Golden Prague, Expat life, tips and reviews

Czech is said to be one of the most difficult European languages to learn, only Finnish and Hungarian are deemed to be more difficult.

Nevertheless, knowing a few words in Czech will convert you from a tourist into a guest in the eyes of the people here. I have put together a little list to help you, pronunciation in brackets, so lets learn Czech!

Three things before we start, in Czech the stress is always on the first syllable, accents simply “prolong” the sound and things are always spoken as they are read, at least no exemptions there! (simplified advice but it will get you there)

Saying “hello” to people:

Doesn’t matter if you enter a shop, restaurant or if you simply meet somebody in the street, make eye contact and say:

Dobrý den (Dobree den) literally “Good Day” but also the more formal version of “hello”.

If you want to be a bit more sophisticated you can also adapt your greeting for the time of the day:

Dobre rano (Dobreh rahno) “Good Morning”

Dobrý večer (Dobree vetcher) “Good Evening”

Dobrou noc (Dobroh nots) “Good Night”, often used before retiring to bed, in the sense of “Sleep well”

Two words that you will hear all the time:

Prosím (proseem) “Please” It doesn’t matter if you order a beer or ask for the way, or simply sign in a shop what item you like to buy, adding Prosím (proseem) “Please” to the end of your sentence will make people much friendlier towards you. Czech people are very polite and appreciate when others are the same.

Promiňte (promin^yehteh) “Sorry” In the sense of excuse me/ pardon me

You can use it if you want to pass somewhere, like in a full tram, when you want to reach the exit or on other occasions when somebody blocks your way.

To round it up a bit, here some words to say Good-bye and Thank you in Czech:

Na shledanou (Na shlaydanoh) means “Good-bye” and is said also when you leave a shop or restaurant, just look at the people around you and throw a “Na shledanou” into the air and everybody will think: Wow! What a polite foreigner;-)

Děkuji (Dyekuyi) stands for “Thank you”. Whenever you receive something, like your food in the restaurant or the change on the supermarket till it is common to say “Děkuji”

More to come, stay tuned and subscribe to my blog

Edit: Ivanhoe From Ohio with Love made the following comment/ correction:

” Good Morning should be Dobre rano and Good Night should be Dobrou noc.” For the moment I will leave both versions in the post until further research, but I guess he is right!

Thank You! SY

2.Edit: As suspected, Ivanhoe  From Ohio with Love was right and the original post has been corrected. My apologies to everybody for the confusion! SY

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