Language Closest to Czech

Discussion in 'General Language' started by czechlover34, Jul 30, 2004.

  1. czechlover34

    czechlover34 Member

    Ahoj,
    I am interested in taking a language course at my school, either French or German. However the language that I would like to learn above both of those and all languages is Czech. However that is not a language that is taught at my school and as far as I know taught in the entire state of Michigan. :( So that brings me to my question. What language is closer to Czech, French of German? I would be happy to hear people's advice.

    Theresa
     
  2. adder

    adder Active Member

    Well, we should start with that Czech is a West-Slavic language, German is Germanic and French is Romanic so all of them are from completely different families. I'm Polish and we have some things taken from German as well as from French. I think the similar aspects of Czech should be taken from French or German. Anyway, neither language sounds close to Czech, the grammar is different and the vocabulary is similar only where Czech borrows something either from German or from French.
     
  3. Eva2

    Eva2 Well-Known Member

    The closest to the Czech language is Slovak, followed by Polish, followed by Serbo-Croatian and Russian. They form a family of Slavic languages, completely different from French or German.
     
  4. czechlover34

    czechlover34 Member

    Thanks for the help. Unfortunately my school doesn't teach any languages in the Slavic family :( .
     
  5. hockeygirl_leafs07

    hockeygirl_leafs07 Active Member

    The best language to learn is latin, even though it's a "dead" language, I studied it and it helps you a lot if you're learning almost any european language, in my opinion any way. Latin even improved my english. I studied french for almost 12 years, and studied german too.

    German is definately you're best bet if you can only choose between French and German. I think there are more similarities, ie: the declensions, learning masculine, feminine, neuter nouns, ...but still German and Czech are very different, Czech is way harder. Latin could help a lot with Czech but since you can't take it..........
    Besides, I think you may imitate German sounds better than French. Americans trying to speak French sounds so incredibly awful.
     
  6. nikia7

    nikia7 New Member

    Dear Czechlover- I know for a fact that they do teach Czech at University of Michigan--i'm not quite sure where you are in your education, I'm guessing high school. But if so, here is all the info for Czech at U of M..which you could take not too long from now.
    Czech courses at U of M

    Good luck!

    Nikia7
     
  7. czechlover34

    czechlover34 Member

    Děkuji! I have not been able to find a college that teaches Czech. I have been researching that for many months now and I have not found a single college that offers czech courses. Somehow I must have missed it on their site. I am a Sophmore in High School, but I already know where I will be going to college :wink: .
     
  8. hana

    hana Member

    ma dear i think german is easier for ya......bt u might use french much more it's the 2nd international language after english!
     
  9. nikdo

    nikdo Well-Known Member

    Hi Theresa

    I'm a native speaker of the Czech language and know both German and French languages relatively well. Definitely pick German as German had a strong influence on Czech in the past. People don't realize this as it isn't apparent at first. When I moved to Germany and started to learn German I was surprized by how many Czech idioms are just literal translation of their German counterparts (while when translated literaly into English or French you couldn't even guess the meaning). If it wasn't for the Czech national revival movement the Czech language might have been extinct and replaced by German. Yet not so long ago, almost all words for household items were of German origin. Also the slang (especially dated slang) and informal language contains myriads of German words. When new technical terms were to be introduced into Czech the scientists and scholars were inspired by how these terms were coined in German which means they often are literal translation of the German technical terms.

    It's a bit similar to how Turkish influenced modern Greek, Bulgarian and other Balkan languages (not only vocabulary but grammar as well) although Turkish is not even an Indoeuropean language.
     

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