Czech language

My first Czech Wedding

Lea & Petra at Bouzov Castle © Ricky Yates

Earlier this year I received an email from an English young man called Lea, asking if there was a Czech language version of the Anglican ‘Common Worship’ Marriage Service. He was planning to marry a Czech young lady called Petra, at a venue near her home town of Olomouc in the east of the Czech Republic, and this was the liturgy that they wanted to use. As there would be both English and Czech speakers attending the wedding, they wanted the text in both languages.

One of the many helpful things left by my predecessor John Philpott, was a ‘Word document’ containing exactly the text that Lea had asked for. I forwarded it to him but wrote an accompanying note asking who was going to use it? If they were going to be married by an English-speaking minister from one of the Czech Churches, then surely that minister would want to use his/her own Church’s liturgy. On the other hand, if they were going to have a Czech civil ceremony followed by a Church service conducted by an Anglican priest imported for the occasion, then it was common courtesy for me, as the Anglican priest for the area concerned, to be consulted.

In reply, Lea and Petra explained that they didn’t yet have anyone to use the liturgy. But they had booked their wedding venue, the ‘chapel’ in Bouzov Castle, and that they had met with the local registrar and were in the process of completing all the necessary preliminaries to enable a legal wedding to take place. Once I explained that, because of my status as a priest in the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, I could legally marry them, then they promptly invited me to do so. Thus on Friday 3^rd July, I conducted my first Czech wedding and my first wedding of any variety since mid-August 2008.

Olomouc is a historic city in Moravia, part of the Czech Republic that neither of us had previously visited. Although it should only take about two and a half hours to drive there from Prague, we decided not to risk it and drove down on the Thursday evening in order to ensure we reached the wedding venue in good time the next day. Some good internet research by Sybille found us a very comfortable double room in the Poet’s Corner Hostel, an extremely interesting establishment owned and run by an ex-pat Australian.

Our ‘Lonely Planet’ Guide to the Czech & Slovak Republics describes Olomouc as ‘Prague minus the tourists’ and it is an apt description. We ate our evening meal in an open air restaurant on the square in the historic centre of the city. The architectural views surrounding us are reminiscent of Old Town Square in Prague. However, other than a small amount of German, we heard no other language spoken that evening except Czech and were far from being surrounded by hordes of people.

The next morning, after leisurely breakfast, we put on our best clothes and set off on the forty minute drive to Bouzov Castle. The castle is situated in the small village of Bouzov set in the rolling wooded hills of Moravia. It was a spectacular sight to see as we drove towards it. After parking in the official car park, we walked up to the main entrance to await the arrival of the wedding party. We had been warned that we would need to be admitted as one group all together to avoid any confusion, as the castle is also open to paying visitors. Eventually, everybody arrived and we were all escorted over the castle bridge and up the stairs to the the ‘chapel’.

As we had discussed back in April when I had met Lea & Petra for the first time, everybody had an order of service with the English liturgy on one side and the Czech translation on the other, using the very material that had been the subject of Lea’s original enquiry. Whilst I conducted the service in English, I did manage to greet the congregation at the beginning in Czech. I was assisted by a wonderful lady called Ivana, who helped Petra make her vows in Czech after Lea had made his in English. She also translated my short address into Czech.

My greatest fear was getting the registration of the marriage wrong. In advance of the service, I had filled out a four-page form all in Czech, which being part of Czech bureaucracy, inevitably required an immense amount of detailed information about the bride and groom, their respective parents, both witnesses and me. This included full name and address, date and place of birth, birth number for Czechs, passport number for non Czechs! Fortunately, John Philpott had also left me an annotated version of this form with guidance as to how to fill it out. Having completed it following his instructions, I got the ever-faithful Gerry Turner to double check what I’d done in Czech, before we set out for Olmouc.

