🌟Build an effective Czech study routine in 30 days without giving up your life! 🌟 Enroll in STUDY LIKE A PRO now: www.becauseczechiscool.com/study-like-a-pro-program
All good comments and suggestions for learning Czech declensions. I learned Czech in 1972 at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. It was 47 weeks of concentrated learning 6 hours a day from native Czech speakers. Of course, the vocabulary was heavily focused on military and intelligence gathering terminology. But all the classes got together every Friday afternoon and sang Czech folk, beer drinking, and marching songs in rousing fashion. It may not have helped learn how to decline a noun in all seven cases, taking into account the singular and plural, and depending on its gender, but what a release after a week of intense concentration. My dream is to someday revitalize Czech to the point of going to Charles University and taking Central European history courses.
I’m a Hungarian native speaker learning Czech and for me the declension part was relatively easy, very familiar even 😊 Hungarian has 18 cases so everyone terrified by Czech cases should remember this fun fact 😃
I'm a Czech who's about to start learning Hungarian (waiting for my books to arrive) since Hungarian is my grandma's first language and none of her grandchildren speak it, so I decided to learn to make her happy. Cant wait for the 18 cases ._.
@@dominikuhlir2347It's not too bad. I had studied Finnish for a few years which is of the same language family, although it sounds nothing like Hungarian, it has 15 cases if I remember correctly. They mostly replace our prepositions, like inside/into/out of, I'm sure you'll manage just fine 😊
I am a Kenyan who had problems with the 4 German cases for nearly 2 years. But started learning czech and their 7 cases made me understand the 4 German cases almost overnight.
I am a native speaker of Czech and Hungarian, I can judge objectively. It's not the same thing, the 18 cases in Hungarian are made much easier, they can't be compared to the 7 cases in Czech.....Legyünk tárgyilagosak!
Wow what an absolutely brilliant video. I’m married to an amazing Czech woman and I’ve tried to learn czech for four years using apps, in vain. it’s defeated me, it’s overwhelming for a native English speaker. This video addresses that and suggests ways of coping with the avalanche that learning czech is for an older person. I will never give up!
It may be that you've been trying to learn *about* Czech instead of simply acquiring the language. Look for Dr. Stephen Krashen taking about "comprehensible input" on RU-vid for something that'll blow your mind.
wow!!! all of u guys.! i grew up in Czech and when i was 21 i decided to move to Florida and i have been living there for over 13years. i cant believe how much u all have learned. your pronaucination is soo good. very good job!
Děkuji vám! It is so helpful for me. I'm Japanese so I have less opportunity to learn way of studying. I have being passed 4 months since I started leaning Czech. Now I'm really struggling Declensions. It's tough work but I like the difficulty of the beautiful language!
Eli, to je báječné video! 😍🤩😍 Největší problém je podle mě to, že každý říká "čeština je těžká a a je nemožné se ji naučit" a toto každý všude slyší a toto zůstává pak v hlavě lidem, kteří se učí česky. A samozřejmě, pokud něčemu věříme, tak se podle toho i chováme. Moc se mi líbí tvoje video a přístup sdílení nápadů, tipů, triků od studentů, kteří umí skloňovat nebo to nepovažují za něco nemožného. Víc víc víc takových videí! 🤩 A bravo Mako, Jennifer, Bree, Gavin, Johnny, Bobby.
Yes, Gavin! Recognition, that's the word. Strategy and system are important. But the most important thing is to go out there, to listen and talk. There's no better way. And if you're afraid of making mistakes, don't worry about that. Czechs are extremely tolerant in this manner, because they are aware of the complexity of the Czech language.
i dont mean to be so off topic but does anyone know a trick to get back into an instagram account..? I somehow lost my login password. I love any tips you can offer me!
@Carson Kyle I really appreciate your reply. I found the site thru google and I'm in the hacking process now. Looks like it's gonna take a while so I will reply here later with my results.
