Czenglish

Farewell to Karen

From l to r: Yours Truly, Rev'd Dr Karen Moritz, Jack Noonan © Sybille Yates — From l to r: Yours Truly, Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz, Jack Noonan © Sybille Yates

On Sunday 17^th April, I, together with the St Clement’s congregation, bid a sad farewell to my friend and ministerial colleague, Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz.

As I explained in a post in May 2011, Karen is an ordained minister of word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She has been in the Czech Republic since September 2010 as a mission co-worker, working with the Ceskobratrská církev evangelická (CCE) / Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (ECCB), the main Czech Protestant Church, which is a united Lutheran/Presbyterian denomination. The Kliment congregation of the CCE/ECCB own Kostel sv Kliment, the Church building where we worship in Prague.

Since successfully getting Karen licensed under the Ecumenical Canons of the Church of England, she has contributed enormously to the life of St Clement’s during her time in Prague. She has regularly preached, led non-Eucharistic worship in my absence, helped with the administration of Holy Communion, and led intercessions.

Karen has also been a great supporter and contributor to our midweek activities. In 2014, she organised and led our Lent Study Course entitled ‘Discovering your spiritual gifts’ which was much appreciated by all those who attended. Then in 2015, she was the main organiser, as well as one of the speakers, at probably our best attended Lent Course during my time as Chaplain, looking at the Bohemian Reformation.

During her time with us, Karen has become a good friend of many in the congregation and on occasions, has given a listening ear, together with pastoral care and support, to a number of people. As I know from having, at various times in the past, three different ordained female colleagues working with me, sometimes an individual needs the insights that a female minister brings, rather than mine. None of us are gifted in all areas!

At a personal level, what I have very much valued and what I will miss the most, is having someone with whom I have been able to share issues or particular situations that I’ve faced in my ministry. Being able to talk with Karen, have the insights and understanding that she has gained from her many years of ministry in a variety of situations, knowing that anything said will be kept with complete confidentiality, has been invaluable to me.

The reason Karen has now returned to the USA is tied up with decision making, or lack of willingness to make a decision, within the Synodal Council and HQ of the CCE/ECCB. It is my personal view that they have basically shot themselves in the foot! They will only fully realise all that Karen has contributed, most notably getting a whole variety of things into English rather than Czenglish, and organising various events and visits for members of partner Churches, when she is no longer there to do these things.

As I write this, Karen still does not have a definite new position to go to. She will continue to be employed by Presbyterian World Mission until the end of June and over this month and next, will be carrying out deputation work as well as hopefully attending interviews for a possible future post. I am very much hoping for positive news very soon.

On Sunday 17^th April, when the photograph at the beginning of this post was taken, Karen was the preacher at our 11.00 Sung Eucharist. You can listen to her sermon here, though the sound quality is not as good as I would like it to be. My Licensed Reader Jack Noonan, led our intercessions and Karen and Jack administered the two chalices.

Because Karen had already packed and dispatched most of her belongings back to the USA, including her black preaching gown and stoles, Jack and I dressed her up as an Anglican 🙂 , wearing my black cassock and surplice, together with a white stole that lives in our wardrobe in the Church vestry.

Thank you, Karen, for everything you have given in the five and half years you have been such an intrinsic part of St. Clement’s. We will miss you enormously!

The Expats Blog Awards 2012 – Bronze Award for the Czech Republic

blog-award-2012-czech-republic-bronze Further to my previous post, yesterday was judgement day for the ExpatsBlog.com Awards 2012 for the Czech Republic. And I came third – I got the Bronze Award.

I am very grateful to everybody who took the trouble to follow the link in my previous post and ‘left some love’ for my blog in the comment box. I shall say something about those kind comments a little further into this post. There were also, a number of people who promised to go there and leave a comment, but who never did – sigh 🙁 Whilst the number of positive comments was not meant to be the only criteria by which blogs were judged, it is noticeable that the two blogs which finished ahead of me were the two that also got more comments than me.

The winner of the Gold Award was Christopher’s Expat Adventure. Chris is an American who was relocated to Brno a few years ago by his employer IBM. He has taken full advantage of being based in Central Europe to travel widely and, in his blogposts, always gives some interesting background details about each country he visits. He frequently explains the size of a country by relating it to one of the American states – for example ‘Sweden is slightly larger than California’. I do think this is a good idea, especially as I presume a sizeable part of his readership is American, many of whom will have never set foot outside of the USA as 80% of Americans don’t hold a passport.

