Czech Grammar

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Standard written language (spisovná čeština)


  Differs in various, at times rather obvious, respects from most Czechs' everyday spoken language
• Non-standard forms (hovorová čeština 'colloquial Czech', obecná čeština 'common Czech')

  Broadly the spoken language of Prague and Bohemia
• 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.
• Hovorová čeština


  Colloquial Czech, the spoken language of Prague and Bohemia
• Obecná čeština


  Common Czech, the term linguists often use for this variety
• Non-standard forms are often found in literature, on the radio and TV, especially in less formal contexts
• 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
• 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
• Relationship between standard Czech spelling and Czech pronunciation


  • Relatively straightforward, compared with a language like English
  • Beginners will benefit from access to a native speaker or sound recordings
• Czech rules about punctuation and capital letters are slightly different from the conventions of English, but the main features are not hard to grasp
• 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
• Acute signs added to vowels (á, é, í/ý, ó, ú)

  Pronounced with longer duration: roughly like English 'ah, eh, ee, aw, oo'
• Long vowel ú


  Normally spelt ů (with a kroužek 'little circle') except as the first letter in a word
• Word stress


  On the first vowel (long or short)
• Vowel sounds


  • ano, ale, dal, dál, málo, malá
  • ne, den, nese, krém, malé, milé
  • byl/bil, syn, sůr, bílý, milý, malý
  • ona, slovo, doma, gól, móda, haló
  • ruka, ruku, domu, dům, úloha, domů
• Diphthongs


  Sequences of two vowels within a single syllable, where the first vowel moves into a very short u or w sound
• Diphthongs


  • bouda, malou, náhodou, nesou
  • auto car, automobile, autobus 'bus', restaurace 'restaurant'
  • pneumatika '(pneumatic) tyre', neutralita 'neutrality'
• Other vowel letter sequences

  Pronounced as two syllables: Anglie 'England' as if spelt -ije, rádio 'radio' as if spelt -ijo, kakao 'cocoa' as 'a-o'
• 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
• K, P, and T

  Lack the typical English 'post-aspiration' unless they come at the end of a word
• H


  Pronounced further back, more deeply, hollowly, than the English equivalent
• CH


  Pronounced like Scottish 'loch' (not like a regular English CH)
• R


  Briefly trilled, like a Scottish R, and pronounced in all positions
• R and L


  Can act like vowels, creating syllables of their own
• A Czech tongue-twister suggests (misleadingly) that the language lacks vowels: Strč prst skrz krk. (Literally: 'Stick (your) finger through (your) neck/throat')
• Loanwords with retained foreign spelling

  • western [vestern], WC [vétsé], quasi- (pronounced and more often spelt kvazi-)
• S


  Pronounced [z] in words for '-isms' ending in -ismus and in a few other loanwords and names
• X


  Mostly pronounced [ks] in loanwords, except in words beginning in ex- plus a vowel, where it is pronounced [gz]
• Z


  Pronounced as in English 'zebra'
• Soft consonants


  The consonant letters ď, ť, ň, ž, č, š, ř plus letters c and j
• Soft consonants (except c and j)

  Written with a diacritic sign over the letter, generally written and printed ˇ, and called a háček 'small hook'
• Soft t and d

  Also hand-written with a háček, but in lower-case print this is printed as t', d', using a closely linked apostrophe