After quality time in Iceland, I was planning to visit Prague for a few days to eat, enjoy an important European city, and geocache, because their local community does a good job of that:
I was hoping to have some familiarity with the language so I will not be a hrubý Američan. While I had no illusions that I could become fluent in the time-frame before my trip (significantly less than the 1.5 years average time to fluency), I’ve been trying to find appropriate resources that focus on conversational and pronunciation aspects, and less grammar and spelling minutiae.
A few of the apps most recommended by friends (Busuu and Fluent Forever) looked great for the usual second languages an American would want to try (French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German), but less so for Czech. Searching online … was nearly useless because there’s so much “SEO” (search engine optimization) poisoning the results. Some of the best options don’t even appear on the first few screens of results.
For example, one of the sites I signed up (thankfully with a burner account) has led to several veeeeerrrrrrrrryyyyy aggressive marketing emails. Like three a day, including calls to action before their sale runs out, then the “okay, one last day/you’re welcome”.
I’m familiar “drip marketing,” which intends to “nurture” a customer towards an eventual purchase by sending them suggestions and how-to information. This is the garden hose sprayer version. Maybe it works for them, but it’s a huge turn-off to me.
A few times I was curious, I clicked through their tracking link to pricing that is a textbook example of bracketing. The classic ratio I’ve read is:
- Tier 1 (minimal things): some price. Here we have lessons, notes, and 100 core words and phrases. The price is the lead-in for the emails, and as depicted here, is intended to steer you towards …
- Tier 2 (more stuff, but not everything): 2.5 some price. This one has all of the programming features.
- Tier 3 (everything): 5x some price. This adds interaction with a person.
Of course, once I clicked through, it’s apparent that the asterisked number above was for a two-year, up-front commitment:
And then there are more types of pricing depending on the coupon code:
The marketing hijinks were a real turn-off so I never bothered moving forward. These were very useful phrases:
- Dobrý den (dough-brrrey den), literally “Good Day.” It is customary to say this whenever entering an establishment.
- Nashledanou (nah s hle dah no), “Goodbye.” When leaving the establishment. I had a hard time with this one.
- Děkuji (Dyeah-koo-yee) – “Thank you”
- Mluvíte anglicky? (Mloo vee tay ang litzky) – Do you speak English?
- prosím (prrro seeem) – Please. Also your’e welcome
- Kde je …? (k’day yeah …) – “where is …”
- Kolik stoji …? (kow-leek stow-yee …) “How much is …”
For next time, Langoly at least tries to be helpful by recommending specific apps based on the language and types of learning that one is most comfortable at.
One of the most useful finds that I wish I had more time for is the Czech language school. If I ever plan a return trip to Prague, and have some time, this would be a perfect option.
I enjoyed the “Easy Czech” series of videos. The hosts, Anička, Anička, and Lucka, are very charming in their presentation of 50 basic Czech phrases, common adjectives, and even just walking around Karlín into cool cafes. Occasionally, they mixed it up with interviews of people on the street. Lacking much comprehension, it didn’t improve my language skills, but made the people less scary.
Real Prague Guides — Valery, the host is hilarious as she documents her travels in and around the Czech Republic. One of her most useful videos was using public transportation and safety in Prague.
I tried using Mondly, which has a language chatbot tool to help with practice (cleverly implemented as using the iPhone speech to text). There have been some comically bad interpretations of what I thought I said, but it does seem to help. One thing that I don’t like about the app is there’s no tailoring sessions. Thus, their daily lessons have a lot of useless (for my specific tourist purpose) practice on being a student in a library.
Mondly used the iPhone voice transcription to convert what I said into Czech then tried to see if they’re similar. They were not.
Really, I’d have paid to have a solid crash course on the things valuable to a tourist. Based on that visit:
- I apologize for my terrible Czech.
- Where is the nearest toilet?
- Where can I find an ATM that won’t try to rip me off?
- I do not have a dinner reservation. If this is a problem, may I order takeaway?
- Please speak slower. I have the Czech comprehension of a grapefruit.
- Why is that guy honking, screaming and gesticulating?
- I apologize for scanning groceries too quickly, causing the machine to seize and require you intervene. I can see you are having a rough day. I am truly sorry for making it worse.
- Hello, officer. I understand you are following me because I look suspicious. Rest assured, I am merely a dumbass, trying to find the geocache in the busy central train station.
In the end, I eked by with some common courtesy phrases and some locals who helped me out. The Prague Food Tour was invaluable as it also showed me how to use the subway. The Google Translate app was helpful when pointing at signs I couldn’t sleuth out. It even sort of worked with the food truck (pictured above). One area I did have some issue was eating in restaurants solo as there is some etiquette that I was unable to pick up.