Czech I, Continuing and Professional Studies, NYU

Dobrý den. Nasleduje résumé naší poslední hodiny. ("Hello. Following is a summary of our last class.")

I began by reviewing the dictation from the previous week, and asking students to translate it out loud. Here is the English translation:

1) Hello. I have a question.
2) Yes, go ahead (i.e., "I'm listening").
3) Do you know where there is a post office around here?
4) Yes: there is one on the left and one on the right.
5) Thank you very much.
6) You're welcome. Good-bye.
7) Good-bye.

8) Do you have my new radio?
9) You mean that little white radio?
10) Yes. That's it (or "That's the one").
11) Hmm. I don't have it.

As a small aside, I pointed out that the word pán—meaning "Mr.," "lord," "master," or "gentleman"—when used before a surname to mean "Mr." is spelled with a short "a," thus: pan Černý, pan Kundera, pan Pospíšil.

One other random fact that snuck its way into the text without any explanation, and thank one of you for pointing it out, is that the accusative form of the pronoun kdo is koho. Na koho se dívají? = Who(m) are they looking at? Pro koho je ta stupidní kniha? = Who is that stupid book for? Koho tady znáš? = Who here [e.g., in the room, at the party, at the conference, etc.] do you know?

To finish up our discussion of the 4th case, we reviewed the Grammar Note "The Accusative Case," on page 235 in your textbook. This note points out that, grammatically, the accusative most often expresses the direct object 1) after certain verbs; and 2) after certain prepositions.

Because they are given in the Grammar Note on the accusative, I took a brief detour to review the days of the week and their etymology, starting with . . .

úterý (Tuesday; probably, the ú has something to do with "second," as February, the second month, is únor);
středa (Wednesday; from střed [MIn], meaning "middle" or "center");
čtvrtek (Thursday; from čtyři, "four" and čtvrť [F], "one-fourth" or "quarter" or "neighborhood");
pátek (Friday; from pět, "five," and pátý, the adjective "fifth");
sobota (Saturday; from "sabbath");
neděle (from the negation of dělat, meaning roughly, "do-nothing day");
and pondělí (Monday; from po, a preposition meaning "after," and neděle, i.e., "the day after Sunday").

As for their genders, středa, sobota, and neděle are feminine; úterý, čtvrtek, pátek, and pondělí are masculine inanimate. (The adverb "today," by the way, is dnes or, colloquially, dneska.)

But to return to the accusative:
Idiomatically, some verbs are linked with prepositions that "trigger" the accusative case.

Example: dívat se, “to watch” or “to look” or “to look at” (conjugates like dělat): dívám se = “I am watching” or “I am looking.”

But if you want to say you are watching TV, you have to add the preposition na: dívat se na něco means “to look at something.” That “something” in this case is the direct object of the verb, and so takes the accusative case: “I am watching TV” = dívám se na televizi. “I am looking at that book” = dívám se na tu knihu. “I’m looking at that big, modern train station" = dívám se na to velké, moderní nádraží.

Again, other prepositions that often take the accusative are listed in the Grammar Note on page 235. You should learn them, at least in the expressions used as examples: na ("to" or "for"), pro (also "for" but a different one than na), za (again, "for," in the sense of "for the price of" or "for the duration of"; this latter one may also be translated as "in": za hodinu = "in an hour"), v (here meaning "in" or "on"), and o (in this case, "in" or "of": page 235 has examples).

To practice these, we did Exercises 3 and 4 on page 33 of the text.

Next I introduced the three different verbs in Czech that translate as “to know”: vědět, znát, and umět.

Vědět deals with facts or information, and is often used in phrases like “I know that . . .” or “Did you know that . . . ?”

Znát involves knowledge of or familiarity with a person, place, or thing: “He knows her very well.”

Umět expresses not so much knowledge as skill, knowing how to do something: “Do you know how to swim?” “She knows Chinese.”

There are other examples on page 36 in the textbook, as well as in the Grammar Note at the bottom of page 234.

Note especially that these verbs may be used to say simply "I know" (Vím to) or "I know it" (Vím to or Znám to) or "I know how to do it/that" (Umím to). Znám to may also be translated as "I know how it is" or "I know how it goes."

In class we did Exercise 1 on page 36, and then we ran out of time.

