FUN with Czech

It's a girl!

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 13:13:49 -0700

“How do you know that mouse is a female?” That is the typical remark of my Spanish-native-speaker-husband after I automatically start talking about a mouse we have just seen in our garden as if it was a “she” (there’s an overpopulation of them this year). “Because it’s ta myš” is my usual answer. Ta myš means “that mouse” in Czech and the word ‘myš’ is of female grammatical gender. Not for the Spanish speakers though – el ratón is masculine.

It’s just a mouse, you might think. But this little story practically addresses the question that linguists around the world have been doing research on for years: Does language affect the way we think?

You might have heard of something called “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis”. It is actually not a real hypothesis and Sapir and Whorf never wrote any work together, which is why we usually speak rather of “linguistic relativity”, a principle claiming that language can affect the worldview of its speakers. This theory remains somewhat controversial but nonetheless intriguing for many linguists, who continue to design experiments to show how different aspects of languages might influence how we perceive certain aspects of reality. Maybe not the reality as a whole but at least some parts of it.

There exists a number of experiments inspired by this theory addressing the grammatical gender and how it influences the native speakers of languages that express the grammatical category of gender. You can have a look at the following illustration and try the “experiment” yourselves. If you were supposed to give the following animals human names, what names would you suggest?

Were the names you used male or female?

If you are a (native) Czech speaker, chances are that your names would correspond with the grammatical gender these animals have in the Czech language:

If you are a speaker of a language which...Read More

Barbaric Czech Easter

Sun, 21 Apr 2019 13:29:14 -0700

Easter is undoubtedly one of the high points of the year for the Czechs, even though only about one third of the people in reportedly the second most atheist country in the world know about the Christian background of the festival. This is still true even after 2016 when Good Friday (or “Great Friday” in Czech), one of the most important Christian holidays of the year, became an official Czech national holiday. For most Czechs it is just an extra day off when they don’t need to work. Interestingly enough, many people seem to take it also as an excuse to eat and drink a lot, even though for the Christians it is a day of strict fasting.

For many people Easter is more of a “welcome the spring” festival. This is partly due to the fact that the communist government which ruled the country for more than 40 years was actively promoting only this meaning of the festival in order to suppress the religious one.

That is probably why many Czech see Easter Monday as the main day of Easter celebrations, even though traditionally and internationally the Easter Sunday is more important – as the day commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But “barbaric” Czech Easter is not about that… As you will see in the following lines. What makes us call it “barbaric” then?

Have you ever seen something like this? Yes, it’s a whip. And yes, it’s for whipping. And no, it is not a prop from a bizarre kinky adult movie. It is used by Czech kids (and adults as well) on Easter Monday. Czechs usually call it “pomlázka”, which has probably something to do with the fact that using it is believed to keep the girls (on whose buttocks it is used) young. In some regions people also call it “tatar”, which seems much more appropriate, as Tatars were invaders from the east considered “barbaric”. And what else should be labeled as “barbaric” if not whipping poor...Read More

18 Fun Facts about Czech Beer

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 13:04:25 -0700

Beer is usually the first thing foreigners think of when being asked about the Czech Republic. What are the reasons behind that? Grab a beer while you open this article and it will help you understand!
Even though it is constantly declining during the last couple of years, the Czech consumption of beer per capita is still by far the highest in the world. Each person in the country (including babies) drinks an average of 140 litres of beer per year. It used to be 160. That is almost one VELKÉ PIVO (large beer) per day.
The standard size of a Czech beer is 0.5 litres. Czechs like to have it in a thick glass with a handle.
Czech people drink so much beer that they leave only a little for export. In contrast with the figures mentioned above, the country occupies only the 10^th place in export of beer.
Many Czech people are so into beer that they would choose non-alcoholic beer over soft drinks if they cannot drink alcohol. Many bars even have draught non-alcoholic beer.
Czech beer is so cheap that the government once tried to pass a law forcing the bars to offer at least one non-alcoholic drink cheaper than beer in an attempt to control alcoholism. It is hard to say whether this effort was successful or not, as it seems this particular requirement has silently disappeared from the final version of the law currently in use.
Czechs like to call beer their “liquid bread”. Anyone who has ever visited the country knows how essential bread is for the nation.
Czechs are so proud of their beer that it has been chosen by popular vote among the “7 Czech wonders”.
Draught beer is the no. 1 drink for Czechs visiting a bar. A real Czech would never order bottled beer in a bar.
Many Czechs like to save money and drink beer at home though, in which case they...Read More

10 Czech Ways of Replying to "How Are You?"

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 09:07:41 -0800

Have you heard about the “grumpy Czechs”? Let’s analyze the attitude of the Czech people towards one of the most basic questions in any language – “how are you”? In Czech we say “jak se máš” and it’s not as easy as you might expect!
In many countries the question “how are you” is just a natural part of the initial greetings in any human conversation:
Therefore, when learning Czech you would probably expect people to say the same:
However, many Czechs tend to go much deeper into this question and when being asked how they are, they start to analyze in their brains how they actually are. You can even find forums on the Internet where people discuss how they should answer this question, looking for some original answers to surprise the person asking (and if possible make them never ask the “stupid” question again).
For a Czech person, adapting to a foreign culture really requires a “switch”. I still haven’t completely mastered the habit of the Spanish-speaking people (for example the new Colombian part of my family) to make this question an indispensable part of the initial “hola”. I still get stuck at the “hola” often, just not being able to get the “Bien, gracias, y tú?” over my tongue.
But back to Czech. Many people try to avoid the question altogether. Just skip it and start talking about the weather (a topic most Czechs are obsessed about, but we will get back to that later). Many people try to ask in a slightly different way to make it sound less like a “cliché”. I will give you some examples:
Tak co, jak je? [So what, how is?] – This is a more colloquial way to ask the same question. Notice that we don’t ask how the person is, we ask just “how is”. How is what?
Alternatively, we can shorten this to just “Jak je?” or “Tak jak je?”.
Jak se dnes máš? [How yourself today have = How are you today?] – To make it...Read More

TY or VY?

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 08:19:19 -0800

Sometimes the most basic things in a language can be the most difficult to grasp, especially if your mother tongue uses them in a completely different way. I have been trying to teach my husband (whose mother tongue is Latin American Spanish) the usage of TY and VY for almost two years and I still don’t think he can really understand the difference. That’s why I decided to write it down, so that he can see it “black on white”, as we Czechs say (well, we actually say “ať to vidí černé na bílém”). And so that our students can understand the usage better as well!
In the Czech language you have to distinguish between addressing other people in formal and informal situations. If you speak to your friends or family members, you would usually address them by TY, the 2^nd person singular. If you speak (or for example write an e-mail) to a stranger (no matter if it is your doctor, a policeman or a shop assistant) or to an elder, you would usually address them by VY, which is the 2^nd person plural (and it doesn’t matter if it is just one person or if there are more of them – so basically you address the doctor as if there were actually at least two of them there).
Once you are addressing more people at the same time, you don’t need to worry too much whether the occasion is rather formal or informal, as you will address them by VY in any case, no matter if they are your family members or strangers.
You can check this table summarizing all personal plurals in Czech, so that it gets more clear.
Let’s have a look at several widely used languages and compare their features for formality and informality with Czech: text here.
French
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