Customer Reviews

Contemporary Czech

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
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This book serves as an excelent reference for learners of Czech -- far better than any book you'd run into in your average book store. It has been my staple and savior for years of learning and using Czech, and I still depend upon it for reference. The russian examples, as mentioned by a previous reviewer, are extensive. This is excellent for a slavophile such as myself, coming to Czech after studying Russian. The book does not rely upon them entirely for explanation, however, leaving its usefullness unscathed should the reader have no prior familiarity with slavic languages. My only cause for disappointment is the exercises, which I found to be entirely insufficient. If you won't be practicing Czech frequently otherwise, look elsewhere for a workbook, but keep this one as your grammar bible!

Heim's _Comtemporary Czech_ is a very grammatical approach to a language that has a lot of grammar. The first chapter is dedicated to spelling, pronunciation, etc., and chapter two begins immediately with an introduction to seven noun cases, exemplified by the feminine hard declension in the singular. It is expected that the student will understand the concept of the inflected noun and be able to begin to use these seven cases immediately. The rest of the first section of the book is similarly densely packed.

Although the student is presented a huge amount of information, the text is so well organized and the exercises so well matched to the lessons that learning the elements of Czech grammar is fairly painless.

The second part of the book is a series of review lessons (which introduce many of the grammatical irregularities omitted in the first section) and is intended to be used together with reading material. By the time the student has finished the first half of the book, he has been exposed to all of the important aspects of Czech grammar and can use and recognize them in his own writing/speaking and reading/listening.

The book includes a number of appendices where the declensions of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc. and verb conjugations are presented concisely in one place. The text serves as an excellent reference grammar, and I have used it (and continue to use it) since 1975. (Although 1975 predates publication, I was one of Dr. Heim's students and therefore have a pre-publication copy of the text.)

Although I have searched, I have found no other Czech grammar written in English that is more complete or easier to use than Heim's. For further information on grammar or on the forms of specific words, it is necessary to use the standards of the Czech linguistic community (which are written in Czech). This text brings the student as far as any in English, leaving him prepared to use Czech sources thereafter.

The last person to review this book was not satisfied due to the large amount of Russian examples in the book. I think the evaluation is quite critical and in my opinion, quite wrong. The book covers czech. It occasionally mentions a russian example for those who have a knowledge of that language. It is particularly useful because there are grammatical topics in czech which look like russian but are not used as often as in russian speech or writing(compare czech mozne vs. russian mojno). There are also examples that point to similar attributes between the two languages. As the author states in the preface, it is not necessary to know russian to use this book succesfully. In fact, every concept that uses russian, also has an explanation without the use of russian. The russian examples are merely side notes which can be useful to those with a knowledge of russian, but are by no means essential. In fact one can flip by many pages on which no russian examples are present. In all, this is a first rate book. I recommend it to anyone with or without a knowledge of russian.

The thing I like most about this book is that it offers many sentences in Czech to give you an idea of how sentences are structured. It also includes a nice review section. On the other hand, it immediately throws you into rather complex grammatical forms with minimal explanation. You'll find yourself discussing Czech and Russian literature before you can ask where the library is. In this sense, the book is aimed more at academia than at practical use. There are exercises throughout the text. However, the author chose not to provide the answers, maybe because the book was intended for classroom use. That can be very frustrating when you're learning Czech "sám/sama"(solo), as there is no way to be absolutely sure that your answers are correct. Also, it would be nice if the book offered more examples of conjugations and declensions, concepts native English speakers rarely consider. In summary, for someone who already knows the basics of Czech or knows Russian or another Slavic language, this book will probably be quite helpful. But if you're new to Slavic languages, you may very well feel left behind from the outset and might prefer a book like David Short's "Teach Yourself Czech."

Unless you speak Russian, tear out everything but the first chapter and the appendices, and call it an "abridged" language reference. The first few pages give the best, most concise explanation of grammatical cases I've ever seen. In less than an hour an average student will understand that which professors/teachers spend months trying to get across to English-speaking students. Then the author immediately jumps into lengthy comparisons of differences between Russian and Czech, leaving beginning students dizzy from "extraneous information overload." As a result, the wonderful appendices may be overlooked in the haste to find an easier second language.

Like the first chapter, the Appendices are very concise, as grammatical tables ought to be. My fellow students and I actually spent hours copying them onto poster-sized paper for the wall, and miniaturizing them for laminated pocket references. As the model words for the "declensions", or "cases" (see Chapter 1), the author actually used the SAME model words that Czech students learned in grammar school. I can't explain how much of a help that is! (The only improvement I can suggest for the tables, would be for the author to label what each word is the model for. For example: "kniha - hard feminine", "hrdina - masculine animate ending in 'a'", etc.")

The first few pages and the last few pages became dog-eared and worn, while everything in the middle is still virgin white. Buy it, "abridge" it, and use it in conjunction with a different book.

I found Contempory Czech by Michael Heim to be an excellent learning tool for Czech IF you already know and understand another foreign language. In fact, Heim even states that his book is intended for Slavophiles who've already been exposed to other Slavic languages, particularly Russian. Overall, it's an excellently written grammar.