Or, as I joke with my nieces, How NOT to learn Czech!.
I visited the Czech Republic, my father's homeland, in the summer of 2006. I had a great time, and English worked OK everywhere I went. I started working on speaking some Czech, mostly place names. It turned out that didn't work so well.. however
Since my wonderful nieces started working on my Czech, I've been trying to pronounce more Czech and learn more words. It turns out that pronunciation is a obstacle. My knowledge of German and limited knowledge of French didn't help any with pronouncing Czech words! Without understandable pronunciation, forget about grammar and vocabulary!
So, here is my story on starting to learn Czech, and some resources I found, and research to help.
Czech language incompatibility... Please excuse me for the missing accents on the Czech letters which need them. OK, an update on that ... I've started fixing the Czech spelling in here, so that native Czech readers (and now myself) can actually understand the Czech words. Please forgive me, this work has been worked on for a couple of years now, and I probably still have many things to correct.
The good news is that this is getting so long that I need to think about breaking it up into parts!
It was a mad rush to leave for Prague which lasted for almost 1.5 months. Between working and flying, getting a passport, coordinating with my parents, buying airline tickets, preparing students my absence, arranging care for my house, preparing my house, buying luggage, looking for a digital camera ... and that is the short list.
So, I went to Prague and the Czech Republic without
About the only think I had going for me was that I knew my nieces, Stana and Zdenka, and my uncle Eda. And that my plane would arrive at 0845 at Prague Ruzny Airport, and Stana would meet me.
My dad and aunt never worked on speaking Czech to us, but I could at least pronounce 'Zd' properly because my aunt's name is Zdena and it always came up in conversations.
So, I needed a good Czech/English dictionary.... The only problem is that I couldn't find any dictionary which has pronunciations of the Czech, only of the English! I found this the hard way, after purchasing a really nice bilingual dictionary ... only to find it was from the Czech point of view, and only included pronunciation hints for the English words. I thought this was a unique problem, until I started checking other dictionaries available in the Czech Republic, only to find they had the same problem for an english learner of the Czech language.. Stana thought that the situation would improve if I purchased a Czech/English dictionary in the US. However, that didn't work out either.
While I was looking for resources in the Czech Republic, one gal recommended the book 401 Czech Verbs. Stana thought that this was a good book, since the verb forms of Czech are quite important. I think they are both right, but for now I need a more basic book that works on pronunciation and basic vocabulary before working on good verb tense skills.
However, I think I found Chcete Mluvit Česky?, or in English Do you want to speak Czech?, It is a series of 4 resources; a beginners/intermediate textbook, a workbook, audio CDs, and then a advanced level textbook. It tries hard to teach you Czech pronunciation rules, and then moves onto vocabulary, and grammar. After reading reviews of the set, it is called "not appropriate for beginners", but that the new (current) edition may be better. Well, perhaps I'll write a review once I spend more time with it. The only problem is that I didn't have anyway to verify that my pronunciation was correct .. so I pulled out my trusty Czech-English dictionary, only to discover that it didn't help any.
As I was departing Prague, I believe that Zdenka may have found a better dictionary at the airport bookstore. Unfortunately, we couldn't remove the shrink wrap to check it out. Researching it, it appears that it is a classic Czech/English bilingual dictionary. It is the English-Czech Czech-English Dictionary by Ivan Poldauf. Those speaking about it mention the this dictionary as including both verb forms... imperfective and perfective, something which most (all) other dictionaries don't bother with. Most books use only the imperfective versions of the verb. Also summing up ... this book has its own weakness, such as not including genders of nouns, but it is a classic work worth owning.
Further web research points to Dictionaries by Josef Fronek of Glasgow University, of being a best in class of English/Czech dictionaries. Fronek has the typical Czech/English bilingual dictionary. However, after that, he has both a Comprehensive Czech - English dictionary and the English - Czech Slovník. A new version of some of his collection of Slovníks may be forthcoming later in 2006. Research and hearsay mentioning Fronek says the weak points are lack of the perfective tense of verbs, and the elimination of older Czech words which are still pertinent. In comparison, Ivan Poldauf retains those older words.
Josef Fronek also has a text on learning Czech for English Speakers. It is claimed to be a good book with many useful tables.
