Why bother learning a language spoken by a little more than 10 million people? With its unpronounceable consonants, endless noun declinations and irregular verb conjugations, Czech is a tough language to master. You might be better off learning, say, Esperanto, some could argue.

And yet more foreigners than ever are making valiant stabs at learning Czech. The Summer School of Slavonic Studies at Charles University in Prague attracted a record number of students this year. With 211 foreigners — nearly 20 percent American — from 38 different countries, the courses, which end this month, are operating at maximum capacity.

Jan Kuklík, director of the Institute of Czech Studies, which organizes the program, says growing numbers of students come from Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and now also China. "This year we even have students from Latin America," he says. "It's incredible how many different nationalities want to learn Czech."

Why the surge? According to Kuklík, there's a growing interest in Slavonic studies at many European universities. In Asia, meanwhile, Czech music is extremely popular and has motivated many students to give the language a go.

Horst Dippong, who has a Ph.D. in Slavonic studies, came to the summer school from Hamburg, Germany. He already speaks Russian, so he's making good progress with his Czech. It helps knowing another Slavic language, he says. "I want to focus more on the western Slavs in my research, so Czech will be useful."

Dippong's classmate, Rocío Isasa, who is from Spain, decided to improve her Czech after living in Prague for two years and working for the Spanish Embassy here.

"It's useful in a lot of jobs to have a special skill. Not many people abroad know Czech," she says. "It's a beautiful language. But so difficult."

Indeed, the perceived difficulty of the Czech language is the main reason why many foreigners living here eventually give up. Is this merely a lazy excuse?

Not according to Milan Hrdlička, who teaches linguistics at the Institute of Czech Studies at Charles University. Hrdlička confirms what most expats have suspected all along: Czech is one of the world's most difficult languages, along with Arabic and Mandarin.

"All Slavic languages are hard to learn for non-Slavs like Americans," says Hrdlička. "The grammar is especially hard, with so many different rules and almost as many exceptions to those rules." Hrdlička says that Czech is also more complicated than other Slavic languages such as Polish or Russian because it has the most inflections — affixes that, when changed only slightly, give words entirely new meanings.

Czech is also rich in idioms that are virtually untranslatable and can throw off even the most determined language student. Take sbal si svých pět švestek a běž, a way of saying "get lost" that, translated verbatim, means, "Take your five plums and run."

Finding motivation

One of the key obstacles to learning a new language is a lack of motivation.

"It's possible for foreigners to live here without speaking the language at all," says Věra Bártová, a Czech language instructor. "Many Czechs speak English now, and they welcome opportunities to practice their English." This means English speakers eager to test new Czech on their local friends are often out of luck.

Jo Weaver, chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce, has lived here since 1990. By her own admission, Czech continues to be a struggle. Weaver, who takes private lessons and has quite a good passive understanding of the language, points out that Prague isn't exactly friendly to those speaking beginner-level Czech. She recalls countless cases where her attempts to say something in Czech only met with impatient, uncomprehending glances.

"I became discouraged after a while," she says. "It just made me more shy about trying to use the language."

This would sound all too familiar to Jeffrey Welker, an American, who is the managing director of BCH Telecommunications. He's been here for 14 years and identifies himself as an advanced beginner. Welker is well aware that expats living here miss out on a lot if they don't learn at least some Czech.

"If you don't speak Czech in Prague, you can get by, but your life will be semi-limited in the long run," says Welker.

No matter how integrated into Czech society expats are, they all seem to agree that by far the hardest thing about Czech is the grammar and the pronunciation.

Words without vowels, sometimes booby trapped with the abominable ř sound, look intimidating even on the paper and can stick in the non-native speaker's mouth like a wad of stale chewing gum.