largest group is of the Ukrainian origin, and many people come from Slovakia, Russia, and Vietnam (surprisingly), too.

Even though only about one fifth of all Czechs speak a foreign language at an advanced level, it is much better in Prague. Most often, Czechs have a good command of English, with the second most “popular” foreign language being German and the third one Russian. French, Italian, and Spanish are not widely spoken by the locals.

English in Prague

In Prague, a great number of native citizens speak English at least a bit. And at the tourist hotspots, restaurants in the centre, hotels, and gift shops, knowledge of the English language is taken for granted. Of course, all the tourist spot attendants speak English very well, and cab drivers, waiters, hotel concierges, and people working at the airport do too. You will also find information, instructions, rules, and other writings in English in many places. On the other hand, do not expect much English from the Czech police officers or bus drivers.

Of course, knowledge of the English language gets better with higher education, however older people in the Czech Republic quite often do not speak English at all. Russian and German are more common in their case, due to the periods of Czech history when Germany and Russia (the former Soviet Union) had a large influence on the Czech Republic.

Learn Some Czech

The best way to learn Czech is this 5-minute video from Janek and Honza from Honest Guide.

Even though you should not have any problems communicating in English in Prague, you can learn a few phrases or just words in Czech prior to your visit. It is fun, and the locals will appreciate it. Below, find some useful Czech phrases and words. The pronunciation is simple, in that words are pronounced the same way as they are written. On the other hand, the diacritic and declension might be very confusing.

Czech Phrasebook

• One beer, please. – Jedno pivo, prosím.
• Two beers, please. – Dvě piva, prosím.
• Yes – Ano
• No – Ne
• My name is… – Jmenuji se…
• How are you? – Jak se máte?
• Do you speak English? – Mluvíte anglicky?
• I don’t speak Czech. – Nemluvím česky.
• I don’t understand. – Nerozumím.
• Thank you. – Děkuji.
• Hi / Bye – Ahoj
• Excuse me. – S dovolením.
• How much does it cost? – Kolik to stojí?
• Where is…? – Kde je…?
• I love Prague! – Miluji Prahu!

Czech Alphabet

The Czech alphabet has 26 basic letters and 42 in total including diacritics (ˇ, ´, °), but don’t worry about pronouncing the diacritics as you can simply pronounce as you read.

The basic letters in the Czech alphabet are:

• Lowercase – a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z
• Uppercase – A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z

The Czech language is the language of the Czech Republic in Central Europe. Around 10 million people speak Czech which is of the Western-Slavic language family, with it’s closest relatives being Polish and Slovak.

Czech has the reputation of being a difficult language to learn. It might very well be so, but as it’s the case with all languages, if you put in the time and you’re consistent with your daily studies, you’ll eventually reach fluency.

In this guide, I’ll try and walk you through the possible steps of learning Czech from the beginning stages towards fluency. There are obviously many ways of going about it, and no solution fits everyone’s learning style. But this is my take on it!

Read also: How Long Does It Take To Learn Czech?

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Helpful tip: One of the most impressive starting points for learning Czech I’ve seen is a resource called CzechClass101. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Start By Having A Look At The Czech Alphabet And Its Pronunciation

Unlike many other Slavic languages, Czech isn’t written with the Cyrillic script, but with a modified version of the Latin alphabet.

This is a relief when it comes to learning to read and write in Czech. But you do need to focus a little on pronunciation.

Let’s take a quick look at the Czech alphabet and how it’s pronounced. First, watch this short video.

There are a few letters in this video that might seem challenging to the average English speaker. I’ll try to summarize them here:

• CH — this one is pronounced somewhat like a Dutch «G» or an Arabic «خ» but the letter in Czech is not as raspy and doesn’t sound as much like you’re cleaning your throat, but more like a very strong H-sound.
• R — A normal thrilled R. (It’s not that difficult — here’s a great video that explains you how)
• Ř — This is a letter that’s supposedly unique to the Czech language. It’s also supposedly pretty difficult to learn to pronounce correctly. I tend to agree with that. Here’s a helpful video that gives you a few examples though.

As for the rest of the Czech alphabet, there are several other letters that seem strange. But the sounds actually do exist in English even though we don’t have a letter for them. Those shouldn’t be a problem for you.

