How to learn Czech by reading

Czech gave the world the word robot, from Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R., and a modern literature that runs from Jaroslav Hašek’s good soldier Švejk to Bohumil Hrabal, Milan Kundera and the Nobel laureate Jaroslav Seifert. Prague was also Franz Kafka’s city, although he wrote in German.

Czech looks dense on the page. Strč prst skrz krk, “stick a finger through your throat,” is a whole sentence without a single vowel letter. But its spelling is consistent and its stress always falls on the first syllable, so once you know the letters you can read any word aloud. What takes longer is the grammar, and that’s where reading helps most.

What makes Czech hard to read

• Diacritics that matter. The háček softens a letter (č, š, ž, ř, ě, ň, ť, ď), the čárka lengthens a vowel (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý), and the kroužek marks a long ů. Length changes meaning: byt is an apartment, být means “to be.”
• The famous ř. A trilled r and a sound like the s of “pleasure” at once, as in Dvořák. It’s rare among the world’s languages, and it’s best learned by ear.
• Vowelless syllables. R and l can carry a syllable on their own: vlk (wolf), krk (neck), prst (finger).
• Seven cases. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns change their endings with their role, and Czech actively uses the vocative for addressing people: pane profesore, “professor,” Petře, “Peter.”
• Endings that change the stem. Some endings alter the consonant before them: Praha, but v Praze, “in Prague”; ruka, “hand,” but v ruce, “in the hand.”
• Little words in second place. Short pronouns and the reflexive se gather in the second position of a clause, whatever comes first: Jednoho rána se Řehoř probudil, “One morning Gregor woke up.”
• Two kinds of “you.” Ty is for family and friends, vy for everyone else, with a plural verb (though a past participle stays singular: Vy jste byl?). Switching from vy to ty is a small ceremony in Czech life, and novels make a point of it.
• Aspect. Most verbs come in pairs, imperfective for processes and habits, perfective for completed actions: dělat and udělat, psát and napsat.
• Two kinds of Czech. Novels use standard Czech for narration, but characters in contemporary Czech fiction often speak Common Czech, the everyday spoken language: dobrý becomes dobrej, mléko becomes mlíko, malé okno becomes malý okno. Once you move on to Czech authors, you’ll meet both on the same page.

Czech reading at each level

What to expect from Czech text at each CEFR level:

• A2, elementary. Short sentences in the present and past, the most common cases, frequent aspect pairs, and everyday vocabulary.
• B1, intermediate. All seven cases, aspect choices in narration, verbs of motion (jít and chodit), relative clauses with který, and the conditional with bych, bys and by.
• B2, upper intermediate. Passive forms, participles and more literary vocabulary.
• C1, advanced. Close to the original, with some passages condensed. C2 is the complete text.

The scale itself is explained in CEFR levels explained.

The Metamorphosis at A2 and at B2

Kafka wrote the story in Prague in 1912. Here are two moments from it, written for this page. In Czech translations Gregor Samsa is traditionally Řehoř:

A2

Jednoho rána se Řehoř Samsa probudil a zjistil, že se proměnil ve velkého brouka. Nemohl vstát z postele. Bál se, že přijde pozdě do práce.

One morning Gregor Samsa woke up and found that he had turned into a big beetle. He couldn’t get out of bed. He was afraid he would be late for work.

B2

Když se otec vrátil z práce a uviděl, že Řehoř vylezl ze svého pokoje, popadl jablka z mísy a začal jimi po něm házet, až mu jedno z nich uvízlo v zádech.

When his father came home from work and saw that Gregor had crawled out of his room, he grabbed apples from the bowl and began throwing them at him, until one of them lodged in his back.

The A2 text shows se taking second place in its clause, a time phrase in the genitive (jednoho rána, “one morning”), and ve velkého brouka, where an animate noun takes the accusative ending -a. The B2 sentence adds the reflexive possessive svého, “his own,” the instrumental jimi, “with them,” and po něm, “at him.” Záda, “back,” exists only in the plural, hence v zádech. And notice that začal, “began,” is followed by the imperfective házet: in Czech, you can only begin a process, never a completed act.

Your daily Czech reading, in four steps

1. Read along with the narration. Start a section and follow the highlighted words as they’re spoken. You’ll hear vowel length, the first-syllable stress and ř as the words go by.
2. Reread without the narrator. Take the same pages again, at your speed. Endings that puzzled you begin to look familiar on the second pass.
3. Tap for the base form. When an ending hides a word you might know, tap it: Praze leads back to Praha. Then keep going.
4. Learn the Common Czech pairs. When you move on to Czech novels, characters will say dobrej or mlíko; knowing the standard forms behind them is the quickest way to read contemporary Czech fiction comfortably.

Why read at your level? For English, Paul Nation (2006, “How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening?”) estimated that reading unsimplified novels takes around 8,000 to 9,000 word families. Czech’s figures differ, and every Czech word comes in many forms, but the lesson holds: an original novel asks for far more words than a learner has. See how many words you need to read a novel, extensive reading and reading while listening.

Classics to start with

• The Metamorphosis is short, strange and unforgettable. Read it adapted at B1 or B2, then come back for the complete text at C2.
• Grimms’ Fairy Tales are short and complete, ideal daily reading at A2.
• The Time Machine is Victorian science fiction from a generation before Čapek’s robots, a good B1 or B2 read.
• Treasure Island has pirates, a map and a lot of dialogue, a classic first novel at A2 or B1.
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a book of twelve stories, so you finish something every few sessions at B1 or B2.

Reading Czech with Lexo

Czech endings change the shape of words you know, and Lexo’s word card changes them back. Tap a word and you see its meaning in that sentence, its base form and its part of speech, so Praze, ruce and zádech lead back to Praha, ruka and záda. Phrases and idioms are explained as a whole, the full sentence is translated into English, and words you want to keep go into your Words list.

Every word can be played on its own, so you can hear a long vowel or an ř as often as you like, and the whole book is narrated, with different voices for different characters and the text highlighted word by word. There’s also a sentence-by-sentence mode, which shows one sentence at a time with its audio and translation.

Every book comes at five levels, A2 to C2, chosen book by book. Many Czech editions don’t exist until a reader asks; ask for The Metamorphosis at a level no one has asked for yet and Lexo writes it for you, chapter 1 within minutes and the rest while you read, with a dated “First edition” mark that stays yours. Books download for offline reading, and purchases go through your Apple ID, so there’s no account to create.

Czech’s closest relatives on this site are Polish, Ukrainian and Russian.

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