What are you afraid to ask about the Czech Republic ? / Co jste se o Ceske Republice vzdycky bali zeptat..

My comments to all the points paragraphs:
1) Czechs also invented pistol a houfnice
3) Any Czech beer is good…compared to US beer…
4) It is a well known fact, Franz Kafka hated
Czechs…he was kissing Germans’ “backs”
5) Milan Kundera is a good salesman..;)
6) Not sure about goulash…But in Hungarian
vocabulary are meals like: pecsenye, kalacs,
palacsint.. sounds familiar??
8) it happens in any country…I was trying to buy a
chewing gum on a gas station paying with $20 bill.
The attendant started shouting at me , he looked
very dangerous…
9) Vaclav Havel is not “ace”…I would change the
spelling slightly ….
10) In Czech republic people don’t bother to have
landline phones..They simply buy a cellphone…
My favorite coffe is still a Dunkin Donuts
cofee…And I can dring it while driving….
Can hardly do it if buying it in a porcelain
cup 😉

I was wrong, Chinese invented the pistol..I always mix Chechens, Czechs and Chinese 😉

Etymology of “pistol”

Hand Cannon from the Chinese Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).The word “pistol” is derived from the French pistole (or pistolet), which has these possible origins:

1) From the Czech pistole and this one from the Czech píšťala (flute or pipe, referring to the shape of a Hussite firearm), from Middle High German pischulle or from Middle French pistole.
2) From the city of Pistoia, Italy, where hand-held guns (designed to be fired from horseback) were first produced in the 1540s.[6]
3) That early pistols were carried by cavalry in holsters hung from the pommel (or pistallo in medieval French) of a horse’s saddle.

English language language would not be complete without words of Czech origin 😉 (taken from wikipedia):

Absurdistan (in Czech Absurdistán) – word created by
Eastern Bloc dissidents, passed into English mainly
through works of Václav Havel.
Budweiser – after Budweis, the German name of Budějovice,
a city in southern Bohemia
dollar – from German thaler, a nickname for the silver
coins that were minted from the ore found in Jáchymov in
western Bohemia, called Joachimsthal in German
(literally Joachim’s Valley)
háček – a diacritical mark, literally “little hook”, e.g.
č is letter c having háček. Also known as “caron”.
howitzer – from houfnice, a 15th century Hussite catapult;
houf meaning crowd or band
kolache – from koláč or koláček.
pils, pilsner, pilsener – after Pilsen, the German name of
Plzeň, a Czech city. The name of the city is derived
from Old Czech plz (damp, moist)
pistol – from píšťala, an 15th century Hussite firearm
(disputed—alternative sources have been suggested)
polka – from Polák or polský, a Czech dance named in
remembrance of the November Uprising of 1830; or from Půlka, in English half because of its tempo
remoska – is a small electrical cooker made in Czech
republic, sold and well-known in UK. Its origin is in
the name of company which made it – REMOS which is
bbreviation (revize, elektro, montáže, opravy, servis =
revisions, electro, assembly, repairing, service).
robot – from Czech robota (labour, drudgery), introduced
in Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. from the 1920s.
semtex – a plastic explosive named after Semtín, part of
the city of Pardubice, Czech Republic, location of its
manufacturer.
tunelling – a colloquial term for financial fraud
committed by company’s own management or major
shareholders. Widely used in the Czech Republic (and
Slovakia) since the first half of 1990s to describe the
massive asset stripping during transition from planned
economy.

To Tanja:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Czech_origin