Learn about exchanging foreign currency
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Exchanging money in the Czech Republic is easy and convenient. You can exchange money at airports, special money exchange kiosks and banks. It will be easy to find a place to exchange money. Just look for the English term ‘Exchange.’ In case you can’t find one, you can also look for an ATM. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| In Czech, “Is there an ATM near here?” is |
| Je tady blízko bankomat? |
| (slow) Je ta-dy blíz-ko ban-ko-mat? |
| Je tady blízko bankomat? |
| If you want to exchange money at a bank, you can just replace the word for ATM with the word for bank. “Is there a bank near here?” In Czech, this is.. |
| Je tady blízko banka? |
| (slow) Je ta-dy blíz-ko ban-ka? |
| Je tady blízko banka? |
| It is simple. As you may have noticed, we just replaced bankomat meaning “ATM” with banka meaning “bank.” |
| (slow) banka |
| banka |
| Let’s ask for an exchange office. The Czech word for ‘exchange office’ is.. směnárna. |
| (slow) Smě-nár-na. |
| Směnárna. |
| To ask ‘“Is there an exchange office near here?”, you can say.. |
| Je tady blízko směnárna? |
| (slow) Je ta-dy blíz-ko smě-nár-na? |
| Je tady blízko směnárna? |
| If you want to ask "Where can I exchange currency?" you can say.. |
| Kde můžu vyměnit peníze? |
| Let’s break it down: |
| Kde mů-žu vy-mě-nit pe-ní-ze? |
| Once again: |
| Kde můžu vyměnit peníze? |
| The first word, kde, means “where.” |
| (slow) Kde. |
| Kde. |
| Then we have můžu, which is a form of the verb “can”. We translate it as “I can”. |
| (slow) Mů-žu. |
| Můžu. |
| The word vyměnit is a verb that means “to exchange”. |
| (slow) Vy-mě-nit. |
| Vyměnit. |
| And at the end we have peníze the word for “money”. |
| (slow) Pe-ní-ze. |
| Peníze. |
| All together, we have |
| Kde můžu vyměnit peníze? |
| Literally, this means “Where can I exchange money?” |
| When you exchange money in Czech, usually you will be asked Všechny? It means ‘All of them? The word Všechny literally means ‘All.’ |
| (slow) Všech-ny? |
| Všechny? |
| If you want to, you can simply say ano meaning ‘Yes.’ |
| (slow) ano |
| ano |
| In the case that you need more coins, you can break a banknote into coins or the small denominations of bills. You should say “Can you break this banknote please?” or in Czech, Můžete mi rozměnit tuhle bankovku, prosím? |
| Let’s break it down: |
| Mů-že-te mi roz-mě-nit tuh-le ban-kov-ku, pro-sím? |
| Once more: |
| Můžete mi rozměnit tuhle bankovku, prosím? |
| The first word můžete is something like“can you”. |
| The word mi means “to me” in English. |
| Then we have rozměnit which means “to break” or literally “to change”. |
| (slow) Roz-mě-nit. |
| Rozměnit. |
| Next we have tuhle which means “this” in feminine form. |
| (slow) Tuh-le. |
| Tuhle. |
| After that, we have bankovku meaning “banknote”. |
| (slow) Ban-kov-ku. |
| Bankovku. |
| And at the end, we have prosím meaning “please” |
| Here’s the question again: |
| Můžete mi rozměnit tuhle bankovku, prosím? |
| The literal translation is “Can you change this banknote?” |
| Ask this when you have a big bill that you want to break. |
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