Learn Czech for Travel, Work and Study

Czech is written in the Latin alphabet with two kinds of mark: the háček, a small hook that softens a consonant — č is ch, š is sh, ž is zh, ň, ť and ď are their soft partners, and ř is the famous one — and the čárka, an acute accent that makes a vowel long: “byt” is a flat and “být” is to be. The spelling is close to the sound, with the oddity that “i” and “y” sound identical and are kept apart only by rules Czech children memorise. Stress falls on the first syllable of every word without exception, which gives Czech speech a steady, falling rhythm, and “h” is voiced, from deep in the throat.

The grammar is the full Slavic set. Nouns, adjectives and names take seven cases, so “Praha” becomes “do Prahy” on the way there and “v Praze” on arrival; there are three genders, with the masculine split into animate and inanimate; and almost every verb has two forms, one for an action under way and one for an action completed. There are no articles and no present-tense “to be” in some constructions. Czech also makes diminutives of everything — a beer is a “pivko”, a moment a “chvilka” — and uses them to soften requests and show affection rather than smallness.

“Ty” is for family, friends and children; “vy” for the rest of the world and for any group; and the step from one to the other is offered, not taken — by whoever is older, or by the woman. What marks Czech address is the use of titles: a person with a degree is called by it — “pane inženýre”, “paní doktorko”, “pane magistře” — and the surname is often dropped in favour of the title, which appears on doorbells and business cards too. Women's surnames take “-ová”: Mr Novák's wife and daughter are Nováková.

Czech has two layers a learner must learn to hear. The Czech of the news, the law and the textbooks and the everyday Czech of Prague and Bohemia part company in their endings and vowels: “dobrý” becomes “dobrej”, “mléko” becomes “mlíko”, and whole case endings shift. Moravia, in the east, speaks closer to the standard and has a slower, warmer music. Across the border, Slovak is a sister language so close that Czechs and Slovaks talk to each other in their own tongues; Polish is a cousin Czechs half-follow and enjoy mocking for its hushing sounds.

Czech sits with Polish and Russian in the US Foreign Service Institute's longer group — a thousand-odd hours of class, by their reckoning, before the language is a working tool — and the effort has the Slavic shape: a quick start on the sounds and the reading, because the spelling is honest and the stress fixed; a long middle on the seven cases and the two forms of every verb, which the ear must meet thousands of times before the right one arrives unasked; and a particular Czech twist, the gap between the Czech of the book and the Czech of the pub, which means a learner understands the evening news a year before they follow a table of friends. “Ř” comes to most people after a few months of trying; a few never get it, and Czechs forgive them.

Prague's historic centre, its hotels, its restaurants and its tram ticket machines work in English, and younger Czechs speak it well; the generation that went to school before the change learned Russian or German. Beyond the centre and the capital — in a Moravian town, at a doctor's surgery, at the foreigners' police, in a village hospoda — Czech is the only language, on paper as well as aloud. The shared-service centres and technology firms of Prague and Brno hire in English and other European languages; Czech companies, the public sector, schools, courts and hospitals work in Czech. Universities teach in Czech for free and in English for a fee; the foreign student who wants the free place learns the language first, usually in a year's preparatory course.

• Ř: A rolled r with the tongue raised to buzz at the same time, found in Dvořák, Řepy and “dobře”, well. No other language has it, and Czech children are sent to speech therapists to acquire it.
• Sentences without vowels: “Strč prst skrz krk” — stick a finger through your throat — and “smrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh”, a spotted morel grew damp from the fog. The r and l act as vowels, and Czechs say these at normal speed.
• “No” means yes: In everyday Czech “no” is yeah — “no jasně”, yeah sure, “no jo”, oh well — and the word for no is “ne”. Visitors get this wrong in both directions.
• Ahoj: The everyday hi and bye of a landlocked nation is the sailors' “ahoy”, adopted by Czech canoeists and students and never given back.
• Robot is a Czech word: Coined for a play from “robota”, drudgery, and now in every language. Czech also gave the world “polka”, “pistol” and “pilsner”.
• Addressed by degree: A Czech with an engineering degree is “pane inženýre”, with a master's “paní magistro”, with a doctorate “pane doktore” — on the doorbell, in the office and from the waiter who knows them.
• -ová: Czech women's surnames take the ending: Navrátilová, Krejčíková. A foreign woman settling in the country is asked whether she wants it added to her papers.

Czech levels follow the CEFR, and two exams of the state's own mark the two legal thresholds. A non-EU national applying for permanent residence passes the Czech language exam for permanent residence, set at A2 by the education ministry and sat at authorised language schools across the country, with exemptions for children, the elderly and graduates of Czech schools. Czech citizenship by naturalisation requires the exam in Czech language and Czech realities — the language at B1 together with a test on life, institutions and history — run by the Institute for Language and Preparatory Studies of Charles University, which also publishes the model papers. Both certificates are issued once and do not expire.

For every other purpose the reference is the CCE, the Certified Examination in Czech for Foreigners, also from Charles University's institute: one exam per level from A1 to C1, in four skills, held several times a year in Prague and at partner centres abroad, and recognised by universities and employers. A Czech-taught degree asks for B2 in most faculties, B1 in some, proven with the CCE or the university's own entrance test; the universities' preparatory year for foreign students exists to get them there. No Czech visa asks for the language. With regular classes most adults reach the A2 of the residence exam within a year and the B1 of the citizenship exam in about two; the B2 for a university place takes a further year or an intensive course.

Czech self-study has one great free asset — the language institute's online handbook, which gives every form of every word and answers the “i or y” question in a click — and one great free course built for foreigners by the state. Around them a learner wants a flashcard deck whose nouns carry gender and genitive and whose verbs come in pairs, and two kinds of listening: the public radio news for the written standard, and any Czech film or series for the everyday Czech the textbooks postpone.

A tutor is worth most in Czech for “ř”, for the cases at speed and for the second register. The sound is acquired by imitation under correction and almost never from a description; the endings turn from a table into a habit only through conversation with someone who supplies the right one each time; and the gap between the Czech of the book and the Czech of Prague is bridged by a tutor who speaks both and says which is which.