Reading & Writing Czech

XXX how about a section on thinking in Czech? Well, I'd need to be able to do that to know how to do that!

Writing Czech

In my opinion the biggest mistake anyone can make when learning to write in czech is to omit writing the diacritical marks with each character. The diacritical marks are an integral part of each character, since each character in Czech represents a unique sound. Leaving the diacritical mark out can change meaning tremendously.

For example, I sometimes write in English, leaving out the "dot"-ing of "i"s and the "cross"-ing of "t"s. Then at the end of word or sentence go back and do the above.

However, going back to fill in the diacritical marks in Czech doesn't work as well -- because you aren't "tidying up" a character; you have recorded a whole different complete character. If you were writing in English it would be like drawing random parts of a character on the first pass, and then going back to fill in the rest of the character on the 2nd pass.

I have been studying Czech seriously for 3 years now, and such a tiny mistake in the start still shows up to hinder my writing in Czech. Just because I created a bad habit (unbeknownst to myself) at the beginning, and it is sticking with me like glue.

XXX actually write something about organizing thoughts into Czech.

Reading Czech

These are my notes on how to understand czech more easily or fluently. By understand, I'm not discussing the lanugage and words; instead this one method of how to disect sentences in czech. Hopefully by having a good model of understanding, it will be easier to read Czech with greater understanding and speed.

I think the biggest secret is to find where and what is in second position in the sentence. Because of the different tenses and moods in the language that can immediately help you sort out those situations, leading to improved grokking sooner. Fortunately there are other clues which can provide that info, however until you get to the 2nd position and parse it you really can't be certain what is going on.

The other reason for identifying the 2nd position, is that there are many placed things there which you will need to remember to use and "fill in" later in the sentence. It is similar a variable declaration versus use in a programming language.

David (aka Professor Danaher) (XXX url) recommends the following break-down to parse Czech. I've added my own notes on this, so don't blame him for bad results! XXX Find david's handout.

1. Identify Verbs -- This lets you start to identify who and how many is/are doing the action.
   (ps, if you find a un-conjugated verb, it means you need to look for the conjugated verb which will be modifying the unconjugated one.)
2. Identify Nominative Case -- this will complete the declaration of the person/thing doing the action.
3. Match Prepositions and Cases; this can be interesting due to case switching (in the temple of doom) (in the temple == lok) (of doom == genitive) So it is all one "unit" even though multiple cases are involved. The prepositions are usually all modifiers saying where, how, etc. But, there are some verbs which take particular cases, making things more complex.
4. Have a beer.
5. Have a Becherovka
6. Put it all together and stir ... out pops a translation!