Talk:Czech language
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The complexity of the Czech language
Due to its complexity is said to be one of the world's most difficult languages to learn. The complexity originates from several sources:
- extensive morphology (some words have over 200 possible word forms)
- free word order (often all the permutations are valid)
Both are true for almost all Slavic languages, so why Czech is considered more difficult than other Slavic languages here? For me it was not not more difficult than Polish for example. So I propose to delete this paragraph as the author's private point of view.
- People seem to like calling every Slavic language "[one of] the world's most difficult languages to learn". Indeed, it's largely opinion and may be freely discarded. --Brion
And there's a lot of other candidates too. People often call Chinese one of the world's most difficult languages to learn, and some African languages are occasionally cited as candidates as well. --Delirium 05:04, Oct 29, 2003 (UTC)
One man's meat is another man's poison. Something like that. It is my personal experience that claims about one language being more difficult than the other (let alone one of the most ... stuff) are usually groundless myths. Whether a foreign language will be difficult for you to learn, depends upon numerous things.
First of all, what is your native language? If the language you want to learn is similar to yours (belongs to the same language family or group etc.), it will be much easier for you to learn it than a very different language from another part of the world. It will be naturally much easier for a Polish guy to learn Czech than for a, say, Spanish guy. Chinese is said to be very difficult but for whom, let me ask? Japanese people learn Chinese quite easily while Americans don't.
Secondly, how good are you at learning languages? If you have the talent, you can crack Czech and Chinese alike down pretty quickly if you are really eager to learn them and have some free time. Finally, there are even more factors that determine this, like your surroundings, people around you, even political situation in your country.
So, there can be no ideally motivated claim that a particular language is more difficult than the others. These things are hard to judge about, they are relative. I've been learning English for over eleven years (I'm Lithuanian) and guess what, I don't feel confident with my English at all.
Now about the arguments. *free word order (often all the permutations are valid) It was free in almost every ancient language. Czech is by no means the only language to retain this feature. Word order is free in most other Slavic languages and in all Baltic languages (only two of them survive, though. Word order is absolutely free in them and in extinct Baltic languages). Possibly there are non-Indo-European languages with free word order as well.
*extensive morphology (some words have over 200 possible word forms) Again I must say there is nothing unusual about this fact. Ancient languages also had this many word forms (to have many different word forms is an archaic feature, their number decreases in all languages in time for some reasons not yet discovered by linguistics). Most notably, Sanskrit verbs could have over 700 forms. Other Slavic languages also have many different verb forms (one of them has retained dual).
Therefore, the it is said ... is to be removed. Such phrases are considered weasel terms. 213.226.138.241 12:36, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The real problem is the irregularity of Czech morphology. In comparison with Russian, Slovak, etc. (official) Czech morphology is extremely irregular (I would say it is a mess). However nobody is a native speaker of that language. Morphology of colloquial Czech is much simpler.
So I would say that morphology of Czech is extremelly hard to learn. But I agree, that it is silly to say it about the whole language -- for me, the hardest thing about any language is the usage, registers, etc. -- Jirka
Pronunciation of Polish RZ
QUOTE It also features the consonant ř, a phoneme that is said to be unique to Czech and quite difficult for foreigners to pronounce (it's close a sound that would be written as rzh in English). /QUOTE This is one of our (Czech) national myths, but is it true? I know very little Polish, but what about Rzeczpospolita (republic) and przepraszam (please) ?
- Polish rz is pronounced like Czech ž. --Chris 22:15, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- The rz in the Rzeczpospolita is pronounced as ž but rz in przepraszam is pronounced in the same way as our (czech) ř is. But Polish is the only other language I know which uses it... --Lukas 13:27 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What's the difference between czech ř, and ž? is it a 'voiced/unvoiced' pair (such as in the Rzeczpospolita/przepraszam pair). In polish 'ż'/'rz' mark the same sound, with morphology acting different on it (as in the pair 'może' (maybe) != 'morze' (sea), which are pronounced the same, but 'ż' declines to 'g' while 'rz' declines to 'r'), and both 'rz' and 'ż' can be voiced or unvoiced in accordance to possition. As for other languages - at least the voiced 'ż' is present in bulgarian/russian/ukrainian, marked as 'ж'. In Czech, is it that ř is always unvoiced and ž always voiced?
No. ř can be both voiced or voiceless (compare tři three and dři rub). (However, phonemically ř does not distinguish voicing - there is no minimal pair). The voiceless counterpart of ž is š. All (ř, ž, š) are fricatives; ř is a trill, ž and š are not. -- Jirka
Zmrzl, ztvrdl. Do you know of anything which does the opposite, softens when it freezes? -phma
OK, I give up. Stupid link to Croatian page on Czech didnt work. Maybe because of diacritical mark (haček). Later.....Mir Harven 17:27, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC) --
Languages other than Czech with the ř sound
According to M. G. Kossmann and H. J. Stroomer (Phonologies of Asia and Africa, ed. Alan S. Kaye, vol. 1, p. 470), the Berber language Riff has this sound where Tamazight and related languages have /l/. Its tense/geminate counterpart /ll/ (or /l:/) becomes an affricate [dž].
A voiceless relative of ř, /rš/, is found in Nivkh, and is apparently a voiceless /r/ phonemically. -- LudwigVan 15:55, 2005 Jan 28 (UTC)
- "Of unique and difficult sounds, Czech boasts ř, basically trilled r which is not in any other language (except for Polish and some dialects of French)."
- Source: [1] (http://www.bohemica.com/czechonline/reference/czechtrivia/common_learner_errors.htm)
- PS: This whole site is great: Yellow Pages of The Czech Language (http://www.bohemica.com/czechonline/reference/referencetop.htm)
- Adam78 01:28, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- I was always under the impression that Polish rz is now pronounced as Czech ž (a voiced postalveolar fricative) in the standard dialect. I wasn't aware of it being in any French dialects either; I only learned Parisian pronunciation, where r is a voiced uvular fricative.
- Something else I should check into...
- About the sound being found in Riff: there's not much written on that particular Berber language; most linguistic writings seem to focus on Central Atlas Tamazight (and Tachelhit, which is very closely related) as Morocco's unofficial indigenous language. I'd like to see more written on Riff (also known as Tarifit), or actually hear the language spoken; I don't like to base my conclusions on a single citation.
- On a side note, Arabic, like Czech, boasts a unique consonant: a voiced velarized alveolar stop, the sound of ض dād. It's rare indeed, but not quite unique. Most varieties of Berber have that sound, but they originate as two different phonemes in Proto-Afro-Asiatic: The Arabic consonant came from Proto-Semitic *ṣ́ (most likely a glottalized voiceless lateralized alveolar affricate, the sound of Navajo tł’); the Berber sound from Proto-Afro-Asiatic *ṭ (a glottalized voiceless dental stop). LudwigVan 03:34, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to know how often do Czechs say things like "strc^ prst skrz krk"?
V. Kodytek 18.02.05 15:08 CET