Looking through English/Czech bilingual books back in the US was disappointing as well. Stana thought that perhaps they would pronounce the Czech, and not the English. It made a lot of sense, but apparently sense has little to do with foreign language books .. The only book which included even some hints of Czech pronunciation was so limited in vocabulary as to be useless, and at the same time, pronounced the words incorrectly!
However, I did find one book I may purchase. It is The Rough Guide to Czech Dictionary Phrase book. The contents looked to be the most useful of the handful of 6-8 English/Czech dictionaries and phrase books I perused. It had some (mostly useful) hints on pronunciation, as well as a good organization on finding useful phrases easily.
I also enjoy the Rough Guide to travel in the Czech and Slovak Republics. The strong suite is that it explains the history of the countries to put things in perspective. There is also a corresponding Rough Guide to Prague itself, and the history surrounding it.
As I was finishing this section of the web page, I discovered another recommended author of Czech language books -- Lida Holá. I remembered this author because I saw some of books and reference cards while in Prague. There are both quick-study books like Czech Express, and a language text Czech Step-By-Step, which has won some awards. Lida also has a adaptation of classic Czech stories for starting Czech students to read. I've added an entry and some detail to the bibliography. there is also WWW info about the author and language courses.
I studied Czech for a while, using my little Rough Guide book, as well as the online-resources they have; audio of some phrases. I was also searching for locally available dictionaries that were useful. I finally decided to purchase Nina Trnka's Czech-English/English-Czech Concise Dictionary. I did so because it had words not included in the Rough Guide, and it tries to help out with pronunciation some more too.
I learned that Czech verbs have several different cases, seven to be precise. I am completely ignoring them for now, or learning them only by accident. This may be a bad idea, but I believe that some basic vocabulary is more useful to me so I can at least try working on pronunciation.
In the Christmas of 2006 my Dad helped me work on my pronunciation quite a bit. I was inserting accidental vowels in strings of consonants, and he showed me how to go about stopping that.
In early spring I found another Czech Resource that I really liked. Unfortunately I found only one-third of it in a used book store. I really like it because it works on both understanding written and spoken Czech. It uses a conversational story telling setting which is built up throughout the book. In this way it is a great gradual introduction, instead of doing all pronunciation at first, then cases, etc. This book is Survival Czech, by Sona Vachalova. It is actually three books; the text, a dictionary/answer key, and a set of cassette tapes. The 1/3 I found was just the text. Still, it made things a bit more fun to follow along.
In spring 2007 my Dad helped me on the character 'ř', the 'r' with the hachek over it. I had been somewhat close but mutilating it badly, and he worked quite a bit on getting it down. I am still working on that, every once in a while I just get the sound wrong, but I keep on trying.
I also purchased from Transparent Languages their BYKI -- Before You Know It Czech software. This stuff is great for the isolated student of Czech. Why you ask? Because it is a multi-level flash-card based learning system of Czech vocabulary and phrases. The most helpful item on this is that it Speaks Czech of the words/phrases at you so you can practice pronouncing them. The speaker is almost as good as those who did the tapes for the Prague Metro. You can also slow down the voice to make the inflections correct before going full-speed on the words. The flash-cards also have you typing the Czech words in (with a Czech keyboard) so you get used to spelling in Czech. The big advantage of BYKI is that it makes learning fun, and you can improve your pronunciation.
Transparent also has another product, Languages of the World with a Czech module. This also speaks Czech, but it does it in phrases, and it also lets you search for words. As a tool, it also records the Czech you speak and compares it with what should be said. There are also Czech conversations and games to engage in, instead of just the straight-forward vocabulary and phrases of BYKI. BTW, the help files which come with LOTW explain some details and interactions in the Czech language which help me understand it better. LOTW had the first concise version of the various forms of gender of nouns that I have read.
Between my Dad and BYKI, I am making some real progress in my pronunciation. I was also doing OK in random vocabulary words. However, there is no real method behind my learning, I would study things (and recall things) that I was interested in ... others I would work on, but not have such a good recall. This is a problem because Czech words have about 7 different cases, and 4 different genders, and two different verb forms on top of that. I was learning none of those. I still am not... well not in a formal manner.