Get A Good Beginner’s Course And Get Started With Learning Czech

You’ve had a glimpse at Czech pronunciation, but now it’s time to really get started with learning the Czech language.

To do this, go and pick up a good beginner’s textbook that comes with audio recordings. One that I can easily recommend is Teach Yourself Czech. (Link to amazon)

Teach Yourself is a language learning series that introduce you to languages through dialogues that gradually get more and more complex. The course has exercises, grammar explanations and some cultural reference built in, but the main strength of Teach Yourself Czech is its dialogues. The audio to said dialogues can be downloaded for free off their site.

I recommend that you find a good spot throughout your day to study. I like studying in the early morning before everyone else get up around the house — if you’re a morning person, try doing the same, and make a routine out of doing one lesson per day.

This is how I suggest you study with Teach Yourself:

• First read the English translation of the dialogue in order to get an idea what is going on.
• Then read the Czech text one sentence at a time.
• After each sentence, play the corresponding audio and repeat out loud as precisely as you can. Work your way through the whole dialogue this way.
• Then listen to the whole dialogue when following along the text in Czech. If you forget the meaning of a work along the way, throw a glimpse to the English translation.
• After finishing the whole dialogue, read through the notes on grammar as well as the exercises. If you want, you can just go over this last step quickly. The most important part of the lessons are the dialogues.

As you progress with your daily studies, I recommend that you revise previous lessons. For each new lesson you do, try going through the previous 5-10 lessons from the days before.

The Importance Of Varying Your Czech Studies Every Day

When you study Czech or any other language for that matter, it’s important to attack the language from multiple fronts.

The reason is, that when you keep your study approach varied, you significantly strengthen the connections that your form in your brain for new information.

Think of your brain as a web of strings. Each string represent a memory. A string on its own is not very strong, and can easily break, but if you weave a network of strings that go in all directions — not only between two points, the connections inherently get much stronger.

If you try to learn a new word, but you only try to fix it in your brain with «one string» (or one memory), it’s very hard to remember it.

If, however, you learn a new word from Teach Yourself Czech, then write it down, then think about a few associations, and then hear the word used in a Czech radio show a few days later, you won’t be relying on just one «string» of memory, but of a web of several connections anchored in different regions of your brain.

I’ve written about this subject a little more in detail in my article about remembering words.

If you were at an intermediate stage or advanced stage of learning Czech, I’d recommend that you start reading news online, listen to the radio, watch TV and do all sorts of things to vary your approach in Czech.

As a beginner, however, you won’t get a lot out of native content (yet).

That’s why I suggest that you get a second beginner’s course and study it in parallel with Teach Yourself Czech.

Work Through A Second Czech Beginner’s Manual In Parallel

For a second beginner’s course I suggest that you have a look at Colloquial Czech. (link to amazon)

Colloquial is a language learning series much like Teach Yourself. The lessons are mainly based on dialogues, but it does spend some time on grammar explanations too. This can be useful as a supplement to Teach Yourself.

If you managed to find a spot in your study schedule for Teach Yourself Czech in the morning, I recommend that you try and fit Colloquial Czech into your evening routine. Or maybe you have half an hour to spend during the day?

Work with the Colloquial Czech book as you would with Teach Yourself, and don’t forget to revise 5-10 of your previous lessons every day.

Work On Pronunciation, Listening, Grammar, And Vocabulary With Glossika

When you’ve worked yourself a good chunk into your Teach Yourself and Colloquial books, it’s time to add another element to your daily study routine.

For this, I recommend that you start working with Czech sentences through Glossika. (Scroll down for a link)

Glossika is a language learning program that helps you assimilate languages through sentences and repetition. You’re gradually introduced to more and more grammar and vocabulary through sentences that you read and listen to over and over again.

With this approach, Czech grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary will begin to feel «natural». You’ll learn the details of the language not through analysis, but through habituation. Eventually you’ll reach a point where grammar mistakes will start sounding wrong in your ears, like it’s the case with your native language.

This is how you use Glossika.

When you first add their Czech course, you’re asked to do a placement test to check at which level you should start. Unless you’ve already studied Czech for a while, you can skip this and start directly as a beginner.

For each study session with Glossika, you’re introduced to 5 new sentences which are in turn repeated 5 times at random, meaning that you’ll be doing at least 25 repetitions in one sitting.

