Learning Natural Languages

[OnyxCougar]

My maternal grandmother's parents were both Czech, from a city on the Polish border called Ostrava. My grandmother was the baby of 6 children, the first 3 of which were born in Ostrava. My great-grandpa came over on a boat with his best friend and is registered through ellis island, stayed with his friend's uncle in new york for a little over 3 years, then my great-gramma came over with the 3 kids (also through ellis island), and they all moved to oklahoma, where the last 3 were born.

I have never studied Czech, but I have self studied Hebrew, Esperanto, Russian, Spanish, and Croatian, which is in the same family as Russian and Czech. I started learning Croatian because I was planning a trip there, and some internet friends of mine lived there, and taught me the written part of the language. Luckily, Croatian is a language that is pronounced exactly as it's spelled, so making the transistion between written and verbal is pretty easy (if the speaker talks slowly).

I started off by going into a croatian chat room (IRC) and just logging a half hour of material, then looking things up on an online dictionary. Most of the content on the IRC is slang, so won't be found, but it does give you a feel of how people really use the language. Most of them knew English, so when I explained what I was doing there, they were most helpful, although some made rude comments, thinking I didn't understand what they were saying.

Then I went to Voice of America online, which has news in a LOT of different languages (and IIRC, Czech is one of them). Also, I went to google in Croatian, and found news sites and (at the time) had Kazaa, and found songs, both traditional folk in nature, and contemporary. (The Divas are a great band!) Croatian streaming radio is also a resource, but they talk FAST and I can only get a few words per sentence.

Also, reading in the language is essential, I have a copy of the Two Towers by Tolkien, (but it's in Serbian, which is similar, but enough different that it only screwing me up). If you can find a book in Czech that you already have in English, it's a marvelous resource for vocabulary and grammar.