Chris also writes about his social life and how things differ between the Czech Republic and the USA. He is also good at explaining aspects of Czech culture and history. A recent post was very informative about why there is a Greek community here, something I had only become aware of recently during a conversation I had with a Czech young lady sat next to me on my Prague-Geneva flight in late September.

However, I couldn’t help but note that two of the positive comments were from people who admitted that ‘Chris is my boss’. It did make me wonder how many other of his underlings left comments as a result of an in-house memo 😉 But joking aside – congratulations Chris on your Gold Award.

The Silver Award went to a fellow Brit who blogs as Girl in Czechland. GIC is a young lady who met her ‘Czechman’ whilst he was living and working in the UK. When he decided to return to his native country, GIC moved to Czechland with him, about a year after I moved to Prague.

GIC or Ms Girlová, writes both articulately and humorously of her life here in the Czech Republic. Her posts about visiting the ‘Village People’, her descriptive title for Czechman’s family who live in the Bohemian countryside, are one of the hilarious highlights of her blog.

I’ve been a fan and follower of ‘Girl in Czechland’ from the blog’s very early days and have recommended it to numerous other expats and English-speaking Czechs. I honestly thought Ms Girlová would win the competition and regard it as no disgrace to finish one place behind her. And yes, I do know her true identity, (we’ve met on several occasions), but I do promise not to reveal it – honest!

As promised earlier, I want to say a few more words about the twenty-three comments/reviews my blog received. Those of you who wrote were extremely kind in what you said, describing my writing as, ‘funny, interesting, insightful, informative, warm, incisive, well-written, balanced, smart, eloquent, entertaining and detailed’. It’s left me feeling quite overwhelmed and, if I’m honest – embarrassed.

Several comments were also complimentary about my photographs which I also appreciated. And with regard to content, my frequent examples of that wonderful language I call Czenglish, are clearly enjoyed by many of my readers. I’m sure I’ll have more to share with you in 2013! Who knows? They might just help me win silver or gold, next time around 🙂

My blogging and online philosophy

Ever since I started writing this blog more than three years ago, I have always sought to recognise three important things. Firstly, I am a native first-language English-speaker. Secondly, I am an expatriate, living in a foreign country – in my case, the Czech Republic. Thirdly, I am a Christian minister – an Anglican priest in the Church of England.

Therefore, as far as I am concerned, numerous consequences flow from these three things.

As a native first-language English-speaker, it behoves me to use correct English spelling and grammar; particularly so when I have written and posted many times about the numerous examples of Czenglish which I regularly encounter.

As a foreigner resident in the Czech Republic, it is essential that when I write about Czech history and geography, I get my facts and locations correct.

As a Christian minister, I have a duty and responsibility to always seek to be accurate and truthful in what I write and publish online.

In order to ensure I am true to each of these responsibilities, there are a number of precautions I take before posting anything either on this blog or anywhere else online. I always use a spell checker to pick up any spelling mistakes. And I also normally get someone else, usually Sybille, to read through what I’ve just written, to ensure what I want to say, is actually what I’ve written – not what I think I’ve written.

Of course, spell checkers do not think. If you misspell your intended word as another perfectly legitimate word in the English language, no spell checker will pick this up. An online friend of Sybille recently intended to write about ‘Public and private information’. What she actually wrote was ‘Pubic and private information’. You can imagine the hilarity that followed once this was spotted!

Likewise, I am quite thorough in checking my facts before publishing anything. For this, I use both books in my possession and online resources, always recognising that, because it’s on the internet, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s correct!

Despite all of this, I do still make mistakes, spelling, grammatical and factual. So I am always grateful when someone picks this up and points out the error of my ways. Thank you Tim, for the correction of my spelling. Thank you Sean, for pointing out that I had Jan Hus born in the incorrect part of Bohemia. And thank you Katka, for spotting my more recent mistake, in writing ‘Prague’ when I clearly meant to write ‘Brno’.

You will only know about these errors if you follow each of these links and scroll down to the comments. This is because, as soon as an error is pointed out to me, I correct the main text. But if the correction is made via a comment, then the comment still gets published, followed by a thankful and apologetic comment in response from me, acknowledging my mistake.

