Czech discussion group

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Linguist108
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Linguist108 » 2015-12-11, 20:27

Lauren wrote:Unless I am sorely mistaken, I'm pretty sure I've heard it on the recordings of Colloquial Czech, and from speakers on Forvo. :hmm:

Before I was thinking that this example was stressed on the penultimate syllable, but now I'm doubting myself. :para:

No, the stress in this example is not on the penultimate syllable. Actually, there is no stress anywhere at all :shock: Standard Czech would/should have a bit stronger stress on the first one. Not the best speaker used here imho.
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Lauren » 2015-12-12, 1:29

Thank you for choosing up the vowels. Though I'm still not convinced about /o/ and /u/. :hmm:

And about colloquial vs. formal language, I highly doubt I will ever be writing any newspaper articles or working in the Czech government or anything, if I ever do become fluent in Czech, mostly just reading/watching things and talking to people online, so the formal language would be good for most media, but colloquial would be very useful talking to people I'm sure.
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Aurinĭa » 2015-12-12, 1:36

Linguist108 wrote:Finally, I must admit that am not a big fan of colloquial Czech (especially of Prague type) as I am originally from Brno :D

Some of the books I've used in Czech courses give the colloquial (Prague) pronunciation between brackets, next to the standard pronunciation. I agree with you, though, learning standard Czech first (and colloquial, if you want) is a more useful order than the other way round. And that's not just because I'm not a big fan of colloquial Czech either.

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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby hreru » 2015-12-12, 18:31

Linguist108 wrote: Where can I find the example?

Why, it's the Lauren's link of course, manželka ... only she says penultimate and I say second because it's too long and I'm lazy. :P

Dr. House wrote:To je zajímavé. V ruštině je důležité znát na které slabice je důraz (možná i důležitější, než výslovnost hlásek), ale vždy tam slyším, na které slabice ten důraz je. V češtině naopak vůbec a to je to má mateřština. Asi proto vždy poznáme, pokud je někdo z Ruska nebo Slovenska, i kdyby měl fonologii zvládnutou na jedničku a ř vyslovoval jako rodák. :)

Ze Slovenska taky?, to mě překvapuje. Totiž, nikdy se mnou žádný Slovák česky nemluvil, ale teď mě tak napadla Vašáryová a Labuda, a ti mají přízvuk perfektní. Ovšem zase to jsou herci, jsou zvyklí pracovat s jazykem ... hey, wait a moment. What am I talking about? Linguist, since when is stress in Slovak on penultimate syllable? :shock:

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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Linguist108 » 2015-12-12, 19:56

Aurinĭa wrote:
Linguist108 wrote:Finally, I must admit that am not a big fan of colloquial Czech (especially of Prague type) as I am originally from Brno :D

Some of the books I've used in Czech courses give the colloquial (Prague) pronunciation between brackets, next to the standard pronunciation. I agree with you, though, learning standard Czech first (and colloquial, if you want) is a more useful order than the other way round. And that's not just because I'm not a big fan of colloquial Czech either.

Colloquial Bohemian Czech differs not only in pronunciation but in grammar as well...
That's strange, what course was it? I would find colloquial pronunciation in brackets confusing whilst learning a foreign language. I have never seen anything like that in any English or German courses for example.
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Linguist108 » 2015-12-12, 19:59

hreru wrote:
Linguist108 wrote: Where can I find the example?

Why, it's the Lauren's link of course, manželka ... only she says penultimate and I say second because it's too long and I'm lazy. :P

I can't hear stress on second/penultimate syllable in that manželka example. I rather hear a lack of stress on the first syllable where it should really be.
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Linguist108 » 2015-12-12, 20:07

hreru wrote:Linguist, since when is stress in Slovak on penultimate syllable? :shock:

Polish definitely has stress on the penultimate syllable. As for Slovak, sorry my bad, it's probably not generally true for standard Slovak, but I've heard many Slovaks speaking like that. I bet this is the case for northern and eastern Slovaks. :wink:
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Aurinĭa » 2015-12-12, 21:45

Linguist108 wrote:
Aurinĭa wrote:
Linguist108 wrote:Finally, I must admit that am not a big fan of colloquial Czech (especially of Prague type) as I am originally from Brno :D

Some of the books I've used in Czech courses give the colloquial (Prague) pronunciation between brackets, next to the standard pronunciation. I agree with you, though, learning standard Czech first (and colloquial, if you want) is a more useful order than the other way round. And that's not just because I'm not a big fan of colloquial Czech either.

Colloquial Bohemian Czech differs not only in pronunciation but in grammar as well...
That's strange, what course was it? I would find colloquial pronunciation in brackets confusing whilst learning a foreign language. I have never seen anything like that in any English or German courses for example.

I was specifically thinking of Česky krok za krokem. And yes, I found/find it confusing too, so I mostly tried to ignore them.

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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Linguist108 » 2015-12-13, 11:52

Aurinĭa wrote:I was specifically thinking of Česky krok za krokem. And yes, I found/find it confusing too, so I mostly tried to ignore them.

