It appears that the glorious Czech Republic has so many
subconscious connections with the Anglicized world, one particular vein of which
can be seen in terms of the polite mannerisms similar to that found within the
British psyche. What is important here are formal introductions, personal
meetings, the socialising of colleagues and potential business partners beyond
the workplace (especially over beers) and attention to language. The latter’s
emphasis is particularly striking in this highly literate society. Bookshops
are popular and nearly every modern title in English is translated into Czech.
Even supermarkets have book aisles and many people take time out of their
day to pop down to the tabak, pick up a newspaper or magazine.
There is an official Academy of the Czech Language. Since 1911 Czechs have appointed guardians of their language, such as those in Paris or Beijing, although Czech speakers seem quite competent at the task themselves.
Perhaps this is where similarities with British culture slightly diverge –
many in the UK would see attention to linguistic niceties and grammatical precepts as mere
pedantry of the sort that occupies letters pages of the Daily Telegraph,
but in matters Czesky the finer points of language are hotly and popularly
debated: it is a language cherished for the very qualities that make it exact
and precise, highly nuanced and suitably rich.
But times they are a-changin’. Some women now choose to omit
the suffix -ana to indicate the feminine
form of their husband’s suffix –a;
thus a smart new Miss or Mrs Vaclavana may decide to call herself Ms Vaclava. The Czechs enjoy their suffixes, and it is because of this that the British name Brenda must become Brendé in order to emphasise its
natural feminine ownership (unless anyone knows of a bloke out there with
that name). In general, add -sky, –ky or just -y to an ordinary English word, like boxerky or slipy in clothing outlets, and you're probably getting there.
As a newcomer to all of this it is interesting to note how
in many ways the Czechs have a fondness of sorts for the ole Anglictiny. I can only really
attribute this to the flimsy efforts at diplomatic entente before Hitler decided East was where it's at (those efforts resulted, of course, in abject failure). Perhaps it is that the Brits
have been amongst the few European nations not to have stomped their military
boots upon these rich potato fields either as conquerors or on their way to
conquer other poor sods – mention not within these towns the hated Hun
or reviled Russian! Cool Britannia is still
a bit of a fad here – planting Union flags on pieces of Czech clothing or
in decorative advertising cannot fail to give the product an instant breath of uber-coolility in much the
same way that the Stars and Stripes excited us Brits back in the 70s when
Americana was in and even Coca-cola logos were most desirable: everyone wanted
to buy the world a coke or sing about it!
For a multitude of historical reasons probably best not to
go into here, the lingua franca of
modern times has become English, This has meant that for many museums,
galleries, restaurants and railway stations all over the world the preferred
second language is that of those pesky Angles and Saxons. Whilst fortuitous for us
adventurous Brits, it has also had the effect of making us into lazy little
buggers in our attitude towards the acquisition of foreign tongues – I mean,
there are so very many of the blighters! Do we really have to learn Swahili, Swedish or any of the Slavic national languages; can't they all learn English?
So, it is possible to find howlers on restaurant menus
throughout the world, malapropisms-a-plenty in nomenclatures for domestic
products, ill-adopted English names and wordy similitude. And that really is the
point of this post. There are wonders to behold in any new country, even in the
home of double ententres. No doubt there
are tribesmen in the Upper Volta that regard a visit to London as hilarious
because for them the name Trafalgar Square sounds like “I’ve got a tiny penis”.
There was plenty of this sort of thing in Hong Kong and
China and there is a wonderful website Engrish.com of many years extant that
catalogues the extraordinary nonsense translated as English. In a similar vein
is that online application Bad Translator that by the wonders of Internet trickery
translates any given text as many times as is desired between English to
Chinese to Hindi to Hebrew and to any other automatic translating dictionaries it can get
its hands on. For some probably immature reason I find this intensely amusing
and can lose myself for hours in playing with words and finding astonishingly
hilarious outcomes.
No such translating machine is required to find good honest
similitude on the streets of Olomouc. The Memsahib looked at a flat that I
dearly wished would be right for us on Wanklova Street where, incidentally,
there is an enormous red cock painted on the side of one the residential buildings: I
so wanted us to become the new Wanklovas of Wanklova Street: it sounded so like a wonderful naughty book title! At least we don't live on Prof. Fuky!
Not quite a similitude, but in bookshops it is charming to see the promotion of that latest naughty book by J.K. Rowlingova.
But the best discoveries here are the -ovas. The main street in Olomouc is Denisova, named, one presumes, after the astonishing gin drinking exploits of a certain Mr Thatcher – or maybe it was in honour of the bushy eyebrow growing propensities of a certain Mr Healey? They're everywhere! Franklinova, Rooseveltova, Mozartova, even Sukova... You try it: Hangova, Leftova, Rollova – the possibilities are endless.
Comments