Stana sent me a short email in Czech. I thought I might be able to read it, but I ended up with my dictionary going through every word trying to decode it. This made me realize that I was also ignoring sentence structure, grammar, and conjunctions, adverbs, prepositions, adjectives, and all the other language glue words you need. Yikes! Fortunately BYKI had a bunch of those, so I started working on that at least.
So, I visit the Czech Republic again. I managed to purchase my Prague Transit system ticket in Czech, and make it to my Aunt's flat. I tried listening to flight numbers at the airport -- the numbers rolled off so fast I had to listen 3-4 times to get one flight number right.
Stana, and Zdenka, and Zdena, and Zdena, and Edda, and Edda, and Tomas all worked on my Czech a little bit while I was there. Stana managed to decode my broken Czech into what I should be trying to say. It is amazing the patience she has!
I could go around Prague this year, and purchase food and items using my Czech. Stana is mostly to blame for this advancement! Sometimes I would go hungry and dehydrated because I didn't have enough confidence in my Czech to use it, and I didn't want to use English. I even managed to decode some transit Czech on-the-spot (wasn't carrying around a dictionary) when detours and other unusual things happened.
My self-studied Czech was hit-or-miss. Some things worked out OK, and I kept surprising people with OK Czech from time to time. Other ... I could pronounce some things perfectly, but I couldn't remember what they meant. Sometimes I would be so rushed that I would pick the wrong word. I also discovered that when I was tired (and dehydrated) that my Czech pronunciation really broke down. I know how to pronounce it, but it just didn't sound correct.
While in Prague, I looked at several Czech learning products, books, cards, tapes, dictionaries, etc. After I found some good ones, Stana went with me so I could get a second opinion on them. That was really good, because she pointed out that while many were excellent, that I should probably either use them once I had some more basics down, especially given the way I was approaching learning the language.
I located the complete Survival Czech, so that I could start really working on that. Also purchased were two Slovník; first Poldauf's Anglicko-Česky Česko-Anglický Slovník/Dictionary and then I also purchased Fronek's English-Czech and Czech-English Dictionary ... because if I wanted it I would have to order back to the Czech Republic for it. We found a small concise Course to Czech Grammar, which attempts to provide a good reference and teach you how to think about Czech Grammar. It looks pretty cool, and provides some nice background and insight to the elements of the language; things which I haven't read about elsewhere, or noticed myself. The only downside may be that ... how much will that help me?! As a quick-reference, there is a great set of Grammar Reference Notebook, which provides a quick reference to the entire of Czech grammar (or so it seems to me)!. Also found was Czech Grammar in a Nutshell, a grammar guide that Lida Holá puts out with her books. It uses a color-coded approach to gender in grammar, perhaps her books use the same system. It is a 4 sided card with reminders about things. Anything can help, especially when you need to wait a year to try something else.
Last year, my research on czech/english dictionaries indicated that Josef Fronek may be publishing a new one. The Czech book stores were selling these new versions of the Czech->English and English->Czech dictionaries this year. In a handy shrink-wrap package of both huge volumes!
On my last few days in Prague first Stana, and then both Stana and Tomas started working on my numbers. The problem wasn't the numbers themselves, but rather the change of case depending upon what number is used. That is something that the BYKI materials really didn't do anything with at all, and it shows a weakness there ... there may be some rules you need to know, but you don't get them from the flash-card vocabulary pronunciation system.
Reading about things a few weeks later, this is really starting to get to the genders of nouns and/or the 7 cases of verbs. So, in a year of studying Czech I am at least exposed to those things in a somewhat understandable format.
Last year I noticed that the UW Slavic Languages department teaches Czech starting every other year. Last year (2006) was the off year, so I couldn't take it. I checked, and they are offering it this year. I'm thinking about it quite a bit. It would improve my Czech quite a bit to take two semesters worth before I return to the Czech Republic to see Stana next year. At the same time, it is a full-time 4 hour per week course, which interferes quite a bit with my schedule when I am not at school.
Darn .. I need a different cassette deck to burn my Survival Czech tapes ... the drive belts are worn on my stereo cassette deck.
