Anglický is the Czech word for English, except of course it's not Ang-licky with the 'ck' pronounced in the stout Anglo-Saxon way as in muck, duck or f... Around these parts it is spoken Ang-liss-kee – a 'c' in Czech always being a bit of a softy.
In
addition, the 'y' has an accent. Until a few weeks ago I didn't know a 'y'
could have an accent. This 'y' in Anglicky is actually a ý. Not that that makes
a huge difference to you and I because our primitive pronunciation of a 'y' is
as consistent as the wind changing direction at any opportunity:
- you, young and yoghurt is the 'yuh' y,
- city, baby, Yvette is the more Frenchified 'ee' y and
- typhoon, cycle and psychic being the 'ai' y.
There
are phonetic pedants out there who are no doubt horrified by my
over-simplification and would correctly point out of the beautiful varieties of y, but I know now that I am
an Anglický with an 'ee' and that will do – hooray!
It's
a handy word, Anglický – spoken as a question with an upturned quasi-australian question intonation, it facilitates a quick response in English (usually
positive). In restaurants it might even be accompanied with the proud presentation of
an Anglicised menu, where Czech and English appear side-by-side as a magical
gastronomic lexicon. Here the confusing word salám is translated into salami, the impenetrable víno it turns out is wine
and the mysterious banán split is superbly transformed into the much clearer banana
split. Wow – I hadn't realised Czech would be so easy!
That easy intro to Czechishness immediately takes a crash on making a quick visit the lav before heading
out into the snowy dark wastes of downtown post-dinner Olomouc: I mean, there's a certain terror of
not knowing which door to use. In many establishments there's not even a handy 'man smoking pipe' or
'lady in 18th Century garb' on the door, simply the bleak four-letter words muži and ženy!
I recall as a 7-year old visiting my uncle and aunt in Geneva being horrified at seeing
the unknown mots français Femmes and Hommes attached to the entrances of the
public bogs outside the St. Pierre
Cathedral – I had a 50% chance of getting it wrong, of being
shamefully discovered in a ladies loo and of word of my nefarious dithery wee shop shenanigans getting back to me laughing schoolfriends – Apocalypse Loo! If only the internet had been around back then to
help with that sticky
situation...
Olomouc is a very beautiful and yet small(-ish) city in Moravia, the eastern half of the Czech Republic. It has about 102,000 people, although the centre of town is usually so quiet it seems that most of those are either at home in the suburbs or have fled the ice and snow on holiday. I think the summer warmth will bring 'em out. A further 25,000 souls that attend the prestigious Palacký University swell the population during term time. In truth, I expected to see Uni kids swaggering around just as you might in any university town of the UK, gaggles of beery lads and tottery lasses filling up the town's central hostelries with smoke and sweat and leaving a terrible mess to be cleared up the next morning. But it seems that students here are well-behaved, stay home with a cup of cocoa and actually study! Either that or they're just too impoverished to cough up the pennies for a few pints. Or there's a secret studenty bar somewhere offering discounted beer: if that is so, I must find it. The only time I've heard noisy late-night naughtiness was on the occasion of the end of term where the miscreants were, surprise-surprise, noisy high-schoolers hanging out in the centre of town pooling resources to buy celebratory end of term cheap head-splitting wines. Many-a passer-by offered disapproving shaky heads and stern tut-tuts!
So, for the next 2-3 years Olomouc is home. Our first few weeks have been an interesting mix of newby excitement and infuriating frustrations, of wonderful discoveries and poignant reflections – some of which will be set out in later posts. The cafés and bars we've visited have been respectfully restrained, if a little too quiet, and around the main square even on the coldest days accomplished buskers, using anything from xylophones to gypsy fiddles, have filled the streets with the melodic ringing of their souls. We, along with everyone else, have begun walking from A to B, something I've enjoyed getting used to again. We've also been learning a few Czech words each day, enjoyed the most
excellent beer on God's earth and have just bought a lovely old flat c.1910 in the town centre
in the shadow of the St Wenceslas Cathedral.
In many ways this blog may very well be much like the other one, but the very difference of life here and my observations of it will, I hope, draw the reader back. Life in the city of Olomouc and in the wider Czech Republic beyond seems to be such a pleasant contrast to our previous home in Hong Kong and thus far I can express nothing but cheerful enthusiasm.
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