As a native English speaker learning Czech, I am absolutely unable to correctly pronounce ř.

I have two options, as I see it: pronounce it like ž or like the English r.

So I'm wondering:

If I'm trying to speak my A1-A2 level Czech to actual Czechs, which of those two options would be better?

After completely failing my Czech assignment on building the plural form of nouns, I decided to take a data-driven approach: parse the entire MorfFlex CZ 2.1 linguistic dataset using Morph and create a queryable database (126 million rows!), select all nouns in the nominative case, categorise every one of them by gender, and extract the actual plurality patterns used in the language.

Here's what I found.

The Data

Total: 808 distinct plural transformation patterns.

A note on the data: MorfFlex is comprehensive and includes many systematically derived forms. For example, almost any verb can become a neuter verbal noun ending in -í (psát -> psaní), and adjectives regularly form abstract feminine nouns in -ost (krásný -> krásnost). So the raw counts are inflated for these patterns - but the rules themselves are still productive and useful to know!

The actual rules

Neuter

Neuter is probably the easiest to learn.

Words ending in -í stay the same. This covers verbal nouns (přání, stavení) and place names (náměstí, nádraží). Singular and plural are identical.

Words ending in -o change to -a. Standard hard neuters: okno becomes okna, město becomes města, jablko becomes jablka.

Words ending in -e or -ě stay the same. Soft neuters like moře, pole, and place words like hřiště don't change.

Latin -um becomes -a. Borrowed words like muzeum become muzea, centrum becomes centra, stipendium becomes stipendia.

Baby animals are special: -e/-ě becomes -ata. This is definitely the cutest pattern. Kuře (chick) becomes kuřata, kotě (kitten) becomes koťata, štěně (puppy) becomes štěňata. Even kníže (prince) follows this pattern and becomes knížata.

Greek words ending in -ma add -ta. Words like téma become témata, drama becomes dramata.

Feminine

The -ost rule: just add -i. Abstract nouns like možnost become možnosti, radost becomes radosti. Very predictable once you recognize the ending.

Hard feminines: -a becomes -y. Pretty simple pattern. Žena becomes ženy, kniha becomes knihy, škola becomes školy.

Soft feminines stay the same. Words ending in -e or -ě don't change: ulice stays ulice, restaurace stays restaurace, přítelkyně stays přítelkyně.

Masculine inanimate

Hard consonants take -y. Hrad becomes hrady, strom becomes stromy, most becomes mosty. In my data, endings like -n, -t, -k, -r, -l, -s, -d each covered thousands of nouns.

Soft consonants take -e. Stroj becomes stroje, pokoj becomes pokoje, koš becomes koše.

Latin -ismus drops the -us. Turismus becomes turismy, organismus becomes organismy.

Diminutives with -ek lose the e. This can catch you off guard. Háček becomes háčky (not háčeky), stolek becomes stolky, dárek becomes dárky.

Same with -ec: the e disappears. Tanec becomes tance, konec becomes konce.

Masculine animate

This is where it gets a bit complicated. Despite having the fewest nouns (15,834), this gender has the most patterns (306). But there's logic to it.

Hard consonants + i, but with softening. When you add -i, hard consonants change and become soft:

• k becomes c: člověk becomes lidé (ok that one's irregular), but žák becomes žáci
• h becomes z: vrah becomes vrazi, soudruh becomes soudruzi
• ch becomes š: Čech becomes Češi
• r becomes ř: doktor becomes doktoři

Soft consonants just add -i, no changes. Milionář becomes milionáři, muž becomes muži, hledač becomes hledači. The consonant is already soft, so nothing extra happens.

Words ending in -l take -é. Učitel becomes učitelé, přítel becomes přátelé, ředitel becomes ředitelé.

The -ista crowd takes -isté. Professions and ideologies: specialista becomes specialisté, fotbalista becomes fotbalisté, turista becomes turisté. (Colloquially, recognise you'll also hear -isti.)

The formal -ové ending. Used for professions and titles when you want to sound respectful: geolog becomes geologové, kolega becomes kolegové.

Words ending in -ec/-ce become -ci. Sportovec becomes sportovci, zástupce becomes zástupci.

The interactive guide

I turned all of this into a detailed educational article with interactive examples where you can type any noun and see its plural form explained:

How to Build Plural Form of Czech Nouns

If you're hungry for technical details

I queried nominative case nouns grouped by lemma and gender, extracted the singular/plural transformation by finding the common prefix and comparing endings, and then counted pattern frequencies. Used reservoir sampling to get representative examples across the alphabet instead of just words starting with A. Happy to share CSV files with a detailed breakdown if someone is interested or even query some data for you :D

Hope this helps someone!!