My English speaking (near native) partner had been using New Czech step by step and we both found it very good, furthermore I'd heard good reviews from others back then. I've just had a look into the book now and I haven't found the Common Czech (colloquial Bohemian) pronunciation there. This book is in English though, not in Czech.
http://www.czechstepbystep.cz/en/publikace/publikace_new_czech_step_by_step.html

Česky krok za krokem is from the same author but it's in Czech, not in English. And I think it's little bit more advanced than New Czech step by step. Looks like I've found it at home as well :), it's Česky krok za krokem 2 and it doesn't have any colloquial pronunciation there. Perhaps, it's mentioned just in the first book of the series? :hmm:
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Linguist108 » 2015-12-13, 12:10

Lauren wrote:Thank you for choosing up the vowels. Though I'm still not convinced about /o/ and /u/. :hmm:

Can you give me an example of o or u being pronounced anything else than pure /o/ and /u/ respectively? I'll check it out.

Lauren wrote:And about colloquial vs. formal language, I highly doubt I will ever be writing any newspaper articles or working in the Czech government or anything, if I ever do become fluent in Czech, mostly just reading/watching things and talking to people online, so the formal language would be good for most media, but colloquial would be very useful talking to people I'm sure.

That's about right. However, I must say that Standard Czech doesn't necessarily need to be formal, especially if you use Standard Czech grammar along with colloquial vocabulary and/or if you talk to people in Moravia, that should be perfectly fine. Praguers (and Bohemians) might find your grammar 'too correct/standard' though as the so called Common Czech (Bohemian colloquial Czech) differs from Standard Czech in grammar, but I wouldn't say it would be anything serious.
I'd definitely suggest to learn colloquial vocabulary, that's certainly very helpful. I'm not that much convinced about colloquial grammar. If your only objective is to talk to people in Prague's pubs, cafés and clubs then go ahead and learn Common Czech grammar instead of the standard one :)
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby hreru » 2015-12-13, 20:53

Linguist108 wrote: I can't hear stress on second/penultimate syllable in that manželka example. I rather hear a lack of stress on the first syllable where it should really be.

Exactly, I couldn't locate the stress so logical conclusion would be there's none, and I came to that conclusion. However, as I'm not too much of a realistic personality, my imagination denied to be satisfied with this clear and simple solution, when there are other ones to choose from... ;)

As for Slovak, sorry my bad, it's probably not generally true for standard Slovak, but I've heard many Slovaks speaking like that. I bet this is the case for northern and eastern Slovaks. :wink:

Really? I've met only once a Slovak girl from the East, but I can't recall she talked this way. Hmm, I guess there are things I notice only after I've been told so. :hmm: The only thing I can remember is that she was surprised I addressed her by her name in the "Východniari" manner because they use vocative (at least she said so), untill she realised after a few seconds it's of course normal for me as I'm Czech and not Slovak.

By the way, I use standard Czech exclusively for writing, my mother tongue is that Prague variant that's called colloquial Czech, and I'm not able to speak the standard way even if I wanted. (True that my ability to express myself is kind of limited, so focusing on "how it should be said properly in standard Czech" is wasting of time from my point of view, which I can allow myself to do when writing.) I always find it surprising and cute when I listen to Moravians. It's like they come the past century. :P

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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Linguist108 » 2015-12-18, 1:03

hreru wrote:By the way, I use standard Czech exclusively for writing, my mother tongue is that Prague variant that's called colloquial Czech, and I'm not able to speak the standard way even if I wanted. (True that my ability to express myself is kind of limited, so focusing on "how it should be said properly in standard Czech" is wasting of time from my point of view, which I can allow myself to do when writing.) I always find it surprising and cute when I listen to Moravians. It's like they come the past century. :P

That's interesting. When I listen to Bohemians and especially Praguers, it's like they lost the ability to speak correct/standard Czech :D
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby drakon » 2016-01-17, 17:07

hey folks, how do i say in czech
' committed to you for every moment '
thanks so much

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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby Linguist108 » 2016-01-18, 11:33

drakon wrote:hey folks, how do i say in czech
' committed to you for every moment '
thanks so much

Is this for a love letter? :)
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Czech and Polish learning ease

Postby langmon » 2018-11-10, 10:32

How much easier is it to learn Czech instead of Polish, or vice-versa?
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby silmeth » 2018-11-10, 12:16

As with all languages, depends on your background. If you already know Slovak, then Czech will be much easier, because of common vocabulary and culture. If you already know Ukrainian or Belorusian, Polish will be easier, again thanks to common vocabulary and a lot of common culture and history.

If you don’t know any Slavic language, but you know a Germanic one, then perhaps Czech might be a bit easier, because it was influenced by German a bit more than Polish, and thus eg. always uses accusative for direct object, while Polish keeps a distinction between accusative for positive sentences objects vs genitive for negative sentences… so Czech might have a bit more parallels in its grammar.

