Mluvíte anglicky?

Do you speak English?

Czech is a very difficult language to learn but Mary and I are slowly learning some basics. The first things we learned were, of course, "hello", "goodbye", "please" and "thank you". Beyond that we quickly mastered the phrases "Do you speak English?" and "I don't speak Czech". I now prefer the slightly more impressive sounding "I speak only a little Czech".

While you can get by speaking only English we realized very quickly that the level of English spoken varies based on touristy areas or types of people working at a shop or service being visited. Outside the city downtown, like our neighborhhood which is a very local, family-oriented area, there is very little English spoken. Restaurants in touristy areas generally speak some English but workers at the Post Office seem not to. Some non-touristed shops, like computer stores generally speak very good English, I assume because the employees are typically young and recently attended university.

We intend to learn as much Czech as we can manage. I will be taking Czech lessons through work and we'll figure out some lessons for Mary. What we have found, is that in the vast majority of cases, even if we can't communicate in English, people do sincerely appreciate our efforts to be polite - saying hello when we enter shops, asking nicely if they speak english, explaining we speak very little Czech, saying please and thank you, and good bye on our way out - and will smile and make every effort to help us.