The reasoning behind this blogging and online philosophy of mine is quite simple. I write because I want others to read what I write, take it on-board and think about what I say. I want what I say to be taken seriously. Incidentally, it is ‘seriously’ and not ‘serious’, an ever-increasing error in spoken and written English!

This is because when I read something online which contains bad grammar, careless spelling and/or glaring factual errors, I have great difficulty in giving much credence to what that author is trying to say, even though they may be very well-intentioned. So consequently, I often do leave comments on other expat blogs, online newsletters and on Facebook, when I spot something wrong, be it a funny but unintentional typo, or a factual inaccuracy. I do this because, as I explained previously, I appreciate it when people do this for me because, so far as it is possible, I don’t want to ever be inaccurate or untruthful in what I publish online.

Most of the time, the response I get is similar to mine. The writer is grateful for the error being pointed out, their text is corrected, and a friendly acknowledgement is given. But in recent months, I’ve had a small number of rather negative responses. These have ranged from complaints that I’m ‘always finding fault’, through to the dismissive, ‘it’s vaguely right so why does it matter?’

Of course, everybody is entitled to their opinion and I am very aware that, having worked in publishing for several years before my ordination, I do possess what is usually known as ‘proof-reader’s eye’. But when these comments come from first-language English-speaking expats who cannot be bothered to use English correctly or get their facts right about the country they are now living in, I have great difficulty in giving any credence to anything else that they write about.

Am I being too harsh? Am I being pernickety (British English) or ‘persnickety’ (American English)? And I would be interested to hear about other people’s blogging/online philosophy. As always, comments and discussion are welcome.

Czenglish corrected!

Dreams 1 — Dreams are comming soon????? © Ricky Yates

Dreams 2 — Spelling corrected! © Ricky Yates

Last Wednesday, 29th February, I was walking past a newly renovated building at the western end of Klimentská, the street in which St. Clement’s Church is located, when I spotted the graphic design work illustrated in the photograph on the left above, with the blatant misspelling of the word ‘coming’. Later that evening, I posted the photo on Facebook, asking what it cost to create the artwork and why those who commissioned it were not willing to spend a few more Czech crowns by asking a native English-speaker to check their text.

My posting on Facebook has since attracted 14 comments, many of them humorous. But one of the most telling was that of Karen who remarked, ‘When a luxury place can’t spell, they look cheap!’ That was my immediate reaction too, as soon as I saw it.

What I didn’t say when I posted the photo on Facebook was that, as I stared incredulously at this absurd error, two young ladies came out of the building and saw me with a look of amazement on my face. So I said to them in English, “Do you realise how stupid that looks?” To be fair, once I pointed the mistake out to them, they both immediately acknowledged that there was a serious spelling error.

My past experience when I have pointed out examples of Czenglish, is that the perpetrators rarely see any reason to correct what they have previously written or printed. Therefore I was most surprised that when, 48 hours later, I once more walked past the building, the spelling error had been corrected as can be seen in the right-hand photograph.

On close inspection, I realised that, rather than going to the expense of completely re-doing the artwork, instead a sticker had been made with ‘coming’ correctly spelt, and placed over the previous error. But I have to say that, of all the examples of Czenglish that I have previously highlighted, this is the first one I have ever seen corrected. I just hope it isn’t the last!

A example of Czech Czenglish

Rib-eye steak — Czenglish in a Czech menu © Ricky Yates

This evening, we went to eat at one of our favourite local bar-restaurants – U Topolu. The name means, ‘to the poplars’, hence the logo at the bottom of the menu in this photo. On each of the tables, there was this laminated card advertising various new additions to their main menu.

The penultimate item yet again had us in stitches. For those who cannot read or understand Czech, it is seeking to describe what, in English, would be called an ‘Australian rump steak’ or a ‘Rump steak from Australian beef’.

There was no supposedly English version of these additions to the menu. What you have here is Czech Czenglish – a menu in Czech, trying to appear sophisticated, by using English to describe a certain item. But in describing the steak as, ‘Eye of round’, they have used Czenglish.

U Topolu is one of several places where we have offered our help, as native speakers of English or German, to translate their menus so that they make sense, rather than being the source of amusement. As ever, our offers have been spurned, leaving the bar-restaurant owners looking totally stupid in the eyes of every non-Czech speaker who enters their premises. But do they care?