My Czech is bad enough that now I can come up with my own different meaning of Czech sentences than my simple language books have. This is especially confusing when one book says "xx yy zz ww" is the correct translation, while another says "xx ww yy zz" is the correct translation. I asked my Aunt Maria for help; she tells me that there is a subtle difference between the two having to do with emphasis. That the last word is usually the emphasized part of the phrase. She also says I shouldn't worry so much until I know Czech so well that I can understand the fine differences between the two! I also am wondering about subtle differences in wording, such as the difference between do/can in Czech verbs, or to be more specific, their English translations. Or, I wonder, is the subtlety not really anything but inconsistency in translation, or different translators???
It turns out that the
Rough Guide Czech Dictionary
does one disservice to learning Czech.
There are 7 cases that Czech nouns can be used in.
These cases are so standardized that even the names can
be left off of the cases, and just the numbers
(always in the same order) are used to refer to the cases.
The rough guide presents all the cases, but does not present
them in the normal order of the Czech Language!
To its credit the Rough Guide does not number the cases in anyway
XXX I need to double-check that and it is a
survival guide to a certain extent.
But still, they get everything else right, why not perfection?
Once I learn some more Czech, I'll write about it here!
I clocked the round-trip time from the airport to/from Czech class. Between driving, parking, walking, class (and the return) it takes right about 2.5 hours. I don't know how well this is going to work from a logistics point of view, (or from working, missing 10-12 hours a week of prime time) but I'm going to see how it works out. The Professor is using an older book on Czech I haven't seen before, Čeština hrou -- Czech for Fun.
While searching for this I came across a paper on resources for teaching Czech. It is written by the author of Czech for Fun and is a thorough reference of all textbooks Czech. It discusses many of the texts I have already found and noted, others which I have run across but not made reference too, and many more. It also covers their strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to organize them into a good Czech course. IMO This is a excellent resource for any instructor of the Czech language, especially one looking for teaching materials.
I like the class, enjoy the instructor's teachings, and the book is OK. The course is quite fast paced; all too often I can't write fast enough to keep up with things gone through in the class. That means that sometimes I really miss (just by the tail) something really cool and perhaps helpful.
The Professor, Dr. David S. Danaher, is quite enthusiastic about teaching Czech. That help makes it fun even with the fast pace and intense content. He does a great job of trying to make things easy to pronounce, and has good suggestions on learning the vocab. As a CFI, I appreciate his breaking down the grammar more than the text does to make it easier to understand and remember. You can really see the difference in learning a language with this. With one you have someone who understands the material and how it is put together, versus another who is teaching something they can speak, but they can't help you understand it.
There are some Slavic languages graduate students taking the class. To a certain extent this is frustrating, because the vocab and word meanings, etc are already known to them from other slavic languages. Sometimes the class seems paced for these folks who already know stuff beyond what the course teaches. Other times, I really appreciate those same folks being in the class. They help slow down and explain those very same topics, so I get a better idea of what is going on, history etc. Weird is about the best way to describe this situation.
As of September, the most significant structural problem I seem to face is how to phrase things correctly. I keep on feeling that I never really understand sentence structure, or the glue words, and that I just sorta jam things together. Stana and Zdenka told me to expect that, but the problem I'm having is that I don't understand how to put together good sentence structure. Without that knowledge, how the heck do you put together good sentences? Often if feels that this is just a tiny bit beyond my grasp, then it becomes blurred and confusing again. For all I know, I missed something critical when I missed the first day of class. It may not be a problem, but it lowers my level of confidence, and ultimately your confidence is what constrains success.
We just had the first major test (písemka) late in September. It was nicely done. There is both audio and written aspects. That is quite important to ensure you can hear the language and just not see it. Some sentence construction, completion, and vocab work. The excellent thing about the test is that Dr. Danaher tests at the correlation level of learning, not just at the lower levels that most people teach to. The bad thing about this is that none of the earlier material exercises your skills at the correlation level of learning. An example of this, is that we know how to do transformations, selections, etc of things in a targeted fashion at the application level of each individual item. However, the workbook and text really don't have any questions which make you recognize which rules and combination of rules you need to use to "put it all together". No exercises to really select what rule or rules are required, or even to realize that you need to use them. Then the test hits at the higher level of learning and you feel like you aren't certain about what is going on.
In 2nd semester Czech we continued learning. We added the genitive and dative cases of declension, and a slight introduction of the last case, instrumental, but just the pronouns.
