How To Fight Damaged, Fragile Hair And Split Ends

Wash Your Hair In Lukewarm Water– Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold

I know, everyone likes to shower in hot water but your hair doesn't. Never use hot water on your hair. However, warm water helps open the cuticle of a hair; therefore you should use it before applying moisturising and other products. Allegedly, the cuticle opens (or rises) when it comes to contact with water itself so there's no heat needed (i. e. stop wasting electricity by using a hair dryer to warm your hair). Nevertheless, when washing the products off, use cold water to close the cuticle again because it protects the hair's cortex.

Hair Dryers Usually Have This Magic Button

So use it. (There's a snowflake on it.)

Use Conditioners For Easier Combing

It is said that you shouldn't comb your hair when it's wet. It gets stretched and fragile. I tried and failed, because I need to straighten it before it gets dry. If you tug your hair when combing and stubbornly claim that nothing helps it, you're wrong (unless you're hiding chewing gums in there).

Don't Use Heat 

If you want sexy waves, leave curlers on your hair overnight. I know, it's not comfortable but it's better for your hair. If you need to straighten your hair, use a hair dryer and a comb when it's wet.

Don't Rub Your Hair With A Towel

Just don't. Period.

Make A Ponytail When Going To Sleep

And don't wallow on your hair all night long. But don't make it too tight!

Split Ends Need Cutting

Nothing else. People don't want to hear this but it's the only solution– the fastest, most effective and helpful.

Buy Some Hair Growth Supplements... And Eat/ Apply Them

This is better than eating chocolate and mourning your decision to cut the split ends. You can also search for some articles on which vitamins, minerals, etc. help. They are all over the internet, waiting for you to read them.

Use Natural Oils

They are super helpful, full of vitamins, proteins, and so on. Apply them after washing your hair, before straightening; use them as a hair mask (even overnight). They are not cheap but they last for ages. I've had mine for four months. The cheapest, yet of high quality is coconut oil (depending on the brand, of course). I personally prefer argan oil and some people extol avocado oil. They even smell wonderfully!

Purchase some, I've been using this one for four months and it's still almost full.

Lesson 20– Noun-adjective Agreement, Vocabulary (body parts & colours)

Hello, kids, I'm back with another lesson.
This time we have an excerpt from Starlight's story as an example text. I chose this one because there are two topics I would like to talk about today: Noun-adjective agreement and vocabulary (colours and body parts). Let's get started!

'Měla dlouhé vlasy, jejich barva byla mezi blond a světlou hnědou. A oči byly hnědé, nebo aspoň tak z dálky vypadaly. Roztomilý nos, plné rty, jemně růžová líčka...'
(From the Chapter 1 of 1989, edited)

We already have past tense here. That is why I dedicated my last lesson to it. If you haven't read it yet, please, check it out, it will help you to understand better.
'Měla' is the past tense form of the verb 'mít' which means 'to have' (full conjugation table is found here). 'Byla' and 'byly' are past forms of 'být' (to be). 'Vypadaly' comes from 'vypadat'.
'Jejich' is a possessive pronoun; I mentioned them in Lesson 13. It is the subject of the sentence, therefore it is not inflected. Now let's find out the meaning of all of the other words.

Vocabulary

barva, f. (barvy; prdg. žena) ['bur-vah] colour; noun
dálka, f. (dálky, exception: 3rd case: dálce; prdg. škola) ['du:ll-cah] distance; noun
dlouhý/á/é ['dlow-hee:] long; adj.
hnědý/á/é ['hnye-dee:] brown; adj.
jemně ['ye-mnye] slightly, softly; adv.
líčko, n. (líčka; prdg. město) ['leech-coh] cheek; noun
mezi ['meh-zee] between, among; prep.
nos, m. (nosu; prdg. hrad)['nos] nose; noun
oči (sing.: oko), f. (očí; prdg. kost) ['o-tchi] eyes; noun – quite complicated, I'm going to talk about it later
plný/á/é ['pl-nee:] full; adj. 
ret, m. (rtu; prdg. hrad) ['ret] lip; noun
růžový/á/é ['roo:-zyo-vee:] pink; adj.
tak ['tuck] like that, that way, so; adv.

The rest of the words has already been mentioned in some lessons before, so they can be found in my Czech-English dictionary.
Knowing these words, you should now be able to translate the sentences. Yet, to make sure you fully understand them, I'll go through them with you.