This is what the Glossika Czech study screen looks like

When you begin your first study session, you’ll see a screen with the sentence in English and the translation in Czech. As soon as you click play, you’ll hear the English sentence followed by a pause, then the Czech sentence two times followed by a pause. And then Glossika automatically continues to the next sentence.

• After first hearing the English sentence, use the pause to read the Czech sentence out loud. Do so quickly, because you don’t have a lot of time. Try to pronounce as correctly as possible.
• Now you’ll hear the Czech sentence two times. Immediately after this, try repeating after the Czech speaker. It’s important that you try to mimic the speed, pronunciation, tone of voice and rhythm of the Czech speaker as correctly as you can.
• Continue on with the rest of the sentences. This one will be shown to you 4 more times, so you’ve got a few chances to pronounce it better.

But even through you’ll try pronouncing every sentence multiple times, you’re unlikely to get it completely right. Most likely, you’ll find yourself mumbling quite a bit in order to keep up.

Don’t worry about this, Glossika will reschedule each sentence for review several times, so you’ll eventually get used to the sentence and learn to pronounce it correctly.

After finishing going through your first five sentences, you’ll be tempted to do a lot more. It only takes a few minutes after all. Go ahead, but don’t do more than a maximum of 20 new sentences in one go. Why? Because Glossika reschedules fresh sentences quite vigorously and you’ll quickly be amassing a mountain of sentences that you’ll need to review a lot of times in the coming days. So stick to a maximum of 20 new sentences in one go.

Glossika is a great tool to use in the «dead time» that you might have throughout your day. You can study 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there, and it’s all beneficial. Here’s an article I wrote about studying languages on a busy schedule where you might find a few more tips for finding time for your studies.

The Importance Of Doing Reps With Glossika

After you’ve finished your first batch of sentences with Glossika, take a pause and come back some 12-24 hours later. You’ll notice that all the new sentences that you’ve added are up for review. Do these before adding any new sentences.

In the Glossika world, everything is about reps. You don’t learn a new sentence from seeing and repeating it once. It’s after seeing it again and again that it starts becoming natural and automatic.

For each time you review a Czech sentence with Glossika, it’ll be automatically rescheduled further into the future. Glossika bases the rescheduling time on something called the forgetting curve which is a mathematical model that tries to predict how long you can retain a new piece of information before it needs to be refreshed.

Glossika then strategically schedules reviews at the moment just before you’re most likely to forget the sentence. For each time you review it, the rescheduling time becomes longer and longer.

If you find a sentence particularly difficult, however, you can let Glossika know by tagging the sentence while in the study screen. Now, this sentence will be rescheduled a little earlier. Likewise, you can postpone a sentence by marking it easy.

With Glossika, reps is everything. This is why your total number of reps is used as an indicator for how far you’ve come in your studies. The milestones set by Glossika are high: 25.000, 50.000 and 75.000 reps. When you reach these goals, however, chances are that you’ve made significant breakthroughs with Czech.

If you want to learn more about Glossika, go have a look at my Glossika review.

Or you can go directly to the Glossika Czech website.

It’s Time To Start Reading In Czech

At this point, you’ve just about finished with your Teach Yourself Czech and Colloquial Czech textbooks and you’re a few thousand reps into Glossika. It’s time to start reading in Czech.

Most people, when considering reading as a technique for language learning, would go straight to reading books with a dictionary.

I don’t recommend this approach. Reading with a dictionary can be extremely frustrating, demotivating and it doesn’t really benefit you that much.

For each page you read, chances are that you need to look up 10, 20 or even more words. Imagine having to pick up a dictionary, search through it to find a word, match it to the context that you’re reading and get back to reading only to be interrupted by another unknown word 22 seconds later!

You’ll be spending almost all of your time with your nose in the dictionary and you’ll have absolutely no chance of getting into the story or establishing any kind of flow in your reading.

So how, then, should you approach reading in Czech as a beginner? Can you only read children’s books and beginner’s textbooks until you get better?

No, don’t worry. There are better options.

Read Czech Articles Online With A Pop-up Dictionary

Go have a look at Google Dictionary. Google Dictionary is a browser extension that you can download and install for free. It was developed for the Chrome browser by Google (duh..) but alternatives exist for other browsers as well.