The genitive case describes "of", "from" and "by" relationships, such as
We learned how to describe going to or coming from a location, versus describing at a location, which is all we could do at the end of last semester.
We learned about imperfective / perfective verb pairs, and the uses of each. This is an area which causes interesting problems translating between Czech and English. English has many past or future tenses, Czech has two.
Something else we learned was the future tense of verbs.
We learned more songs.
We had a project of presentation about an item of Czech culture. It was quite interesting getting different people's views on a wide variety of subjects.
Some of us participated in a film project of the Czech film Tmavomodrý Svět -- Dark Blue World by Jan and Zdeněk Svěrák. It is a tribute to the the Czech fighter pilots who escaped from the country after the Nazi invasion and flew in the Battle of Britain and through WWII for their Country. When the returned home they were imprisoned by the communists, who believed that such patriots would again fight for the freedom of their country.
What did we do in 3rd semester Czech?
Well, we learned about the last case of Czech -- the instrumental, which is how you describe the with or via / by / using relationships. For example
Learned more about motion, more indeterminate / determinate verbs of motion. Then we learned about the prefixed verbs of motion and all the changes and rules of using them.
Some Czech Poetry, and of course a few more songs.
We did a full-class film project of Lásky jedné Plavovlásky or Loves of a Blonde by Miloš Forman.
We did translation and web surfing and add watching exercises from YouTube.
And we had a final project where we had to take a Czech news article, and present a summary of the article, complete with vocabulary to our classmates.
We are almost finished with Czech grammar -- just another semester and we might have about 75% of it down. Now we have all the cases of nouns, we are expanding our vocabularies, and picking up on the differences between formal and spoken (colloquial) Czech.
To make things more interesting, my spleen ruptured a couple of weeks into the class (but not in class). I joked with David that it was due to our wicked vocabulary quiz causing it undue strain, but actually the two events had no relation... Just a humourous outlook on the stresses and dangers of learning Czech :)
We have escaped from Čeština Hrou, but we didn't complete it. This semester we are using pieces-parts of a different Czech textbook, Communicative Czech (Intermediate) by Ivana Rešková & Magdalena Pintarová. We've actually seen a few pieces-parts of this text before; some of the tables in the back were quite useful. The ones I'm thinking of are the tables of examples of all the different cases, with word classes and special cases when declining words. There is also a first, elementary, book and workbook in the series: Communicative Czech (Elementary). I have read about it other places and the overall reaction to it has been positive.
By the way, be careful when purchasing this book: many booksellers confuse the textbook and the workbook. You'll often find the workbook listed as a paperback version of the textbook -- which in reality is already a paperback. Check the ISBNs or page count carefully.
We'll be looking at a play (hra), Audience by Karel Čapek, as well as another film project, Musime si pomahat, or the choosen english title is Divided we fall. The title is better translated as we must help us/ourselves, but I guess I'm not a hollywood titlemaker.
In addition, Prof. Danaher has written/created some new presentations on Conditional Phrases or Mood in Czech. I proof-read these last semester, and took my flight instructor hat, and paper-writing hat, and sat down and tried to organize them into a textbook format. I find that David's teaching is often way better then the textbooks out there, and it seems they would make a great filler for his teachings, instead of the other way around. Unfortunatly I can't convince him to make him write even a chapter of a textbook be re-arranging what he has for these parts. Much less writing or taking over somebody elses textbook and fixing it so it is a better guide to learning. I understand his point, but I'm also imagining a world of Czech speaking people who learned the language from David and really understand it superbly.
Heidi brought in a book she found, Czech, An Essential Grammar by Jeff Naughton, and was asking David about it. Dave recommended it as a good old friend to summarize and let us revisit the parts of the language we already knew. It's strange -- I'd considered the book several times before, but it really didn't seem to make sense to purchase it. But -- Now that we know a lot of Czech grammar, it has become a useful tool and reference instead of a conglomeration of ...
I've had this guide for almost two years now. Even with more advanced Czech dictionaries and texts around, it still holds its own in any number of ways. It isn't comprehensive ... that is its strong point. It isn't perfect, but it tries to cover a wide breadth of things Czech, It has good (and simple) pronunciation guides. It is a reasonably simple word and phrase based dictionary. The Rough Guide Czech Phrase book is also a resource for on-the-go things you might want... all in a slim form-factor. It has situational guides and words to help out in specialized endeavors -- such as eating, travel, and sleeping.