It is this form, rather than two sets of Church registers, that is signed during the wedding service. Again, as I have explained previously in this blog, not only signed but, much more importantly, stamped!! As I raised my hand above the stamp that declares us to be the English-speaking parish of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, I said in English & Ivana said in Czech, “This is the most important part of a Czech marriage service!” Everybody smiled and laughed as I very firmly slammed the stamp down. It is this signed and stamped form which must be returned to the local registrar within two working days. The registrar will then issue the happy couple with their marriage certificate.

The service over, we were all escorted back out of the castle and then the newly married Lea and Petra walked down from the castle bridge hand-in-hand. As you can see, you cannot really have a much better setting than Bouzov Castle for your wedding photographs. An evening reception followed back in Olomouc.

Eating & Drinking in a Czech Bar-Restaurant

A wonderful example of Czenglish! © Sybille Yates — A wonderful example of 'Czenglish'! © Sybille Yates

One of the joys of living in Prague is being able to ‘eat out’ in one of the very many bar-restaurants that abound here. Provided you avoid the expensive ‘tourist traps’ in the centre of the city, prices are extremely reasonable, so much so, that some single people have told me that it is often cheaper for them to ‘eat out’ rather than try & cook for themselves at home. However, there are noticeable cultural differences between Britain and the Czech Republic in the way that you order, are served and pay for your drinks &/or meal.

As in Britain, most bars also serve food. But even if you go to a bar-restaurant just for a drink, do NOT go to the bar itself and say “I’d like two beers please”. No – go in and sit down at one of the free tables and wait until the barman/lady comes to you. If you just want a beer, taking a beer mat from the container in the middle of the table and putting it down in front of you, will indicate fairly clearly what you want. And if you forget to do this before your beer arrives, then the barman/lady will do it for you, before placing your beer in front of you. In the Czech Republic, beer glasses have to be placed on beer mats!

Do not try to pay for your beer when it is served to you. No – wait until you have finished drinking and are ready to leave. This may of course, be several rounds of drinks later. However, the person who has served you will have kept track of what you have had, either behind the bar or on a strip of paper left on the table on which the number of beers served will be marked. Saying “Zaplatim prosim” (may I pay please), will produce a bill which you then settle.

If you want to eat, do exactly the same as you would if you just want to drink. Go in, choose a vacant table and sit down. Only in slightly more upmarket restaurants will you be met at the door, asked how many people there are, and then be directed to a suitable table.

Czech menus have a number of interesting characteristics. For any meat dish, the exact weight of the meat will be specified such as 200 grams of pork, or 150 grams of chicken. There is of course, no way to check whether you actually are served 200 grams of pork rather than 191 grams of pork as scales are not provided! Often a meat dish will be served with little else other than a small salad garnish. Therefore you need to go to the ‘side dishes’ section of the menu where various forms of potato, together with other vegetables, will be listed. The advantage of this system is that you can choose almost exactly what you want to eat.

Prague is a city that is geared to visiting tourists. Therefore nearly every bar-restaurant has their menu not only in Czech, but also in English, German & sometimes also in Russian. But this is where you encounter a wonderful language which I have christened ‘Czenglish’. Very rarely do Sybille & I visit a new restaurant without descending into fits of laughter at the interesting English used to describe certain dishes. The menu on a Prague restaurant window shown in the photo at the head of this post left us creased up with laughter when we saw it last Monday. Clearly the bread to accompany the potato soup had been taken to Church and blessed prior to being served!

Czech people tend to be very particular regarding their own language and quickly correct anyone who dares to conjugates a verb or noun incorrectly. Yet they seem oblivious to the multiple mistakes that are contained within the English version of so many menus. My English Czech-speaking friend & Churchwarden Gerry Turner told me that he offered once to correct the English on the menu of a restaurant he regularly frequents in return for a free meal. The offer was refused point blank as the restaurant owner could see no reason for doing so.

There are two other cultural peculiarities that I experience every time I eat in a bar-restaurant in Prague. The first is the absence of place settings. Instead, soon after you have placed your order, a plate or upright container will be brought to your table containing your cutlery and paper serviettes. You take what you need from the plate/container and create your own place setting. The second is that, as soon as one person has finished eating, immediately a waiter will appear and whip their empty plate away, regardless of the fact that other people sitting with them are still eating. The reasoning behind this practice I have yet to discover but it happens everywhere we eat.

