Colloquial Czech

Colloquial

Czech

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Colloquial

Czech The Complete Course for Beginners James Naughton

First edition published 1987 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Second edition published 1999 by Routledge This third edition published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Ave, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1987, 1999, 2011 James Naughton The right of James Naughton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Avant Garde and Helvetica by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Naughton, J. D. (James D.), 1950 – Colloquial Czech : the complete course for beginners / James Naughton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Czech language —Textbooks for foreign speakers — English. 2. Czech language — Grammar. 3. Czech language — Spoken Czech. 4. Czech language — Sound recordings for English speakers. I. Title. PG4112.N38 2010 491.8′682421—dc22 2010005856 ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

13: 13: 13: 13: 13:

978-0-415-49631-5 978-0-415-49633-9 978-0-415-49632-2 978-0-415-58827-0 978-0-203-87827-9

(pbk) (audio CDs) (pack) (MP3s) (ebk)

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Pronunciation guide

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Vítám vás v Praze! Welcome to Prague! Co d2láte? What are you doing? Rodina a práce The family and work M2sto a sídlišt2 The city and the housing estate Hudba, jídlo, byt Music, food, the flat Doprava, cestování, po1así Transport, travel, the weather Jídlo, šaty, t2lo Food, clothes, the body Telefon, den, týden The telephone, the day, the week Barvy, zájmy, politika Colours, interests, politics Pohostinství a domácnost Hospitality and the household Obchod a potraviny The shop and groceries Hotel – Kolik je hodin? The hotel – What time is it?

vii ix xi xvi

1 23 44 61 79 98 122 142 164 183 204 224

vi

Contents

13 14 15 16

P < + acc. adj. adv. dat. f. freq. gen. impf. ins. loc. m. ma. mi. n. nom. pf. pl. sg. voc.

divides male and female variant nouns arrow-head pointing forward to the perfective verb arrow-head pointing back to the perfective verb separates ‘single’ and ‘habitual/repeated’ verbs of motion; or precedes the case required after any word accusative case adjective adverb dative case feminine gender frequentative verb genitive case imperfective verb instrumental case locative case masculine gender masculine animate masculine inanimate neuter gender nominative perfective verb plural singular vocative case

x

Abbreviations

Other: lit. s/he

literally he or she

Introduction

The course This third edition of my Colloquial Czech is a revised version of the edition first printed in 1999. Ten years have passed. It was time to update the dialogues and vocabulary here and there, and respond in places to user feedback. The presentation of the grammar has been adjusted at various points, in order to distribute material more evenly between lessons and make the exposition of points a closer match for my reference volume Czech: an Essential Grammar (Routledge, 2005). The Czech– English glossary is more comprehensive. Letter-writing has mostly given way to emails, mobile phones with text messaging are busily in use, and computers are everywhere around us. The recordings are new, and more carefully paced, we hope. The course aims as before to take you up to a level at which you can begin to communicate with success on a range of essential topics, as well as tackle books, the press and other media (with the help of a decent dictionary, see below). The language is a hard one for English speakers, so no foolish promises are going to be made to you about how easy or straightforward your task will be. There is much alien grammar, as well as alien vocabulary, to be assimilated, step by step, and there’s no way to avoid making robust efforts over a period of time if you want to complete the course successfully! Exactly how you advance through the units will depend on factors such as your previous experience of language learning and whether you have a teacher or not. The order of items in each unit suggests the author’s own personal approach. Take things as they come. Tackle dialogues with their new vocabulary before making a more detailed study of the new language points. Use the exercises to monitor your

xii

Introduction

progress. Back up your progress with the short further texts for reading. (Most of the units contain two broadly equal cycles of dialogues and language points.) You should not really expect to get through a unit adequately at one sitting. If working alone, proceed at your own pace. The units are designed to break down into smaller, bite-sized segments. Use of the accompanying recordings is especially advisable for learners working on their own. Listen to the dialogues, after preparing them from the book. Re-read them and study the language points more thoroughly. Repeat, until you reach a level where you can follow the dialogues adequately, and tackle the recorded exercises. English versions of the dialogues are provided in the earlier part of the course, but are phased out by the end of Unit 6. By this time the learner should have become sufficiently accustomed to Czech word order and structures to cope without this life-support. If a detail here and there remains puzzling, just carry on without worrying too much, especially if you are without a teacher. Don’t expect to assimilate everything perfectly the first time round. Many things which seem hard at first will be easier when you revisit them later.

Language Czech is closely related to Slovak and Polish, and somewhat less closely to Russian. Words like sestra ‘sister’ and t