Slovo dne #5

Těhotná (adj.) - pregnant

Ona je těhotná? Is she pregnant?

Czech art on Wikipedia

Started the Czech art article on wikipedia the other day, so if you were ever curious who is the most well known Czech artist, what was the key movement of the 20th century or what was going on in Bohemia in the Middle Ages, head on over! And don't forget, if you know anything on the subject, wikipedia is free for anyone to edit!

Czech Basics 2- Introductions

So more than half a year after the last one, here is Czech Basics 2!

In this lesson we will learn how to introduce ourselves and ask how someone is.

The verb for “to be called” is “jmenovat se”. In case you are a complete beginner, here is a quick grammar explanation. Czech verbs (doing or action words, like “do”, “run” etc) change ending according to who is doing the action. This happens in English as well, where we say “I walk” and “you walk” but “he walks”. It’s a bit more complicated in Czech, there are a lot more endings, but they follow quite simple patterns. Here is the full pattern for “jmenovat se”.

I	Jmen-uju se	We	Jmen-ujete se
You	Jmen-uješ se	You (polite and plural)	Jmen-ujeme se
He, she, it	Jmen-uje se	They	Jmen-ují se

 Note that you don’t include the dash when writing, that’s just to make the endings obvious.

Another important thing about Czech verbs is that, because of the endings, they can stand alone, without the need for words meaning “I”, “you”, “he” etc. But just in case you need them, for emphasis, here they are:

I	Já	We	My
You	Ty	You	Vy
He	On	They	Oni
She	Ona
It	Ono

There are two different “you’s”. One, “ty”, is like French “tu”, it is informal and can be used with friends, family, or those of an equal age to you. “Vy” is either plural, for use with more than one friend, or formal, for use with shop assistants, work superiors, relatives of friends etc.

Here is a little dialogue to show how these work in a (admittedly unrealistic) conversation. Try to guess the meaning of words that you don’t know.

Jan: Dobrý den. Jak se jmenujete?
Josef: Dobré ráno. Jmenuju se Josef. A vy?
Jan: Těší mě Josef. Jmenuju se Jan. Jak se máte?
Josef: Děkuju, dobře. A vy?
Jan: Jde to. Na Shledanou.
Josef: Na Shledanou.

When introduced to someone, it is polite to say “těší mě“, “pleased to meet  you”.

“Jak” is a question word meaning “how”. Here it is used with “jak se jmenujete”, to ask what someone’s name is. It is also part of the set phrase “Jak se máte”. This means “how are you?”, the normal response to which is “dobře“, which means „well/ good“. "Jde to" is similar to French "ca va" when used as a response, it means literraly "that goes", you can think of it as "fine". 

Rediscover your childhood. In a new language

I have read the Harry Potter books, the first one especially, too many times to put a number to it. They took me through my childhood years and they remain something I return to when I am feeling a need for a nostalgia trip. The first line in particular evokes a certain feeling of safety and warmth in me that few other books can, "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much". So it's only natural that sitting here feeling a little homesick in Paris, I pick up Harry Potter once more. Though this time, with a more practical purpose. You see, I am reading the whole series in French. Along with my other various goals for my year abroad, any spare moment I get, I am re immersing myself in the fantastical world of my childhood favourite. And I really think that it is just as useful as the university lectures I am attending, the classic French literature I have to read for my course and any other contact I have in the language. I know the books so well that it means I don't need to keep on routing through dictionaries for words I don't know because I can just guess, and in this way I have expanded my vocabulary. I also enjoy reading them, so it is making the language immersion a positive experience for me, I don't resent being completely cut off from English because I feel just at home in the French Harry Potter universe as I do the English one. 

All this sounds a bit childish, but I really recommend picking up that book you read countless times and trying it in a new language. Like Czech for example (something I plan to do next semester). Once you have got past the initial hurdles of grammar and vocabulary and decide you want to tackle an actual work in the language, then a children's book is often the best place to start. The Internet has a copy of the Little Prince in Czech you can access from your browser. 

Internet Language Reference Book

This is a great grammar reference site that is incredibly useful to find the correct form of a word, something very difficult in Czech with its myriad verb forms and noun cases. Just type the word you want to look up in the box:

It will then bring up a table with all the correct forms:

A great tool to add to your Czech language kit!

Assimil Czech

I am currently in Paris, France, on my year abroad. Clearly, this means that at the moment, Czech is not my biggest focus. However, in February, I am going to the Czech Republic for five months, so maybe it would be worth making a few efforts to improve my Czech, which, after an entire summer of not speaking it, I have mostly forgotten. With this in mind, I headed over to Gibert Jeune, a perennial favourite of Parisian students. There, I picked up a copy of Assimil "Tcheque sans Peine". Yes, I have decided to brush up on my Czech through French. I'll get onto the whys later, but for now, the book itself. It consists of around 80 lessons that are supposed to take 15 minutes each day. With 2 years of Czech behind me, I am finding that at the moment I am getting through the lessons in about 5 minutes. They consist of a short, rather unnatural sounding conversation that is supposed to introduce basic grammatical constructs through repetition. By lesson three I have supposedly learnt how to conjugate to be and to have in the singular persons, how to negate, ask questions, and a host of vocabulary. I will have to wait until I progress to the further lessons to see just how much I am picking up from the book.

So why use a French book for Czech? Well, firstly, it's a matter of practicality. It is just simply a lot easier to pick up a French guide in Paris than an English one. However, I am also interested to see if letting go of English will help me think more directly in Czech. Using the French will hopefully get me to think more about the underlying meaning and structures of the phrases than a simple direct-to-English translation.

That's the plan anyway.

Slovo Dne #4: Tučňák

Ok, so my first¨”Word of the Day” of the New Year may strike you as pretty irrelevant when it comes to general conversation, being a word you may use at most once every 6 months, but it illustrates a good point. In most languages, names for exotic animals tend to be quite similar, being new additions to the vocabulary. So we have “giraffe” in English, “girafe” in French, “girafa” in Italian and “zhirafa” in Russian. All pretty similar, and here at least, Czech follows suit with “žirafa”. However, this is more the exception. The word “penguin” has its equivalents in most of the worlds languages, “pingvin” in Russian, for example. In Czech, the word is “tučňák”. This clearly bares no relation to the international term. It is one of many words that were coined during the “National Revival” where scholars attempted to create new words from existing stems and affixes, much like in Icelandic. Which all means that Czech has a lot of words bearing no relation to English, making it even more difficult to learn. Thank you, Revivalists!

Speak Czech and help win the Cold War!

So here I am, week 3 of the Christmas vacation, still slogging through Colloquial Czech and I’m starting to… get a little bored. Sooo, after looking through my small portfolio of links and resources I have collected over the previous 2 years, I found: The FSI Czech FAST course, which aims to provide students with enough language to “deal with the most common social and daily life situations they will encounter during their overseas assignments”. Yes, assignments. It’s aimed at “US government personnel” and so teaches language suitable for an ambassador and other diplomats. This all comes with a selection of “cultural highlights”. Bear in mind these are from 1990 so refer to Czechoslovakia. Some of the cultural tips are still relevant and interesting, the old one regarding odd and even numbered flowers, for example, but some are extremely out-dated, referring to the situation under a Communist government. The language however, is well represented and includes lots of vocab and grammar, along with a lot of listening practice. And the best part? It’s in the public domain so can be found for free on the internet!  So whilst you may not want to make it your main course, the amount that is there for free makes it a valuable resource that you should definitely consider checking out. There’s about 10 hours worth of audio and a 242 page textbook, so have a look!

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone has a good new year, I shall be updating in the next few days with more Czech tips!