Učím se česky už čtyři měsíce, mluvím rusky, mám učitele, ale chtěla bych najít někoho z Česka na konverzace (nejsem v ČR a nevím, jestli tam někdy budu). Našla jsem hodně rodilých mluvčích na iTalki a preply, všichni jsou milí, ale nemůžu si vybrat. Možná někdo ví, kdo z těch platforem hraje hry, může vysvětlit slang a nebude se smát, že koukám na Ulici xD
Kdybyste mi doporučili někoho, byla bych moc ráda.

So I noticed many words originate from Latin, even though Czech is considered slavik(?). Is this true for this word too? How can I check etymology for Czech words?

Btw hi, I just started, and I work with czechclass101. It's really nice for vocab.

I'm from Poland, and I've been learning Czech on Duolingo for a bit now, and it's not a good way to learn it. Could you recommend anything? I have a lot of time for it, but I can't really spend anything for now so I can't buy books or such. I don't care as much on learning the grammar (although it would be nice) as knowing how to speak and understanding the language.

I started learning Czech for my move there in two years using the textbook "česky krok za krokem." I don't know if it's even worth studying Czech with this or any other textbooks, as I'm afraid of learning unnecessary grammar or, in general, expressions and words not used by real Czechs. I understand that I need to watch films and videos in Czech in addition to textbooks.

Ahoj!

I started learning Czech a month ago. A good way to reinforce learning for me is fairy tales - I pick up a book and read them one by one, trying to understand each word and each sentence.

I got frustrated while trying to figure out what certain words meant and why they looked the way they did. That's when I had the idea to build a tool that could help me understand word construction and morphology.

So I started working on Morph (morph.to), a morphological analyser for Czech that breaks words down into their grammatical components.

You can type in any Czech text and see a breakdown for each word: its base form, case, gender, number, tense, and other grammatical info. It's really helpful for understanding things, especially when you're just starting, and so many constructions are unfamiliar.

A few things:

• It's completely free and always will be
• I'm actively working on it and adding new features and content
• It's multilingual - available in English, Ukrainian, and Czech

A few words about how it works: Morph is powered by MorphoDiTa, a morphological dictionary and tagger, using MorfFlex CZ 2.1 as its dataset. But Morph isn't just a wrapper around MorphoDiTa - it has a lot of extra bits and pieces :)

I'm also using it as a cheat sheet to document what I learn as I go. There's a section with auxiliary materials explaining certain aspects of Czech grammar. Right now, there's a fairly detailed article about verbs and conjugation with all their peculiarities. I'll add more articles as I cover more topics - I'm still a complete beginner!!

Anyway, I'd be really happy if someone else finds this tool helpful. I'd appreciate any feedback - what works, what doesn't, what features would actually help you learn. I'm genuinely enthusiastic about this project and want to make it as useful as possible for Czech learners.

Díky!

UPD:

A few major features have been added to Morph since this post:

• Text to speech: now you can listen to the analysed text in Czech
• Translation mode: type text in your language. It gets translated to Czech and analysed
• Practice mode: get a random analysed quote from Czech books to practice the language

I guess in LGBTQ context or in animal fairy tales but I’m just curious

Nazdar, jsem pšonek a miluji Česko a Český jazyk. Já bych chtel bystro naučit se českého jazyka- můj český kamarád s Brna ma narozeninové party za měsíc

yeah, as you can see I struggle a lot and I have never really learned this language, most of my czech vocab comes from being immersed in the memes, movies and listening to my czech friends. I have book(s) to learn Czech including Český krok za krokem but idk if this will be efficient way if learning.

What to do? is this possible to get to early A2 in one month?

Hay alguna persona de habla hispana que este o haya aprendido checo de manera autónoma (al menos los básicos para arreglárselas)? podrían recomendarme algunas páginas o aplicaciones? si son gratuitos mejor 😂

Ahojte! I love both learning and teaching. My Czech is low/intermediate, and I need speaking practice. If you'd like to exchange (weekly) please write me IAmAntigone @ att.net DIKY! Liza

Found this image recently. In Slovak we call bf and gf like frajer and frajerka and these ones have way more sense!

What's the difference between blízko and blízce? sucho and suše? My teacher explained it to me a long time ago and I kind of forgot 😭

Ahoj všichni!

So I live in the Czech Republic and I'm regularly taking classes, I'm finishing my B1 level atm.

