Tag: language

(Part of an ongoing series. Previous installments begin here).

There’s a verb ‘krmit’ in Czech that describes the act of feeding an animal, small human or very old human (basically, anyone who can’t feed themselves). Czech is a very precise language in that there are often these highly specific verbs to differentiate between slightly different activities (feeding somebody else vs. feeding oneself, taking someone somewhere by car vs. taking someone somewhere by foot, and so forth). The pronunciation is phonetic: just say ‘Kermit’, but try to stifle the ‘e’ as much as possible. It helps if you smoosh your chin into your chest to constrict your throat and sort of gurgle the word out. Czech language is full of these consonant clusters– you can in fact say ‘fart, death, burp’ without using a single vowel.

I had a hard time convincing my wife that ‘Kermit’ is actually a real name in the native English-speaking world and that I wasn’t just pulling her leg. I think this might be the worst-conceived name to give a Czech kid, narrowly surpassing ‘Brezhnev’, ‘Khrushchev’ and ‘George W.’.

My favorite small residual thing about my birthday- once the day itself has passed, the festivities have ended, and the giant paper-mache birthing reenactment tube/slide has been disassembled- is easily being able to figure out what day of the month it is for the remainder of August. Because my birthday falls on the 7th, I get three-plus weeks of easy date calculation.

I wish that these powers also extended to allowing me to remember the names of months in Czech. This is one of my real downfalls when it comes to learning the language of my adoptive country. I even get a tingling ‘oh no’ sensation when the conversation swings towards some topic involving dates.

Maddeningly, Czech month names don’t stem from the familiar Gregorian etymological roots. I would be okay with this if it were a sort of pan-Slavic trait and other neighboring countries also didn’t have Gregorian-derived month names. But no: it’s specific to Czech. Even little buddy Slovakia, which shares about 95% of its language with Czech, has months that sound like January, February, etc.

Another thing that makes Czech calendar names hard to remember is that there doesn’t seem to be any handy mnemonic for keeping track of them. The names actually do mean things, like ‘falling leaves’ and so forth, but with the exception of Kveten (from ‘flower’, for May) the meanings are obscure enough that they’re no easier to remember than just learning the month name outright. Others have no meaning at all that I’m aware of and sound to me like lesser-known Soviet leaders: Duben, Brezen. Finally, they don’t have the feature of being grouped by name length – longer names at the beginning and end of the year, shorter in the middle – that I remember helping me to learn our calendar as a kid. Weirdly, the only naming convention that the Czech calendar shares with ours is similarly-named six and seventh months – Cerven and Cervenec .

Days of the week, blessedly, are much more intuitive and have personable, easy-to-remember names. My favorite is Nedele – Sunday – which means ‘do nothing’. Do nothing day. If you insist, Czech language.

A first from the Codger’s Corner. Used to be in a restaurant that a waiter or waitress would just walk up and ask for your order. But now there’s a whole series of statements and questions to which one must respond.  (Note that I did NOT write “litany of statements . . . .”  A  stop must be made to the the misuse of  “litany” as synonymous with “list.)”  Anway . . .oh, yes:  Perhaps you the reader can suggest some responses that are a cool, clever, but not at the expense of the unfortunate young man or woman who hasn’t found any better work than waiting on me.

First, there’s “My name is Michelle, I’ll be etc.”  I don’t see the sense of this.   In what later part of the transaction do first names matter?  It happens that this Michelle was a sweet ingenue, but as she didn’t follow her name with her phone number, what was the point?  In any case, the principle of egalitarianism that may be this country’s (and my own) one virtue requires that I tell Michelle my name is Joe.  Which is absurd.  Let’s go around the table introducing ourselves.

Later comes the question, “Is everything all right?”  This is usually asked solicitously, expressing his or her interest in my welfare. Accordingly, I should answer in an appreciative spirit of enthusiasm that the meal is indeed delicious. At the same time, I’ve been told that the question is a legalistic ploy by which the restaurant covers itself.  If the customer answers “Yes,” then the customer supposedly can’t refuse to pay the bill on account of some fault in the meal served.  Since I haven’t finished the meal, I’m not sure that it deserves payment, so I have to be guarded as well as gracious in my response, which is hard to pull off.  (By the way, I wonder if the question really  could work as  legalistic ploy.  A lawyer here would help.)

Finally, there’s the most irksome question of all:  During a pause in your eating, he or she comes up and asks, “Still working on it?”   This is supposedly more polite than “Are you finished?” but actually casts the  situation in a light unflattering both to the eater, who is working away like an animal on its prey,  and the food, whose consumption has become an unpleasant task.  Sometimes I try to indicate that eating, usually and in this particular case, was not intended by our Creator to be work, but rather a gift of refreshment for our spirits and strength.  I’d like to come up, however,  with something less didactic.  Any ideas?