A while ago I received an email from a lady who’s boyfriend was struggling with learning Czech (I think he was American). She asked about my own personal experience and relationship with the Czech language. As I haven’t written a new post here for quite some time (sorry!), I thought I would share the thoughts I had with you too. So here goes…

My Czech learning has been rather passive for the last few years I’m afraid but here’s the brief version of my story.

I met my wife while we were both living in Cambridge and she was living with other Czechs and Slovaks. I had also previously travelled in both Slovakia and the Czech Rep. While travelling I learnt some basic pleasantries; please, thank you, two beers and where’s the toilet! When I met Radka, I quickly learnt colours, numbers, animals and bird names plus a few useful phrases. After three years together and with our first daughter we decided to move to the C.R. Before the big move we took a two week holiday, staying with her father in Prague and I went to a language school in Žižkov for three hours per day for two weeks. I was also self studying after the sessions and sitting in the evenings watching TV with Radka’s dad where I picked up a few more words and practised what I had learnt.

So, cut to moving here (ten years ago now) – we lived with her father for about 3 months while looking for a house to buy. During that time I was again practising with her father, mainly while watching football on the telly. 🙂 I also saw a Czech teacher for face to face lessons but only saw here two or three times because she wasn’t very reliable. Since then I have done a bit of self study at home sometimes using an app called Memrise or by watching TV and noting down new words. I have found that the longer I have been living here the easier it is to remember new words the first or second time I hear them.

All that said, I still don’t understand most of what people say. One to one, I can often get the gist (general meaning) but in group conversations it’s very difficult. I can usually get my point across and say what I want to but often with bad word order and the wrong case endings! I read something recently that said Czech (and I guess other Slavic languages) is one of the hardest to learn as a non-Slavic foreigner.

Anyway, my advice to her boyfriend was to be a bit more proactive than I have been in recent years. Time will help massively and be brave enough to try speaking even badly because people are usually quite happy that you are even trying. Young people will understand your bad Czech better than older people (50 plus) and often have a bit of English to help you understand. Get to the pub, relax and tell friends funny stories using any words you have (I used to say zeleny koberec venku because I could never remember the word for grass!)

Anyway, I just thought you might find that interesting and it’s about time I posted something right? 🙂

Goodbye and good riddance, an English saying meaning that you are glad to be ‘getting rid’ or leaving something behind.  No, I’m not talking about a certain Mr. Trump, but the year 2020 in general. It’s a phrase that I think many (all?) people will be saying about this year.  But what have we learned in 2020?

Personally, I tried to learn a bit more Czech, better running technique and to have have more patience in general. Unfortunately I let ‘the situation‘ distract me from persevering with my Czech so it’s back to passive learning I’m afraid.  It also became a bit of an excuse if I’m honest, for not writing any blog posts or filming any videos. I will try to make up for that next year, starting today.

New words and phrases in English you may have heard this year?  Leave yours in the comments below.  For one I have to admit I had never heard the verb ‘to furlough‘ before the start of 2020, but it has quickly found its way into the lexicon of the mainstream.  People working in the civil service may have been aware of it as it means ‘to give workers temporary but long term time off work’.  Outside of the medical profession you would be ‘hard pressed‘ (challenged) to find someone who knew what a ‘corona virus‘ was, I think we are all now acutely aware! The phrase ‘global pandemic‘ is one we hoped we’d never hear in our lifetimes and although the word epidemic was widely used, I don’t think too many people used the word for someone who is a specialist in the science of epidemics, ‘an epidemiologist‘, sometimes referred to as ‘disease detectives‘. Other related phrases such as              ‘social distancing‘,            to keep one’s distance from another, [[[‘self-isolate‘]]]  taking the social distancing to the extreme and ‘denialist‘ someone who denies (to deny) the existence of something (like corona virus), and the acronym (abbreviation using the first letters of each word in a phrase) ‘WFH‘ meaning working from home have all come into our regular chosen vocabulary. Note: not ‘WTF‘ which means something else 🙂  Who would have thought ‘face masks‘ would become a fashionable item and that the hyphenated word ‘single-use‘ would refer to something other than plastic and condoms!

More positively, an ‘e-bike’ is something your parents or grandparents are very likely to be talking about and the word ‘Anglosphere‘ has become more popular as a way of grouping together the countries where English is the first language (UK, US, Canada, Australia. New Zealand, Ireland). ‘Contactless‘ as in your new credit or debit card which do not require inserting into a terminal to pay as opposed to ‘a contact sport‘ such as football, rugby and ice hockey. ‘Influencer‘, a social media term meaning someone who has a lot of influence by way of a large online audience. Another acronym, ‘G.O.A.T.‘ in sporting terms meaning: the greatest of all time found its way into my ears for the first time this year. Think Muhammad Ali, Pelé, Michael Jordan etc. Maybe that has been around for longer and I was just ‘living under a rock‘.

Anyway, here’s to hoping next year will be a little more positive. Let me know your favourite new words from 2020 in the comments below. I’ll be back at Christmas.