Englishman Anthony Lauder has called the Czech Republic home for 17 years. Initially nestled in an English-speaking bubble, his perspective shifted when he committed to staying long-term. His YouTube channel shows others how to learn Czech, but he’s keen to stress he’s neither a language guru nor teacher. He’s just a regular guy who struggled to learn a language, until he hit on a few things that helped.
How long did it take you to learn Czech?
A lot longer than expected. I would say it was at least five years before I could speak Czech well.
How would you describe your Czech level now?
It’s what most people would call fluent. That is, I can speak about pretty much anything, at length, and never have to revert to English. However, there are still times when I get completely lost; mostly when people refer to, say, childhood cartoons that I never saw, or cultural events from the past I am unaware of. When Czechs get drunk and “bond” at a party, laughing and sharing jokes, and the slang gets heavy, I often am reminded that I am an outsider.
What other languages can you speak and how did learning Czech compare?
I speak French well, and German and Italian at “can get by” level. I also have dabbled in quite a few other languages, but not well enough to hold a good conversation. Czech certainly was very hard for me. Mainly because it is a Slavic language, so not closely related to English. This means there is very little common vocabulary, and the grammar is wildly different. There is much more “studying” involved (trying to cram the grammar) and it is much harder to guess what words mean than in languages like French or Italian or German.
How did you set about learning Czech?
I bought the standard textbooks (such as “Czech Step by Step”) that most English speakers buy. I found them very frustrating. Primarily because they were mostly written by Czechs, who didn’t approach the language from the mentality of an English language background. After a year or so of struggling with those books, and taking some evening classes, I gave up on that route. I threw those books out and stopped taking classes.
A few months later, I stumbled upon and bought “Czech: An Essential Grammar” by James Naughton. He teaches Czech at Oxford University, and understands the struggles that English speakers face with Czech. I devoured this book. It remains my number one recommendation whenever someone asks me how to learn Czech. A superb book, that teaches the grammar well, and really helps the student get a grasp of the basics of the language.
In addition, I bought several textbooks aimed at teaching English to Czechs. Many of them, it turns out, work well in both directions, and I found them far better than the earlier textbooks I had bought. The publishing house Grada sells some great ones, such as “Angličtina: 15 000 slovíček ve 150 tématech“ (English: 15,000 words in 150 topics).
Did you make any discoveries about how to learn Czech along the way?
I noticed that most foreigners who are learning Czech focus on reading and writing, and never learn to actually speak. This is a major mistake, and can leave you effectively mute for decades. The best language hack by far is to speak early, and speak often. The first few months will be deeply embarrassing, where you make lots of mistakes and feel foolish. But that does pass, and one day (after many months of not giving up) you will find that you can actually speak the language comfortably.
On your website you discuss the importance of ‘connectors’. What are these and why are they so important?
Wow. You have done your research! A few years ago, I met an English woman who has lived in Prague for a long time and she said to me “I can speak Czech, so long as I never have to string together more than six words.” It seemed very specific (why six words?) and also very strange. I began to wonder why saying a long sentence was difficult, when she could say short sentences well.
So, I devoted quite a long time to paying attention to actual conversations, and noticed that long sentences generally consist of short sentences joined together with reusable conversational chunks which I call “connectors”. Things like: “I have to say that …”, “Between you and me …” , “… and now that I think about it …”, “… but, to tell the truth …” and so on.
As I noticed the same connectors used repeatedly, I wrote them down, memorised them, and started to throw them into my own Czech conversations. They certainly helped me string together long sentences, which is what I had hoped for. But, what I hadn’t anticipated, was how they seemed to put Czechs more at ease when talking with me. That is, they not only helped connect short sentences together, but also seemed to help to connect people together in a better flowing conversation.
Thinking they might be useful to other people, I published a few dozen of these connectors, and was really surprised how well the idea caught on. Soon, other people translated them into many languages. And over time my list of connectors grew to several hundred.
What are conversational intimacy connectors? Why are these important?
Conversations are not just about exchanging information. A large part of a conversation is about establishing intimacy (“a connection”) with the other person. You want to make the conversation a pleasant experience, so that both people want to keep the conversation going.