So, your homework for this week: From the textbook, Exercises 10 and 11, pages 35-36 (Note: here I added no. 11); and from the workbook, Exercises 7 (Fill in the missing endings), 8 (Fill in the correct form of the verbs znát, vědět, and umět), 9 (Finish these sentences—be creative!), 10 (Fill in the missing words, then check your answers against the text on page 37 of the textbook), 12 (Fill in the appropriate prepositions), 13 (Form sentences from the following words).

That is all that's assigned. But if you'd like to, and have the time to go ahead, you can do Exercises 14 and 15 as well.

Next week I'm going to give you a short, oral true-or-false quiz. Then we'll go over the Dialogue at the beginning of Lesson 2 and I'll try to get you all to say something about it, make a few sentences with what you've learned so far.

To je zatím všechno. (That's all for now.)

Takže:

Here is the text of the dictation I gave you on Tuesday:

1) Dobrý den. Mám otázku.
2) Ano, prosím.
3) Nevíte, kde je tady pošta?
4) Ano: jedna je nalevo a jedna je napravo.
5) Děkuju mockrát.
6) Prosím. Na shledanou.
7) Na shledanou.

8) Nemáš moje nové rádio?
9) Myslíš to malé, bílé rádio?
10) Ano. To je ono.
11) Hm. Já to nemám.

We then learned our first declension: the accusative case (no. 4), used to express the direct object.

Nouns decline as follows:

MAn: (hard) student > studenta; (soft) muž > muže and učitel > učitele
MIn does NOT change: (hard) sešit > sešit; (soft) pokoj > pokoj
F: (hard) žena > ženu; (soft) židle > židli BUT two soft don’t change: skříň and místnost
N does NOT change: (hard) město; (soft) moře and náměstí

Demonstrative pronouns ("that") decline as follows:

MAn: ten > toho
MIn: ten > ten (no change)
F: ta > tu
M: to > to (no change)

The word for the number one:

MAn: jeden > jednoho
MIn: jeden > jeden (no change)
F: jedna > jednu
M: jedno > jedno (no change)

Possessive pronouns (my/mine, your/yours, his, hers, our/ours, their/theirs):

MAn: můj > mého; tvůj > tvého; jeho > N.C.; její > N.C.; náš > našeho; váš > vašeho; jejich > N.C.
MIn: no change, across the board
F: moje > moji; tvoje > tvoji; jeho > N.C.; její > N.C.; naše > naši; vaše > vaši; jejich > N.C.
N: no change, across the board

Adjectives:

hard
MAn: český > českého
MIn: český > N.C.
F: česká > českou
N: české > N.C.

soft
MAn: moderní > moderního
MIn: moderní > N.C.
F: moderní > N.C.
N: moderní > N.C.

How to use the Accusative, or 4th case:

You may recall from our second class, I believe it was, when I handed out the photocopied pages from Michael Heim's book, that the accusative is used to express the direct object. The example Heim gave to illustrate this was "A friend of a family wrote us a letter." Here, "a letter" is the direct object of the verb "wrote."

Your textbook, in the Grammar Note on page 235, gives more examples of situations in which the direct object is used:

1) after certain verbs

2) after some prepositions

Study these examples! I will go over them in class next Tuesday.

Your homework for this week, apart from the translation I e-mailed to you, is as follows:

Workbook: Exercise 6, p. 12 (Put the nouns in the correct form, both masculine and feminine); Exercise 11, p. 13 (Fill in a direct object for each of the following verbs, using both an adjective and a noun).

Textbook: Exercises 6, 7, 8, and 9, pp. 34–35.

Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions: nyuczech2003@yahoo.com

To je všechno.

Tomorrow I will post a summary of Tuesday's class. Meanwhile, if you want to see what the weather is like in Prague, look here:

(Live webcam courtesy of www.prague-city.cz)

A couple pages I'd like to highlight from the Links section at right:

1) from Bohemica.com, a page on Pronunciation (see the links under "Summary" on the right-hand side of the page).

2) this page, from the same site, if you scroll down to the Verbs section, has some exercises on conjugation.

And also, courtesy of Richard, here is a Web site devoted to Slovak-related events in the New York area.

Vám všem zdravím! (lit. "All of you I greet!" i.e., "Greetings to all of you!")

Teď vám dávám résumé naší poslední hodiny. (lit. "Now you I give a summary of our last hour." i.e., "Here is a summary of our last lesson.")

Before I start, though, I promised I would tell you what the dictation will be from this week. Give a going-over to the Dialogues on pages 24 and 25, and Grammar Section D on page 23.

