Czech Language

Because of its complexity, Czech is said to be a difficult language to learn...

Czech language

Czech (Čeština) is one of the West Slavic languages, along with Slovak, Polish, Pomeranian (extinct), and Lusatian Sorbian. It is spoken by most people in the Czech Republic and by Czechs all over the world (about 12 million native speakers in total). Czech is very close to Slovak and, to a lesser degree, to Polish. Most adult Czechs and Slovaks are able to understand each other without difficulty as they were routinely exposed to both languages on the national TV and radio until the splitting of Czechoslovakia. People born after circa 1985 may have difficulty grasping the few words that differ significantly, or understanding fast spoken language.

Because of its complexity, Czech is said to be a difficult language to learn. The complexity is due to extensive morphology and highly free word order. As in all Slavic languages (except modern Bulgarian and Macedonian), many words (especially nouns, verbs, and adjectives) have many forms (inflections). In this regard, Czech and the Slavic languages are closer to their Indo-European origins than other languages in the same family that have lost much inflection. Moreover, in Czech the rules of morphology are extremely irregular and many forms have official, colloquial and sometimes semi-official variants. The word order serves similar function as emphasis and articles in English. Often all the permutations of words in a clause are possible. While the permutations mostly share the same meaning, it is nevertheless different, because the permutations differ in the topic-focus articulation.
As an example we can show:
Češi udělali revoluci (The Czechs made a revolution),
Revoluci udělali Češi (It was the Czechs who made the revolution),
and Češi revoluci udělali (The Czechs did make a revolution).

The phonology of Czech may also be very difficult for speakers of other languages. For example, some words do not appear to have vowels:
zmrzl (froze to death),
ztvrdl (hardened), scvrkl (shrunk),
čtvrthrst (quarter-handful),
blb (fool),
vlk (wolf),
and smrt (death).
A popular example of this is the phrase "strč prst skrz krk" meaning "stick a finger through your throat". The consonants l and r, however, function as sonorants and thus fulfill the role of a vowel (a similar phenomenon also occurs in American English, for example bird is pronounced as [brd] with a syllabic r). It also features the consonant ř, a phoneme that is said to be unique to Czech and quite difficult for foreigners to pronounce. To a foreign ear, it sounds very similar to zh, though a better approximation could be rolled (trilled) r combined with zh, which was incidentally sometimes used as an orthography for this sound (rž) for example in the royal charter of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor from 1609.

Dialects

In the Czech Republic three distinct koine, or interdialects can be found, all corresponding more or less to geographic areas within the country. They differ from standard Czech, creating some form of diglossia. The first, and most widely used, is "Common Czech", spoken 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 (-ej- in others), and the insertion of prothetic v- at the beginning of some words starting with o-. 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. 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 interdialect is spoken in Moravia. This dialect has some totally different words from standard Czech. Unlike in Bohemia, Moravia tends to have more local dialects varying from town to town. For example in Brno, tramvaj (streetcar or tram) is šalina (originating from German "ElektriSCHELINIE"). Everyday spoken form in Moravia would be a mixture of given interdialect, remnants of old local dialect, some Standard Czech forms and sometimes also Common Czech. The use of Standard Czech in everyday situations is more frequent than in Bohemia and Moravians tend to say that they use "proper" language, unlike their Bohemian brothers.

The third major dialect - Teshen Silesian - is spoken in Silesia, centered around the city Ostrava. This dialect, too, is grammatically sound and closer to Standard Czech, but in this dialect people speak very quickly, and the long vowels become the same as their short counterparts.

Declension

The noun cases are typically referred to by number, and learned by means of the question to which they are the answer. When learning a new word, children recite the cases using a set of example phrases, shown as follows:

1. kdo/co? (who/what?) - Nominative
2. bez koho/čeho? (without whom/what?) - Genitive
3. komu/čemu? (to whom/what?) - Dative
4. vidím koho/co? (I see whom/what?) - Accusative
5. volám (I call) Vocative
6. o kom/čem? (about whom/what?) - Locative (also known as Prepositional)
7. s kým/čím? (with whom/what?) - Instrumental

The case used depends on a number of variables, and for foreigners can be very confusing.
The simplest of the rules governing noun declension is the use of prepositions (předložky). Excepting expressions and common phrases, each preposition is matched with a certain noun declension case depending on use. The following are basic examples of common prepositions and their corresponding noun cases (note: these examples represent only one circumstance. Often each preposition can be used with two or more noun cases depending on the sentence).
Genitive: během (during), podle/dle (according to/along), vedle (beside), kolem (around), okolo (around), do (into), od (away from), z (out of), bez (without).
Dative: k (towards), proti (against), díky (thanks to), "naproti" (opposite).
Accusative: skrz (through), pro (for) "na" (to/for).
Locative/Prepositional: o (around, about), na (on), při (into, in, around), v (in), po (after, around).
Instrumental: za (behind), před (in front of), mezi (between), pod (below), s (with) "nad" (above).
Many of the above prepositions are used in different circumstances. For instance, when motion or a change of position is expressed, prepositions like nad, mezi, na, pod, etc. are used with the accusative case.
The second factor affecting noun declension is the verb used. In Czech grammar, the Accusative case serves as the direct object, and the Dative case serves as the indirect object. Some verbs require the Genitive case to be used. For example the verb to ask "zeptat se" requires that the person being asked the question be in the genitive case (Zeptat se koho/čeho), and that the thing being asked about follow the preposition "na" and be in the accusative case (Zeptat se koho/čeho na koho/co).
The third factor affecting noun declension is number. The Czech language has a very complex counting system, explained as follows with the example masculine animate noun muž (man):
For the number one, the singular number is of course used: jeden muž.
For the numbers 2, 3, and 4, any case may be used, depending on the function of the noun in the sentence: dva muži (nominative). "Vidím dva muže" (accusative).
For all numbers from 5 to infinity, the genitive plural is used when the noun would normally be in the nominative, accusative or vocative case: pět mužů. "Pět mužů je tam." Five men are over there. "Vidím pět mužů." I see five men. For other cases, however, the noun is not placed in the genitive. "Nad pěti muži." Above the five men (instrumental).
Numbers also have declension patterns in Czech. The number two, for instance, declines as follows: Dva/dvě: nominative Dvou: genitive Dvěma: dative Dva/dvě: accusative (o) dvou: locative Dvěma: instrumental
The numbers are singular (jednotné číslo), plural (množné číslo), and remains of dual. The dual number is used for only several parts of the human body, of which each person has two: hands, shoulders, eyes, ears, knees, legs, breasts. In all but two of the above body parts (eyes and ears) the dual number is only vestigial and affects very few aspects of declension (mostly the genitive and prepositional cases).
The genders are masculine animate, masculine inanimate, feminine, and neuter. Masculine animate is used only to describe living things (note: plants are not considered animate in Czech noun declension!). Strangely enough, there are hundreds of words for living things that are not masculine words (for example morče is a neuter word, and means "guinea-pig").

Software

Coding of Czech letters with diacritical marks (especially those with a háček, e.g., č, ě, š, ř, and ž) is not uniform and sometimes causes incorrect display and printing of texts. The following sentence is commonly used to test all special characters: Příliš žluťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy ("a too yellow horse moaned devilish odes"; needs to be tested with lower- and uppercase).