The best AI apps to practice speaking Czech

What you need to practice speaking Czech

Czech takes work. In our ranking of 67 languages it’s the 29th hardest for English speakers, at 5,715 effort points. That’s almost twice what Spanish takes (2,941), and a little less than Polish (6,329) or Russian (6,067).

Reading is the easy part: Latin letters with a few marks on top, spelled the way they sound, and the stress always on the first syllable. What makes Czech hard is the endings, a couple of sounds and the verb pairs, at full speed, in a real conversation.

• Seven casesNouns change their ending with their job in the sentence. Brno is Brno, but you live v Brně, go do Brna and come back z Brna. Even numbers change the noun: dvě piva, two beers, but pět piv, five. And when you call someone, their name changes too: Lukáš becomes Lukáši! Knowing the tables is one thing. Getting the ending right while you talk takes practice.
• Ř, and words with no vowelsŘ, as in Dvořák, is a sound almost no other language has: a rolled r and the s in “pleasure” at the same time. You need it for everyday words like tři, three, and řeka, river. Then there are words where r or l does the vowel’s job: vlk, wolf, krk, neck, and the famous Strč prst skrz krk, “stick a finger through your throat”. Not one vowel in the whole sentence.
• Verbs come in pairsMost verbs have two forms. Četl jsem knihu: I was reading the book. Přečetl jsem knihu: I finished it. Napíšu ti means I’ll write to you, with no future tense in sight. Some pairs don’t even look related: brát and vzít, to take. You pick one every time you talk about the past or the future.
• Spoken Czech isn’t written CzechTextbooks teach the written standard. On the street, especially in Prague and around it, you hear Common Czech, obecná čeština: dobrý becomes dobrej, mléko becomes mlíko, and okno, window, becomes vokno. Brno has its own slang on top: a tram is a šalina. You need to understand all of it, and know when to use which.
• Lots of Czech you understandSpeaking activates the words you have. New words come from input: Czech videos, podcasts and texts where you already understand most of it.
• Lots of speaking timeA language this hard takes hours of talking. A few minutes a day won’t get you there.

A complete fluency system, not just a speaking app

Our speaking practice is the heart of Teacher AI. But speaking alone won’t make you fluent, and neither will input alone. You need both, and you need to see it working.

So Teacher AI is a complete fluency system. Input grows your Czech. Speaking activates it. And we track every word along the way, to get you to real fluency as fast as we can.

1. Step 1Input grows your vocabularyWatch Czech YouTube videos and podcasts, and read stories written at your level. You always see how much you already understand, and every word you tap becomes a flashcard. How Watch and Read work.
2. Step 2Speaking activates itKnowing a word isn’t the same as using it, with the right case ending and the right verb of the pair. Talking with your teacher, for as long as you like, is how words move from “I know that one” to “I just said it”. Every mistake gets fixed, with a Why?.
3. Step 3We track every wordYour passive words are the ones you understand when you read or hear them. Your active words are the ones you’ve used yourself. You see both grow, how your time splits between input and output, and how many words to your next level.

Brand new to Czech? Start somewhere else first. Teacher AI works best from about A2, once you can handle simple everyday sentences. Before that, you just don’t have enough words yet for open conversation. So learn the basics with a course like Duolingo (free) or Pimsleur, and come back when you want to talk.

What it looks like in Czech

Here’s what a moment of practice looks like. You answer, your teacher replies, and if you made a mistake, your sentence gets fixed right there.

A card for every word you tap

Tap any word, in a conversation, a video or a story, and you get its card: what it means, what kind of word it is, and an example with a translation. Its family and its forms are one tap away. Tap play to hear it.

An illustration of three word cards, rebuilt for this page. On the real card, the wording depends on the word. Below: real screenshots of the web app.

Meet your Czech teachers

Two teachers, both from Brno, the Czech Republic’s second city: Klara and Lukáš. Each has their own voice. Pick the one you like.

• 
  Klara Dvorak

  Brno · Czech
• 
  Lukáš Beneš

  Brno · Czech

Input: Czech to watch and read, at your level

Here’s the input side up close. New words come from lots of Czech you hear and read, where you already understand most of it.

Watch and Read are on the web app for now. Words you read along with, without tapping, count toward your passive words. Every word you tap lands in your flashcards. And when you’re done, you talk about it with your teacher.

• Any YouTube videoPaste a link to a Czech YouTube video, or an Apple Podcasts episode. We turn it into a page you read along with, new words in yellow. No subtitles? On a paid plan we transcribe it for you, within a monthly allowance.
• Stories written for youRead writes Czech texts at your level, from A1 to Native, about anything you like, and suggests ideas from what you talk about with your teacher.
• How much you know, before you startTeacher AI keeps a list of every Czech word you’ve met: the ones you use when you talk, the ones you read or hear, the ones you tap. It checks every word of a video or text against that list and shows you the share you already know.
• The 80% rulePick videos and texts where you know 80% or more of the words. Then your brain fills in the rest from context. Under 70% is too much for now. 90% and up is easy and fun.
• Then talk about itOne tap on Talk about this starts a conversation about what you just watched or read. Retelling it is how new words become words you can say.

Teacher AI or Duolingo?

Lots of people start Czech on Duolingo. Good! So here’s how the two compare for speaking, with every Duolingo fact from Duolingo’s own pages.

The apps side by side

The apps, one by one

Where another app might suit you better

Head-to-head comparisons

Teacher AI vs Langua · Teacher AI vs Talkpal · Teacher AI vs Duolingo. All comparisons.

Other languages

SpanishSpain and Latin AmericaFrenchFrance, Belgium and SwitzerlandMandarin ChineseSimplified or Traditional, with pinyinCantoneseHong Kong, with JyutpingThaiWith spaces between words, and Paiboon+ or IPAJapaneseWith furigana or romaji, and a kanji countDutchThe Netherlands and Flanders, with Flemish voicesBrazilian PortugueseWith Brazilian teachers and well-known polyglotsItalianWith Italian teachers from Podcast Italiano and Vaporetto ItalianoGermanWith German and Austrian teachers, from Lingster Academy to Herr AntrimEuropean PortugueseWith teachers from Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Faro, and Portuguese With LeoEnglishWith American and British teachers, from Espresso English to English Like A NativeKoreanWith teachers from Seoul and Busan, and every dropped 요 fixedRussianWith the stress marked above every wordTurkishWith Can from Turkishle, and every ending fixed as you talkArabicWith teachers from Cairo, Amman and Jeddah, and a straight answer on MSA or dialectPolishWith teachers from Warsaw, and every case ending fixedSwedishPitch accent, en or ett, and nobody switching to EnglishIndonesianWith teachers from Bali and Bandung, for the Indonesian people actually speakHindiWith teachers from Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai, and every missing ने fixedRomanianWith teachers from Bucharest and Transylvania, and every ending explainedCatalanFor when Barcelona keeps answering you in SpanishVietnameseWith teachers from Hanoi and Sapa, and every tone, classifier and pronoun fixedUkrainianWith two teachers from Lviv, and every case fixed as you talkGreekWith teachers from Crete and Thessaloniki, and every gender and ending explainedHebrewFor Hebrew without the vowels, with two teachers from Tel Aviv