You can study Czech (with Slovak) at Oxford in combination with French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish; please note that you can only be a beginner in one of your languages of study. You can also study Czech (with Slovak) with Classics, English, History and Philosophy. It is not possible to study Czech (with Slovak) at Oxford without a second subject. The course normally lasts four years, with the third year spent abroad, at least half of it normally in a Czech- or Slovak-speaking environment.
What is Czech like to learn?
For ambitious linguists, Czech is a fascinating language to learn. It is highly inflected - among non-Slavonic languages you may know, it is structurally most similar to Latin, Greek and German, which has been quite influential in its development - and has a relatively high proportion of vocabulary unfamiliar to English speakers. At the same time, it is an Indo-European language that works very similarly to English and other European languages you may have learned, and our students normally achieve a very high level of fluency and competence. While knowledge of Czech and Slovak will make learning other Slavonic languages (like Russian and Polish) much easier, graduates of Czech have also found the intellectual training valuable in tackling unrelated but similarly complex Middle Eastern or Asian languages.
The Course
Typically four to six undergraduates come to study Czech (with Slovak) each year. All teaching therefore takes place in small, informal groups, which ensures plenty of flexibility and individual support. Most undergraduates who study Czech at Oxford are complete beginners, but we also provide appropriately tailored language teaching for native speakers or those with existing knowledge of Czech or Slovak.
Language Classes
You will have four hours of intensive, small-group language classes weekly in First and Second Year, taught mainly by a highly experienced native-speaker tutor, Dr Vanda Pickett, with three in Final Year. In First Year, we focus on introducing and using Czech grammar in context and developing writing and translating skills, working through the third edition of Colloquial Czech by James Naughton (who founded Czech at Oxford) alongside other materials. In Second and Final Year, you will have dedicated oral, writing and translation classes that develop your confidence and range. In translation classes, you work on literary, academic and journalistic texts in both Czech and Slovak, covering various contexts, periods and themes that allow you to learn more about their history, culture, politics and society, and acquire a complex understanding of each language and the differences between them.
In the exams at the end of First Year, you will translate passages from and into Czech and sentences testing grammar specifics. You need a minimum of 40% to pass, but should expect to do much better!
The only other language exams at Oxford take place at the end of Final Year, with the following papers: Translation into Czech and Essay in Czech, Translation from Czech, Translation from Slovak and an oral/aural exam in Czech. These contribute to your final degree result.
Literature and Linguistics
Oxford can appear to have a limited variety of cultural options compared to other universities. In fact, in Czech with Slovak, the variety is contained within our literature papers, which allow us, through literary texts, to explore history, society and politics from the Hussite proto-Reformation and the Counter-Reformation through national awakening to Nazi occupation and Communism and its aftermath, and consider questions of not only literary aesthetics, movements and techniques, but also gender, national identity and nationalism, race and ethnicity, religion, sexuality, ideology, philosophy, psychology, cinematic adaptation and so on. Moreover, thanks to our small class groups and tutorial essays, you have great scope to choose the texts you study and examine the aspects of them that interest you most.
First Year literature classes are closely linked to your language work and focus on developing your ability to read in Czech. Two classes a week focus on close reading of a small number of set texts including short stories, poetry and plays. We translate and discuss the language and note features of grammar and syntax before plunging into literary analysis. You will encounter classic texts like the Romantic epic Máj (1836) by Karel Hynek Mácha, the Symbolist cycle Mstivá kantiléna (1898) by Karel Hlaváček, the 'robot play', R.U.R. (1920) by Karel Čapek and stories by Jan Neruda and Milan Kundera, as well as less familiar and more contemporary texts. What starts as a puzzle becomes an unparalleled way of deepening your grasp of how Czech works and has developed over the past two hundred years. You will also have an unassessed weekly seminar that explores literature in the context of the history of the Czechs and Slovaks from the Middle Ages to the fall of Communism.
In the exams at the end of First Year you write a mixture of commentaries and essays on texts studied during the year.
In Second and Final Year, students take at least one and up to three literary/linguistic papers in Czech with Slovak. All students must take the survey paper Czech and Slovak Literature since 1816, and may also choose to take papers in medieval Czech literature and/or focused on the deeper study of two modern authors chosen from a list. We typically mix study of some canonical texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with texts chosen by students based on their interests, with a particular focus on more contemporary and recent writing in Final Year. Classes combine seminar discussion with essay tutorials; you will typically write four tutorial essays (c.1200 words each) per paper per term, so your research, writing and communication skills very quickly improve.