With this little tool, you can click any word, anywhere on the internet at get an instant translation that even takes the context of the text into consideration.

Using Google Dictionary to read a Czech article about building a snowman

Go look up articles on whichever topics that interest you. Hobbies like fishing, gardening, DIY, traveling and so on are great topics to read about when learning Czech. To find suitable articles, just run a search term through Google Translate and have a look at the results.

Use LingQ To Learn Czech Words Through Reading

I’m a great fan of the language learning tool LingQ. (scroll down for a link)

With LingQ you can either import texts that you find on the net, or study some of the Czech books, articles or dialogues that are already available in the LingQ archives.

The LingQ reader’s main feature is that it «remembers» the words that you know as well as the words that you’re in the process of learning. This allows you to measure your progress quite easily, but more importantly, it makes it possible for you to to easily get a complete overview of the words you’re learning and therefore, where to focus.

This is how you use LingQ:

Studying Czech in the LingQ android app

When you first start reading a Czech text in LingQ, you’ll notice that all of the words on the page are blue. Blue words are «unknown» words (or words that LingQ hasn’t registered that you know yet). Click one, and you’ll get a little window with a few options.

Now you can choose between a couple of dictionary translations — these are the most common translations picked by other LingQ members. Under these suggestions, you get the options of «I know this word» and «ignore». If you click any of these, the word will turn into a normal word on a white background. I use «ignore» for people’s names and other things that aren’t really words. (Ignored words won’t be calculated in your statistics).

If you click on a translation, the word will go from blue to yellow. Yellow words, also called «LingQs» are words that you’re in process of learning. Next time you come upon this word, you’ll be reminded by the translation that you’ve picked, and you can gradually change its status from completely unknown towards «known».

After finishing reading your text, I recommend that you go and work with the yellow words that you have created.

With LingQ, there are numerous ways to work with the words that you’re learning. Among them are flashcards and daily reminders sent to your inbox.

Personally, I think that the best way to keep studying and revising the words is to read a lot and see them again and again in different contexts.

I do, however recommend, that you go have a look at the translations that you’ve picked.

As a beginner, you’ll create a lot of new yellow words every day, so I advice you to only pick the words you find the most important for the moment. Now have a look at the translations that you have picked.

Can you come up with something better?

Instead of a direct dictionary translation, I suggest that you think of a Czech synonym or you write an explanation in your own words in Czech (or even in English). This turns the translation into a «hint» instead of a direct answer, and it’ll make you use your brain in another way the next time you click the word.

It also greatly helps you to remember the word simply to do something with it. The action of editing the yellow word and the translation is a moment in which you think about the word and try and come up with a specific association related to that word. Chances are that this action in itself will help you remember the word significantly.

If you want to learn more about LingQ, go read my LingQ review.

Or you can simply go directly to the LingQ website.

Read Czech And English Texts In Parallel For Transparency

Some people don’t really like spending a lot of time reading text on their phone or computer screen.

I understand that, and I have an option for you, that I can warmly recommend to anyone. Paper or screen-lovers alike.

It’s parallel reading. The idea is that you get a book in Czech and a translation of the same book in English and you read them side by side.

First read a sentence, paragraph or even a chapter in English.

Then read the same in Czech. And continue to work your way through the book going back and forth in this way.

Reading the text in English first clears up all the unknowns before you even see them. You’ll know what’s going on in the plot as well as understand any subtleties or small details that can be easy to miss when reading in a foreign language. (Even if you look up words)

Then when you read the same thing in Czech, you’ll have no need to pause and look up unknown words. These you can safely ignore without missing out on the story.

Parallel reading is a great way to make sure that you read fluently and without obstacles. It’s not an automatic solution to learning all unknowns by heart instantly, but it helps you read in a foreign language without being bothered by unknown words.

I recommend that you read the kind of book that’s hard to put down. Page-turners, who-dunnits and novels with a lot of suspense are great for this kind of thing.

I’ve enjoyed reading Harry Potter and Agatha Chrtstie books in numerous languages (amazon links), but there are a lot of possibilities. The availability of Czech books outside of the Czech Republic, however, is not fantastic. So if you plan on traveling to Prague in the near future, it’s a great opportunity to fill your suitcase with reading material!

