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CZECH

Tips and notes

The sounds of Czech


Czech is mostly phonetic. If you know how a word is written, you can almost always determine how
it is pronounced. The only words which don't follow the rules are recent loan words, but these are mostly
taken from English, and so should be familiar. Conversely, if you know how a word is pronounced, you can
usually figure out how it is written. The main exceptions are that i & y (as well as í & ý) and mě & mně are
pronounced the same. Most letters are pronounced more or less the same as in English.

Vowels
The vowels are as in most European languages:
 a is always like the a in father, never like the a in dad.
 e is as in let.
 i is as in kitten.
 o is as in gopher, but without the light w sound which usually follows it in English.
 u is as in put.
 y is always a vowel, never a consonant, and is indistinguishable from i in most contexts.
Each vowel has a short and a long form. The long forms are written á, é, í, ó, ú, and ý, except that ú is
replaced by ů everywhere except at the start of a word (or at the start of the word's root after a prefix). The
main difference between a short vowel and a long vowel is the length of time spent pronouncing it, except
that i/y may undergo a quality change on lengthening (possibly variable by region):
 í/ý is as the "ea" sound in cleat.

Consonants
Many consonants occur in pairs, voiced and unvoiced, like b and p, d and t, or z and s. Sometimes
one of the pair is missing. There are also consonants like l and r which don't really fit into either category.

VOICED
 b is as in English
 d is mostly as in English, but if you listen closely, you'll hear that it's pronounced with the tongue
closer to the teeth.
 ď is a sound that does not exist in English. It sounds roughly like a d followed by a consonantal y, but
it is one sound rather than a combination of two. Unless you already know a Slavic or Celtic language,
it may take you some time to learn to pronounce this correctly.
 g is as in English but is not used much in Czech.
 h is as in English.
 v is as in English.
 z is as in English.
 ž is like the sound that the s makes in pleasure or leisure.

UNVOICED
 c represents a sound which doesn't quite exist in English, but it is very close to the ts as the end
of cats. It is, however, a single sound rather than a combination of two.
 č is like the ch in chicken.
 f is as in English, but is not used much in Czech.
 ch is considered a single letter in Czech and is found after h in dictionaries. It is the unvoiced
counterpart to h, a sound which no longer exists in most dialects of English. Scots has retained it, for
example in Loch Ness.
 k is as in English, but a bit softer.
 p is as in English, but a bit softer.
 s is as in English.
 t is as in English, but with the tongue closer to the teeth.
 ť is the unvoiced counterpart to ď, and is similarly a sound which does not exist in English. It sounds
roughly like a t followed by a consonantal y, but it is one sound rather than a combination of two.

OTHER
 j is like an English consonantal y, in other words like the y in yellow.
 l, m and n are as in English.
 ň is roughly like an n followed by a consonantal y, but it is one sound rather than a combination of
two.
 r is lightly rolled, as in Spanish or Italian, or tapped, as in Scots.
 ř is a sound unique to Czech and is the sound the majority foreigners find most difficult to learn. Even
some native speakers never learn it properly. It's roughly similar to the combination r+ž, but is a
single sound.

COMBINATIONS
Unless mentioned explicitly below, each letter in Czech is simply pronounced independently of any
letters which precede or follow it. Some interdependencies exist.
 Final consonants are often unvoiced. So a b at the end of a word is pronounced p, a d at the end of a
word is pronounced t, etc.
 Groups of consonants in the same syllable are pronounced voiced or unvoiced, usually according to
the last consonant in the group, so sb is pronounced zb, zt is pronounced st, etc. However, sh is
usually pronounced sch instead of the zh one would expect from the "last consonant governs" rule.
 As mentioned above, i and y are pronounced the same. However, an i/í (unlike a y/ý) impacts the
pronunciation of three consonants if it follows them in a word. When followed by an i/í, a d is
pronounced like ď, a t like ť, and an n like ň.
 The letter ě is pronounced like a consonantal y followed by an e. When d, t, or n is followed by ě, the
pronunciation is as if the consonant changed to a d', t', or ň (resp.) followed by an e. And mě sounds
like mně