Normally in the UK, once everyone has finished their main course, the dirty plates and cutlery will be removed from the table and the dessert and coffee menu will be offered. Yet here in the Czech Republic, despite desserts (often the Czenglish ‘deserts’!!) being available, the opportunity to order them is rarely offered. If you want to have a dessert, you often have to specifically ask for the return of the menu in order to be able to decide what you want and place your order.

This post is my contribution to World Blog Surf Day being organised by Sher. Please read the next expat blogger in the chain by going to empty nest expat who is my friend Karen, currently back in the US of A but hopefully returning to Prague very soon once her work permit and visa problems are resolved. I am also asked to link to Anastasia Ashman who is an American cultural producer based in Istanbul, and is a creator of Expat Harem, the anthology by foreign women about modern Turkey. Her Tweetstream focuses on women, travel and history and she shares resources for writers/travelers, expats, Turkophiles & culturati of all stripes.

Living as an Expat Englishman in Prague

Although I had lived in my native England for thirty uninterrupted years before moving to Prague, Czech Republic six months ago, this is not my first experience of living outside my country of birth. At the tender age of 18, I left home and family, and emigrated to Australia where I lived for nearly five years. And in my mid-twenties, I spent three years living in a strongly Welsh speaking area of West Wales which is more ‘abroad’ than many English people realise unless they’ve had the same experience.

However, as I reflect on these last six months of living as an English expat in Prague, I feel I have returned to many aspects of the way I use to live during the first 18 years of my life. These were spent in Coventry, my place of birth, the ninth largest city in England with a population of over 300,000 people. Other than 11 months spent living in London, Coventry is by far the largest city I have ever lived in until coming to Prague with its population of 1.3 million.

As a child and as a teenager, if I wanted or needed to get anywhere then I walked, rode my bicycle or caught a bus. For most of that time, my parents didn’t own a car. Because of the wonderful integrated public transport system here in Prague, if I want or need to go anywhere now, I walk a short distance to catch a bus, tram or metro. This is in complete contrast to the previous fifteen & half years where I lived in a small North Oxfordshire village with a population of 420 and almost non-existent public transport. Other than walking to the village pub, to go anywhere else meant jumping straight into the car. Now that self-same car sits for many days at a time without being driven at all.

However, there is one marked contrast between British and continental European cities and that is the nature of their respective housing stocks. Whilst there are blocks of flats/apartments in British cities, only a relatively small proportion of the population live in them. The vast majority live in houses, most of which are privately owned. Prague, like so many continental European cities has many, many blocks of flats in which are housed the majority of the city population. I now live in a second floor flat in a recent modern development. It is quite a contrast to the large four bedroomed detached Rectory that came with the previous job, or the two houses in which I spent my childhood. Do I regret the change? Not really.

There was a major downsizing job before the big move. But now there are fewer rooms to clean and no garden to maintain. And although we now live in close proximity to quite a number of people, we’ve experienced very little noise or disturbance. However in contrast, despite having numerous people living on the same staircase as us, we’ve hardly met our neighbours, let alone got to know them. Czech people tend to keep themselves to themselves.

The other major issue I face is that of language. I work with the English speaking community so it is less of an issue than it otherwise might be. But it does throw up practical issues such as explaining how I want my hair cut! However, whilst I have begun language lessons, I do suffer as every first language English speaker does, from the fact that everyone wants to speak my language. Most young Czechs would much prefer to practice their English on me rather than me try to use my limited Czech on them. Yet if I am to become a more permanent resident rather than a transitory expat, that language has to mastered – somehow!!!