You may additionally or instead take a linguistics paper in the History of the Czech and Slovak languages, which explores the development of orthography, phonology, morphology and syntax from earliest written sources to the present, or write a dissertation on a cultural or linguistic topic of your choice.
All papers taken in Second and Final Year are assessed by final exam at the end of Final Year, except the dissertation, which is a coursework submission at Easter of Final Year.
The Year Abroad
You will normally spend at least half of the year abroad in a Czech- or Slovak-speaking setting. Unlike some universities, Oxford does not require students to study or to spend time in a specific placement; instead, we allow you to plan your year abroad independently, with advice and support. Students of Czech (with Slovak) typically study and/or work, but also find time to travel widely within the Czech Republic, Slovakia and elsewhere in Central Europe.
We currently offer study placements with Masaryk University, Brno, and the University of Ostrava; in return, we host students from those universities who attend classes with you at Oxford. We also offer a volunteer teaching placement at a leading grammar school in Brno. While, since Brexit, it has sadly become very difficult for students with UK passports to obtain paid work in the EU, our students have proved very resourceful in finding interesting and rewarding volunteer internships, for example, with charities or research institutes.
In addition, each year you can apply for Czech government scholarships to study for one month at a university summer school, in a variety of locations throughout the Czech Republic.
Reading Lists
The primary language textbook we use throughout the degree in Czech is:
- James Naughton, Colloquial Czech (Routledge, 2010).
Please ensure that you obtain the MOST RECENT (3rd) edition.
For reference purposes throughout your studies in Czech, we also recommend you acquire:
- James Naughton, Czech: An Essential Grammar (Routledge, 2005)
You may be able to obtain these and other recommended books second-hand, via websites like AbeBooks or the Used section of Amazon.
First Year Prescribed Texts
Poetry:
- Karel Hynek Mácha: Máj (1836)
Available with a translation at: https://czech.mml.ox.ac.uk/karel-hynek-macha-maj-1836
- Karel Hlaváček: Mstivá kantiléna (1898)
Available at: https://czech.mml.ox.ac.uk/karel-hlavacek-mstiva-kantilena-1898
Drama:
- Karel Čapek: R.U.R. (1921)
Available at: https://web2.mlp.cz/koweb/00/03/34/75/81/rur.pdf
There are many translations available, notably Rossum’s Universal Robots, translated by David Short, with a foreword by Arthur Miller (Hesperus, 2011). Other good translations include R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), translated by Claudia Novack-Jones, with a foreword by Ivan Klíma (Penguin, 2004) and Four Plays: R.U.R., The Insect Play, The Makropulos Case, The White Plague, translated by Peter Majer & Cathy Porter (Methuen, 1999).
Short Prose:
- Jan Neruda: ‘Jak si pan Vorel nakouřil pěnovku’ (1876)
Translated by Michael Henry Heim as ‘How Mr Vorel Broke In His Meerschaum’ in Prague Tales (Central European University Press, 1993).
- Růžena Jesenská: ‘Mimo svět’ (1909)
Translated by Kathleen Hayes as ‘A World Apart’ in A World Apart and Other Stories: Czech Women Writers at the Fin de Siècle (Karolinum, 2001, 2021).
- Milan Kundera: ‘Falešný autostop’ (1965)
Translated by Suzanne Rappaport as 'The Hitchhiking Game' in Laughable Loves (Faber & Faber, definitive revised version, 1999).
- Jan Balabán: ‘Kluk’ (2004)
Translated by Charles S. Kraszewski as ‘Boy’ in Jan Balabán, Maybe We’re Leaving (Glagoslav, 2018).
- Milena Slavická: 'Sestra' (2018)
Learn More about the Czechs and Slovaks
History
The following books (listed alphabetically) will help develop your understanding of the history of the Czechs, Slovaks and Bohemia and Slovakia in their various incarnations:
- Agnew, Hugh, The Czechs and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (Hoover Institution Press, 2004).
- Demetz, Peter, Prague in Black and Gold: The History of a City (Penguin, 1998).
- Heimann, Mary, Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed (Yale University Press, 2011).
- Pánek, Jaroslav et al. (eds), A History of the Czech Lands (Karolinum Press, 2011).