Gender
Every noun in Czech has a gender. The gender can be "masculine", "feminine", or "neuter" and has
little relation to actual biological sex. For example dům, which means house, is masculine, and věc, which
means thing, is feminine. For words which refer to people, the grammatical gender and biological sex often
do coincide, but not always. For example, girl, can be translated into Czech as dívka, holka, or děvče. The
first two are feminine, as you might expect, but the last is neuter!
Rather confusingly, Czech actually has four genders. "Masculine" is really two genders, "masculine
animate" and "masculine inanimate". There will be cases in later lessons where the distinction matters.
"Animate" and "inanimate" mean what you would expect them to, so that dům, for example, is masculine
inanimate because houses are inanimate objects.
Knowing the gender is important because it determines the form of any adjectives which modify the
noun. For example, if we want to talk about a young girl we would say mladá dívka or mladá holka,
but mladé děvče. As you can see, it's the grammatical gender which is decisive, not reality.
The (partly) good news is that it is sometimes possible to guess the gender of the noun from its ending:
 Nouns ending in a consonant are mostly masculine. Early examples will
include kluk(boy), muž (man), stroj (machine), hrad (castle), dům (house), and two proper
names, František and Matěj.
 Nouns ending in -a or -e are mostly feminine. Early examples will include holka (girl), žena (woman,
wife), ulice (street), láska (love), and two proper names, Kateřina and Žofie.
 Nouns ending in -o are almost always neuter. Early examples will include město (city), auto (car),
and víno (wine).
 Nouns that end in -ě or -í are fairly often neuter, e.g., dítě (child) early in the course,
and letiště (airport) and náměstí (square, plaza) later on.
The unfortunate challenge is that many nouns do not follow the “rules” given above:
 Many nouns that end in a consonant are feminine, e.g., věc (thing), sůl (salt), kost (bone),
and postel (bed).
 Some nouns that end in -a are masculine, e.g., táta (dad), kolega (colleague), turista(tourist),
and terorista (terrorist).
 Some nouns that end in -e are masculine, e.g., soudce (judge), or neuter,
e.g., děvče(girl), zvíře (animal), moře (sea), and slunce (sun).
 Some nouns that end in -ě are feminine, e.g., žákyně (student) and přítelkyně (girlfriend).
 Some nouns that end in -í are masculine, e.g., vrchní (waiter), or feminine, e.g., paní(lady).

Adjectives
There are two types of adjectives in Czech, hard and soft. They differ in their endings:
In the singular nominative form, which is all that we are learning for now, the hard adjectives have
endings that depend on the gender as follows:
 -ý in masculine, e.g., mladý muž (young man) or velký strom (big tree)
 -á in feminine, e.g., mladá žena (young woman)
 -é in neuter, e.g., malé dítě (small child)
In the singular nominative form, the soft adjective endings are the same regardless of gender, -í:
 další muž (another man), další žena (another woman), and další dítě (another child)
 poslední dům (the last house), poslední věc (the last thing), and poslední zvíře (the last animal)
For now, consider nominative the base form of many words.

Demonstratives
Czech doesn't have articles. Mladá dívka could be young girl, a young girl, or the young girl,
depending on context. Czech has a variety of ways of making clear which is meant when the distinction is
important, including the word order, as we will see in later skills. For now, we will only examine the
demonstrative adjectives that are sometimes (not always!) used in place of the English definite article.
The Czech demonstrative adjective that partly overlaps with the definite article "the" and the
demonstrative pronoun "that" has the following singular nominative forms:
 ten in masculine, e.g., ten muž (the man, that man)
 ta in feminine, e.g., ta dívka (the girl, that girl)
 to in neuter, e.g., to dítě (the child, that child)
Demonstrative adjectives and regular adjectives can usually be combined, and usually in that order: ta
mladá dívka (the young girl, that young girl).

To be: singular

The singular forms of the verb to be are


Czech English

(Já) jsem I am

(Ty) jsi You are (informal singular)

(On/Ona/Ono) je He/She/It is
In Czech, unlike English, the subject pronouns (written in parentheses in the above table) are optional.
Both Já jsem and Jsem mean I am. As a general rule, if you add unnecessary words then they are likely to be
interpreted as emphatic, so Já jsem would generally be interpreted as I am. There are exceptions to this rule.
There are certain words which Czech likes to have in the second position in a sentence, and it will sometimes
add a redundant subject pronoun to accomplish this instead of reshuffling the whole sentence. (The second
"position" does not simply refer to showing up after the first word but rather after the first unit of
meaning.) As a singular neuter subject pronoun, ono is usually replaced with the more general neuter
pronoun to. However, tohas many additional meanings and uses, in some of which it may not even be neuter
or singular. We have already seen its use as the definite article or the demonstrative adjective "that" for
singular neuter nouns, e.g., to děvče (the girl/that girl).

