Czech: An Essential Grammar

James Naughton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415287852, 9780415287845
• eBook ISBN: 9781134444045
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Czech: An Essential Grammar is a practical reference guide to the core structures and features of modern Czech. Presenting a fresh and accessible description of the language, this engaging grammar uses clear, jargon-free explanations and sets out the complexities of Czech in short, readable sections.

Suitable for either independent study or for students in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types, key features include:

* focus on the morphology and syntax of the language
* clear explanations of grammatical terms
* full use of authentic examples
* detailed contents list and index for easy access to information.

With an emphasis on the Czech that native speakers use today, Czech: An Essential Grammar will help students to read, speak and write the language with greater confidence.

Chapter 1

Introduction

This is styled an ‘essential’ grammar, and is certainly not anything like a comprehensive grammar (mluvnice) of Czech (čeština) – the Czech language (český jazyk), with its strong tradition of –writing from the late thirteenth century onwards.

All kinds of choices have had to be made – especially about what to exclude! – either simply for reasons of space, or in order to try not to overburden readers who may still be at an elementary level in their knowledge of the language. (The dangers of over-simplification are of course ever-present, and the author is all too aware that he may have succumbed to these at times – he hopes not too often.)

Efforts have been made to separate the basic, core elements from those which are less central and vital.

Presentation of morphology (declension and conjugation) has been interspersed with material on usage. A work designed for trained linguists would arrange this material somewhat differently, no doubt, but it is hoped that the approach adopted here will be helpful to the general reader as well as informative for the more academic scholar.

I have tried to take account of readers’ likely unfamiliarity with various grammatical categories, and with linguistic terminology.

Czech grammatical terms have been infiltrated into the text as well, for those who go on to encounter them in their further studies or hear them from their teachers.

The author has no particular theoretical or systematic approach to offer – this may or may not be a weakness. He has simply tried to steer a reasonably pragmatic course through the often thorny jungle of this language – wielding, as he hopes, a not too crude machete in his fist.

1.1	Standard versus Non-Standard Usage

A few words ought perhaps to be said at the outset about how nonstandard spoken Czech is presented here alongside the standard written forms.

The standard written language (spisovná čeština) differs in various, at times rather obvious, respects from most Czechs’ everyday spoken language.

Wherever this book refers to non-standard forms of everyday colloquial language, it is broadly the spoken language of Prague and Bohemia that is being referred to.

People may refer to this variety as hovorová čeština ‘colloquial Czech’, while linguists often call it obecná čeština ‘common Czech’ (the former term has sometimes been used for a slightly relaxed version of the standard language, avoiding the more literary or ‘bookish’ features, but still more or less standard in phonetics and grammar).

Non-standard forms are often found in literature – in the texts, especially dialogues, of fiction and plays. They also occur on the radio and TV, especially in less formal contexts, and anyone living in the Czech Republic will soon notice these non-standard features even if they only have a rather basic command of the language.

Differences between written and colloquial usage will be pointed out throughout this book, rather than being hived off into a separate chapter. (Non-standard usage is marked by an asterisk.)

Much less attention is devoted to features which readers would mainly encounter when reading older texts, of the nineteenth century and earlier. Seventeenth-century Czech writings, such as those of Comenius (Komenský) are still very accessible to present-day Czech readers, but this grammar focuses mainly on the present-day language, which is spoken by around 10 million people in the Czech Republic, as well as by lesser numbers scattered over the globe.

Chapter 2

Pronunciation and Orthography – Výslovnost a Pravopis

The relationship between standard Czech spelling and Czech pronunciation is relatively straightforward, compared with a language like English.

Nevertheless, as with all languages, the beginner who wants to be able to pronounce the language properly will benefit from access to a native speaker or at least to some sound recordings.

The following is designed more for the layman than the trained linguist. The reader who wants a more specialised approach will need to consult other sources.

Czech rules about punctuation and capital letters are slightly different from the conventions of English, but the main features are not hard to grasp.

2.1	Vowels – Samohlásky

Vowel letters a, e, i/y, o, u represent sounds which are quite close to the English vowel sounds in ‘tuck, tech, tick, tock, took’ respectively.

There’s no difference in sound between i and y, but the spelling affects the pronunciation of preceding d, t, n – see below.

With acute signs added (á, é, í/ý, ó, ú) these vowels are pronounced with longer duration: roughly like English ‘ah, eh, ee, aw, oo’.

The long vowel ú is normally spelt ů (with a kroužek ‘little circle’) except as the first letter in a word.

Word stress is on the first vowel (long or short).

A, Á:	ano, ale, dal, dál, málo, malá
E, É:	ne, den, nese, krém, malé, milé
I, Í/Y, Ý:	byl/bil, syn, sýr, bílý, milý, malý
O, Ó:	ona, slovo, doma, gól, móda, haló
U, Ú/Ů:	ruka, ruku, domu, dům, úloha, domů

There are also three diphthongs (diftongy, sequences of two vowels within a single syllable) in which the first vowel, pronounced as above, moves into a very short u or w sound.

The commonest is OU:

OU:	bouda, malou, náhodou, nesou

The other two diphthongs appear in loanwords:

AU:	auto car, automobile, autobus ‘bus’, restaurace ‘restaurant’
EU:	pneumatika ‘(pneumatic) tyre’, neutralita ‘neutrality’

Other vowel letter sequences are pronounced as two syllables:

IE:	Anglie ‘England’, as if spelt -ije (for J see below)
IO:	rádio ‘radio’, as if spelt -ijo
AO:	‘a-o’ e.g. kakao ‘cocoa’

2.2	Consonants – Souhlásky

Consonant letters b, d, f, g (as in ‘good’), h, k, l, m, n, p, s (as in ‘sun’), t (as in ‘stop’), x and z are pronounced much the same as in English. However:

K, P, and T lack the typical English ‘post-aspiration’, a slight puff of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Pronunciation and orthography výslovnost a pravopis
• Chapter 3. Nouns – podstatná jména
• Chapter 4. Adjectives and adverbs – přÍdavná jména a přÍslovce
• Chapter 5. Pronouns – zájmena
• Chapter 6. Numerals and quantifiers – čÍslovky
• Chapter 7. The verb – sloveso
• Chapter 8. Cases and prepositions – pády a předložky
• Chapter 9. Syntax and conjunctions – syntax a spojky
• Chapter 10. Word formation
• Index