I was blown away by how much Gavin had managed in just two years. His accent sounded the best to me from the whole bunch, he really has a Czech brain, embracing the fluidity of our language and feeling it more than memorizing it.
Gavin's technique definitely helped me the most. I've already started to recognise certain forms next to certain prepositions when I'm reading so I think it comes naturally to me. Tbh reading tables makes me want to cry so it's way more appealing to read a book or listen to a video and pick out parts gradually. I always found it confusing when I would ask a native and they would start saying stuff like "bez __, v ___" to remember, but I can see how this is the most fluid option when you get used to it.
Mako is awesome. The 1-4-2 ordering felt natural to me, too, but as a native speaker, I already knew from practice before I started learning any theory, so I didn't care. It is also pretty clear that she learns quickly, and while there were some clear mistakes, speaking Czech so well after less than 2 years, I find it hard to believe. She has a system and it clearly works well for her. I guess she is very intelligent, and she probably has a good music hearing as well, considering her near-perfect pronunciation. And on top of all that she is so pretty. I watched this video to see her again, and then I stayed for the rest.
John is really thoughtful, I like his idea to study Nominative and Accusative first, then Locative and Dative and Instrumental and Vocative at the end what I do when I learn any foreign language i put paperclips at everything I have in my flat, so I always have the picture of the word I intend to learn ( and a flat full of papers):)
Super video a každá kontribuce je skvělá pro sebe. Kdyby to šlo, tak bych dál palec nahoru šestkrát :) Všechno, co si k tomu tématu myslím, už někdo řekl. Myslím si, že to nejdůležitější je pochopit funkce pádů, a potom pro ty koncovky dostat intuitivní pocit, což se dosáhne opakováním. Já jsem spíš akusticky typ, mě pomáhají i písničky. Například, když mi celý den zní ve hlavě písnička, a stokrát se opakuje třeba "kdybych se narodil před sto lety, v tomhle městě...", tak to pomáhá. 😄
I'm actually improving a lot since I've stopped learning them and going into grammar (only some pop-up grammar if needed). Because it's a lot of informations, very confusing, I was stuck into and quickly I found out that it was not the right way. Now I'm mainly listening, watching, reading, talking, a lot, using also flash cards, so declensions are slowly but surely entering deeply into my little brain. As says Gavin, I'm making the language come alive, I'm feeling it, acquiring it more than learning it.
Ahoj, thanks for sharing your experience! This is great, you learn naturally and by actually using the language in real life. I'm happy you found your own system that works :) Dobrá práce, jen tak dál!
I think that may become one of the most important/useful videos ever created for learning Czech. Thank you and to your students/friends for contributing. I just began learning in Dec. and am still struggling to figure out my system. This truly helped. How do Czech children learn their language/declinations in school? Surely they don't use big words like nominative with a first grader. Maybe you could do a video on that explanation. I haven't seen any RU-vidrs explain that.
Ahoj Jamesi. Díky moc! Thank you for this inspiration, I think I will make a video on this indeed. Because there is a huge difference between how Czech children learn and how foreigners learn and for me it's super interesting to compare these two systems.
@@BecauseCzechIsCool but can we really learn like children learn their mother tongue? What we could learn from them is theier fearlessness to speak, though and the will of the adults to always nicely correct them, thank you and best greetings
Ahoj Alex :) Tak to jsem moc ráda. P.S. Pozor, "v záchodě" znamená opravdu uvnitř v záchode. Lepší je říct "NA záchodě", například nalepené na stěně nebo na dveřích.
@@BecauseCzechIsCool Děkuji za korekce! Přemyšlela jsem o tom ale nejsem si byla jista pokud to musi být V nebo NA. "V" mně vypadalo nejak špatně, ale nevěděla jsem proč.
Skvělé video! Učím se česky 4 roky a moje metody se podobnají metodům Gavina a Bree. On má pravdu, že musí to být "pocit" s pády, a že poznáte vzorce skloňování.
