What is the best way to learn some tourist Czech?

September 17, 2024 10:06 AM

All I want is some very basic, as-a-courtesy phrases: hello, yes, no, excuse me, sorry, do you speak English?, two beers please, etc. I have no existing Czech, and I am not interested in becoming fluent.

Ideas I have considered:

• Apps/Websites: All of them seem to be based around becoming fluent and have sizeable "tech trees".
• Flashcards: Where do I get these from? How do I know they're correct? How do I deal with understanding how to pronounce words, etc.
• Videos: Which series of videos? How do I "use" a series of videos? (Also, video is far from my preferred learning format.)
• Language courses on CDs: It is not 2002. Also based around becoming fluent.

posted by alby to Travel & Transportation (10 answers total)

It sounds like what you want is a phrasebook. You can use it to memorize some basic courtesy phrases and look up anything else you might need.
posted by epj at 10:14 AM on September 17 [1 favorite]

The website reverso.net. Set your languages to English to Czech. Type in your word or phrase and click the "Listen" speaker button below the translated word/phrase to hear the pronunciation. Repeat it out loud multiple times. (This site has tons more functionality if you get more into it, but the basic translations are good. More reliable that google according to a few language teachers I've had.)
posted by CheeseLouise at 10:27 AM on September 17 [2 favorites]

Youtube is great for this sort of thing!

-Visiting Prague Basic Words and Phrases
-Top Tourist Czech Phrases You Need to Know
-Learn Czech Basic Phrases for Restaurant

I did a search for "tourist phrases czech" and "tourist phrases czech restaurant"
posted by donut_princess at 10:46 AM on September 17

Some four pages in the back of my Lonely Planet guide to the Czech Republic had what you're looking for. I read them on the train from Berlin to Prague. Learned how to pronounce those accented characters, and got the kind of vocabulary you're looking for. Nemáš zač
posted by morspin at 11:25 AM on September 17 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I'm not sure a >250-page phrasebook is what I'm looking for. And I'd like something that will actually help me to learn, rather than just being a textbook.

I can see how reverso.net would be useful as a translation tool, but I'm not sure how it actually helps me to learn? I have to work out what the key phrases I need to know are, and then type them in over and over again?

I suppose my ideal solution is an app like Duolingo but with a vastly reduced corpus targeted to tourist requirements. I'm surprised that something like that does not already exist.

I think some combination of donut_princess's and morspin's approaches would probably work, but I'd really like something that actually helps me learn. Reading a phrasebook or watching a video seems very passive.
posted by alby at 11:38 AM on September 17

Find a native Czech speaker in your neighbourhood and pay for some conversation time (or online if there are no Czechs in your area)?
posted by JJZByBffqU at 11:49 AM on September 17

1. Type the phrases you want to learn into Google Translate, hit the button to have the Czech version spoken out loud.

2. Write the English version on a flash card. Write the Czech version out in a phonetic way that makes sense to you on the other side. Optional: also write the actual Czech spelling.

3. Drill yourself on the flashcards in the usual way, i.e. spaced repetition: look at each card every day until it is easy, then every week, then every month, and back to every day if you forget.
posted by caek at 12:08 PM on September 17

I have to work out what the key phrases I need to know are

I mean, that makes sense, right? Since it looks like you want to learn a small subset targeting things personally useful to you.

I would try to make a list of questions/phrases in English, and then see if you can group them grammatically in any way. For example, questions of the format "Can I ...?", "Do you have/is there any ...?", "Where is ...?", "I don't [verb]", etc.

When you've grouped similar questions together, start looking up translations and see what patterns you notice, and whether they overlap exactly with the pattern groupings in English. For example I don't know Czech, but in other Slavic languages the pattern for "do you have ...?" would be different than "do you know ...?", whereas in English it's the same ("do you [verb]?")

I suppose my ideal solution is an app like Duolingo but with a vastly reduced corpus

Duolingo is basically a spaced repetition system (SRS) with gamification. You can do spaced repetition manually (e.g. with flashcards), or you can use apps/webapps like Anki. Personally I recommend supplementing that with quizzing yourself in the wild, so to speak: as you're just going about your day, pause for a second and think "how do I say [some pattern you've learned]". You can also daydream yourself having conversations with people using those patterns and phrases. (By the way, one snag to the "learn some phrases" approach is that you can find yourself unable to understand the responses.)

Optional: also write the actual Czech spelling.

I would definitely take at least a few minutes to learn Czech orthography, so you can read signs and so on. (It's the Roman alphabet but not always the same sounds per letter as in English so some things will be spelled differently than you expect.)

Also: I don't think Pimsleur is particularly great for learning a language to any advanced extent, but if you do the first Pimsleur audio level for Czech (I assume there is one) you'll learn (a subset of) exactly the kind of really basic phrases and patterns that could be useful to you as a tourist. You'll also get a very tiny bit of grammar that's likely to be more useful than you think. You might be able to find it in your library, or through other avenues online.

If you don't have the time or patience for Pimsleur, then take at least a quick look at an "Introduction to Czech" book to find out if there are any grammatical things you need to be aware of. For example, if you were learning Spanish and all your translations used "tu" instead of "usted", that wouldn't be great. I think formality/respect works similarly in Czech, and there might be other differences like that from English that you wouldn't know on your own to expect.

Finally, once you've done some of this I'd try to watch some Czech movies or shows if you have time, to get a better sense of the sounds, listen out for some of the patterns you've learned, and possibly even pick out some new ones.
posted by trig at 1:07 PM on September 17

Your needs are so minimal that I think you’d be able to get nearly all of what you want by looking at the Czech phrasebook pages on Wikitravel and Wikivoyage and making some extremely basic flash cards out of some cut-up bits of paper with the Czech on one side and the English (and maybe some formality notes or other things you think are helpful, like pronunciation tips, for example) on the back. Keep them in a sandwich-sized resealable bag and add to the set as you find the need to do so.

The acts of writing your own cards personal to your exact needs and reviewing them at a pace you are happy with will put you into a less-passive role and perhaps a more motivated-to-practice mindset than using a set created by someone else.
posted by mdonley at 1:38 PM on September 17 [1 favorite]

Czech may be one of the most difficult of the Slavic languages to learn and pronounce (Polish comes close) so just go with a phrase book - basically everybody under 50 years old who doesn't work with cows can speak either basic English or German.
posted by zaelic at 12:17 AM on September 20