While talking with a Bulgarian contact today, we were discussing the conjugation of the verb ‘to juggle’ in Bulgarian, as you do, and I was struck by how similar Bulgarian verb endings are to Czech ones. Below is the present tense of this verb with the Bulgarian on the left and the Czech on the right.

• жонглирам (žongliram) / žonglovam – I juggle
• жонглираш (žongliraš) / žonglovaš – you juggle
• жонглира (žonglira) / žonglova – he/she/it juggles
• жонглираmе (žonglirame) / žonglovame – we juggle
• жонглирате (žonglirate) / žonglovate – you (pl) juggle
• жонглират (žonglirat) / žonglovají – they juggle

The more I learn about the Slavic languages, the more similarities I see between them. So far my knowledge is limited to a smattering of Russian, a little Czech, and a few Bulgarian words, so my impressions and thoughts may change as I learn more. One encouraging factoid I’ve discovered is that Czech only has about seven irregular verbs.

I also came across an interesting site today which contains useful words and phrases in a number of Slavic languages, with translations in English and Japanese.

Correction: the Czech conjugation of the verb ‘to juggle’ is actually:

• žongluji – I juggle
• žongluješ – you juggle
• žongluje – he/she/it juggles
• žonglujeme – we juggle
• žonglujete – you (pl) juggle
• žonglují – they juggle

There are Czech verbs with endings similar to the Bulgarian ones above, but not ‘to juggle’, unfortunately.

Výslovnost is the Czech word for pronunciation, and appears in this week’s Czech lesson. I’m currently working my way quite slowly and thoroughly through Colloquial Czech and am spending a week or two on each lesson. I don’t move on to the next lesson until I’m familiar with all the slovníček (vocabulary), mluvnice / gramatika (grammar) and výslovnost.

Some people advise you to listen to a language a lot before you try to speak it. Listening to the languages you’re learning as much as possible is very useful and beneficial, but I don’t know if you should put off trying to speak the language until you’ve listening to it for several weeks or months.

What are your thoughts on this?

My studies of Czech are progressing slowly. So far I’ve only really got to grips with the first lesson of Colloquial Czech, and am working on lesson 2. Yesterday I had a quick look at the later lessons and wondered whether I’ll ever get that far. I know I shouldn’t let this put me off, but it a bit disheartening to see how far I have to go.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to make this comparison, but learning languages has quite a lot in common with climbing mountains. You start off in the foothills where the going is relatively easy, as long as you are physically fit / your language learning skills are up to scratch, otherwise you might find even this stage a struggle. Past the foothills there will be some difficult climbs and some long, hard slogs up slopes of varying steepness.

You might come up against some seemingly unscaleable obstacles, though with time and effort you probably find a way over or round them, perhaps with the assistance of a guide/teacher. When you think you’re not making much upward progress, or are even going downhill, it might help to turn round to admire the view and to see how far you’ve come.

Even when you reach the summit, you’ll probably see further summits to scale. You might also look over at neighbouring moutains (related languages) or distant ones (unrelated languages) and think that it would be interesting to climb/learn them.

As you’re climbing, you might look up at the mountain every now and then and think it looks steep and difficult to climb. This might inspire you to try harder, or to stop and enjoy the view / put what you’ve learnt to good use. If you decide to give up and do something else, then come back to your climbing/learning, you’ll probably find the going easier the second time, as you’ve already been that way before.

With Czech I’m pootling around in the foothills at the moment. When I look up towards the summit, I wonder whether this is a mountain I really want to climb, or whether I should stick to more familiar mountains.

I’m now half way through my Pimsleur Czech course and am enjoying it. I like the way the lessons are arranged and the way you’re asked to construct new sentences using the words you already know. The focus on listening and speaking really suits me as these are the skills I prefer to focus on. The relatively small amount of material covered by the course is covered in some detail, so I feel confidient about using it.

When I’ve completed this course, I plan to tackle Routledge’s Colloquial Czech. After that, I’ll be able to say mluvím český and I’ll have another go at Russian.

Have you learnt any languages with Pimsleur courses? What do you think of them?

I’ve decided to put Russian on hold for now and have started learning Czech instead. My Czech friends have taught a few words and phrases, and I hope to acquire a much more knowledge of the language.

I’m beginning my studies with the Pimsleur Czech course, which consists of 10 half-hour lessons. The small amount of material covered by the course seems to be covered thoroughly. As I listen to the tapes, I’m converting them to mp3 format so that I can copy them to my mp3 player and listen to again whenever I want.

At the same time, I’m also digitizing some of my other language courses, which is enabling me to brush my Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Cantonese and Taiwanese. It will take quite a while to convert all my tapes to mp3s, but I’m in no particular hurry.