'Měla dlouhé vlasy...' I think this is clear. Note that the adjective and the noun have to 'agree'. I talked about this in Lesson 8 and I'm going to talk about it more in this lesson. One important thing is that we talk about hair in plural (like in French – les cheveux), not like in English. 'Vlasy jsou...' not 'Vlasy je...' but you can say 'Vlas je...' if you're talking about one hair. Translation: She had long hair...

'...jejich barva byla mezi blond a světlou hnědou.' When talking about something's colour, you have to use the colour's name as a noun. 'Barva mých očí je hnědá.'  (=My eyes' colour is brown.) BUT 'Mé oči jsou hnědé.' (=My eyes are brown.) Translation: '...its colour was between blonde and light brown.'

'A oči byly hnědé, nebo aspoň tak z dálky vypadaly.' I see there could be a problem with the word 'tak'. Aside from its being used as a 'filler' (it's basically the Czech equivalent of 'well' or 'so') it is also used as an adverb. As a translation, I used 'like that'. Let's take a look at the verb 'vypadat'. We talked about this verb in Lesson 18 and you already know that we usually use it with 'jako' or 'jak' (no difference in this case). Together it means 'to look like'. And if you don't want to repeat 'they looked like they were brown', you can just say 'they looked like that'. The same can be done in Czech– 'vypadaly jako hnědé' => 'vypadaly tak' (you have to omit 'jako', 'tak' itself means 'like that'). Translation: And [her] eyes were brown, or at least they looked like that from a distance.

The last sentence will be explained in the following part.

Noun-adjective agreement

I'm not sure whether this is the official name for it. Ergh. Well, this is pretty much about the gender, case and number of the noun. I have already mentioned that we decline the adjectives too and I've also told you the two patterns which are jarní and mladý. According to these two, you are able to decline any adjective. Let's divide all of the adjectives we know into these two groups:
Jarní- další, menší, nervózní, světlejší, vlastní, zálkadní
Mladý- černý/á/é, dlouhý/á/é, dobrý/á/é, hubený/á/é, chladný/á/é, chutný/á/é, jistý/á/é, ledový/á/é, malý/á/é, náctiletý/á/é, naštvaný/á/é, nějaký/á/é, některý/á/é, nemocný/á/é, plný/á/é, podobný/á/é, překvapený/á/é, připravený/á/é, roztomilý/á/é, slaný/á/é, slovanský/á/é, smutný/á/é, světlý/á/é, šťastný/á/é, štíhlý/á/é, růžový/á/é, unavený/á/é, vysoký/á/é, zeleninový/á/é, zklamaný/á/é, zmatený/á/é
As you can see, the pattern 'jarní' has only one form for the first case of singular and plural.
See these examples:
bratr, m.      další bratr        další bratři
sestra, f.       další sestra       další sestry
číslo, n.        další číslo         další čísla
The pattern 'mladý' has much more complicated declension and is commoner than 'jarní'. However, there are two comparative forms of adjectives– menší and světlejší. These are, as you know, derived from malý and světlý. Based on this, you can easily deduce that comparatives are always declined according to 'jarní'.
Examples:
bratr, m.     malý bratr          malí bratři
sestra, f.      malá sestra        malé sestry
číslo, n.       malé číslo          malá čísla
The full declension tables are in Czech Language Course section.

Vocabulary

Body Parts

I'm actually planning to make a video on body parts because hearing the pronunciation from a native speaker is probably better than a dictionary's 'pronunciation brackets'. When it's done, I'll post a link. This doesn't need any commenting so. I'm presenting a 'Body parts' wordlist!

We already know these:
líčko, n. (líčka; prdg. město) ['lee:tch-coh] cheek; noun
nos, m. (nosu; prdg. hrad)['nos] nose; noun
oči (sing.: oko), f. pl. (očí; prdg. kost) ['o-tchi] eyes; noun
ret, m. (rtu; prdg. hrad) ['ret] lip; noun

Let's add another facial parts:
brada, f. (brady; prdg. žena) ['brah-dah] chin; noun
čelo, n. (čela; prdg. město) ['tche-loh] forehead; noun
oko, n. (oka; prdg. město) ['oa-coh] eye; noun
pusa, f. (pusy; prdg. škola) ['poo-sah] mouth, kiss; noun
ucho, n. (ucha; prdg. město)  ['oo:-cho] ear; noun
ústa, f. pl. (úst; prdg. města-pl.) ['oo.s-tah] mouth; noun
uši (sing. ucho), f. pl. (uší; prdg. kost) ['oo-shi] ears; noun