- Seton-Watson, R. W., A History of the Czechs and Slovaks (Hutchinson, 1943).
- Teich, M. et al. (eds), Slovakia in History (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Literature
At no other time have so many living or recent Czech creative writers had works available in English translation. Of these, the best known or most interesting include Daniela Hodrová, Petra Hůlová, Jáchym Topol and Tomáš Zmeškal. At the same time, the range of writers from earlier periods available in English is also expanding: from the Communist period Ladislav Fuks, Václav Havel, Bohumil Hrabal, Josef Jedlička, Milan Kundera, Arnošt Lustig, Josef Škvorecký, Ludvík Vaculík, from the earlier twentieth century Karel Čapek, Jaroslav Durych, Viktor Dyk, Jaroslav Hašek, Vítězslav Nezval, Ivan Olbracht, Vladislav Vančura, and from the nineteenth century Karel Jaromír Erben, Jiří Karásek, Božena Němcová, Jan Neruda… Recently published anthologies include:
- A World Apart and Other Stories: Czech Women Writers at the Fin de Siècle, selected and translated by Kathleen Hayes (Karolinum, 2001, 2021).
- Povídky: Short Stories by Czech Women, edited by Nancy Hawker, (Portobello, 2006)
- And My Head Exploded: Tales of Desire, Delirium and Decadence from Fin-de-Siècle Prague, selected and translated by Geoffrey Chew (Jantar, 2018).
- Beyond the World of Men: Women’s Fiction at the Czech Fin de Siècle, selected and translated by Geoffrey Chew (Karolinum, 2024)
Slovak literature has become more available to English-speaking readers only in the past decade or so; it is quite different in style, themes and humour from Czech literature and very much worth discovering. Two excellent recent anthologies are:
- Into the Spotlight: New Writing from Slovakia, edited and translated by Magdalena Mullek and Julia Sherwood (Slavica, 2017)
- The Dedalus Book of Slovak Literature, edited by Peter Karpinský (Dedalus, 2015)
Contemporary writers now available in English translation include Balla, Jana Beňová, Ivana Dobrakovová, Mária Ferenčuhová, Mila Haugová, Jana Juráňová, Daniela Kapitáňová, Uršuľa Kovalyk, Peter Krištúfek, Peter Pišťanek and Pavel Vilikovský. For a regularly updated list, see Slovak Literature in English Translation.
Film
Czech cinema has enjoyed an outstanding international reputation since at least the 1960s. Two Czech-language films have won the Best Foreign Film Oscar: Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely observed trains, Jiří Menzel, based on a Hrabal short novel, 1966) and Kolja (Jan Svěrák, 1996). The first Czechoslovak film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film was in fact Slovak: Obchod na korze (The Shop on the High Street, Ján Kádár, Elmar Klos, 1965).
Other recommended Czech-language films from the post-Communist period include Petr Zelenka’s Knoflikáři (Buttoners, 1997) and Ztraceni v Mnichově (Lost in Munich, 2015), Pelišky (Cosy Dens, Jan Hřebejk, 1999), Otesánek (Little Otik, Jan Švankmajer, leading Czech animator, 2000), Štěstí (Something Like Happiness, Bohdan Sláma, 2005), Katka (Helena Třeštíková, leading Czech documentarist, 2010), Alois Nebel (based on Rudiš/Jaromír 99 graphic novels, Tomáš Luňák, 2011), Rodina je základ státu (Long Live the Family!, Robert Sedláček, 2011), Hořící keř (Burning Bush, Agnieszka Holland, 2013) and Cesta ven (The Way Out, Petr Václav, 2014).
Other recommended films from the 1960s ‘new wave’ include Menzel’s Skřivánci na nití (Larks on a String, 1969) and Postřižiny (Cutting It Short, 1981) (both based on Hrabal stories), Miloš Forman’s Lásky jedné plavovlásky (A Blonde in Love, 1965) and Hoří, má panenko (The Firemen’s Ball, 1967), Sedmikrásky (Daisies, Věra Chytilová, 1966), Marketa Lazarová (František Vláčil, based on a Vančura novel, 1967), Všichni dobří rodáci (All My Good Countrymen, Vojtěch Jasný, 1968), Spalovač mrtvol (The Cremator, Juraj Herz, based on a Fuks novel, 1969) and Ucho (The Ear, Karel Kachyňa, 1970).