So, Tuesday we started by finishing up the Dialogues on page 25, and then we finished off Lesson 1 by doing the short "matching sentences" exercise in the gray box on page 25.

We started Lesson 2 by reviewing the Nová slova ("New Words"). The abstract expression for "vocabulary" in Czech is slovní zásoba, literally "word supply" or "word stock." We also quickly went through the Země a národnosti section ("Countries and Nationalities"; as I said, you do not need to learn these now if you don't want to).

We did Review Exercises 1 and 2 on page 29, then skipped 3 and 4 and 5, and cut to your first exposure to verbs.

As I said in class, there is more than one system in use to classify and group Czech verbs. Our textbook breaks them into three groups, based on their infinitive forms ("to . . ."):
1) Verbs ending in –at
2) Verbs ending in –it, -et, or –ět
3) Verbs ending in –ovat (and several irregular verbs)

Our model –at verb is dělat ("to do" or "to make"). It is conjugated as follows:

já dělám (I do, am doing)
ty děláš (you do, are doing)
on/ona dělá (he or she does, is doing)
my děláme (we do, are doing)
vy děláte (you do, are doing)
oni/ony dělají (they do, are doing)

(Note: For "to make," subsitute the word "make" for "do" and "making" for "doing." I included the personal pronouns above as a reminder; after this, I'll leave them out.)


Our model –it or –et or –ět is mluvit ("to speak").

mluvím
mluvíš
mluví
mluvíme
mluvíte
mluví

And for –ovat and select irregular verbs, studovat ("to study").

studuju
studuješ
studuje
studujeme
studujete
studujou

(Note: These are the informal endings for já and oni. The formal endings are studuji and studují.)

See the list in your textbook on page 31 of some of the more basic and important verbs and which category of conjugation they fall under.

We also looked at, and you should review, too, the conjugations of číst ("to read"), psát ("to write"), jít ("to go on foot, to walk"), and jet ("to go by vehicle, to ride"), and the dozen or so verbs that conjugate like them, at the bottom of page 31.

All of your homework this past week came from the Workbook:
Lesson 2, Exercises 1 (Fill in the missing forms), 2 (Fill in the table), 3 (Give the infinitives), 4 (Respond, either the affirmative or the negative), and 5 (Fill in the proper verb—there may be more than one option for some).

This coming Tuesday we will begin to learn the Accusative, or 4th, Case (direct object).

To je všechno. ("That is all.")

Greetings, all. My apologies for not posting sooner.

Before I review the material we covered in our last class, allow me to draw your attention to the latest issue of Transcript: The European Internet review of books and writing, which features Czech literature in translation. Click here.

This past Tuesday, we started with a dictation. The sentences were as follows:

1) Dobrý den. Kdo jste?
2) Jsem nový student. Jmenuju se Tomáš. A vy?

3) Ahoj. Jak se máš?
4) Docela dobře. A ty?

5) Prosí­m! Není­ zač.
6) Na shledanou! Dobrou noc!
7) Mám otázku. Jak se řekne česky "cow"?

We then reviewed the vocabulary for Lesson 1, and read through the nouns at the bottom of page 19 in the textbook, identifying them by gender.

I then introduced the two types of adjectives, hard and soft.

Hard adjectives change ending based on the gender of the noun they modify: -ý for masculine nouns; -á for feminine nouns; -é for neuter nouns. (Again, keep in mind that we are talking here only about the nominative, or 1st, case. Once we get into other cases, you will see that the endings change as well. Also, remember: By convention, when you look up adjectives in a Czech dictionary, they are given in their masculine form only.) Thus nový pokoj, nová kniha, nové město (new room, new book, new city).

Soft adjectives end in -í­ regardless of the gender of the noun they modify. Thus moderní pokoj, moderní kniha, moderní­ město (modern room, modern book, modern city).

The interrogative pronoun jaký (or jaká or jaké) -- meaning "what kind of" or "what sort of" -- behaves gramatically like a hard adjective.

I then introduced the demonstrative pronouns ten, ta, and to -- again, respectively, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Thus ten pokoj, ta kniha, to město: that room, that book, that city.

And, finally, we learned the word for the numeral one: jeden, jedna, or jedno (masc., fem., neu.): jeden pokoj, jedna kniha, jedno město (one room, one book, one city).

We then used these words to make some very basic sentences of the type Jaký je . . . (What kind of ... is that?).