Another thing is their phonology – Czech has a distinction between long and short vowels, Polish does not. Polish has three series of (non)-palatal sibilants (s /s/ vs sz /ʂ ~ ʃ/ vs ś /ɕ/), while Czech has only two (s vs š). Both have fixed stress – Czech on the first syllable of the word, Polish on the penultimate one. Czech keeps has a ř /r̝/ sound, often hard to pronounce for foreigners… so depending on where you’re from, pronunciation of one of them might be easier, and the second harder.

But overall they are very similar languages, so I think that if don’t have prior familiarity with any other close Slavic language, both of them will probably pose a similar challenge to master.
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby langmon » 2018-11-10, 13:51

silmeth wrote:As with all languages, depends on your background. If you already know Slovak, then Czech will be much easier, because of common vocabulary and culture. If you already know Ukrainian or Belorusian, Polish will be easier, again thanks to common vocabulary and a lot of common culture and history.

If you don’t know any Slavic language, but you know a Germanic one, then perhaps Czech might be a bit easier, because it was influenced by German a bit more than Polish, and thus eg. always uses accusative for direct object, while Polish keeps a distinction between accusative for positive sentences objects vs genitive for negative sentences… so Czech might have a bit more parallels in its grammar.


I wasn't aware that Czech has been influenced by German (my native language) more than Polish. In fact, I only knew that there are some loanwords or similar in PL.

silmeth wrote:Another thing is their phonology – Czech has a distinction between long and short vowels, Polish does not.


A distinction between long and short vowel is being made in several languages :), some of them are among those I already learned.

silmeth wrote:Polish has three series of (non)-palatal sibilants (s /s/ vs sz /ʂ ~ ʃ/ vs ś /ɕ/), while Czech has only two (s vs š). Both have fixed stress – Czech on the first syllable of the word, Polish on the penultimate one. Czech keeps has a ř /r̝/ sound, often hard to pronounce for foreigners… so depending on where you’re from, pronunciation of one of them might be easier, and the second harder.


Now that is something I possibly would take a closer look at when beginning with either of them, right now I cannot fully comprehend it :).

silmeth wrote:But overall they are very similar languages, so I think that if don’t have prior familiarity with any other close Slavic language, both of them will probably pose a similar challenge to master.


Not really with a Slavic one, but with Latin. Six cases, including vocative and ablative (used for "with" and "trough").
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby silmeth » 2018-11-11, 14:24

SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:
silmeth wrote:But overall they are very similar languages, so I think that if don’t have prior familiarity with any other close Slavic language, both of them will probably pose a similar challenge to master.


Not really with a Slavic one, but with Latin. Six cases, including vocative and ablative (used for "with" and "trough").


Latin is not a Slavic language. It certainly will help with understanding Slavic declension, which is very similar, and thus will be an advantage when learning any Slavic language, but it won’t be more helpful when learning eg. Czech than when learning Polish – it is basically equally distant or equally close to both of them. It might be less helpful when learning Bulgarian, but only because Bulgarian basically lost its declension, not because somehow it’s farther away from Latin.

My point was, for Polish or Czech to really be easier than the other for an individual to learn, that individual would really need to already know some really close language, that would be noticeably closer to the one-to-be-learned than the other, because in general the two languages are very similar, and will pose a similar challenge for a foreign learner.
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby langmon » 2018-11-11, 15:45

silmeth wrote:Latin is not a Slavic language. It certainly will help with understanding Slavic declension, which is very similar, and thus will be an advantage when learning any Slavic language, but it won’t be more helpful when learning eg. Czech than when learning Polish – it is basically equally distant or equally close to both of them.


Sure. It's just that a certain member's input (i.e. yours :)) contained a Language Learning Puzzle Piece I didn't find yet before asking. This is about realizing that, if I am someone who already had been learning Latin for a few years in the distant past, then I haven't got a reason to consider Czech and Polish to be (even relatively speaking) difficult just because it has more cases than my native language. Because Latin has more, too.

silmeth wrote:It might be less helpful when learning Bulgarian, but only because Bulgarian basically lost its declension, not because somehow it’s farther away from Latin.
Now that is, once again, interesting. Because if Bulgarian dropped a lot (or even all) of its Case Related Inflections, just like English dropped a lot of them, then this is another reason to consider especially Bulgarian also easier than I used to think.

silmeth wrote:My point was, for Polish or Czech to really be easier than the other for an individual to learn, that individual would really need to already know some really close language, that would be noticeably closer to the one-to-be-learned than the other, because in general the two languages are very similar, and will pose a similar challenge for a foreign learner.
Sure, and I already got your point when I read the last post :). But the new one also contained some, additional, interesting input. Having said that, whoever decides to continue a conversation like this with me is very welcome to do so, but I want to emphasize that I simply consider it your (plural) decision :).
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Re: Czech discussion group

Postby langmon » 2018-11-13, 13:43

How do you say this Czech?

"Not every tea is the same".

"She really likes eating cornflakes, as long as they aren't too sweet".

"He partially is of Czech ancestry, but not fully".

(A literal translation of the Czech examples would be helpful, although not "required" at all. Someone is trying to mentally decode Czech grammar).
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