Learning Czech: Week 1 Done and Dusted!

Today marks one week since I began my mission to learn Czech. I’ve been doing Duolingo lessons every day, and I’ve even watched some children’s TV shows in Czech to get used to the sounds of the language! But what have I learned in the past seven days?

Although Czech uses the Latin script, just like English, it has letters that I’m not familiar with, like ř and ž. If I want to be able to read and pronounce Czech properly, I’m going to need to devote some time to studying the alphabet and the individual sounds of the language.

Czech has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. I’m used to two grammatical genders from speaking Spanish, but the extra neuter category will take some getting used to.

As good as Duolingo is for introducing the basics of a language, it’s teaching me some really weird sentences in Czech, like “A book is a thing” and “That big pear is at home”, which aren’t really practical on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully I’ll start learning some useful phrases soon!