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Czech verbs
Czech verbs is a practical guide for those who need a perfect knowledge of Czech language. It is addressed to communication and translation professionals as interpreters, translators, journalists, lecturers, as well as all students who need to master one of the hardest aspects of Czech language: its conjugation. This book has an introduction to Czech verbal system in which it is clearly explained the formation of all verbal tenses. After that, the main conjugation models, regular and irregular, and finally a reference guide with more than 10,000 verbs in which it is indicated its reference model, its aspect and its irregular forms.
265 pages, Paperback
First published July 18, 2011
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January 24, 2019
As a native speaker of Czech I have to say this book contains lots of quite critical mistakes and inaccuracies which make it rather untrustworthy as a whole.
To give an example, the author uses the verb "ukrást" as an example of class I. verb even though this verb in fact belongs to class II. As the author attempts to force class I. conjugation on the verb "ukrást" he ends up with forms which do not exist in the Czech language at all such as *ukrade.
Other examples are missing possible variations in forms, for example, the verb "klepat" (which btw. does not mean "to beat" but "to knock") allows forms either following class I. conjugation or class V. The author ignores the fact that some verbs of the type "klepat" or "mazat", due to their similarity to past conjugation of verbs of the V. class, actually allow class V. conjugation even in present tense.
The author could have prevented this easily by consulting some relevant sources such as the "Internet Language Reference Book" published by the Czech Academy of Science.
In several examples in the conjugation tables the author could have chosen a better verb to represent the category and make it more relatable. A simple search in the Czech National Corpus returns 2 hits on the verb "vyžnout" - yes, it does exist in the language but a more frequent word would certainly serve as a better example for learners of Czech. Another one, the verb "posázet" returns 17 hits as opposed to the verb "vysázet" which would serve as an equally good example (also formed by a prefix from the imperfective verb used in his example for imperfectives) and returns 344 hits.
I have not yet reached the verbal index part but after encountering such blunders as described above, I am reluctant to actually trust the author to assign the verbs to their correct class and model.
To give an example, the author uses the verb "ukrást" as an example of class I. verb even though this verb in fact belongs to class II. As the author attempts to force class I. conjugation on the verb "ukrást" he ends up with forms which do not exist in the Czech language at all such as *ukrade.
Other examples are missing possible variations in forms, for example, the verb "klepat" (which btw. does not mean "to beat" but "to knock") allows forms either following class I. conjugation or class V. The author ignores the fact that some verbs of the type "klepat" or "mazat", due to their similarity to past conjugation of verbs of the V. class, actually allow class V. conjugation even in present tense.
The author could have prevented this easily by consulting some relevant sources such as the "Internet Language Reference Book" published by the Czech Academy of Science.
In several examples in the conjugation tables the author could have chosen a better verb to represent the category and make it more relatable. A simple search in the Czech National Corpus returns 2 hits on the verb "vyžnout" - yes, it does exist in the language but a more frequent word would certainly serve as a better example for learners of Czech. Another one, the verb "posázet" returns 17 hits as opposed to the verb "vysázet" which would serve as an equally good example (also formed by a prefix from the imperfective verb used in his example for imperfectives) and returns 344 hits.
I have not yet reached the verbal index part but after encountering such blunders as described above, I am reluctant to actually trust the author to assign the verbs to their correct class and model.
Displaying 1 of 1 review