# One man's look at Czech

What follows are Dan Polansky's highly incomplete and relatively disorganized notes on Czech, especially Czech grammar and punctuation. Czech vocabulary is covered in dictionaries, but I may cover idiosyncratically selected vocabulary questions here. There is a hope that someone will find the notes useful as well.

## Spelling

Czechs seem to care very much about what they consider to be correct spelling. Czech spelling seems to correspond to a single standard, unlike British vs. U.S. vs. Canadian vs. Australian etc. Spelling can be checked in Pravidla českého pravopisu.
Some forms that are commonly considered to be misspelling (even if one can argue that this is a misconception) include tchýně (vs. tchyně) and vyjímka (vs. výjimka).
There is a distinction between ů and ú, a result (some may say burden) of history; the pronunciation is the same. There are some heuristic rules of thumb for this aspect, but in case of doubt, one is well advised to consult a dictionary since certain exceptions seem to have been codified as correct.
There is a distinction between y and i, a result (some may say burden) of history; the pronunciation is the same. There is a set of rule for this aspect. Children seem to struggle with this aspect, and so do some adults. I seem to recall that in Russian (another Slavic language), the distinction between what Czechs call hard i (y) and soft i (i) is reflected in the pronunciation.
In general, there is a tight, nearly mechanical correspondence between pronunciation of spelling. It is rather easy to derive pronunciation from spelling. The other direction is also fairly straightforward but for ambiguities such as those mentioned above. It is fairly easy to produce phonetic spellings that are not part of the standard, e.g. dizajn and softvér (these spellings seem standard in Slovak).
During the 20th century, Czech underwent one or more spelling reforms. For example: filosofie --> filozofie, theorie --> teorie, analysovati --> analyzovat, president --> prezident.
Some words are taken over from English in an unchanged form as for spelling, creating exception to the rule of the spelling being phonological: design, image, banjo, smartphone, interface; these words acquire Czech pronunciation following the English one. Which words receive this treatment does not seem to be governed by any simple or fixed rule; since, by contrast, there is telefon (rather than telephone), telegraf, morfologie, etc. Interestingly, Slovak, a closely similar language, spells e.g. dizajn.
Further reading:
* Czech orthography, wikipedia.org

## Hyphens and dashes

Czech uses hyphens and en dashes.
Em dash is hardly ever used in Czech.
When an en dash is used to separate a parenthetical part of a sentence, it is enclosed with spaces (which differs from the U.S. using em dash without space enclosure?)
More is currently delegated to further reading.
Further reading:
* Pomlčku, nebo spojovník?, p3k.cz
* Pomlčka versus spojovník, didacticus.cz

## Word order

Compared to English, Czech has a much more flexible word order. This is supported by inflection. For instance, what in English would be an object is rather often on the position of subject, e.g. nádobí jsem umyl (I washed the dishes.), although in this example, inflection does not play a role.

## Czech dictionaries

See Czech dictionaries. The most modern one is ASSČ, in the process of creation.

## Definite and indefinite articles

Unlike English or German, Czech does not have definite and indefinite articles. However, some words can be pushed to serve the purpose, including ten for definite article and nějaký for indefinite article. Legal documents sometimes use the adjective předmětný in a way that resembles that of a definite article.

## Capitalization

In part, Czech capitalization resembles that of English:
* Sentences start with a capital letter.
* Nouns other than proper nouns are in general not capitalized, unlike in German.
However:
* For proper names, Czech generally does not use title case and only the first word is capitalized. And thus, there is Mnoho povyku pro nic (Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing). Of course, the word in the middle of a title can have its own rationale for capitalization, e.g. in the putative novel title Muž s deštníkem z Prahy.
* For adjectives derived from proper nouns, Czech does not capitalize them. And thus, there is český (adj:Czech), pražský (attributive:Prague), moravský (adj:Moravian), etc.

## Punctuation

Czech seem to be using something like a syntactic comma. And thus, there is comma before že, as in Vím, že nic nevím. Moreover, there is a comma before který and jenž (which, that) without regard for whether they introduce a defining clause of an extra-information clause. From what I remember, this did not use to be the case; this practice was taken over either from Austria or Germany (verification pending).
Other than that, Czech punctuation resembles that of English. There is a period at the end of a sentence; there is the question mark and exclamation mark at the end of a sentence; semicolon in the middle of a sentence is much like in English, except that Czech seem to be committing comma splice quite a bit more than English. Colon seems to be used in ways similar to English.
As for quotation marks, the Czech ones are the German ones, not the English ones (verification pending).
As for brackets, the usual ones from English apply. Czech may be more inclined to insert parentheticals (like this one) into sentences; verification pending.