This was posted as part of Golden Prague’s World Blog Surf Day. Please also visit the next Expat Blogger taking part; Michael from http://blogging.gelle.dk

Divided by their common language?

britannia-uncle-sam

“England and America are two countries divided by their common language”. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, this famous saying is attributed in this and other forms, to George Bernard Shaw, but not found in any of his published writings. I have also heard of it being attributed to Oscar Wilde. It may well be a corruption of the following lines from a short story written by him entitled The Canterville Ghost. “We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language”. However, regardless of its origins, it does highlight the fact that there are differences in words, phrases and spelling, between American and British English.

image source wikimedia commons

Having many Americans in my congregation, I try to be careful with the words I use when preaching. I try not to say ‘fortnight’ but to say instead, ‘two weeks’. To remember that a ‘mobile phone’ is a ‘cell phone’, though that one is less of a problem as it is a ‘mobil’ in Czech. And that ‘football’ to Americans is ‘American Football’, not what I know as ‘football’, which is, of course, ‘soccer’.

Like most British people, I’ve seen enough American films and TV programmes (not ‘programs’!) to understand most American vocabulary. But this past week I’ve learnt a new American phrase and also been enlightened as to how my written English could easily be misunderstood by an American reader.

Ironically, I learned my new American phrase whilst attending my Czech languages class. Our Czech teacher wanted us to practice the correct Czech words for numbers between one and twenty by playing a version of ‘tic-tac-toe’ with the neighbouring student. Fortunately, mine was a young American called Anna. When I looked blank, Anna explained to me how to play ‘tic-tac-toe’. It only took a short while for me to realise that the game was ‘noughts and crosses’. Of course, Anna had never heard of ‘noughts and crosses’!

At today’s Church Council meeting, I asked for the approval of the Council of the wording of a letter that will go out to the congregation next Sunday. The Council fully agreed with the thrust of what I had written regarding the somewhat difficult financial situation we are facing, but Mark, an American Council member, asked me to change two things. I had referred to ‘one-off costs’ that had occurred in 2008. “Americans won’t understand that,” said Mark. So it has been changed to ‘non recurring costs’. And I had used the abbreviation ‘A/c’ for account as in ‘bank account’. “Americans will think that is air conditioning,” said Mark. So it is now ‘account’ in full, to ensure there is no confusion.

However, it does work both ways. Another American member of the congregation, who is a TEFL teacher, tells me that she has learned more British English the last two years she has been teaching in Prague than in the previous fifty or so years of her life!

An Interesting Week

we are drowning, we are drowning, we are drowning in the Czech sea...

The week beginning Sunday 22^nd February was always going to be interesting. For starters, it contained both our birthdays, Sybille’s on the 24^th & mine on the 26^th. It was also the week we were booked to commence our Czech language classes.

image source

Because our birthdays are only two days (but numerous years!) apart, we normally try to have a little celebration on the intervening day, the 25^th. However, the liturgical calendar this year decided to play it’s tricks upon us by 25^th February being Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Hardly a day for birthday celebrations but instead, an important Holy Day in the Christian Year. So instead of a party, I celebrated an Ash Wednesday Eucharist with the imposition of ashes for those who wished for it. Most encouragingly, it was well supported, both by regular members of the congregation, and by others. These included two members of our host Church, the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, who don’t themselves hold an Ash Wednesday service.

Back in January, we had booked ourselves onto a Czech language beginner’s course running on Mondays & Wednesdays & commencing on Monday 23^rd February at the Vítezné námestí branch of the Caledonian Language School, just three tram stops from where we live. Unfortunately, four days before we were due to start the course, we received an email to say that they didn’t have enough takers for our planned course so it wouldn’t run. Instead, we had to transfer to a course being held at their Národní branch in the centre of Prague running on Tuesdays & Thursdays.

So how did we mark both our birthdays? By attending our first two one & a half hour lessons in Czech!!! And I mean in Czech!!! It is the full immersion method with all the instructions being given in Czech. By our second lesson, on my birthday, I was sinking fast and rapidly believing that being in ones late fifties is not the right age to try to start learning a completely new language! Our course book is entitled, ‘Czech Express’. At the moment, as far as I am concerned, that title is exceedingly optimistic! If you want to do real penance this Lent, try three hours of Czech language lessons each week!