Time To Start Speaking And Writing In Czech

With your beginner’s courses well behind you, several thousand reps into Glossika and solid daily reading routine, it’s time to start taking speaking and writing Czech seriously.

For this, I suggest that you go look for a good Czech tutor who can help you with conversation and writing practive.

Italki is a great place for finding a tutor, but there are many options on the net. Go to the site, pick the Czech language and look through the list of Czech tutors.

When you find someone that you think you’d be able to work with, make contact and start dicussing how you’d like to go forward.

I recommend that you take charge on your Czech studies and try to be very clear about what you want out of your tutor’s services.

Do 2-3 tutoring sessions per week of around 30-45 minutes. Ask your tutor to keep these conversational. Many tutors have their own programs, learning materials and teaching style. What you want is conversation, so your tutor should limit any corrections or explanations to an absolute minimum, and preferable leave them for a quick walk-through in the end, or he or she might write you a little session-report.

During the conversation it’s important that you hear yourself speak at least 50% of the time. If it’s mostly your tutor speaking and you listening, you’re not practicing conversation, but listening. And you can do that for free on YouTube!

After the end of a tutoring session, sit down and write a short text about the subject that you just discussed. Try making it 100-300 words long in the beginning. As you improve you can write longer texts. Send it to your tutor and have it corrected. And when you receive the corrected text, make sure to read through it and to try and take note of all the corrections. (But don’t worry if you keep making the same mistakes a few times. These things take time).

Finding A Czech Language Buddy — The Free Alternative To A Tutor

Hiring a professional Czech tutor can be costly.

That’s why a lot of people prefer going for a free alternative. One such is language exchange.

Language exchange is when someone who’s learning your native language acts as your Czech tutor in exchange for you acting as a tutor for him or her.

This method can, potentially, be just as effective as hiring a paid tutor. But it has its pitfalls.

With a language buddy, you have to rely on the ambition level and motivation of your partner in order to succeed. As I assume that you’re someone who takes learning Czech very seriously, this isn’t always a given.

But even if you’re lucky to find a language partner who is as motivated as you are, who’s got the time, is a talented tutor, and who’s teaching style matches your learning style, you still need to face the fact that you’ll need to spend the same amount of efforts on teaching English.

If this isn’t a problem for you, however, chances are that you’ll be making a new, lasting friendship and that you’ll be learning more about Czech culture and customs than you would from paying a tutor.

Finally, What Learning Czech Really Comes Down To

There are obviously a ton of different approaches to learning a foreign language like Czech, and my above suggestions only represent my own approach. But if you were to follow all my advice, I feel confident that you’ll end up fluent in Czech.

There’s one thing that’s even more important than everything I’ve listed above. It’s having the right attitude, motivation, and being consistent with your studies.

You need to put in the work every day, even when it feels like you’re going nowhere. Learning Czech is not something that you do in a matter of weeks or even months. You need to be in for the long haul, stay motivated and study every day in order to get there.

But if you do that, I guarantee that you’ll become fluent in the Czech language!

The official language of the Czech Republic is Czech. It is spoken by approx. 10.6 million people. Czech falls within the West Slavic language group and therefore is similar to Polish, as well as Russian and Croatian. An interesting phenomenon is its great similarity to Slovak. And did you know that the famous writer Franz Kafka spoke Czech? Or that Czech ranks among the most complicated languages in the world?
Although the vast majority of the population of the Czech Republic (96%) speaks Czech, you can also hear Slovak, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, or Vietnamese as these are languages of the largest national minorities in the Czech Republic.

Tourists will usually make themselves understood in English and quite often also in German or Russian.

The deaf are advised to use, if possible, Italian or Austrian sign language, since these are closest to Czech sign language.

10 things you (probably) did not know about Czech

1. Although Czech is not a very common language, the whole world uses one word originating from it … and this word is robot! First used in the novel “R. U. R.“ by Czech writer Karel Čapek, it was created by his brother Josef Čapek.

 

1. Czech is one of the most complicated languages in the world, as classified by scientists from the U.S. Defense Language Institute. Similarly, as Finnish, Russian, Bengali, and Thai.

