Czech
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This book will help you to begin learning the Czech language. Each lesson is aimed to some particular topic and at the end you will find some simple text using the new skills and a vocabulary.
It cannot cover all of the words you will need. The best way how to improve the vocabulary is simply to read and to use it. Search [1] for the words you do not know and note them.
[edit] Czech in a nutshell
Czech is an Indo-European, western Slavic language (see en:Slavic languages on the English Wikipedia), especially similar to Slovak (en:Slovak language), which means it is very likely for a Czech or Slovak native speaker to also understand some Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian etc. Czech and Slovak are very similar languages, and at first glance, a tourist may think (incorrectly) of them being dialects of each other. Czech is spoken by 10 million people as a first language and at least 6 million as a defacto second language in Slovakia and vice versa. Even before the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Czechs and Slovaks have always understood each other without the need of a translator as both have been subjected to Austro-Hungarian domniation for many centuries until after the First World War.
The relatively hard parts of the language are, like all other Balto-Slavic Languages (except Bulgarian and Macedonian):
- Declination (7 cases)
- Several types and subtypes of endings for nouns and verbs
The easier parts may be:
- Arbitrary word order in the sentence
- Simple, regular pronunciation
- Very simple and straightforward verb conjugations: Only one present tense (imperfective) two types of past and conditional tenses, a compund future (imprf.) a simple future (perf.). Verb are always found in pairs, imperfective on the left and the perfective on the right separated by a dash (usually, but NOT always, one adds a prefix to the imperfective infinitive to change it to perfective).
[edit] Table of Contents
- Alphabet and Pronunciation - (nothing interesting, as would you expect)
- Basics - common phrases, to be, to have
- Nouns - information on nouns (declination etc.) in the Czech language
- Verb - general information on Czech verbs
- Verb/Past - using the past tense
- Verb/Future - using the future tense
- Verb/Conditional - using the conditional mode
- Verbs/Irregularities - irregular verbs
- Word Order - informations/questions/commands in sentences, stressed words
- Connecting the Sentences
- Using the Commas
- Advanced Irregular Verbs
- Common phrases
