More Than 100 Students Came to Prague to Learn Czech This Summer
Charles University’s Summer School of Slavonic Studies has brought learners from around the world to Prague for an intensive month of Czech language, culture and history.
Charles University’s Summer School of Slavonic Studies has brought learners from around the world to Prague for an intensive month of Czech language, culture and history. From seven grammatical cases and challenging pronunciation to films, excursions and everyday conversations, the programme shows why immersion remains one of the most effective ways to understand both Czech and the country where it is spoken.
More than one hundred students from around the world gathered in Prague during the summer of 2026 with the same goal: improving their Czech. The four-week programme provides an unusually intensive form of language immersion (ponoření) in which students study Czech while living in the country's capital. Its international cohort (skupina účastníků) included 104 participants from 30 countries in 2026. The programme's long continuity (kontinuita) is also remarkable, with this summer marking the 69th edition of the Summer School of Slavonic Studies at Charles University's Faculty of Arts. The 2026 course ran from July 16 to August 13 and accepted learners ranging from complete beginners to highly advanced students. Rather than separating Czech from its cultural environment, the school combines classroom teaching with opportunities to encounter the language throughout Prague.
Language lessons form the core of the programme, but students do considerably more than memorize vocabulary or complete grammar exercises. Participants are divided according to their proficiency (jazyková úroveň) so that beginners and advanced learners can work at an appropriate pace. A placement test helps establish the correct competence (jazyková způsobilost) level before intensive teaching begins. The programme also includes phonetics (fonetika), workshops and lectures alongside conventional language classes. This structure allows students to work not only on what they say but also on how clearly and naturally they say it. Charles University describes the programme as suitable for everyone from beginners to very advanced speakers, while the broader Czech government summer-school system covers levels from A0 through C1.
One of the first challenges facing many Czech learners is the language's system of seven grammatical cases. Czech nouns undergo declension (skloňování), meaning that their endings can change according to their grammatical function in a sentence. Adjectives and pronouns also display extensive inflection (ohýbání) and must often agree with the nouns they accompany. This system of morphology (tvarosloví) can initially surprise learners whose native languages depend more heavily on fixed word order or prepositions. Czech uses the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative and instrumental cases. Learning them requires more than memorizing seven labels because different noun patterns have their own endings and several prepositions are associated with particular cases. With repeated exposure, however, the system gradually becomes predictable rather than appearing as a collection of unrelated forms.
Grammatical gender adds another layer to the challenge. Every Czech noun has a gender (rod) and belongs broadly to the masculine, feminine or neuter category. Masculine nouns require an additional distinction (rozlišení) between animate and inanimate forms in several grammatical situations. Correct agreement therefore demands considerable precision (přesnost) when learners combine nouns with adjectives, pronouns or certain verb forms. A table of endings can help at the beginning, but students eventually need to recognize common patterns automatically while speaking. This is one reason intensive study can be effective: the same structures reappear throughout lessons, conversations, readings and daily encounters. The learner gradually stops calculating every ending consciously and begins to develop a feeling for combinations that sound natural.
Pronunciation creates a different set of difficulties, even for learners who already know another Slavic language. Czech contains several distinctive consonants (souhlásky) and sound combinations that may be unfamiliar to international students. The letter ř is particularly notorious (proslulé) because its sound has no close equivalent in many widely spoken languages. Long consonant clusters (souhláskové skupiny) can also make apparently simple words intimidating when learners first see them written down. The word zmrzlina, meaning ice cream, became the playful symbol of the 2026 summer-school report precisely because its sequence of consonants looks challenging to many beginners. Words such as čtvrtek (Thursday), prst (finger) and čtvrt (quarter) similarly demonstrate that Czech does not always insert vowels where English speakers might expect them. Regular pronunciation practice helps students learn that these combinations follow patterns and are usually less difficult once broken into manageable parts.
Written Czech introduces features that are equally important for accurate pronunciation. The language makes extensive use of diacritics (diakritická znaménka) to indicate sound differences and vowel length. Marks such as the háček and čárka are not merely ornamental (ozdobné) additions to ordinary Latin letters but meaningful parts of Czech spelling. Ignoring vowel length (délka samohlásek) can change pronunciation and occasionally distinguish one word from another. Letters such as č, š, ž, ň, ť and ď represent sounds that learners must gradually associate directly with their written forms. The acute accent in á, é, í, ó, ú and ý indicates a long vowel, while ů represents another way of writing long /u/. Once these conventions become familiar, Czech spelling is comparatively systematic because written forms provide substantial information about pronunciation.
