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Originally Posted by Tonchi
Grant, I AM Czech (on my mother's side, Bohemian father) and I can tell you the only reasons for you to learn that language is to train police/guard dogs or because you want to communicate with spies.
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There are something like 12 million native Czech speakers in the world. I'm learning Czech so that I can communicate with people in their native language, especially if they don't speak English. An even stronger motive for me is the sense of accomplishment.
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Originally Posted by Tonchi
The only language which sounds worse to speak is Dutch (and I am Dutch on my father's side).
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Ok, Dutch can sound kind of funny. I listened to Czech news radio for a few hours yesterday and I think it's a beautiful language. Some of the rhythms that emerge in regular speech are absolutely mind blowing.
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Originally Posted by Tonchi
A lot of my relatives still live over there, but my uncle is the only one who has visited them so far. My immigrant grandfather had a horrible time learning to write English because there are no vowels when you're writing Czech.
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Czech has plenty of vowels...
From locallingo.com/czech:
Long vowels: á, é, í, ó, ú/ů, ý
Softening vowel: ě
Plus some consonants that can function as vowels(actually sonorants I believe).
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Originally Posted by Tonchi
I applaud your desire to teach English there, there are several work-abroad websites promising good positions in the CR, but maybe you could go to the American University there instead, once you are already working?
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From what I hear it's not very difficult for native English speakers to find teaching jobs. I have thought about persuing a Masters degree part time while there so that I could go after a Uni position.
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Originally Posted by Tonchi
Splitting the country into Slovakia and the Czech Republic also complicated things.
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At least Slovak and Czech are mutually intelligible. Czechosolvakia was only a country for mid-late chunk of the 20th century so I've been curious to know how much of a change this actually was. I'll have to look into that.
I appreciate all the replies, everyone.