Czech language

Categories: Languages of the Czech Republic | Slavic languages

Czech (čeština)
Spoken in:	Czech Republic and as a minority language also in the United States, Canada, Germany, Slovakia and elsewhere
Region:	Central Europe
Total speakers:	12 million
Ranking:	73
Genetic classification:	Indo-European Slavic West Slavic Czech-Slovak Czech
Official status
Official language of:	Czech Republic, European Union
Regulated by:	Czech Language Institute
Language codes
ISO 639-1	cs
ISO 639-2	cze (B) / ces (T)
SIL	CES
See also: Language – List of languages

The Czech language 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), many words (esp. 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 (quater-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 followed by 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.

1 Morphology
2 External links
- 2.1 Dictionaries
- 2.2 Other

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Morphology

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Parts of speech

Noun (podstatné jméno)
Adjective (přídavné jméno)
Pronoun (zájmeno)
Numeral (číslovka)
Verb (sloveso)
Adverb (příslovce)
Preposition (předložka)
Conjunction (spojka)
Particle (částice)
Interjection (citoslovce)

Nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numbers are declined (7 cases over a number of declension models) and verbs are conjugated; the other parts of speech are not inflected (with the exception of comparative formation in adverbs).

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Dialects

In the Czech Republic three distinct dialects can be found, all corresponding more or less to geographic areas within the country. The dialects are used in spoken language only, never in written form. The first, and most widely used, is "Bohemian Czech", obviously 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 all 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.

The second dialect is spoken in Moravia. This dialect even has several different words from standard Czech. Unlike in Bohemia, Moravia tends to have more local dialects varying from village to village. For example in Brno, tramvaj (streetcar or tram) is šalina (originating from "ElektrisSCHELINIE". Moravians consider themselves to speak correct Czech, unlike their Bohemian brothers, which is a popular, albeit untrue, urban legend in the Czech Republic.

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

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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:

kdo/co? (who/what?) - Nominative
bez koho/čeho? (without whom/what?) - Genitive
komu/čemu? (to whom/what?) - Dative
vidím koho/co? (I see whom/what?) - Accusative
volám (I call) Vocative
o kom/čem? (about whom/what?) - Locative (also known as Prepositional)
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).

Accusative: skrz (through), pro (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).

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.

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, the nominative plural is used: dva muži.

For all numbers from 5 to infinity, the genitive plural is used: pět mužů.

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").

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Software

Coding of Czech letters with accents (especially those with a háček) 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).

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