Czech language

The Czech language is one of the West Slavic languages, along with Slovak, Polish, Pomeranian, and Sorbian. It is spoken by most people in the Czech Republic and by Czechs all over the world (about 11 million native speakers in total).

Due to its complexity it is said to be a difficult language to learn. The complexity has several sources:

• extensive morphology (some words have over 200 possible word forms)
• seemingly free word order (often all the permutations are valid)

It shares these features with other Slavonic languages such as Russian.

For foreigners even spoken Czech may be very difficult. For example, some words do not appear to have vowels: zmrzl, ztvrdl, scvrnkl, ctvrthrst. The consonants l and r, however, function as sonorants and thus fulfill the role of a vowel.

Je to krutá pravda ...example of Czech language

Morphology

Word kind

1. noun (podstatne jmeno)
2. adjective (pridavne jmeno)
3. pronoun (zajmeno)
4. number (cislovka)
5. verb (sloveso)
6. adverb (prislovce)
7. preposition (predlozka)
8. conjunction (spojka)
9. particle (castice)
10. interjection (citoslovce)

Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numbers and verbs are flexible kinds; remaining kinds have no morphology. Flexible kinds have additional morphological attributes.

Number

(Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs)

• singular (house -- dum)
• plural (houses -- domy)

Gender

(Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numbers, verbs)

• Masculine animate, live beings (the men worked -- muzi pracovali)
• Masculine inanimate, other (the machines worked -- stroje pracovaly)
• Feminine (the women worked -- zeny pracovaly)
• Neuter (the creatures worked -- stvoreni pracovala)

See also:

• Hacek

External links

• Bohemica.com - Language and culture resource including full online grammar, free exercises, essays about the language and culture, discussion board, annotated links and annotated books (http://www.bohemica.com)
• Overview of the Czech language (http://www.czech-language.cz)
• Online dictionary (http://www.wordbook.cz)
• Another useful portal (http://www.locallingo.com) with clear audios