Hey Gav, 17:39, I had a car accident would be better translated into Czech as "Měl jsem autonehodu". Your Czech is great, so is it of other participants. Stick with it, Well done, fingers crossed
Thanks for this informative video. It could have been better, if there were speakers with different motherlanguages to become familiar with their approach of the czech cases. But yeah, it was helpful.
Interesting video! I'm a specific situation, since my native language is Polish with 7 cases. Besides pretty broken Czech (I don't feel confident enough to write in Czech publicly yet) I also speak pretty fluently German, that has 4 cases, so to me the weird thing is.. how did you managed to concise it into less cases? :D It's always interesting (but also sometimes hard to remember) to find out which verb pairs with which pad, because sometimes even the verbs that sounds almost identical to Polish counterparts can pair with different question or preposition in each language.
Haha, greetings from Germany! ✌🏻😁 Although we have less cases than slavic languages, I think having these 4 cases makes it a lot easier for us to understand Czech declination (compared to an English speaker). 😊
Ahoj Eliško, ti jsou prostě úžasní! Oblíbila jsem si Gavina a doslova hltala každé Gavinovo parádní video z jeho střípků učení se češtiny. Pak ale videa z ničeho nic přestal vytvářet a ze scény zmizel. Na zprávy bohužel nereagoval. Já jen pevně věřím, že se mu daří stále dobře, že mu jede jeho podnikání (měl online kurzy portugalštiny, co vím) a že je jak on, tak i jeho rodina v pořádku. Ty o něm máš nějaké zprávy? Jste v kontaktu? Pokračuje se studiem Čj? Děkuju moc za odpověď. Měj se a ať se daří i Tobě! Markéta
Ahoj Markéto, ano, je v pořádku, jen se teď soustředí na jiné projekty, než na češtinu. Taky doufám, že se k češtině zase někdy vrátí, uvidíme :) Taky tě moc zdravím!
Those are great strategies. In the end, whatever works, works. In my experience, however, I see Gavin's and John's approaches most effective. I would recommend getting (from translation, or natives, vetted by natives etc.) sentences expressing things you need to say and repeating/memorizing those ... e.g. describing what you did this morning, common questions you ask, common answers you give etc. ... and learn the vocabulary and grammar as a secondary thing. This will also reduce the overuse of personal pronouns and article-like constructs and other artificial things used in text books that are almost never used in real life and can be misleading. Things like "Ja jedu do te prace" pretty much doesn't exist (unless you talked about multiple jobs, identified a specific one and now you are referring back to it and it is not clear who is going to that specific workplace or something crazy like that), but may appear as an example sentence to demonstrate grammar. "To je moje okno", is something most Czech will never say in their lives ... why would they? What is the last time you said "This is my window"? So, it is good to look at what you are learning, before committing it to memory. Words like, muz, zena, dite etc. are also very rarely used in speech (unless you are specifying gender or age in a formal way). In that respect, it is probably a good idea to differentiate between spoken and written expression. Again, depending on your motivation level and need for functionality (tourist, polyglot, expat, immigrant ... in that order, with the last most urgent) you may prioritize spoken language. Good luck everyone.
I only started learning Czech a few days ago, I'm at a young age so this is all confusing to me. Do you think having a declension table would be easy for someone younger like me? Or would the other techniques people mentioned in this video be better for me?
Ahoj, I think it doesn’t depend on age but on what type of learner you are. What worked for you in school when you were learning other subjects? What have you had good experiences with? What, on the other hand, bores and drains you? Everyone has something a little different that works for them, you just have to explore and try :) Good luck!
Oh boy, when all of them started showing their declension cards, I felt so sorry for them. Good work guys! (Btw, just a little nitpick - the sentences that Mako used to remember the possesive pronouns were actually not correct, because you're not supposed to use "můj" in that context, but rather "svůj", since it's you doing an action to your own thing... but it's no big deal; it's usually just the Czech teachers who are nitpicky about this)
I hate to complain -- everyone here, including Gavin, speaks such better Czech than I ever have -- but isn't Mako slightly wrong on the genitive (possessive) case? In the sentence, "I see my...", doesn't "my" have to be a reflexive pronoun (svého/svou/své)? Or has one of my textbooks badly confused me?