 

1. Franz Kafka, a German language novelist, was fluent in Czech because he lived in Prague. Czech is also the mother tongue of the famous writer Milan Kundera, who lives in France. One of his well-known novels is “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”

 

1. Do you know what a raised alveolar non-sonorant trill is? It is the name of the «ř» sound, which is very specific for Czech, since other languages do not have any similar sounds like that. Foreigners find it very difficult to pronounce «ř» and without good training it is almost impossible. If however you wish to give it a go, slightly purse your lips, keep the teeth together, place the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth and vibrate it. The sound you are looking for is something like a horse neighing or a motorbike starting up.

 

1. Czech is spoken almost exclusively in the territory of the Czech Republic. It is possible to come across small Czech-speaking enclaves in Romania, Ukraine, the United States, Canada and Australia.

 

1. Czechs can pronounce words containing no vowels at all. And surprisingly, they use them quite often. For example, “prst” means “finger”, čtvrt is “quarter“ and krk means “neck”.

 

1. There is a special relationship between the Czech and Slovak languages, referred to by scientists as passive bilingualism. Simply put, it means Czechs understand Slovak without much effort or study and vice-versa Slovaks comprehend Czech.

 

1. Nonetheless, throughout its history the Czech language was strongly influenced by German, as is shown for example in its word-stock and geographical names. Interestingly, towns close to the German border often have not only Czech but also a German name. This is the case of the spa town of Karlovy Vary known as Karlsbad or Liberec referred to as Reichenberg in German.

 

1. Although the Czech Republic is a relatively small country, there are several considerably different dialects. So you may quite easily witness a situation when two confused Czechs will not understand what people from around Olomouc are saying to them.

 

1. A typical feature of the Czech language is the use of diacritics — small hooks (carons) and acute accents (dashes) written above the letters. These symbols indicate pronunciation and simplify spelling. They were not always used in the Czech language; their beginning is connected with the reform of the late 14^th and early 15^th century. The main advocator of the diacritic concept was Master Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in Konstanz for his criticism of the Church. His monument dominates Old Town Square in Prague.

 

Basic glossary of words and phrases, which may come handy in the Czech Republic

 

Hello = Ahoj  [aɦɔj]

Good day = Dobrý den [dɔbriː dɛn]

Good-bye = Na shledanou [na sɦlɛdanɔʊ̯]

Thanks = Děkuji [Djɛkʊjɪ]

Not at all = Není za co [Nɛɲiː za tsɔ]

Beer = Pivo [Pɪvɔ]

Another one = Ještě jedno [Jɛʃcɛ jɛdnɔ]

Czech (čeština)

Czech is a Western Slavic language spoken mainly in Czechia (Česko), which is also known as the Czech Republic (Česká republika), and was formerly part of Czechoslovakia (Československo). In 2012 there were aout 10.5 million speakers of Czech in Czechia.

There are Czech speakers in a number of other countries, including Slovakia —
2.5 million in 2012, the USA — 47,400 in 2015, Serbia — 37,700 in 2009, and Austria — 17,700 in 2003, and smaller numbers of speakers in Croatia, Poland and Romania.

Czech is closely related to Slovak, and more or less mutually intelligible with it. However, since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, Czechs have less exposure to Slovak, and vice versa. As a result, they may not understand each other as well as before. Dialects spoken in Moravia are closer to Slovak.

The region where Czech is spoken is traditionally called Bohemia (Čechy). It was named after the Boii tribe, who, according to Roman sources, have inhabited the area since at least the 1st century AD. The dialects spoken in Moravia (Morava) are also considered forms of Czech. The language of Bohemia was known as Bohemian until the early 20th century, when it became known as Czech.

Written Czech

Czech first started appearing in writing in the form of glosses and short notes in texts during the 12th and 13th centuries. Czech literature started to appear in the 13th century. The first printed book in Czech, the story of the Trojan war (Příběh o Trójské válce), was published at Pilsen (Plzeň) in 1468. After many years of Austrian rule, during which German was the main language of literature and government, there was a revival of Czech literature at the end of the 18th century.

The most prominent writer during the early period of Czech literature
was Jan Hus (1369-1415), a religious reformer who also reformed Czech spelling (české hláskování). He created the system of having one grapheme (letter) for every phoneme (sound) in the language by adding accents (čárka) to some of the letters. As a result, written Czech looks very different from written
Polish. For example, in Czech the sound ch, as in church, is written č, but the same sound is written cz in Polish.

