Czech: An Essential Grammar (Routledge Essential Grammars)

A lecturer of the University of Oxford, UK, James Naughton has written "Colloquial Czech" and "Colloquial Slovak." I began studying Czech decades ago before the end of communist governments in Central Europe. I own one edition of "Colloquial Czech," and wanted to improve my knowledge of Czech grammar before visiting the Czech Republic in the near future. "Czech: An Essential Grammar" goes into detail about the finer points of the language, beginning with pronunciation and orthography and ending with word formation using prefixes and suffixes. I think it is a very useful book for students of the Czech language.

This Routledge series book helps those who once studied Czech but have forgotten a lot through disuse. Rather than make the reviewer plow again through a traditional grammar book, this series allows instant access to actual advanced sentences in a grammatical context that is both helpful as well as attractive. I think Routledge has a good format in these books.

This is a bit different, in the way grammar is discussed and presented, but fits Czech to do it this way, and I loved it. Could just sit and read it like any book and come away with good understanding. Very useful!

Really! First, use this work. I know it means seemingly meaningless memorization, but then the Short Teach Yourself Czech will make a lot more sense, and you can concentrate on the colloquial expressions and phrases. Then you can polish off your knowledge with Radio Praha (which has the printed Czech of their articles and sound in RealAudio or Windows Media) and the Fronek dictionary. The Fronek IS hideously expensive, but since you're not gonna find "2,000+ Essential Czech Verbs," you'll find all you need on the irregualr conjugations and declensions there.

Very technical

It's a book on czech grammer...nuff said!But really...it is a great book to own if you are working your way through a challenging, and I hope rewarding, language. I'll let you know when I get to the other side!

Very pleased finally to have a Czech grammar, I have not as yet managed to make use of the grammar. Thus I cannot as yet write a proper review. When I have had the opportunity to make use of that grammar, I will then be able to write my evaluation.

I would not consider this for beginners, however it is a good book once you learn the basics

Without any doubt, this is the best one-volume guide to Czech grammar that you will find - and you will certainly +need+ this book (or something very like it) if you plan to go beyond basic phrasebook communication.It covers all the ground that you will need to cope with almost any situation and is clearly and logically laid out with a well-written text. All reasonable questions and areas of uncertainty are anticipated and answered, with helpful tips on informal usages.The only real negative is the price, which is not cheap for a paperback. But then quality rarely comes cheap.

I echo the praise for this book from the previous reviewers. As mentioned, this is a bit heavy for a beginner, but perfect for someone moving to intermediate stage and attempting to make sense of the grammar (and grammar is all-important in Czech - there's no way of progressing until you've got it nailed).The reservation ? The author's decision to present cases in a non-standard order. It's standard for Czech to list cases in 1-Nominative 2-Genitive 3-Dative 4-Accusative up to 7-Instrumental, but the author has arbitrarily decided to list in 1-4-2-3-6-7-5 order ! If this was the only reference material you ever used it wouldn't matter much, but it's irritating to have to remember that the format differs from all other reference material, so that you find the accusative form where you expect the genitive to be, and so on. But that irritation apart, it's an excellent reference book.

After twenty-five years in the Czech Republic, I think this book is definitely progress. Much more intuitive, much less rigid, more intelligent in thinking about Czech as a foreign language. The reordering of the cases is ballsy in one sense, pedagogically brilliant in another. I had no problems whatsoever, even after all these years, with how they do it and it reinforced my understanding of the direct and oblique cases. The book, however, is in desperate need of paradigm tables in the back or an index of them at least.

Thorough and clear. Could do with a better overview on the complexities of cases and declining them

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