## Paragraph structure

Czechs may tend to write less well organized paragraphs, with more tangential elements, with less well logically grouped items. Anecdotal; verification pending. Other than that, a Czech paragraph is like an English paragraph. The mentioned anecdotal difference, if true, is perhaps more of a matter of culture than the language per se.

## Důsledek vs. následek

I tend to use důsledek to refer to logical consequence and následek to refer to causal consequence. I am not sure where I have this norm from. It is not universally upheld by Czech writers.
And thus, it would be incorrect to state that v důsledku zranění zemřel, but it would be fine to state that následkem zranění zemřel.

## Pojem vs. termín, slovo and fráze

I tend to use pojem strictly as a synonym to the English concept, whereas Czech writers often use pojem as a synonym of the English term. My rationale is this: we need a Czech name for the concept of concept and pojem neatly fits the bill; we do not need pojem as a reference to term since we have termín for that.
And thus, a statement like tento pojem má více významů is nonsense, in my terminology; it is the významy that are pojems.
The Czech confusion may in part have to do with the German confusion concerning Begriff, which sometimes refers to concept and sometimes to word or phrase. Duden:Begriff 1 is concept; Duden:Begriff 2 is expression, word, marked as colloquial.

## Počátek vs. začátek

I once heard a philosophy university teacher indicate a difference between počátek and začátek that I found compelling. According to this distinction, počátek has to do with origination, unlike začátek. And thus, a book's začátek are the first pages, whereas its počátek may lie somewhere quite different. I am fairly confident some authors use počátek and začátek indiscriminately as synonyms.

## Dlužno

I like to use the Czech word dlužno in a way that is now archaic, approximately stating a duty. Alternatives are radno, lépe, záhodno and nutno, but, etymologically, they seem to be a worse fit. I think dluh (debt) is an excellent synecdoche for duty. The English equivalent is ought to in the deontic sense (ought to is also used in epistemic sense). Czech dlužno is still in widespread use in the phrase dlužno dodat. It seems unlikely that Czechs will fail to understand this use; at worst, some may be irritated by its being archaic. Some may be irritated by its surface affinity to the Russian modality dolžen or similar, given the current hatred (in part irrational) of all things Russian.

## Anglosaský vs. anglofonní

Czechs tend to use anglosaský in the sense of Anglophone (I think), that is, pertaining to the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, etc. It is perhaps a good idea to start using anglofonní instead, to avoid the habit of saying Anglo-Saxon in English, which apparently leads to some surprise in Anglophone commenters. And etymologically, avoiding anglosaský in this sense is parhaps not a bad idea; the Saxons are not at stake anyway, and nor are Angles; what about the poor Normans? On the other hand, one cannot push the etymological requirement too far: the modern English is not the language of Angles; it is also the language of the former Normans but above all all European Americans including former Germans, Dutch, French, etc.

## Lze říci

Lze říci is a Czech idiom that I plan to avoid. It would be equivalent to stating "One can say that X" instead of "X". Since, if X can be said, say it, and be done with it. "One can say that X" cannot be directly refuted since it is indeed true that one can say X for all sort of wrong or implausible X.

## Náhodný vs. nahodilý

I tend to use náhodný for strictly random and nahodilý for something that is not guaranteed to be random but also not guaranteed to be systematic. I need to find out to what extent this is a mere idiolect of mine. There is also pseudonáhodný for pseudorandom.

## Optimálnější and nejoptimálnější

From a strict perspective, both forms reflect erroneous understanding of the semantics of optimální (optimal). They correspond to English "more optimal" (probably intended to be better) and "most optimal" (probably intended to be best). One way to meaningfully interpret "most optimal" is as "closest to the optimum", but it is not clear why one should not simply say best instead, and in Czech, nejlepší.
On a related note, optimální is not a strict synonym of ideální, from what I understand; optimal means best given real-word constraints. That said, there are many contexts in which the two words can be used interchangeably.
Further reading:
* Optimální - optimálnější - nejoptimálnější, ideální - ideálnější - nejideálnější, nabla.cz
* Čeština před kamerou (36) - Dobrý, lepší, nejoptimálnější — ČT24, ceskatelevize.cz

## Pokud

The word pokud is often used to mean if. However, the etymology seems to point to a spatial relationship involved. This leads to a possible stylistic choice of avoiding pokud in that sense, using jestliže, pakliže, -li and v případě, že instead. The form v případě, že seems often used in legal documents.