Today I decided (unsuccessfully thus far) to memorize numbers 1-10 in Czech. The tools for doing this: my Lonely Planet and two YouTube videos, including this one:
I'm assuming learning a foreign language comes easier to other people than it does to me. For one thing, I have the attention span of a housefly on speed. For another, I have what I like to call selective retention; I know every frontman for Deep Purple (Rod Evans, Ian Gillan, David Coverdale, Gillan again, Joe Lynn Turner, Gillan again ... I imagine Gary Cherone will be joining any day now) but I can't remember my cousin's kids' names.
When it comes to learning numbers in a foreign language, I find it best to do so in groups of two or three. This worked rather easily for the dates/age/money version of counting in Korean, where it's easy to pair up 1-2 (il-i) and 3-4 (sam-sa). In Czech, similar pairings don't happen until 7-8 (sedm-osm) and 9-10 (devět-deset). In related news, 8 is "awesome" (or close enough to it) -- but 4 is far from it, except when it was worn by Captain Carla.
Here's how the number 4 is spelled out in Czech: čtyři. I'll give you a minute to guess how you pronounce it. I'll even let you watch the YouTube video to help. I'll give you these hints as well:
- The č is pronounced like "ch."
- The ř (the most difficult Czech consonant to pronounce) is pronounced like "rzh."
- The y is pronounced like a short "i." (That's because the j is pronounced like a y.)
Upon sharing my frustration with the number 4 on Facebook, a friend who has taught in Pardubice, Mandie-Marie Fiske, posted this note to help me out: "sttt-ear-szzzzsheee." This was very helpful, except I apparently need to transition from an "s" sound to a "z" sound back to an "sh" sound, all in the same syllable. Maybe I could just learn the word for "death" instead.
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