Customer Reviews

Colloquial Czech: The Complete Course for Beginners [book and two 60 minute cassettes]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book, with cassettes, before going to study in the Czech Republic last summer. Though I made it through only the first few lessons, I was surprised by how much I could still understand. Czech is a very complex language in terms of syntax, with each noun having seven cases, for example. This book, I believe, introduced this concept, and most grammar, very well. However, Czech is also a very difficult langauge to learn how to speak, thanks to a unique letter "r hacek" which is found only in czech, and typical slavic consonant clusters (some words don't even have vowels!). Unfortunately the tapes were rather sparse. While all the dialogs were read, often times there were no accompanying exercises. For example, there was rarely the opportunity to repeat after the speakers on the tape, or to take a role in the dialogs. Nonetheless, listening to the tapes regularly did allow me to impress a few Czech students and professors with my "excellent pronunciation." And for less than $..., its an excellent value, especially for someone on a limited budget. If you would like to learn the Czech language, for not a lot of money, I would definitely recommend this book.

I got this book years ago when I was living in Prague. I had learned some by immersion and by studying on my own using whatever grammar book I could find. What most native-Czech speakers told me back then was, "You will never learn Czech; don't even try." I rarely met a non-native Czech speaker. Most Americans there didn't even bother. But I did, but not without some struggles.

I struggled for the first six months until this book started floating around the ex-pat community. Immediately after finding a copy of my own, things started looking up. I had some bilingual Czech friends who helped me out. What they liked about the book is that it was, in their opinion, a fine example of regular spoken speech, even with amusing dialogues.

If you don't know Czech grammar, I can briefly summarize it as being only slightly more complicated than Russian. It has 7 cases of declination. At the time (1993?), I think what was so revolutionary about this book is that it didn't teach all of the Czech grammar, but just what you would find most often in day-to-day conversation, or at least what you should know at a minimum. Just to say, "I'd like a glass of water" is complicated. You can't say anything until you understand that every word in a sentence will have a different ending depending on how the word is used in a sentence. It's not enough to learn vocabulary, conjugation and tenses. Even the numbers change, depending on how they're used in a sentence.

I think it helps to live in the country to appreciate the book. I purchased the Russian version of this book, and also Castillian Spanish, but this was back in the states, outside of a live context. It wasn't the same.

I got this book (no cassettes or CDs came with mine) for a half-semester course I took on Czech history and culture; those of us who wanted stayed behind after class with our professor to learn some Czech. He didn't assign any book for those of us who were interested in the optional language part, but this was the only book on Czech I could find at the off-campus textbook store. As a native speaker, the professor thought it was really good. Of course it doesn't have the most comprehensive dictionary in the back, but that's to be expected with any teach yourself language book. You have to go out and get a real Czech-English dictionary if you're inspired enough to keep learning.

Czech isn't an easy language, but I found it easier than many would, already being familiar with the Russian language. Czech is a Western Slavic tongue and Russian is Eastern, but they're maybe about 75% similar, with some regional changes (for example, many words starting in G in Russian are exactly or nearly the same in Czech, only they start in H, such as hrad/grad [castle]). And even though the accent marks over the consonants can give some people a hard time at first, at least Czech is written in the Roman alphabet. And as the professor told me, it's 98-99% similar to Slovakian, my paternal grandpap's native language, so learning Czech meant I could talk to him and understand most of what he said. Since it's so hard to find a good dictionary or instructional volume on the Slovakian language, this book on Czech is a real bargain.

Best all around czech book if you are interested in learning. The text is very easy to follow and learn, but the accompanying cassettes are difficult. They are okay to hear conversation but they are hard to follow because the people on the tape speak very quickly, so i end up having to stop and rewind repeatedly.

After ressearching and reading review after review trying to find the very best "teach-yourself" Czech course, I stumbled upon this. This book is incredible. Everything you need to know to build a strong foundation in the language. The book includes two cassettes (who uses these still I do not know) and two cd's. I ripped the cd's onto my iPod, and can study just about anywhere :) The cd's have native and non-native speakers of Czech, so you can hear the language as it actually sounds. I have read several books on the Czech language, and not one comes close to being as comprehensive as this. A+. If you are relocating to Prague, as I am, or simply desire to learn a very confusing language with relative ease, buy this book. You will not regret it.

I dont think this is the best language course pack, but it's the best you can do for teaching yourself Czech... let's face it, there really arent many options on Czech books. I think the learning process the book follows is excellent. It teaches you all the case forms and declinations, etc. Which a lot of language packs dont do.

The only negative thing about this book is that the audio cd's that go with it are too fast for complete beginners. In most language tapes, you get to listen to the dialog in slow speed so you can learn pronounciation, etc.... then the dialog is repeated at normal conversational pace. But on this cd, you can only listen at normal conversational pace, which is too fast to grasp things when you're just starting out. But if you can make it through about the 1st couple of chapters, you'll be fine and the speed wont be much of an issue anymore.

I'd definitely recommend this product for people wishing to learn Czech. Dont take a chance on the other Czech books, because I researched those and they all looked like crap. Unless you can get ahold of the books the universities use (which are hard to find and costly) then get the Colloquial Czech series.

I'm quite disappointed with this book. The layout is disorienting and the index, well the index doesn't reference page numbers. That doesn't bode well for looking up specific topics. I was hoping for something more visually organized. If you're the type who doesn't need to have information in it's place and are ok with taking the lessons as they're thrown at you, then you'll enjoy this book more than I have.

I don't understand the positive reviews given to this program. Yes, the book might be useful as a text, but the audio part of the program is next to useless for beginners. After the short audio introduction on pronunciation, the program proceeded to rattle off conversations which were unintelligible and impossible to imitate since there was no time for repetition. I tried to use the book to help, but found that the conversations did not follow the lessons presented there!

If you want to try and learn to read Czech, maybe this is OK, but if you want to learn to speak the language I highly recommend the Pimsleur beginning Czech. After Pimsleur I plan on getting the Foreign Service Institute Czech series.

I found some of the sections okay. As stated by the previous reviewer the speakers spoke too fast. Some of the sections too advanced for the beginner

But it was muddled and unclear as to the grammar. These should have been pulled out more and explained more clearly. I got to chapter 5 and am now looking for a book that breaks the grammar down for someone like me!