Czech alphabet (česká abeceda) & pronunciation

Download an alphabet chart for Czech (Excel)

A recording of the Czech alphabet
by Zbyněk Bambušek

Notes

• dlouhé á
  is also known as á s
  čárkou. The same is true for the other long
  vowels: é, í, ó, ú and ý.
• ě = [je]
  after p, b and v, [e] after d, t
  and n (which become palatalized: ď, ť, ň). After
  m, ě = [mɲe], but it
  is pronounced [mje] in some regions.
• When appearing after d, t and n, i and
  í cause palatalization: ď, ť, ň
• ú is normally used at the beginning of
  root words and in onomatopoic words, while ů
  is used elsewhere, except in interrogatives and loan words.
• Word-final voiced consonants are pronounced unvoiced, even in
  loan words, e.g. chléb [xle:p],
  jazz [ʤes],
  rub [rup].
• When a voiceless consonant comes before a voiced consonant
  (except n, m, n, r, and l) it is becomes voiced, and when a
  voiced consonant appears before a voiceless one it becomes voiceless.
  E.g. zpít «(get) drunk» [spi:t],
  sbít «hammer together» [zbi:t].
• V becomes devoiced as /f/ before a voiceless consonant, eg. předevčírem [‘pr̝̊ɛdɛ,ftʃi:rem]
  «day before yesterday», but does not cause preceding voiceless consonants to become voiced, eg. kvalita [‘kvalita] «quality».
• l, r, n, m all can be syllabic (pronounced as separate syllables). The following words all contain
  two syllables: jedl,
  kapr,
  sedm
• f and g are used in words and names of foreign origin
• Primary stress falls on the first syllable. When there is secondary stress, it falls
  on long vowels. When one, two or three syllable words are preceded by a preposition,
  stress falls on the preposition, e.g. na střeše
  [ˈnastr̝ɛʃɛ] (on the roof).
  Stress falls on the first syllable in a word containing four or more syllables
  preceded by a preposition. e.g. na nástupišti
  [naˈnaːstupɪʃtɪ] (at the train stop).
  In some Eastern dialects stress falls on the 2nd or 3rd syllable.

Recordings in the text by Jan Jurčík

Sample text in Czech

Všichni lidé se rodí svobodní a sobě rovní co do důstojnosti a práv. Jsou nadáni rozumem a svědomím a mají spolu jednat v duchu bratrství.

A recording of this text by Vaclav Dekanovsky

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Sample video in Czech

Information about Czech |
Useful phrases |
Silly phrases |
Numbers |
Family words |
Colours |
Weather |
Idioms |
Tongue twisters |
Tower of Babel |
Learning materials

Links

Information about the Czech language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_orthography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_phonology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_conjugation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Czech_language
https://www.ethnologue.com/language/ces

Online Czech lessons and other resources for learners
http://www.locallingo.com
http://www.czechprimer.org
http://www.videocestina.cz
http://www.myczechrepublic.com/czech_language/
http://www.czech-language.cz/
http://www.digitaldialects.com/Czech.htm

Learn Czech online with CzechClass101
Learn Czech with Glossika

Online Czech dictionaries
http://www.wordbook.cz
http://slovnik.seznam.cz
http://www.slovnik.cz
http://www.online-slovnik.cz
http://prekladacvetonline.cz
https://slovniky.lingea.cz/

Tlumočení a české překlady cizích jazyků
http://tlumoceni.org

Online Czech language radio
http://www.bbc.co.uk/czech
http://www.radio.cz
http://www.rozhlas.cz/english/portal

Online Czech news and magazines
http://www.novinky.cz
http://www.ihned.cz
http://www.halonoviny.cz
http://www.lidovky.cz

Slavic languages

Belarusian,
Bosnian,
Bulgarian,
Croatian,
Czech,
Goral,
Kashubian,
Knaanic,
Macedonian,
Montenegrin,
Old Church Slavonic,
Polish,
Russian,
Rusyn,
Serbian,
Silesian,
Slovak,
Slovenian,
Sorbian,
Ukrainian,
West Polesian

Languages written with the Latin alphabet

Page last modified: 26.09.21

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