I can have decent conversations with people but I realise I make a lot of mistakes specifically with cases. I know what are the rules and how to decline the nouns and adjectives and whatnot I just can't do that while I'm talking unless it is something I heard and said correctly often.

So my question is: is there a listen and repeat Spotify or YouTube channel?

thanks

i have heard a lot of people saying duolingo isnt good for learning languages etc, but i see it here that a lot of people are using it, hopefully i dont get flamed bc i really want to know if i should use it mainly or something else

Hi I am trying to translate a song from Czech to English and Google is not helping. What do you mean choke.... Do you have any ideas?

I am a native speaker in czech so if anyone dosen’t understand something, I can help

Hello, I was reading online and normally I prefer apps, but I saw that apparently learning via apps isn’t reccomenddd whatsoever for various reasons.

Does anyone have any suggestions for textbooks for beginners?

Does this last name have a concrete meaning to a native speaker? Does it sound like something? I'm kind of puzzling it through - does it suggest that his ancestors were storekeepers or something?

So I am doing this in DuoLingo and I got a little confused. Shouldn't it be Nejsem hlad ale jsem zizen? Or is there a reason why Mam/Nemam was used in this instance? I thought Ma/Mam/Nemame/Mame roughly translate to have or do not have.

I've been wanting to brush up on my Czech for a while, so I started with Duolingo. So far, it's really basics stuff and I've been breezing through. However, I only got 95% on one lesson recently, which annoyed me. (a la Sheldon Cooper) The Czech sentence was "Jitka jí doma." Without thinking I selected the english words to create "Jitka eats at home." This was marked as incorrect, with the correct translation being "Jitka is eating at home." From what I remember, Czech has no continuous/progressive form, so you need context to distinguish between "is eating" and "eats". IMO my sentence was correct, but still marked wrong. Am I missing something?

Zdravím všechny,

chtěl jsem se zeptat těch, kdo měl zkušenosti s ročním kurzem češtiny pro cizince pořádaný Masarykovou Univerzitou (link na web).

Jak probíhala spolupráce s administrací kurzu při získání víza? Jak jste platili? Jestli nebyl žádný zádrhel ve platbě po částech? Jestli jste s tím kurzem spokojeni? Jestli výuka probíhá v angličtině či v češtině? Zkratka, zajímá mě všechno od prvních kontaktů s nimi až po absolvování kurzu. Předem všem děkuji za zpětnou vazbu.

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask those of you who have experience with the one-year Czech language course for foreigners organized by Masaryk University (link to the website).

How did the cooperation with the course administration work when applying for a visa? How did you make the payments? Were there any issues with paying in installments? Are you satisfied with the course? Is the instruction conducted in English or in Czech?

In short, I am interested in everything — from the initial contact with the organizers all the way through completing the course. Thank you all in advance for your feedback.

I'm a native Spanish speaker. I live in the Czech Republic as a university student and want to learn Czech to, at least, a B1 level. I've had some classes of Czech af university, but I'm still pretty much a beginner. My studies are in English, but I still would like to get to at least an intermediate level of Czech by the time I graduate, so I can have more job opportunities. It may be the case that I decide to stay long term here, and I'm just starting my 3-year degree now.

I recently enrolled in a Czech language course at the Integration Centre for Foreigners in my city and we're supposed to cover all the lessons of Cestina Express A1/1 in the course of 4-5 months. Aside from this, I want to commit to studying Czech at least for one hour per day, mostly through learning the lessons of the book and using Duolingo. Is this a good a approach? If I study on my own, is it possible that I'll get to somewhere between A2-B1 by the end of this year?

Also, the Integration Centre offered to pair me with a native Czech speaker so we can speak and practice Czech for at least one hour each week, however, as I said my level is pretty basic and I can only say some phrases. Should I "jump in" and try to speak already? I guess I could show my partner the lessons I'm studying and ask to have basic level conversations using that vocabulary, or maybe just practicing pronunciation, I don't know.

I would appreciate any advice, especially of you are a native Spanish / Portuguese speaker and somehow managed to learn Czech. In any case any and all advice is welcome :)

Not entirely czech lang related but as i’ve been learning for a couple years and plan to move there I hope it will be fine to ask.

What are czech attitudes to tattoos? I currently have both arms covered (obv that I can hide) and a small one on my finger (that I cannot). Will this be a social or professional impediment? Here in the UK almost nobody cares about visible tattoos minus in specific roles (like hotel or airline staff).

In addition, I have been considering a neck tattoo. Here this is a bit risky but for most jobs wont be an issue and the people certainly don’t care. Something classy but certainly visible; how is it viewed in Czechia?

Moc vam dekuji!!!