Final Word from Friday, May 6, 2011
Czech is becoming so infiltrated by English, as Hyde Park demonstrated last night, that students of Czech as a foreign language might get the idea that all they need to do is speak English with a Slavic accent. Iff only vere it so easy! Pillow talk is also vastly overrated for picking up Czech. It might work for honing your French, but Czech is just too zatraceně difficult. Your bed partner would fall asleep counting grammatical errors instead of sheep. We've found that dozing off to Václav Moravec is one of the better learning techniques for students of Czech. Radio Impuls provides both audio and text versions of his daily interviews. Reading and listening at the same time helps with pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary and current events. Ekho Moskvy does the same for Russian, but finding a similar service for students of English is a real doozy, unless you don't mind paying to hear Rush Limbaugh.
Glossary of difficult words
pillow talk - intimate conversation in bed;
vastly - to a very great extent;
to pick up (a language) - to learn without exerting great effort;
to hone (a skill) - to sharpen, improve;
zatraceně - Czech for "damn;"
to doze off - to fall lightly asleep;
doozy - a difficult or daunting task;
Rush Limbaugh - a conservative American talk-show host, loved by many, hated by more.