Vocabulary presents its own mixture of familiar and unfamiliar elements. Learners who know another Slavic language may recognize cognates (příbuzná slova) or grammatical structures that provide a useful starting point. Czech nevertheless contains many idiomatic (idiomatické) expressions whose meaning cannot always be predicted from the individual words. Everyday colloquialism (hovorový výraz) also means that the Czech heard in a café or tram may differ from the carefully standardized language presented in a textbook. Spoken Czech, particularly in Bohemia, frequently contains features associated with Common Czech rather than strictly formal Standard Czech. Students studying in Prague can therefore compare classroom forms with the language they hear around them. This exposure helps them recognize variation without assuming that every difference is a mistake.
The summer school deliberately connects language study with Czech society rather than treating Czech as an isolated academic subject. Lessons and lectures provide contextualization (zasazení do kontextu) through material about Czech history, literature, politics and cultural traditions. Afternoon activities provide further exposure (kontakt s jazykem) through galleries, excursions and workshops. Evening events add another layer of engagement (zapojení) through Czech films, theatre and other cultural activities. These experiences turn newly learned vocabulary into something students can encounter repeatedly in meaningful situations. A word connected with architecture, for example, may appear first in class and then again during a visit to a historic part of Prague. This combination of formal teaching and practical experience is one of the central characteristics of the Summer School of Slavonic Studies.
Living in Prague provides an especially rich environment for this approach. Students are constantly surrounded by authentic (autentické) Czech on menus, signs, public transport displays, advertisements and official notices. Daily errands create opportunities for spontaneous interaction (interakce) that cannot be fully reproduced inside a classroom. Even minor linguistic encounters (setkání)—ordering lunch, asking for directions or buying a train ticket—can reinforce structures learned earlier that day. Prague is highly international, so a visitor can often manage with English, particularly in the city centre. For serious learners, however, deliberately choosing Czech in ordinary situations turns the city into an extension of the classroom. Mistakes become part of the learning process rather than something that has to be eliminated before the language is used.
This type of intensive programme also provides something that independent study often lacks: a community of people making similar mistakes and facing similar challenges. Regular collaboration (spolupráce) allows learners to practise without feeling that every conversation is a test of perfect Czech. A supportive environment can reduce linguistic inhibition (zábrany) and encourage students to speak before they feel completely ready. That growing spontaneity (spontánnost) is essential because knowing grammar theoretically is different from retrieving the correct words and endings during a real conversation. When students study several hours a day, communicate with classmates and then encounter Czech around Prague, the language receives constant reinforcement. Learners also discover that comprehension often advances unevenly: reading may improve rapidly while pronunciation or spontaneous speaking requires more time. Intensive courses make these strengths and weaknesses easier to identify.
The Prague programme forms part of a much wider Czech tradition of summer language education. In 2026, Summer Schools of Slavonic Studies were also organized in conjunction (ve spolupráci) with public universities in Brno, Olomouc, Plzeň, Poděbrady and České Budějovice. The courses have a broad academic remit (zaměření) that includes Czech language, literature, culture and history. Their geographical distribution (rozmístění) also allows international learners to experience different Czech and Moravian cities rather than concentrating exclusively on Prague. Programmes normally last between three and four weeks during July and August. They are primarily intended for foreign students, teachers, translators, interpreters, academics and specialists in Czech or Slavic studies, but they are also open more broadly to adults interested in Czech language and culture. The 2026 teaching system covered the full range from complete beginners at A0 to advanced students at C1.
Financial support makes these programmes accessible to some students who might otherwise find a month of international study difficult to afford. Czech government scholarships (stipendia) are distributed through agreements with participating countries and their relevant institutions. Candidates generally require an official nomination (nominace) rather than simply submitting an independent scholarship application directly to the Czech Ministry of Education. The resulting subsidy (finanční podpora) covers significant parts of the summer-school experience for successful recipients. For 2026, eligible countries and territories included numerous European states as well as the United States, Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Egypt and others. The scholarship normally covers registration and tuition, study materials, accommodation, meals and excursions organized by the university, while international transport, insurance and visa-related costs are excluded. At the Prague summer school, 79 of the 104 participants in 2026 attended with scholarship support.
