Czech language

Since I have been living abroad people have been asking about my mother tongue: "Is Czech difficult to learn?", "How does it sound?" etc.
At first it was hard for me to judge, I am Czech, it is easy for me but after learning other languages, I was getting the idea, it is probably pretty difficult for some people. If you are an English speaking person, I am guessing it will be a nightmare for you. To demonstrate, I am going to borrow a paragraph from the book "Me, Myself & Prague" written by Rachael Weiss, an Australian woman who was once living in Prague in search of her Bohemian roots.

This is her experience with the Czech language:-)

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" I'd tried valiantly to teach myself Czech with my guidebooks but I was struggling. The language seemed to be nothing but difficult consonants -ž's, j's and rolled r's -strung together. Ordinary everyday words were incredibly long and complex. The word for 'of course' is samozřejmě. It's pronounced samozrrrrrzzhayemnye - a truckload of consonants and tongue rolling for a word that in essence means 'yes'. It took me three weeks of practice to get that one word right. Knowing the words, though, wasn't enough. The words change completely depending on where they are placed in a sentence, which is why I hadn't been able to find anything in the dictionary when I was shopping or trying to make conversation. Every noun is either feminine, masculine inanimate, masculine animate or neuter. There are four different forms of feminine, four of neuter and two each of masculine animate and inanimate, and each form has a different ending, depending on its declension: twelve different noun types, each declined seven different ways. That's eighty-four altogether, and double that number because that's only singular and every noun is either singular or plural. So there are one hundred and sixty-eight forms a noun can take. All the adjectives have to have different endings too, because they have to agree with the nouns. Verbs take different endings depending on who you're speaking about or to, and how you're speaking to them. There are twelve different endings for verbs just for speaking in the ordinary way, and then another set of endings if you're ordering someone about. In short, the whole business is a nightmare.
Teaching myself Czech had got me as far as, ' His bicycle is clean but her car is dirty'; as useful as that might be in certain circumstances, it hadn't featured heavily in any of my conversations with the locals...."
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Czech Alphabet

And there is more.
There are many words that do not have vowels: zmrzl (frozen solid), ztvrdl (hardened), scvrkl (shrunk), čtvrthrst (quarter-handful), blb (dimwit), vlk (wolf), or smrt (death).
My husband shakes his head when he hears these words.

The consonants l and r can be the nucleus (nucleus is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable) of a syllable in Czech. For examples we use these tongue-twisters to practice: strč prst skrz krk  (stick a finger down your throat) and smrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh (morel full of spots was dampened by fogs).

And then there is the consonant ř. It is unique to the Czech language, and I have no idea how to describe it. One thing is for sure, it is very difficult to pronounce.

I will stop here, yes there is much more! For now, have fun watching this video. ALEX is perfect with his -ř- . Well done!

Czech Tongue Twisters By American Diplomats in Prague