When you are really struggling with a language, your urge is to use very short sentences, and to get the conversation over with as soon as possible. This is unpleasant for you and for the person you are talking with.
When you master conversational connectors, your conversations start to flow better, as you learn to have long conversations by joining short sentences together in a natural way. As you practice using connectors you are developing an ability to hold long and pleasant conversations. Pleasant for you, and pleasant for the person you are talking with.
What are language learner ladders?
A few years ago I noticed there are two, essentially separate, tracks (or “ladders”) of language learning. Formal classes often teach you a lot about a language, but never how to use the language. Similarly, some people learn to use a language but never learn much about the language.
How can this help us when learning Czech?
To really progress with a language, you need to move up both ladders progressively: balancing the deepening of theoretical knowledge with real life use of the language. That is, you need to keep hitting the textbooks as well as having actual conversations. Many people seem to hope that if they stick to one ladder they will magically acquire all the abilities from the other ladder effortlessly. That doesn’t happen.
Do you have any tips for how to learn Czech grammar?
As mentioned earlier, my number one piece of advice is to throw away the textbooks written by Czechs and buy the “Czech: An Essential Grammar” book. It is vastly superior at explaining things in a way that can be understood by people without a Slavic background.
Beyond that, if you treat grammar as primarily an academic subject you will be stuck on the “theory” ladder, and never progress to really internalizing the grammar. Only when you really use the language in real life does it sink in deeply, until you reach a point where you can use it automatically. No amount of studying textbooks will get you to that point.
How do you remember case endings?
Early on, I tried learning case endings by rote. I spent hours memorizing them, and could get a perfect score in written texts where I had to write all the grammar tables out from memory. The problem was they took time to recall. That was too slow for real life use, where I would stumble and stutter and panic as I tried to find some case ending that I had memorized.
To speed up recall, I started using the ancient memory technique of associating real life situations with funny images for case endings. For example, the Czech word for “roof” is “střecha”, and you can remember the 7th (instrumental) case ending by thinking of the real life situation of needing to tell the landlord about a problem “with the roof”, and imagining that the problem is a cow standing on the roof. The image of a cow reminds you that you need to say “se střechou”(“with the roof”), because the ending sounds a bit like the word “cow”.
I found this worked far better and faster than rote learning, and I soon made lots of images for all the other case endings. Over time, I found that these images work a bit like training wheels on a bicycle: they help greatly early on, but soon you find you don’t need the images at all, since you will have internalized the endings, and can just use them correctly without thinking about it.
How can Czech language learners stay motivated when they feel they’re not making progress?
That is a great question. The number one mistake in language learning is giving up. You can try to rely on willpower, and force yourself to keep studying, but you will never look forward to it. The only thing that really kept me going was to stop seeing the language as an academic subject to be tackled, and start using it as a tool to make things happen.
For example, early on I received a letter from the gas company, saying I owed them a lot of money. I was sure they had made a mistake, and set myself the challenge of handling it all in Czech. Admittedly, I was nervous, and spent ages thinking in advance about what I would say. I called up the gas company, and they sent a gas engineer out, we discussed what the problem might be, and he discovered they had indeed made a mistake with the meter reading. I found the whole thing hard going, and it really stretched my language abilities. But afterwards, I felt fantastic.
Small victories, then, in real life situations, help you move from the grind of endless study to actually making things happen with the language. I urge people who are struggling with learning Czech to force themselves into real life encounters that will lead to small victories. It can start off simply, such as asking for a paper bag in the grocery store, and with each victory you prepare yourself for a slightly more challenging victory next time. It gets easier, and eventually you realize you can now handle yourself in pretty much any situation in Czech.
Finally, what is the one piece of advice you’d give to someone asking how to learn Czech?
If you find yourself wondering “why am I learning this stuff?”, as you stare at boring grammar tables, put the books down and find a small but real life need to learn the language. If it remains an academic chore, you will have an unpleasant relationship with the language and feel the urge to give up. Connecting with a language means using it to make things happen. Find small victories, and you will find joy in the language, which will give you the drive to master it.