Best way to learn Czech noun declensions

Question

This post is about a technique I thought up for learning Czech (čeština) Declensions

In an attempt to learn Czech declensions, I wonder whether a web page on the internet or standard Android application exists, which lists, for each of the following standard model words on which the Czech declensions are based, and for each such word, and case and number, a sentence containing the conjugated word. This should mean six to seven times two sentences for each word, since for each word there can be six to seven cases and each can be singular or plural if I am correct.

With this method, by memorizing all the phrases, one can see the declensions in context, and will be able to initially recall these cases and numbers to formulate or conjugate other related words. Since one will put more effort into memorizing the entire phrase than just the declension tables, such method should be more durable and effective, in the long term.

In fact I have been even told that in some scenarios some Czech textbooks portray sentences relating all declentions of a single word in a single sentence as well. It would be interesting to know where these examples can be found on the internet as well.

So, I am looking for examples with the following words.

• pán
• muž
• hrad
• soudce
• předseda
• stroj
• žena
• růže
• píseň
• kost
• město
• moře
• kuře
• nastavení
• lidé
• děti
• kámen
• břemeno

I would also like to know in what order Czech people recite noun conjugation tables, whether all singular forms first and then all plurals, and the relative collocation of declensions, nominative accusative, genitive, native or nominative, genitive, native, accusative, and would also like to know the relative collocation of the vocative, whether before the locative and instrumental or after. Theoretically, Czech children learn to recite these conjugation tables in some given order, and I would like to know which order that is. If there is even an Android app where you can view and hear such conjugations I would like to know about it (my phone is currently running low on memory though and I probably won't be able to try it until I purchase a new phone).

Thanks.

Answer 1

As a native Czech speaker, I should be able to answer some of your questions, but not all. Usage of the cases is something I have learned naturally (without having any idea of grammar), so I can't help you there. It is also many years ago when I attended an elementary school. Sorry.

On an Android app: You might try Duolingo. I have some experience with that, but not with learning Czech.

On order of conjugations: I usually see singular and then plural. Cases are traditionally ordered as nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, local, instrumental. The ordering of cases might be important when talking with native Czech speakers about grammar, because they are usually known just by number (“first case” for nominative, “second case” for genitive and so on). We weren't taught latin names for the cases on elementary school and there are no Czech names for them, just numbers. For remembering their order, you can use NGDAVLI (sequence of their initials) if it helps. This was the way I remember mapping of names to numbers.

Numbering cases and not using names for them is reportedly specific for Czech and Slovak.

Answer 2

For listing lots of sentences with a given lemma (headword), you can use a corpus, which is a huge collection of texts put together and made available for linguistic research. Today, corpora exist for a very large number of languages, for example just the Universal Dependencies corpus contains over 100 languages and it can be searched in several online platforms, e.g. (only older versions up to 2.3) here.

For Czech in particular, I suggest the Czech National Corpus, kontext.korpus.cz. Just put the word you are interested in into the input box and hit Search. If you want to find the given word in a given case and number, switch on the Advanced Search and then search e.g. for [lemma="pán" & tag="N..P4.*"] for accusative plural. It's S for singular and P for plural, and the cases are

1   nominative
2   genitive
3   dative
4   accusative
5   vocative
6   local
7   instrumental

(which is the traditional ordering in Czech school books; this order comes originally from old Latin and Greek grammarians). If you only want sentences with up to 10 words, you could make a query like this: [lemma="pán" & tag="N..P7.*"] within <s> []{1,10} </s> To see full sentences withou additional context, use View > KWIC/Sentence in the top menu.