How Hard Is It To Learn Czech

Tip: Meet my list of the Most Common Mistakes in English. It will teach you lot how to avoid mistakes with commas, prepositions, irregular verbs, and much more than.

Let me start by saying: Yes, I exercise remember that Czech is a very complicated language; it is difficult to grasp and fifty-fifty more than hard to principal. Even among Slavic languages (from which I am acquainted, to some degree, with Czech, Slovak, Smooth, and Russian), Czech is probably one of the hardest, but most Slavic languages are, in principle, like.

However, this shouldn't discourage you lot from learning it; it is actually not much harder to empathise Czech passively than, say, German, and it is likewise not much harder to make yourself understood, but mastering the linguistic communication (being able to speak it fluently without a large number of grammatical mistakes) is very hard considering Czech grammar is very complex.

Throughout this article, I will employ Czech as an instance of feature features most Slavic languages share that make them hard to acquire for speakers whose mother tongue is a non-Slavic linguistic communication.

Coast

All North Slavic languages (languages forming a dialectal continuum spreading from Czech and Polish in the west to Russian in the east) utilize a complicated system of instance endings for nouns. These endings define the grammatical role of the substantive (which would be specified by a preposition in English). For example, in Czech, "a book" would be "kniha", but "of a book" would be "knihy", "to a book" would be "knize", etc.

That wouldn't be so bad if all nouns were declined the same way. Unfortunately, in that location are more than than 16 dissimilar patterns (paradigms) for Czech declension, each having seven forms for the singular and seven forms for the plural (then yous essentially accept to retrieve 15 tables of xiv endings each; fortunately, there are some similarities among the patterns that make them easier to remember). These patterns are usually taught by giving an example word belonging to the given category; these are usually as follows:

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
pán (mister) muž (homo) hrad (castle) les (wood) stroj (machine) předseda (chairman) soudce (estimate) Jiří (George)	žena (adult female) růže (rose) píseň (song) kost (bone)	město (metropolis) moře (sea) kuře (chicken) stavení (cottage)

To illustrate the vastness of this arrangement, allow's listing all the main patterns for the masculines (when there are two possibilities, it means that both are adequate but each i is normally preferred in a different situation):

Nominative	Genitive	Dative	Accusative	Vocative	Locative	Instrumental
pán	pána	pánu pánovi	pána	pane	pánu pánovi	pánem
muž	muže	muži mužovi	muže	muži	muži mužovi	mužem
hrad	hradu	hradu	hrad	hrade	hradu	hradem
les	lesa	lesu	les	lese	lesu	lesem
stroj	stroje	stroji	stroj	stroji	stroji	strojem
předseda	předsedy	předsedovi	předsedu	předsedo	předsedovi	předsedou
soudce	soudce	soudci	soudce	soudce	soudci	soudcem
Jiří	Jiřího	Jiřímu	Jiřího	Jiří	Jiřím	Jiřím

The full declension tabular array would comprise about 4 times more rows (eight more for singular, xvi more for plural forms), and all of them must be remembered (except the vocative case for inanimate objects) if you desire to be able to speak properly. In German, for comparison, the whole table (non just a part of it) would await like this:

Nominative	Genitive	Dative	Accusative
der	des	dem	den
das	des	dem	das
die	der	der	dice
dice (plural)	der	den	die

Once you remember that, yous basically know how to turn down any noun in the High german language. Unfortunately, the corresponding table for Czech is about 15 times bigger than that.

I unfortunate property of declension of nouns in Czech is that information technology is usually non possible to see the correct pattern just by looking at a discussion; you have to recall information technology to exist able to apply the word properly. For example, although "-a" at the end of a word is often a good indicator that the word is declined every bit "žena", it can too be declined as "předseda", and the endings of the two are completely different.

Simply it's not but nouns; adjectives, pronouns, and even numerals are declined too. At that place are 6 declension classes for adjectives (each having 7 cases in the atypical and vii cases in the plural), dozens of pronouns, each of which has to be learned separately (7 cases each, once more), and various types of numerals, some of which are declined similar adjectives, while others are declined similarly to pronouns.

Conjugation

Czech verbs are conjugated according to number and person. In English, the only verb conjugation table looks like this:

Person	Singular	Plural
1^st	have	take
2^nd	take	take
3^rd	takes	have

You only have to remember to add together an "southward" in the tertiary person singular (and not to change the verb at all for modal verbs), and that's basically it (with the exception of "to exist"). In Czech, such a tabular array looks like this:

Person	Atypical	Plural
i^st	beru	bereme
ii^nd	bereš	berete
three^rd	bere	berou

It'due south non that bad, just the endings are a little flake more varied. The bad part is that you have to learn 5 such tables (each having, on boilerplate, three subgroups with minor differences). Once again, there are similarities betwixt different patterns that make remembering them much easier, but the main problem is that you cannot tell the correct pattern just past looking at a verb (you have to retrieve into which of the v groups it belongs)

The good thing is that the Czech tense organization is non very all-encompassing, and one time you master the 5 tables, you have basically mastered all regular verbs. Yous don't have to larn separate endings for the imperfect, subjuctive, and other tenses found in Romance languages, for example.

