Speaking in Tongues

Tonight I began my journey down the unimaginably long road to Czech fluency. I thought I'd start with the basics:

please = prosím ≈ PROseeem
Thank you. = Děkuji. ≈ DYEKOYeh
I'm sorry. = Promiňte. ≈ PROmenytah

The most difficult part so far is the áccent. In Spanish, an accent on a syllable means say it louder, much the same way that "SPANish" sounds right and "spaNISH" sounds wrong. Either way, you can say the syllables as fast as you want. In Czech, the emphasis is always on the first syllable--accents have an alternate meaning. They hold a given syllable longer (i.e. "PROseeem"). It's not difficult once you get the hang of it, but it's far from natural.