Learning to speak Czech

You can only really learn a foreign language by hearing it spoken. This is the most effective language-learning program to use. Language learning with an audio CD or with mp3 disks allow you to understand the language as a child would understand it. When you were learning English, could you speak before you knew how to conjugate verbs? Of course you could. That same learning process is what audio language learning replicates. Listening to language audio CDS in your car while you are driving, or listening with your iPod or mp3 player, audio language learning is the best way to learn a foreign language.

About the Czech Language

Czech na]) is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. Czech is similar to and mutually intelligible with Slovak and, to a lesser extent, to Polish and Sorbian. Czech is widely spoken by most inhabitants of the Czech Republic. As given by appropriate laws, courts and authorities act and make out documents and executions in the Czech language Czech can be used in all official proceedings also in Slovakia . People who do not speak Czech have the right to get an interpreter. Instructions for use in Czech must be added to all marketed goods. Regarding other languages, English and German are the most common foreign languages studied and used. Russian is also spoken, but to a much lesser extent than it was prior to the fall of Communism.

The phonology of Czech may be very difficult for speakers of other languages.In the Czech Republic two distinct variants or interdialects of spoken Czech can be found, both corresponding more or less to geographic areas within the country. The first, and most widely used, is "Common Czech", spoken especially in Bohemia. It has some grammatical differences from "standard" Czech, along with some differences in pronunciation. The most common pronunciation changes include -ý becoming -ej in some circumstances, -é becoming -ý- in some circumstances ). Also, noun declension is changed, most notably the instrumental case. Instead of having various endings (depending on gender) in the instrumental, Bohemians will just put -ama or -ma at the end of all plural instrumental declensions. Currently, these forms are very common throughout the entire Czech republic, including Moravia and Silesia. Also pronunciation changes slightly, as the Bohemians tend to have more open vowels than Moravians. This is said to be especially prevalent among people from Prague.

The second major variant is spoken in Moravia and Silesia. Nowadays it is very close to the Bohemian form of Common Czech. This variant has some words different from its standard Czech equivalents. For example in Brno, tramvaj (streetcar or tram) is šalina . Unlike in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia tend to have more local dialects varying from place to place, however just as in Bohemia, most have been already heavily influenced and mostly replaced by Common Czech. Everyday spoken form in Moravia and Silesia would be a mixture of remnants of old local dialect, some Standard Czech forms and especially Common Czech. The most notable difference is a shift in used prepositions and case of noun, for example k jídlu (to eat - dative) (as in German zum Essen) becomes na jídlo (accusative), as it is in Slovak na jedlo. It is a common misconception that the use of Standard Czech in everyday situations is more frequent than in Bohemia. The Standard Czech became standardized by the Czech national revivalists in the 19th century, based on an already two hundred years old translation of the Bible (Bible of Kralice) using an older variant of the then-current language (for example, preferring -ý- to -ej-). These Standard forms are still common in spoken language both in Moravia and Silesia. Some Moravians and Silesians therefore tend to say that they use "proper" language, unlike their Bohemian compatriots. It should be noted that some south Moravian dialects are also sometimes, although rarely, considered to be actually dialects of the Slovak language, which has its roots in the Moravian empire when Slovaks and Moravians were one nation (without Bohemians) with one language. Those dialects still have the same suffixes as Slovak.

The minor dialect spoken in Pilsen and parts of Western Bohemia and in wester parts of former Prachens region differs, among other things, by intonation of questions: all the words except for the last word of a sentence have a high pitch. This is the reason why the people from Pilsen are said to be "singing". Words that start questions are often given an additional "-pa": "Kolipa je hodin?" (regular Czech: "Kolik je hodin?"; English: "What time is it?"). The words like "this" (regular Czech: "tento/tato/toto") are often replaced by "tuten/tuta/tuto"); some examples: "What is this? or "What's happening?" is "Copato?" instead of "Co se stalo? / Co je to?" or "Why?" is "Pročpa?" instead of "Proč?". The region of Chodsko is the home of a very special Czech-Polish dialect of the Chods people who were displaced in about the 10th century from Silesia owing to the protection of the western border of Bohemia.

The period of the mature literary language from the 16th to the beginning of the 17th century. The orthography in written texts is not still unified, digraphs are used predominantly in various forms. After the invention of book-printing, the so-called Brethren orthography stabilized in printed documents. The Bible of Kralice (1579 – 1593), the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages by the Unity of the Brethren, became the pattern of the literal Czech language. The complicated syntax, influenced by Latin texts, required some improvement of the punctuation. However, the comma was used according to pauses in pronuciation, not the syntax. The full stop, the colon, the question mark and the exclamation mark are used. The first grammars are published for typographers' purposes.

In morphology, the differentiation of animate and inanimate masculines was completed (vidím psa rather than the earlier vidím pes).

The period from the second half of the 17th century to the second third of the 18th century was marked by confiscations and emigration of the Czech intelligentsia after the Battle of White Mountain. The function of the literary language was limited; it left the scientific field first, the discerning literature later, and the administration finally. Prestigious literary styles were cultivated by Czech expatriates abroad. The zenith and, simultaneously, the end of the florescence of prestigious literary styles are represented by the works of Jan Amos Komenský. The changes in the phonology and the morphology of the literary language ended in the previous period. Only the spoken language continued its development in the country. As a consequence of strong isolation, the differences between dialects were deepened. Especially, the Moravian and Silesian dialects developed divergently from Common Czech. Printed documents used the same orthography as in the previous period. Only the two kinds of l are not differentiated any more. The semicolon occurs as a punctuation mark for better and clear organization of excessive and complicated complex sentences. Digraphs with irregular elements of diacritics are still used in hand-written texts. The first ideas of the National Revival were in so-called defences of the Czech language. The most likely first such work is Dissertatio apologenetica pro lingua Slavonica, praecipue Bohemica ("The defence of the Slavic language, of Czech in particular"), written in Latin by Bohuslav Balbín.

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