Ahoj Steve, that's a great question! You are right; the officially correct form would be "svůj, svého," etc. However, even Czech speakers confuse this in everyday conversations and often use "můj, mého" instead. Also, "můj, mého" is often intentionally used for marketing purposes because it connects more with the person who is supposed to buy a product (compare "kup si SVŮJ nový mobil" versus "kup si TVŮJ nový mobil"). You often see it written on billboards, in TV commercials, etc. So, I would say that, in real life, both versions are used frequently, and personally, I consider both to be correct.
I just take them as they come whether I recognise them or not. I am learning czech on duolingo so there are some cases I have not met because i have not progressed that far yet but I literally learnt to read a menu just by...you guessed it...reading a menu (with the english equivalent sentences) this was before I learnt to use the case you see on menus...something like s hovezim masem...if I remember well
@@BecauseCzechIsCool Děkuju moc :) The only thing I don't like about duolingo is that the english translations distract from the 'raw' czech translation with which I feel I need to use to understand the czech thinking and to recognise patterns because in the end I don't want to translate things in my head...
@@TheStarlitfuse I don't think apps like Duolingo make you translate things in your head, they help you memorize sentences and phrases as chunks of information that you can use in a conversation without knowing any grammar rules. The problem with Duolingo is that they often come up with totally meaningless sentences. Or have you already had a chance to use "there is a fox sitting on František" in your everyday conversation? :)) (thanks to one of my great clients - Martin Schmidt - for this amazing example btw.) I would go for other apps like Anki or Memrise and create your own cards with useful and real sentences. If you want to understand the "Czech thinking", you can add a normal translation + add an interesting comment, a literal translation to see how the Czech sentence structure works, a silly comment, a picture, a mnemonic, or anything that might help you remember it better.
@@BecauseCzechIsCool I hear you but what I mean is I don't want to translate at all. I wish there was an app that checked understanding of input without needing to select a translation because you are doing two things at once, trying to think in the target language and trying to think in the native language. For example; there is a fox sitting on františek, so a) frantisek is standing b) frantisek is sitting on something c) frantisek hates animals d) frantisek has an animal on his body...something like that
@@TheStarlitfuse I see what you mean. I know that Rosetta Stone doesn't work with translations at all, they only work with pictures and animations so that you learn as kids do. Only by seeing, listening, and mimicking. Unfortunately, they don't offer Czech.
Hrůza. Já se učím jeden severogermánský jazyk s pouhými 4 pády a je to docela problém. Sedm pádů už je šílenost. Větší masakr než čeština už je snad jenom finština, která používá dvojnásobný počet pádů. Složité není ani tak naučit se koncovky (i když v tomto případě jsou jich jen u podstatných jmen díky členům a díky rozlišování slabého a silného skloňování desítky), ale hlavně zapamatovat si, jaké předložky a jaká slovesa se pojí v konkrétním významu s konkrétním pádem. Člověk si to musí nějak zautomatizovat, aby o to sypal bez přemýšlení, ale úplně nevím jak to udělat.
