A language learners’ forum

Thanks a lot; I will check 'czech it out'.

A small remark for people considering the Czech It UP series: there is an answer key, but you have to go to their web page to download it. You can just download it, no special permission needed. I didn't immediately realize there was an answer key (in fact, I only just realized it ), but it's obviously very important.

I actually bought their C1 textbook a few months ago, but I ended up not using it. At least not yet. Well... I looked at the topics, and they're your typical cheesy textbook topics, and I decided I'd rather just read books. However, the grammar exercises in particular could be very useful for me, and I should get to them at some point.

Since I don't have my own log, I suppose this is the best place to post the news: I passed the CCE-C1 exam! I took it in mid-May, and they gave me a code with which to check my results once they became available, and - there they were a couple of days ago. Except that my scores are so much better than anything I would have dared to hope for that I keep wondering if there's a mistake.

I have been studying Czech with a textbook (le verbe tchèque) for one year. I watched some episodes of 'Games of thrones' dubbed in Czech. I am satisfied to be able to understand some of it. There is still of lot to learn of course. I ordered an easy reader (A2 level) because my vocabulary is insufficient to read the real thing.

After reading Easy readers level A2, I am starting a czech translation of a novel by Arnette Lamb. The gap is huge in terms of unknown words. Some sentences are incomprehensible but I ordered the english version of the novel. Still, I enjoy reading this book.

When I first vaguely began thinking about maybe attending the upcoming gathering in Praha (mostly because of the promised 'language tables') I also started out studying Czech. I had a Routledge grammar and a Langenscheidt dictionary, and as usual I used Wikipedia and Google Translate to produce bilingual study texts. I even listened to snippets of Czech read aloud by the machine voice in Google Translate. It helped me that I already had spent time learning some other Slavic languages at least passively, including Polish and Slovak.

But alas, then I went to Madagascar and forgot all about language learning for almost three weeks, and since I came home mid April I have spent most of my time on other things, including my photo collection and my garden and inland tourism (making 'museum drawings'), and when I have watched Youtube videos and read goodnight goodies I have favoured languages which I already understood, like Germanic and Romance. However today it's pouring down so now I'm going to study Czech again - at least for a couple of hours until the rain stops. My goal is to be able to read simple wikipedian stuff with the help of a dictionary (maybe I can find a smaller one than my thick yellow Langenscheidt once I have arrived down there), but I will definitely NOT be able to speak it nor to understand its spoken version.

I am studying the lessons of 'Czech it up' at level A2. I gave up reading a novel as the level was C2 which has too many rare words.
Finding words in the dictionary is sometimes a challenge because of vowel umlauts and consonant alternations.
Czech seems not too difficult at
first because of the familiar indo-european syntax but the morphology is a challenge (more so than modern Greek).