As I become more advanced it is less helpful... but at the same time it is a tool that let me become a more advanced user of the Czech language. I would say that it is the only American/Czech dictionary that I have met that can actually teach you some Czech!
Do you want to speak Czech is the first multi-media course I found to study Czech with. After studying other materials, I agree somewhat with a comment I read that said it isn't for beginners. I don't think there is anything particularly bad or wrong with the concept of the book. It has a 4 cd collection of well spoken Czech words, conversations, and vocabulary to back it up. As a beginner in Czech I can listen to them and understand them. They go at the right pace, are well spoken, and give good examples.
I think the failing of Chcete Mluvit Česky? is that it isn't fun enough by itself. A teacher or instructor might add the fun to the learning of the material to let you enjoy and take advantage of the tremendous amount of well-thought-out material this work represents. Every time I pick it up to look through it, I keep on observing what a wonderful resource it is. Text, dialogues, drawings, color-coded, vocabulary, exercises, ... everything. But it is sorta dry by itself. I think if you used in companionship with another "fun" product, or with a class, that you would be able to use the tremendous resources that it has available for you.
I enjoy listening to the Czech on the 4 CD set. It is beautifuly spoken and easy to understand. Even now that I know Czech, it is a pleasure to listen to and understand what is being said. The clarity of speech and the rate at which it is spoken is quote appropriate.
To a certain extent the audio of this and Survival Czech complement each other. If I was starting out, though, I think this spoken Czech would be easier to use.
This is perhaps my favorite book on learning Czech. That is funny, because I'm not really learning Czech from it. About the time I got everything together to use it, I found myself spending all my time studying Czech 115.
Why do I like it so then? It is a damn fine idea of how to learn Czech. It is a gradual introduction to the subject. It adds early phrases and questions and paragraphs of text. It is illustrated to help you make the point about what the words say. It is enjoyable and fun. That is really important with a language text, especially one that a student might use alone for self-study. It is sorta like an addiction (but in a good way) ... it pulls you in and hooks you and keeps you going and coming back for more. Like a fairy-tale or novel or other story ... you keep on going; perhaps just to find how the story ends.
At the same time, I also find it a reasonable reference to use when studying with other materials ... it isn't limited as a straight-line-only tutorial. It may not be a good formal textbook due to its organization and evolutionary way of teaching things. However without an instructor that same technique can keep and hold interest by keeping the level of complexity far more manageable.
A further update on Survival Czech, after borrowing a working cassette deck. I find the Czech audio to be of good quality. The speed of the spoken words is quite like that of normal Czech speech; as compared to the more proper and slower spoken Czech as found in Chcete Mluvit Česky?. This is a good thing, as it forces you to learn Czech as how it is spoken. From a learning point of view, the word speed is OK; however the amount of time between words is minimal -- there is quite often not enough time to repeat the word just said before the next word is spoken.
Using Čeština hrou has given me a better idea of how to evaluate the different Czech textbooks out there.
I'd say that Czech for Fun is not perhaps as fun as its title would indicate. However, it is a strong solid text on the subject. It pushes the grammar quite heavily early on, which is good and bad at the same time -- too much front loading. However, with a good instructor to guide you, it isn't such a big problem as it would be for someone studying informally or by themself.
The content is rich and varied along the lines of vocabulary, history, and culture. This traverse of Čeština, Czech Language and Culture, puts you in a good position to learn a lot in a short amount of time. If you like sorta knowing why things are that way, instead of just rote memorization, this book helps out.
If you have an opportunity to learn Czech from this man run screaming ... to sign up for the opportunity. His knowledge of the Language and area and culture are excellent. Dave is enthusiastic about the subject material, and he is an active energetic teacher of the subject and its material.
Dr. Danaher's enthusiasm carries over to make you want to learn Czech, even if the workload in the class is high and fast-paced and perhaps somewhat confusing. That's probably because I am now old and slow! Seriously though, highly recommended. It isn't as common as you might think to find someone who knows material well ... who can also teach it. Teaching something well at the basic level is perhaps one of the the more difficult things to do.