Czech language: origin, dialects, basic rules. Czech grammar online services

Czech is the sixty-sixth most widely spoken language in the world. It is considered native by twelve million people, and hundreds of thousands of students study this language as a second foreign language. Czech is part of the group of Slavic languages ​​- conversations in Czech become clear to a Russian-speaking tourist almost immediately after arriving in the country. Despite the general clarity, the Czech language has grammatical subtleties, complexities and exceptions that are worth knowing in order to master it perfectly.

How did the Czech language develop?

Most tourists before traveling to the Czech Republic are interested in what language the citizens of this country speak. Since the Middle Ages and until now, Czech has been officially considered the state language of the Czech Republic.

There are three periods of formation of the Czech language: Old, Old and New Czech.

Until the beginning of the 10th century, there was no written language in the Czech language. For the first time, Czech words and phrases begin to appear in German literary works and books in Latin at the beginning of the 13th century.

Complete books in the Czech language appear in the first half of the 15th century, when a Czech grammar was published in Prague. In the same period, a proposal appeared to introduce foreign diacritics into the spelling of Czech words, which conveyed in writing sounds that have no analogues in the Latin alphabet. This prescription was accepted, but only in the 16th century was it possible to permanently supplant digraphic letter combinations that convey sound by writing several letters.

Czech writing served as the basis for Slovak, which was formed much later. And also the Czech alphabet was used to try to latinize some Slavic languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Belarusian.

There are four dialects in the official language:

• Czech dialects;
• Central Moravian dialects;
• North Moravian dialects (also known as Silesian);
• Slovak dialects.

The Latin spelling of the alphabet is used to write the features of all four dialects of Czech.

Also, the Czech language is divided into literary, bookish, colloquial and common Czech. Most of the locals use the common Czech language. The basis of the literary language is considered to be the colloquial Central Czech dialect, which belongs to the interdialects of the central part of the country.

General rules of Czech grammar and syntax

The rules defining this national language are distinguished, which distinguish it from other representatives of the Slavic group.

• The language includes ten phonemes that differ in longitude, consonants are divided into voiceless and voiced.
• The stress always falls on the first syllable of the word, this also applies to combinations of nouns with prepositions (for example, “ˈdo Prahy” - “to Prague”, “ˈdo nás” - “to us”).
• There are only two numbers - singular and plural, cases - seven, which coincide with Russian cases.
• Nouns are declined according to gender, adjectives - according to hard and soft types.
• The numerals are assigned five main digits according to the lexical meaning.
• There are ten types of pronouns, and their short forms are often used in colloquial speech.
• As for verbs, there are perfect and imperfect types that form four tenses - present, past, future and infinitive.
• Regular verbs are declined according to the general rules of five separate classes, while irregular verbs belong to the group of exceptions and require memorization by heart.
• The order of words in sentences is determined by meaning. At the end of the sentence is the noun or verb that should be emphasized. For example, the sentence: "Danylo miluje Anju" (Danilo loves Anya) conveys who Danilo loves, and the sentence: "Anju miluje Danylo" (Anya loves Danilo) conveys who loves Anya.

Despite the similar phonetics of Russian and Czech, some phrases in Czech sound incredibly comical to native Russian speakers. For example, "shark" will sound like "zhrapok", "theater" - "divadlo", "bachelor" - "baby". The Czechs will call the plane "letadlo", the persimmon - "kaki", and the cucumber - "cigarette butt".

There are also false friends of the translator - words that, with the same sound, have antonymic meanings. These include the word "čerstvý", which means "fresh" in Czech, "ovoce", which translates as fruit, and "úžasný", which conveys strong admiration.

Also, for the Russian ear, Czech is unusual for words with a large number of consonants in one word or at the junction of words. For example, the word "čtvrthrst", meaning "a quarter of a handful", consists of ten consonants.

One of the most famous "consonantal" sentences in Czech is "Strč prst skrz krk", which translates to "put your finger down your throat". This sentence is included in all textbooks and tutorials as a textbook example of the phonetic rigidity of the Czech language. This is one of the few languages ​​in the world that uses such sound combinations.

Czech basics for tourists

Despite belonging to the same Slavic language group, Russian and Czech differ significantly. Before coming to this country, it is recommended to master the minimum number of everyday phrases. This will allow you to feel more comfortable while communicating with the Czechs and get help if necessary.

If the language is not given to you, do not worry: most Czechs communicate with tourists in Russian.

Phrase	Translation
Everyday:
Good afternoon!	Good day!
How are you doing?	Yak sya mash?
Well thank you.	Goodbye, deacui.
You are welcome.	Please
Goodbye!	On shledanou.
Do you speak Russian (English, German)?	Mlyuvite rushtina (English, German)?
Can you help me?	Can you help us?
Well no.	Ano/not.
Sorry.	Prominte.
Tourist:
Do they provide information to tourists?	E that tourist information?
I need a city map.	Mate minest plan.
When does the exhibition/museum open?	Where are the exhibitions/museums rejected?
In the shop:
What is the price?	Kolik then wait?
It is very expensive.	That is mots drage.
I do not like.	Don't lie.
I'll take it.	I'll take it.
Give me 1 kg of cheese.	Give me one kilo of syrah.
In the restaurant:
Give me the menu, please.	Yidelni leaflet, please.
Bread/tea/coffee with milk.	Bread / tea / kava with milk.
Wine red / white.	Wine chervene / bile.
Soup / fish / meat / salad / dessert.	Vole / fish / maso / salad / dessert.
Breakfast lunch dinner.	Snidan / offend / evening.
In hotel:
I made a reservation with you.	Mom you have a reservation.
Do you have a double room?	Mate free dvuluzhkovy peace?
With balcony/shower/toilet.	With balcony /sprhou /vece.
How much is the room per night?	Kolik stay calm on night?
May I see the room?	May I rest in peace?
Where can you park your car?	Where can mohu park?
In different situations:
Where is the bank/exchanger?	Where is the bank / udder point?
Where is the phone here?	Where can I telephone?
I need a doctor.	Ask the doctor.
Call the police/ambulance.	Let us ask the police / security service.
Where is the police station?	Where is the police commissioner?

