#native czech

[zuzajic]

How to become a Czech in 8 easy steps

Buy a cutlet, cover it in eggs, flour and bread crumbs and fry it. Congratulations, you have successfully prepared a řízek, which is the most czech thing this planet has ever seen (svíčková is a close second).

If you’re going on a trip, take a řízek with you!

Now go and get yourself some nice sandals and a pair of preferably white socks. Wear them together.

Watch Tři oříšky pro Popelku (“Three hazelnuts for Cinderella”) on Christmas Eve, it’s a must.

Listen to a Karel Gott song (I suggest Kdepak ty ptáčku hnízdo máš from the above-mentioned movie).

Learn to quote some of our other classic movies: Pelíšky; Vesničko má středisková; Na samotě u lesa; Sněženky a machři; Marečku, podejte mi pero; etc....people in CR actually do this a lot, especially our teachers, so they’ll love you.

Russians drink vodka, we have pivo and slivovice.

Watch the ice hockey World Championship and dread the moment when we will play against the Slovaks, but then support the winner in the following matches anyway, cause Slovaks are still our bros.

[zuzajic]

Czech nouns, their genders and declensions

There are three genders of nouns in Czech and each of them has 4 patterns of declension (masculine gender has a few more, but they’re not very common).

♂ Masculine

♀ Feminine

☺Neutral

Now, what are those “1.p. (some weird word)” things?

Those are cases, we have seven of them and I’m going to show you how to know which one is which. (1.p. stands for první pád - first case)

The example word is želva (=turtle) which is declined using the feminine pattern “žena”.

In czech schools we are taught “case questions” - you can see one in the first column next to the nominative case. Second case question would be “Without whom/what?” and so on. I have simplified them for you and put only the guide prepositions there.

Once you get used to the thought that czech prepositions are tied to a case, it’s actually not so hard.

If you know the latin cases, then you’re good to go, because that’s where ours come from, except we have one more (the seventh) because we’re extra.