Reddit reviews Czech: An Essential Grammar (Routledge Essential Grammars)

Very sorry to break it to you but there are very few of the mainstream language resources which have czech. Rosseta Stone, Duolinguo, Michel Thomas are all missing Czech despite the fact that it is one language were good resources would be very helpful. The closest I have found for anything interactive is LiveMocha. However its not the best.

In terms of material, there are a growing number of books and other resources but they very much support the traditional way of learning language. Pilmsleur is a good intro course but isn't great for getting into the grammar of the language. This grammar book is good but you'll probably be crying after about 5 pages. There is a good series of textbooks but I can't seem to find it at the moment and the authors do an accompanying series of books/cd's which are designed for beginners reading czech.

If you have the time and money, the courses at Charles University in Prague are pretty good and an immersion in learning Czech is very valuable given the level of distance between English and Czech.

In addition here are some small resources which are semi-useful:
- Little Czech Primer

- Weird American Czech TV course

- Dictionary thats better than Google

- Youtube clips from a guy learning Czech, good for when you need to realise you are not crazy, the language is crazy.

Most of all you should realise that Learning Czech is not like learning French. I have learnt French and Dutch and both were a lot lot easier than Czech. This is because Czech is Slavic and so the grammar is very different so you will be forced to alter the way you construct sentences and vocabulary will be far more distant and new. All this requires more RAM on your part. To make matters worse the resources are limited and Czechs are not very used to teaching Czech as a foreign language or hearing it spoken by a foreigner. Given that Czech contains sounds and grammatical concepts that are not in English it can therefore take some serious work and immersion to really overcome this additional hurdle.

Look at this essential Czech grammar

essential Czech grammar

If it is useful for you, you can buy it legally amazon essential Czech grammar

You can check also this

A Grammar Of Czech As A Foreign Language

the same book A Grammar Of Czech As A Foreign Language


Czech Language Resources

There are lots of course books, and many of them are popular, but most of them are not very good in my opinion.


My top recommendation, by far, is this book that will give you a good grasp of the grammar, without being the book being boring: https://www.amazon.com/Czech-Essential-Grammar-Routledge-Grammars/dp/0415287855


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Can confirm, the Assimil Czech course is great. So is Mluvtecesky.net, as recommended by someone else already. Especially if you are a new learner. Other resources that I have enjoyed during my journey (I'm about 9 months in) -

• Colloquial Czech by James Naughton - I found the dialogs as well as the grammar explanations helpful without being overwhelming.
  
• Czech - An Essential Grammar, also by James Naughton - this book is my gold standard for grammar reference. Explanation are clear and without fluff. Don't buy the E-book version! The diacritic marks are missing!
  
• Assimil Czech (from French) - they also have Czech from German
  
• The Case Book for Czech - Awesome deep dive into different case usage. I love it but it is of limited use until case usage gets a little more automatic for me.
  
• Pimsleur Czech - YMMV with Pimsleur but I credit their Czech course with helping my pronunciation tremendously. You won't get more than 'travel Czech' out of it though.
  
• Lonely Planet Czech Phrasebook
  
  There are a few other resources I like but thats my ideal short list. If you are already familiar with case usage in Slavic languages by any chance, it will help. This is the first Slavic language I have attempted and it's been quite a challenge. If you have zero experience with the language and are cautious about using the Assimil without French or German knowledge, my must-have textbook to start (and the one I wish I had started with) would be Colloquial Czech. The grammar explanations are clear, the dialogs are generally good, and all of the recordings are available for free, so you also have an audio component to work with.
  
  As a side note, I would also recommend signing up for HelloTalk - there seems to be a good amount of Czech speakers on there, especially if you are willing to help with their English. Plus, they have zero qualms about correcting the shit out of your sentences, so as long as the bluntness doesn't bug you it is a great resource.

Here is the mobile version of your link

I have also used James Naughton's Czech An Essential Grammar. https://www.amazon.com/Czech-Essential-Grammar-Routledge-Grammars/dp/0415287855 Though by the time I got it, I was no longer working through a lot of the stuff. I learned some from his old Colloquial Czech https://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Czech-Complete-Course-Beginners/dp/0415161347/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505818609&sr=1-1&keywords=naughton+colloquial+czech which is hardcore but approachable as a revision aid. The former is a reference, and may do some of what you want.

I'm czech - ask me anything, anytime. pm if you want :)
Check out this thread. There are some interesting links there.

Also, I've heard good reviews on this book. Good luck!

> ž

As an aside, if you practice pronouncing this letter and even sort-of get it down, you will really impress Czech's when you try speaking the language and can do it. (I used to repeat it over and over, under my breath, when I was alone riding the tram to or from wherever.)

If you can roll your R's, you can do it! It'll just take practice to be able to trill the unusual "zh" sound the letter makes. If you can't roll your R's, Give this a shot.

Also, this book is great if you want to learn more Czech, and the Pimsleur audio lessons will get you going with phrases and vocabulary.