And some basic words to be able to name what we've broken:
noha, f. (nohy; prdg. škola; 3rd case, sing.-noze) ['no-hah] leg; noun
paže, f. (paže; prdg. růže) ['pah-zye] arm; noun
prst, m. (prstu; prdg. hrad) ['prst] finger, toe; noun
ruka, f. (ruky; prdg. škola; 3rd case, sing.-ruce; pl. ruce) ['roo-cah] hand; noun

Colours

Basic colours always end in -á (except for special ones, e. g. fuchsia, etc.), it is so probably because we used to say 'černá barva' or 'šedá barva' so it was shortened to 'černá' and 'šedá'. This is why they are declined like adjectives (according to the pattern mladý).

We already know these:

černá, f. ['tcher-na:h] black; noun
hnědá, f. ['hnye-da:h] brown; noun

růžová, f. ['roo:-zyo-va::] pink; noun

Let's add some:

bílá, f. ['bee:-la:h] white; noun

červená, f. ['tcher-ve-na:h] red; noun

fialová, f. ['fee-ah-loa-va:h] purple; noun

modrá, f. ['mod-ra:h] blue; noun

oranžová, f. ['oa-ran-zyo-va:h] orange; noun

šedá, f. ['sheh-da:h] grey; noun

zelená, f. ['ze-leh-na:h] green; noun

žlutá, f. ['zyloo-ta:h] yellow; noun

What is your favourite colour? Jaká je tvá (vaše) oblíbená barva?
My favourite colour is ... Má oblíbená barva je...

love & peace
Ciray

Lesson 19– Past tense

I have been thinking... And I believe you are now good enough to understand basic sentences in Czech. So instead of making up dialogues, I decided to take a few lines from Starlight's stories (here in Czech and in English) with appropriate grammar (or in the order they are in), translate them and explain the meaning and grammar. Do not worry, there is no law abuse happening.
But first, I have to tell you something about Czech past tense as the story is written in it. Yes, tense, there's only one past tense.

How to create a sentence in the past tense (=minulý čas)

All tenses affect the verb of a sentence. In the section Verb Conjugations, there are plenty of verbs you can click on to see the way they are conjugated. 

The picture above shows the conjugation of the verb 'otevřít' (to open).

Those are the forms you will use when talking about the past. As you may have noticed, along with the verb that carries the meaning goes a conjugated form of 'být' (to be). You mustn't forget about putting it there. Not even the verb 'být' itself can be used without it. But we're talking about the Czech language so there must be some exception. Of course, the third person of singular and the third person of plural are only consisted of the verb that carries the meaning. See the picture below:

Look at this sentence:

Ráno jsem byla v obchodě. 

(=I was in a shop in the morning.)

ráno, n. (rána; prdg. město) ['ruh:-no] morning; noun

v ['v] in; prep. – connected with the 6th case, therefore 'v obchodě' not 'v obchod'. See the way it's inflected here.

obchod, m. (obchodu; prdg. hrad) ['ob-chod] shop; noun

'Ráno' is the first word of the sentence because I'm emphasizing that I was there in the morning. The word order depends on what you want to stress. To explain this, I'm going to use a couple of examples:

Kdy jsi byla v obchodě? Ráno jsem byla v obchodě.

(When were you in the shop? The speaker is asking a woman, as you may notice.)

Kdo byl ráno v obchodě? Já jsem byla ráno v obchodě.

(Who was in the shop in the morning? The speaker is asking 'kdo' because he/she doesn't know whether it was a man or a woman, therefore it is followed by the form for a male gender.)

Kde jsi byla ráno? V obchodě jsem byla ráno. 

(Where were you in the morning?)

Note that 'ráno' is an adverb, therefore it is never inflected. However, it can be used as a noun and nouns can be inflected. Nemám ráda chladná rána. (=I don't like cold mornings.)

But it doesn't necessarily have to be emphasized to have the privilege to be the first. Because you're talking about the past and thusly, using the past tense, you naturally start by saying when it happened. Like in English. When starting a conversation talking about your holiday for example, you always start with 'Last summer....' or 'When I was in Europe...'

There are also two ways to express the verb. Nevertheless, they are quite simple. You only have to memorize this: If there is any other word preceding the verb, the conjugated verb 'být' will be first and the conjugated verb itself will be second, however, if the verb is starting the sentence, the verbs switch.

Ráno jsem byla v obchodě. Koupila jsem chléb. 

(I was in a shop in the morning. I bought [some] bread.)

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or send me a message.

love & peace

Ciray