Colloquial Czech : The Complete Beginner's Course, 2nd Edition (Colloquial Series) [Paperback]

J. D. Naughton (Author), James Naughton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415161347 | ISBN-13: 978-0415161343 | Publication Date: February 11, 1999 | Edition: 2

This second edition of the popular Colloquial Czech has been rewritten to bring it completely up to date.
Written by an experienced teacher, the course offers a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Czech. No prior knowledge of the language is required.
Czech is spoken by over 10 million people. It is closely related to the other members of the Slavic family of languages but, unlike Russian, uses the Roman alphabet.
By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in a broad range of situations.

 Accompanying audio material is available to purchase separately on CD/MP3 format, or comes included in the great value Colloquials Pack.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Colloquial Czech is a most impressive publication, which draws on a wealth of practical experience and knowledge and is written very much with the learner in mind.' - Irish Slavonic Studies

About the Author

University of Oxford, UK --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (February 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415161347
• ISBN-13: 978-0415161343
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,506,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Language Nonfiction > More Languages > Czech
  • #30 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Foreign Language > Czech

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A highly recommendable Czech course!, February 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Colloquial Czech: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Audio Cassette)

This Czech-course is the best I've ever read, and I've read quite a few! It is, as he title suggests, based on conversations in which you find interesting and easy understandable czech expressions and sentences. Every lesson has a very good grammatical section, and you'll find (almost) every word in the book explained in the czech-english, english-czech dictionary. The language you learn in Colloquial Czech is the "high czech" (spisovná cestina) used in national television and radio. However, most czechs speak dialect and this may of course be a major obstacle for the autodidact student. Colloquial Czech deals with this problem exellently dedicating the last lesson to spoken, colloquial czech (obecná cestina), thereby enabeling the student to understand czech as spoken in the suburbian pubs of Prague. The one thing that might irritate the student is the laziness and indolence of the caracters. Lines as "get out of bed!" "borrow me som money!" are symptomatic of the coversational subjects. The conversations are situated in a young student milieu basically dealing with love and beer drinking. Someone might find this boring and influencing on ones own effort; I liked it though! I now study czech at the University of Oslo. I could not have done this without the help of Colloquial Czech. All my fellow students have used it too, and I know that they all share my opinion: This czech course is highly recommendable!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars adequate, April 25, 2008

By 

RAL (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Czech : The Complete Beginner's Course, 2nd Edition (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

Maybe it's just that Czech is rather difficult, but I'm struggling getting through this book. I think that the content is great, explanation is good, but I wish there was a workbook to go along with it or more questions throughout the book for practice. I am also regretting that I didn't get the audio portion, as it is quite difficult to imagine how some of the words sound.

14 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good for student, but not for real beginner, December 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Colloquial Czech : The Complete Beginner's Course, 2nd Edition (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

My boyfriend is Czech, and his mother was coming down to visit us, so I thought it would be a wonderful idea to learn the language before she got here. I bought this book in order to aide me in that mission. It didn't work. I was more confused than anything, and my boyfriend said most of that language was wrong. There are too many dialects of Czech in the small country to compose it within one book. He's Moravian and he would help me speak Czech, but he couldn't do it from the book when he explained to me what the words really meant. Czech isnt easy to learn anyway, but this book wasn't as helpful as I thought it would be.