Learn Czech Food Vocabulary: 167 Flashcards for Menus, Pubs and Markets

The deck is called Czech Travel & Food Vocabulary, but across all 167 cards there is not one word about trains, hotels or directions. What you actually get is a Czech menu, in order: bread, soups, meat, fish, cheese, eggs, vegetables, grains, spices, desserts, fruit, drinks — and, on the last five cards, the words restaurace, hospoda, snídaně, oběd, večeře. Treat it as a restaurant and market deck and it becomes one of the most immediately usable lists in the library.

The vocabulary you end up with

Rohlík, houska, žemle, knedlíky; vepřové, hovězí, telecí, kachna, husa, králík, klobása, jelito, uzené, sekaná, guláš, řízek, dršťky; kapr, pstruh, losos, krevety; tvaroh, šlehačka, kyselá smetana; bramborová kaše, hranolky, kysané zelí, květák, pórek, pažitka, okurka, dýně, žampion, hlíva; pohanka, kroupy, krupice, strouhanka, mák, kmín, majoránka, bobkový list; palačinky, štrúdl, koláč, bublanina, vánočka, perník, kobliha, kompot; švestka, meruňka, brusinka; pivo, slivovice, limonáda.

The soup pattern nobody points out

Czech turns soup names into single colloquial words with a -čka / -ovka ending, and this deck is full of them: česnečka (garlic), zelňačka (cabbage), hrachovka (pea), gulášovka (goulash), bramboračka (potato), cibulačka (onion). Learn the six as a family, not as six unrelated cards. Printed menus often use the formal two-word version instead — česneková polévka — so expect to meet both.

Every card is in the dictionary form

The backs are nominative singular, which is not what comes out of your mouth when you order. The useful frame is Dám si… plus the accusative: Dám si guláš stays unchanged, but polévka becomes Dám si polévku and káva becomes Dám si kávu. Side dishes arrive in the instrumental: svíčková s knedlíkem. Drill each food card twice — once as a word, once inside Dám si… — and the deck starts producing sentences.

Cards to fix first

Turnip → Řepa is wrong: řepa is beet (červená řepa = beetroot); turnip is tuřín or vodnice. Pilsner → Pilsner is an empty card — in Czech you would say plzeňské pivo. Pudding → Puding and Custard → Pudink are the same Czech word twice, with pudink being the standard spelling, so delete one. Three cheese cards give brand-style names as generic translations: Niva for blue cheese, Hermelín for soft cheese and Eidam for Edam are specific Czech products, not the general terms (plísňový sýr, měkký sýr). And rajče is the only back in the deck typed in lowercase — a formatting slip, not a rule.

Deck CS2206 — Czech Travel & Food Vocabulary is in the Flip It library at flip-it.app. For the general vocabulary that surrounds these nouns, work alongside the 1000 most common Czech words.