Irregularity and stem changes

Even if you know the right coast grade of a noun, you will still sometimes neglect when you try to decline it mechanically. Why? Because many nouns are irregular. For example, "dítě" (child) is declined co-ordinate to the pattern "kuře" (chicken) in the atypical, but in the plural as "kost" (os) (I rather don't inquire why).

Thankfully, there are not that many irregularities of this type. Withal, at that place is a strong trend in Czech to avert certain groups of letters, which causes changes not but in noun endings, but as well in the stem itself. For case, the dative of "moucha" (a wing) should exist "mouchě", according to the pattern "žena" → "ženě", simply it is in fact "mouše", i.e. "ch" has changed to "š" (and "ě" has lost the caron). There are lots of such changes, e.g. k → c, r → ř, ch → š, h → z, k → z, ou → u, í → ě, á → a, ů → o, to proper noun just some of the more common. You can think of these changes as rules (that take some exceptions) rather than irregularities, merely they still add a lot of information to learn.

These stem changes are one of the reasons why I think Czech is amongst the hardest Slavic languages. In Russian, for example, at that place are only 6 cases instead of 7 (there's no vocative in standard Russian), simply this is not such a great advantage. However, the stem changes are very deficient in comparison to Czech, which makes it somewhat easier to larn to decline nouns.

Equally for verbs—as in nigh all other languages, at that place are a lot of verbs that accept some sort of irregularity, but this is something one is usually able to acquire quite fast. Merely in that location'southward a scarier matter; in English, each tense/aspect combination is formed from the infinitive or the by participle using auxiliary verbs. Not dissimilarly, Czech as well uses auxiliary verbs to form tenses, but each aspect has a separate word, and these are sometimes completely unlike. (If y'all are wondering what an aspect is, notice the difference between "he did" (imperfective attribute) and "he has done" (perfective aspect)).

Czech children are taught at school that there are two different aspects, the perfective and the imperfective, but the truth is, many verbs take 3 or 4 dissimilar aspects. For instance:

English language	Czech
he went (regularly)	chodil
he has gone	odešel
he was going	šel
he used to become	chodíval

All of these words are split verbs and can exist used in the infinitive and other tenses in a style unequalled to English. For example, in the nowadays: "chodí" = "he goes/walks", "odejde" = "he will go/leave", "jde" = "he is going", "chodívá" = "he sometimes goes" (these were the same iv verbs as above, only in the present tense). Oddly enough, the present tense of "odešel" expresses a time to come action, but the proper hereafter tense of "get" in Czech is "půjde", a new verb that simply exists in the present tense (grammatically) although it expresses the futurity!

In English, yous would learn just one verb and combine it with an auxiliary verb to get to the correct aspect. In Czech, you have to larn three or four different verbs to limited the unlike aspects.

Is there even more than?

There are other issues which make Czech somewhat unnecessarily complicated. For example, there are at to the lowest degree two diminutive forms for each substantive (expressing different levels of smallness/cuteness). This wouldn't be then bad, if there weren't many unlike diminutive suffixes, e.g. -ka, -ko, -ek, -ík, -inka, -enka, -ečka, -ička, -ul-, -unka, -íček, -ínek. Unfortunately, you lot have to call back the correct suffixes for each substantive.

Some nouns in Czech exist only in the plural form, even though they tin can express as well the atypical (similar "clothes" in English). This can exist very confusing sometimes considering many of these too have a atypical that has a different meaning. For case, if you say "boty" ("shoes"), it can either mean "a pair of shoes" or "shoes" (the plural of "shoe"). If you say "dvě boty" (two shoes), it means… "2 shoes". Then how exercise you say "two pairs of shoes"? "Dvoje boty." The give-and-take stays the same, but the numeral changes; in that location's a whole new set of numerals yous have to acquire to exist able to speak near these odd no-singular nouns.

Simply I believe that's enough. Let's not talk about conjunctions that incorporate a verb within them that is conjugated in a tense that doesn't even exist in Czech any more or how you can rearrange words in a sentence in virtually whatever possible guild to express subtle differences in significant.

No, you've read enough to know that learning Czech is hell. But it was Mark Twain who said: "Get to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." And that'south true; Czechs are by and large a friendly folk, and you will certainly brand some great new friends if you learn Czech, and learning to sympathize it passively is not that hard. Sounding like a native may be very tough, though…

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