On (Czech) Language

It’s another day in black and white up here. Snow again turning everything –even the evergreens – to grey.

I could be studying my Czech language lessons. Or getting my income taxes in order. Or looking for work. Or even giving in to snow-bound cravings and eating Hershey dark chocolate kisses unfortunately left over from Christmas. I could be – but I’m not.

Instead I’ve been reading back articles in the Prague Monitor,
an online newspaper I get in my email box every weekday. No, not what I could be reading or maybe should be reading – important news stories like why the hapless Greek economy ruined a recent Czech government bond sale.

No – I’ve been reading about the use of language in Prague. Czech language. Standard American vs Southern American vs British English. And the merits of editing what you say for the sake of understanding.

Now I don’t even live in Prague except for a few months in the summer – and a few, scattered weeks in fall or spring. But even for those short stays, I find myself editing my English for my Czech friends – as Prague Monitor writer Emily Prucha found herself doing in her combined Czech-American family.

Prucha wrote that Americans find their brand of English – especially when spoken with regional accents and idioms (she’s from Virginia) – sometimes incomprehensible to Czechs who – if they’ve studied English formally have usually been force-fed the grammar and vocabulary of British English. So almost without conscious thought now, I will use “flat” for apartment and “lift” for elevator and try to keep my Lower East Side-influenced northeastern slang to myself.

But Prague isn’t the only place where British English is catching on. It’s happening here too. There are now many British and British-trained news reporters and analysts working in the US. Or as foreign reporters where cost-cutting media companies have closed overseas news bureaus. And many Britishisms that would actually be incorrect in American English are creeping into the everyday language. One of the most obvious: "gone missing" for when someone disappears without a trace or explanation. Young American reporters think the phrase sounds cool and sophisticated -- along with some others like "on holiday" and even occasionally "flat".

Words, after all, define us. My friends and I went through college saying “caio” to each other and thinking that simple Italian word (learned from Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren – not generations of Italian immigrants) somehow gave us a kind of world-weary European sophistication.

Not surprisingly in our much more interlaced world today – ciao is again a college favorite – along with any other country’s words which can make a Brooklyn or Mississippi or even Boston (mine) accent sound like it’s circled the globe.

So – ciao bambino! I’m about to go missing and maybe on holiday as well. You’ll find me at some pub with a pint, some bangers and mash and my mates – some of whom may be a bit dodgy. Like me.

Czech Politics Unczeched

Sitting here in New Jersey -- wrestling with our own US train wreck - health care reform - it's hard for me to criticize the politics of another country. Or the voters here or in the Czech Republic who, it seems, are too easily led or too apathetic or too uninformed -- or all three.

But truthfully -- if someone were trying to write a political whodunit novel--- he or she couldn't possibly imagine the current Czech political disaster. For those who haven't been following the debacle --it started last spring in the middle of the Czech Republic's 6 month rotating Presidency of the European Union. CSSD (center left Social Democrats) called a vote of confidence in the lower house of Parliament which failed and brought down the center right government led by ODS (Civic Democrats). A caretaker government of supposedly apolitical technocrats was appointed to serve until early elections set for October. About a month ago the election campaign began. Then a deputy challenged the early elections in the Czech Constitutional Court, claiming he had the constitutional right to serve a full term. The Court ruled in the deputy's favor. Chaos ensued. Politicians hatched another plan for elections in November but then that was torpedoed when CSSD withdrew its initial support. Are you dizzy yet? Now no one knows what to expect.

I've seen all kinds of unsourced editorials and columns from Prague about which party or corporation or lobby influenced the other and why CSSD (The Social Democrats) changed its stance on early elections and what the true motive of the Czech Constitutional Court might be etc. etc. I hope one of the more journalistically inclined newspapers or magazines or even TV operations has a crack team of investigative reporters hard at work to peel back the opaque political layers and get at the truth of what happened and why. Most importantly why!!! I'm returning to Prague in November to watch what I hope will be a big celebration for the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution which ended Communism in then Czechoslovakia. But if this political circus is all 20 years of "democracy" has wrought --- Czechs themselves may well ask -- "why bother?"