Our next grammatical topic was adverbs of place, used to answer the questions Kde je . . . ? (Where is . . . ?) and Co je . . . ? (What is . . . ?).

vpředu vzadu (in front of / behind or in back of
nahoře dole (above or up or upstairs / below or down or downstairs)
napravo nalevo (on the right or to the right / on the left or to the left)
vpravo vlevo (same as above)
tady tam (here / there)

I also introduced you to the possessive pronouns. Again, these change form according to the gender of the noun they modify, though there are fewer changes than for adjectives.

my/mine můj (masc.), moje (fem., neuter)

your/yours (singular and informal) tvůj (masc.), tvoje (fem., neuter)

his jeho (all genders)

hers její (all genders)

our/ours náš (masc.), naše (fem., neuter)

your/yours (plural or formal) váš (masc.), vaše (fem., neuter)

their/theirs jejich (all genders)

Remember: the form of these pronouns changes according to the gender of the noun -- not the gender of the person possessing them. See the examples on page 23 in your textbook.

Finally, we learned the interrogative pronoun čí, meaning "whose."

Your homework is as follows:

Textbook:
1) Read the rest of the dialogue we started on pages 24-25.
2) Do Exercises 1 and 2 on page 25.

Workbook:
Do Exercises 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 11 -- in other words, the rest of the exercises for Lesson 1.

Review the Vocabulary for Lesson 2, which we will start next week.

Na shledanou v úterý! ("See you on Tuesday!")

Here's another page on Czech language and culture: Bohemica.com. It looks fantastic.

So this past Tuesday, we reviewed the alphabet and the sounds of Czech, following the scheme used by Michael Heim (if you think you are interested in purchasing a copy of Heim's text, by the way, you can find it here):

a (á) b (bé) c (cé) č (čé) d (dé) e (é) f (ef) g (gé) h (há) ch (chá) i (měkké í­) j (jé) k (ká) l (el) m (em) n (en) o (ó) p (pé) q (kvé) r (er) ř (eř) s (es) š (eš) t (té) u (ú) v (vé) w (dvojité vé) x (iks) y (tvrdé í­ or ypsilon) z (zet) ž (žet)

Note that ch is a letter in itself.

There are three diacritical marks in Czech: the háček ("little hook"), the čárka ("little line"), and the kroužek ("little circle"). Remember, these are not accents: the háček softens a consonant; the čárka lengthens a vowel; and the kroužek indicates a long u (except when it falls at the beginning of a word, in which case it takes a čárka; thus úvod but dům).

To listen to the sounds of Czech, click here.

We have also learned the personal pronouns já, ty, on, ona, my, vy, oni, and ony -- I, you (singular/informal), he, she, we, you (plural/formal), they (masculine or mixed), and they (all feminine) -- and two verbs so far: být ("to be") and mít ("to have"). They are conjugated as follows:

být
já jsem (I am)
ty jsi (you are)
on/ona je (he/she is)
my jsme (we are)
vy jste (you are)
oni/ony jsou (they are)

mí­t
mám (I have)
máš (you have)
má (he/she has)
máme (we have)
máte (you have)
mají­ (they have)

I also introduced the concept of declension, explaining that the form of Czech nouns (and adjectives and pronouns and sometimes even adverbs) changes according to their grammatical function.

In Czech there are seven cases:
1. nominative
2. genitive
3. dative
4. accusative
5. vocative
6. locative (or prepositional)
7. instrumental

Czech nouns, furthermore, come in three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The masculine nouns are further divided into animate and inanimate. How a noun declines, then, depends on its gender, whether it is animate or inanimate, and whether it is "hard" or "soft."

Again, to read more on this, go here.

Finally, we learned a few greetings, basic phrases, and phrases for the classroom, all of which can be found on page 17 in your textbook. (The Local Lingo site, linked above on the right-hand side of this page, includes most of these as well as many more.)

Your homework for next Tuesday is as follows:

1) Review what we have learned so far (this is true every week, of course);
2) Read Grammar Note 1 on page 233 of your textbook: Czech genders;
3) Do Exercise 1 on page 19 of your textbook, orally;
4) Do Exercise 4 on pages 7 and 8 of your workbook ("Fill in the correct forms of the verb 'to be'");
5) Read Lesson 1 Vocabulary on page 26 of your textbook;
6) Preview pages 20-23 for next week.

To je všechno. ("That is all.")

Přeju Vám hezký víkend! ("I wish you [plural] a nice weekend!")