Nemůžu než pogratulovat všem, co se pustili do češtiny s takovou vervou a dělají pokroky. Musím říct, že jsem docela překvapená, kolik cizinců se rozhodlo učit česky ať už proto, že "musí" (pracují a žijí tady) nebo prostě proto, že jim ten jazyk přijde zajímavý (asi do doby, než narazí na první skloňování). Škoda, že jsem podobné rady neslyšela tak před osmy lety, kdy jsem se šprtala latinu, která má to skloňování skoro stejně, ale časování je hotová noční můra. Myslím, že pár zdejších rad by mi zachránilo pár opakovaných zápočtů a bezesných nocí :D. Jinak co bych možná ještě doporučila kromě mechanického opakování různých užitečných vět je zkusit číst. Tak jako to dělá třeba Gavin (jeho kanál TadyGavin sleduju a jeho pokroky mě udivují). Jednak to obohatí slovní zásobu a jedna si student ověří, jak vypadá takové skloňování v praxi. Za sebe můžu říct, že mi to hodně pomohlo v angličtině. S gramatikou bojuju dodneška, ale když jsem skládala FCE zkoušky, tak mě zachránilo právě čtení a schopnost orientovat se v textu.. A jinak nebojte se, žádný Čech nebo Moravan nebo Slezan nemluví přehnaně spisovně a pokud zrovna není grammer nazi, tak vás za drobné chybičky peskovat nebude (si myslím já, byť třeba zrovna zájmena můj/svůj i já docela opravuju :-) ). Ale jinak jsem fakt ráda, že se nemusí učit zrůdnosti typu větný rozbor :D. U toho strašně trpí většina žáků v češtině na základce :D. Díky bohům, že na střední je čeština už jenom o literatuře :D.
This is a great compilation, but the fallacies presented by some learners make me cringe. Consider the statement that "it's important to understand the declensions to speak Czech." Ask the average native speaker to explain all of the declensions and this will quickly be proven false. The guy who brought up how it needs to *feel* right is spot on. That comes through exposure to the language. The linguistics research backs this up. Seek out Stephen Krashen and/or "comprehensible input" to make your (language-learning) life easier.
@@BecauseCzechIsCool To ne. Měla jsem namysli, že jste uváděla příklady "jedu metrem, autem, taxíkem", vše končilo na "em". Jak byste to tedy vysvětlila cizinci v případě tramvaje? Je to způsobeno ženským rodem? To mi taky nesedí pokud místo toho použijeme třeba lokomotivu. Upřímně, já sama jsem z toho teď trochu zmatená. :D
@@martinanemcova5088 Aha, rozumím. Ano, máte pravdu. Je to tím, že to je ženský rod. A je to slovo, které se skloňuje jako "píseň". Lokomotiva je taky ženský rod, ale skloňuje se to jako "žena".
Jsem Vlaďka. Jdu ven bez bundy. Dneska jdu k doktorce. Vidím v dálce kamarádku. Volám na ní: "Eliško, počkej! Bavíme se o oslavě mých narozenin. Pozvala jsem Elišku s celou její rodinou.
Napadlo mě - má pro cizince smysl se naučit větný rozbor nebo je to zbytečnost, která jim s učením nijak nepomůže? Koneckonců to pořádně neumí ani 90% Čechů...
Skvělá otázka :) Jednoznačná odpověď asi neexistuje, různí lektoři mají různé přístupy, já můžu psát jenom sama za sebe. Já to vidím tak, že pro cizince to nemá význam. Češi a cizinci se učí češtinu úplně jinak. Češi se ji naučí posloucháním a potom ve škole se učí tomu, co už prakticky perfektně zvládají, dát nějakou formu. Učí se jazyk rozdělit do různých kategorií a teoreticky popsat to, co už umí. Jenže cizinec tenhle praktický základ nemá, začíná úplně od nuly. Když cizinci řeknete "komu čemu" nebo "koho co", tak vůbec nechápe, co po něm chcete. Nemá pro češtinu cit a pády přirozeně "necítí" jako Češi. Kdybychom na ně vybalili větný rozbor, tak po první hodině utečou :) Podle mě je nejefektivnější se cizí jazyk učit co nejvíce přirozeně, tedy hodně poslouchat a jazyk co nejvíc používat, stejně jako to dělají malé děti...a samozřejmě můžeme jako dospělí využít toho, že už minimálně jeden jazyk (svůj mateřský) ovládáme a trochu si vypomoct (například porovnat, jak gramatika funguje v mém jazyce a v tom cizím). Ale myslím si, že přílišné zaměření na gramatiku, tak jak se to dělá v českých školách například ve výuce angličtiny, prostě nefunguje. Gramatický test možná napíšeme na jedničku, ale v konverzaci pak neřekneme ani slovo.