The existence of such programmes reflects the wider international importance of Czech studies. Universities around the world maintain Bohemistics (bohemistiku) programmes examining the Czech language, literature, history and culture. Translation and interpretation (tlumočení) also require highly developed Czech skills, particularly when professionals work with academic, diplomatic, literary or technical material. Academic specialization (specializace) can therefore provide strong reasons to study a language spoken by around ten million native speakers. Czech literature includes internationally recognized writers, while the country's twentieth-century political history attracts historians and researchers from many countries. Musicians may encounter Czech through composers such as Antonín Dvořák, Bedřich Smetana and Leoš Janáček, while film, architecture and Central European studies create additional routes into the language. The reasons for learning Czech are therefore far more varied than the number of speakers alone might suggest.
For people considering moving to Czechia, intensive language study can also have immediate practical value. Greater autonomy (samostatnost) in Czech allows residents to deal with landlords, doctors, shops and government offices without depending constantly on English-speaking assistance. Administrative terminology (terminologie) becomes especially important when reading contracts, official letters or residence documents. Workplace integration (začlenění) can likewise become easier when a foreign employee understands informal conversations as well as formal professional communication. English is common in international workplaces in Prague and Brno, but it is far less universal across the entire country. Speaking Czech also opens access to relationships and cultural experiences that are difficult to develop entirely through a foreign language. Even learners who never reach perfect fluency often find that consistent use of Czech changes how they experience everyday life in the country.
Intensive courses cannot eliminate every difficulty of learning Czech in four weeks, and no serious programme promises that they can. Their greatest advantage is momentum (dynamika), because learners spend enough consecutive time with the language to build habits that can continue after the course ends. Constant repetition (opakování) strengthens vocabulary and grammatical patterns that might otherwise fade between occasional lessons. The resulting linguistic consolidation (upevnění) gives students a stronger foundation for independent study once they return home or begin living in Czechia. Learners still need months or years of continued reading, listening and conversation to reach advanced proficiency. What an intensive summer can provide is confidence, structure and a clearer understanding of how the different parts of Czech fit together. The experience also demonstrates that difficult features such as cases or consonant clusters become much less mysterious once they are encountered every day.
The 2026 Summer School of Slavonic Studies ultimately illustrates a broader lesson about learning languages. Genuine mastery (ovládnutí) grows from combining structured study with regular contact with real speakers, places and situations. Cultural immersion (ponoření do kultury) makes vocabulary more memorable because words become attached to experiences rather than isolated exercises. Continued perseverance (vytrvalost) is still necessary, particularly with a highly inflected language such as Czech. Yet the presence of more than one hundred learners from thirty countries in Prague shows that Czech continues to attract people with very different backgrounds and motivations. Some approach it through academic study, others through work, travel, culture or plans to make Czechia their home. Whatever the reason, a month spent confronting words such as zmrzlina, seven grammatical cases and the famous Czech ř can turn an intimidating language into something much more familiar.
Key Czech Vocabulary
ponoření — immersion
skupina účastníků — cohort
kontinuita — continuity
jazyková úroveň — proficiency
jazyková způsobilost — competence
fonetika — phonetics
skloňování — declension
ohýbání — inflection
tvarosloví — morphology
rod — gender
rozlišení — distinction
přesnost — precision
souhlásky — consonants
proslulý — notorious
souhláskové skupiny — consonant clusters
diakritická znaménka — diacritics
ozdobný — ornamental
délka samohlásek — length
příbuzná slova — cognates
idiomatický — idiomatic
hovorový výraz — colloquialism
zasazení do kontextu — contextualization
kontakt s jazykem — exposure
zapojení — engagement
autentický — authentic
interakce — interaction
setkání — encounters
spolupráce — collaboration
zábrany — inhibition
spontánnost — spontaneity
ve spolupráci — in conjunction
zaměření — remit
rozmístění — distribution
stipendia — scholarships
nominace — nomination
finanční podpora — subsidy
bohemistika — Bohemistics
tlumočení — interpretation
specializace — specialization
samostatnost — autonomy
terminologie — terminology
začlenění — integration
dynamika — momentum
opakování — repetition
upevnění — consolidation
ovládnutí — mastery
ponoření do kultury — cultural immersion
vytrvalost — perseverance
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