Basics of learning Czech

Perception and knowledge of the language are different concepts. Interlingual homonyms, dialects, the presence of diacritical marks and peculiarities of sentence structure hinder the majority of Russian-speaking students in learning Czech.

To learn Czech, you need to abstract from the grammatical rules, phonetics and syntax of the Russian language.

The main rule for successful learning is to always know and remember that the Czech language is complex and independent.

If you plan to learn this language on your own, start by listening to songs and films in Czech, then connect the simplest tutorial, and if possible, communicate with native Czech speakers in special applications.

The best results in learning Czech are achieved by students who attend special courses. These language schools pay more attention to dialects, which are independent units of the Czech language, and teach correct pronunciation. Only here you will be able to perfectly understand the intricacies of grammar and learn the language faster, since you will have to constantly speak Czech.

Conclusion

The Czech language, being the official language of the Czech Republic, is also found in the Czech diasporas in neighboring countries. This language has gone through a long historical path of formation, therefore it includes four different dialects and special grammatical rules.

If you are planning a trip to the Czech Republic, learn everyday phrases in this language in advance in order to feel comfortable in a conversation with native speakers.

Czech language | A short tour for beginners: Video

When learning any language, including Czech, various resources on the Internet are of great help. In this article, I will tell you about the resources that help me in learning the Czech language.

Online dictionaries

There are very few good online dictionaries of the Czech language (especially specialized dictionaries), but I found one for myself that contains most of the words and expressions that interest me. This is a dictionary on the site Seznam.cz. The good thing about it is that in addition to translating the word you are interested in, it also shows its use in specific phrases or sentences, and sometimes illustrates the use of the word by famous Czech sayings.

Grammar and spelling

One of the most useful resources for collecting information about Czech grammar is Internetová jazyková příručka. Here you can look up declensions or conjugations of the words you are interested in. A very convenient resource for systematizing knowledge and checking homework. If you are not sure how a particular word will sound, for example, in the form of Vin. case or plural. numbers, then you are here.

The main problem in learning the Czech language is diacritics - the system of those very superscript "gacheks and charoks". The following resource is useful for those who, for example, write letters to business partners in the Czech Republic, but do not want to switch to the Czech keyboard and put down the ill-fated diacritics. With the help of the Nechybujte.cz resource, you can paste the text you typed into the program, which will automatically put down diacritics.

Other resources

Self-study books and phrasebooks of the Czech language for self-study of the language can be downloaded in a specialized group for the study of the Czech language Vkontakte, where new materials appear quite often. In the group, pictures with Czech words are often added, which make it easier to memorize Czech words.

The Czech language is insidious and complex - a significant proportion of the problems fall on grammar and diacritics, because of which you can become discouraged and put an end to the development of the language.

Fortunately, there are a number of online services that, with a wave of a magic wand, will decline the words you need by case and arrange all the gaps and cups. God forbid you use them in the future - the above services should help you understand the language faster, make fewer mistakes, and not deceive teachers at all.

Case declension

The basis of the basics of grammar is the declension of words in all cases. The study of cases goes through the entire annual course, but foreigners begin to speak and write completely correctly, at best, only after years of stay in the country. If you are writing something serious and do not want to make a mistake, you can check yourself using case declension services. I think the best solution is the one included in the website „Internetová jazyková příručka“ (rus. Online language guide) from the Institute of the Czech Language of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, tk. it works on the basis of a dictionary and therefore does not require the specification of word attributes.

Usage is as simple as possible - first insert the text without diacritics or with partially spaced diacritics:

Then we press the button and the service magically arranges cups and gacheks. Words with questionable spellings are underlined in red so you can manually check them.

By analogy with this service, you can use the more ascetic nlp.fi.muni.cz/cz_accent/ from the Faculty of Informatics of Masaryk University. In addition, if you need to perform the reverse operation (remove diacritics), then you can use http://textmod.pavucina.com/odstraneni-diakritiky .

Total

Many of the above services are used even by the Czechs, so do not be shy to go to them in the moments when you don’t have an unambiguous answer. Of course, do not forget also about, they will save you from many typos and simple mistakes.

Many of these sites contain tools, reference sections on the grammar of the Czech language and therefore you will surely find other useful sides on them. If you know useful services for Czech grammar and I didn’t mention them in the article, write in the comments, we will make the world a better place.

Please do not use the services for homework or exams, as this is not only dishonest, but also stupid - you pay money for learning a language, and in the end your computer learns instead of you. Write smart!