Not to be

The corresponding negative forms are


Czech English

(Já) nejsem I am not

(Ty) nejsi You are not (informal singular)

(On/Ona/Ono) není He/She/It is not

In general, Czech verbs can by negated by adding ne to the beginning of the word. Note that je -> není is
an exception, but fortunately such exceptions are exceedingly rare.

Yes/no questions
In writing, Czech yes/no questions often look just like statements, except they end in a question mark.
For example, Jsi holka? looks just like Jsi holka. When spoken, questions of this type differ from the
corresponding statements in the sentence intonation, which typically rises at the end for yes/no questions
but falls for statements.

Informal vs formal forms of address


The ty forms (pronoun and/or the verb) above are informal singular, in the sense that they are used for
addressing single individuals with whom you are on a first name basis or who are much younger than you.
The singular formal form of address matches the plural form and is introduced in the next skill.

To be: plural

The plural forms of the verb to be, including the negative forms, are
Czech English

(My) jsme We are

(Vy) jste You are (plural/formal singular)

(Oni/Ony/Ona) jsou They are

(My) nejsme We are not

(Vy) nejste You are not (plural/formal singular)

(Oni/Ony/Ona) nejsou They are not


Informal vs formal forms of address
The vy forms above serve both for singular formal and plural forms of address.

Plural forms intro


Several plural nouns and adjectives are used in this skill.
NOUNS
This skill introduces a few plural
nouns: muži (men), kluci (boys), ženy (women), holky(girls), děti (children), and zvířata (animals). This small
sample does not reflect the full range of plural formation possibilities in Czech; consider it a trailer. A few
initial observations:
 Animate masculine nouns ending in a consonant in the singular usually append -i to form the plural,
e.g., muž becomes muži (men) and kluk becomes kluci (boys). Note the consonant shift
from k to c before the -i.
 Feminine nouns ending in -a in the singular form the plural by replacing the -a with -y,
e.g., žena becomes ženy (women) and holka becomes holky (girls).
 Neuter nouns ending in -e/ě in the singular sometimes form the plural by replacing the -e/ě with -
ata, e.g., zvířata (animals).
However, the plural of the neuter noun dítě is an early warning that things are not always what they
seem in Czech. Instead of the expected (but non-existent) neuter "díťata", we get
the feminine plural děti (children).
Note we have focused on living beings in this skill. We will see other plural formation patterns very soon,
including those for inanimate objects.

ADJECTIVES
In the plural nominative form, soft adjective endings stay the same -í across all genders.
The hard adjectives differ in endings between the genders predictably:
 -í in animate masculine, e.g., mladí muži (young men)
 -é in inanimate masculine, e.g., velké stromy (big trees)
 -é in feminine, e.g., mladé ženy (young women)
 -á in neuter, e.g., malá zvířata (small animals)
The consonant shift from k to c also impacts the animate masculine hard adjective before the -í ending.
Thus we get from velký kluk (big boy) to velcí kluci (big boys).

Questions

Yes-no questions
English usually uses word order (in addition to rising terminal intonation when speaking) to distinguish
yes-no questions from statements. Czech often doesn't do this, instead relying on intonation in spoken Czech
and leaving the question mark at the end of the sentence as the only written hint that we are dealing with a
question.
For example Jsi kluk? looks just like Jsi kluk., while the usual English word order in the question Are you
a boy? clearly differs from that in the statement You are a boy.

Question-word questions
The English question words (a.k.a. the wh-words) have their counterparts in Czech,
e.g., kdo (who), co (what, as in what thing), kde (where), jak (how), proč (why), jaký (what, as in what kind
of), který (which), and čí (whose).
These words are typically used to start the questions in Czech, much like in English:
Kdo je ta dívka? (Who's that girl?)
Co je to? (What is that?)
Kde jsem? (Where am I?)
Jak stará jsi? (How old are you?)
Proč je to malé? (Why is it small?)
Jaký muž je Matěj? (What kind of man is Matěj?)
Jaká je Kateřina? (What is Kateřina like?)
Který muž je František (Which man is František?)
Čí dítě jsem? (Whose child am I?)

New noun
This skill introduces a few nouns, of which the masculine animate noun manžel(husband) is noteworthy.
It has an odd plural, manželé, which is also grammatically masculine animate and may mean "husbands" or
"husband and wife".

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