Czechmatediary

What shoe size are you? The American-size number 8? Or the European number 37? The numbers could not get more confusing. But I have got a good news! The biggest shoe-makers in the world are wanting to unite the sizing system. The measuring units should be similar to the metric system, which will include also the biomechanical proportions of the foot. [continue reading…]

My daughter Hahna is 3 years now and she is brilliantly bilingual! What is more, she likes to have an active listener next to her at all times, meaning that she kind of requires of you to echo whatever she says. If I don’t respond within 10 seconds then I am in trouble: “Mommy, are you not talking?” (Mami, ty nemluvis?). I just have to say that my throat hurts – the final excuse.
I am not sure if she is doing so well with both languages because she IS such a talker or if she just has the ear for languages but she is doing great! She is starting to get the past and future tenses, pronouns…
She now feels confident enough to teach dad (and grandma!) some Czech and it is truly a bonding experience for them. Hahna feels smart and dad learns more Czech. Sometimes when she is on the phone with me and we speak Czech she starts laughing, thinking that it’s really funny that she speaks this ‘secret’ tongue in front of her American company. She keeps saying to me on the phone: “Mommy is speaking Czech!” (Maminka mluvi cesky!). She loves to interact with her Czech grandma and granpa over Skype but it does get hard at times. First off, there is quite the delay in hearing what the other one says and second, her pronunciation is not yet perfectly clear so most of the time I am the middle man and have to translate things.
When Hahna talks to herself she is using English, which – as expected – is going to be the language she feels most comfortable with. I am totally fine with that, although it is interesting that she does that since most of the time she ends up speaking Czech with me.
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The Ceske Noviny newspaper (on-line) had a photo contest regarding the most interesting places in the Czech Republic. There are bunch of contestants and vast of amazing pictures to chose from. Check them out! The names are pretty self-explanatory (usually it is a name of a city) but if you need something to translate, let me know.

View the pictures here (click here).

First the volcano now floods. What is going on with Europe? The Czech Republic has been plagued by extreme floods for some time now and the north-west region was warned to braise itself for even more flooding! The local authorities are prepared to pay about 5 billion Czech crowns, which is quite the unwelcomed amount in this economical situation. Read up more on Czech floods here (click here).

CZ: Nejdriv sopka ted zase zaplavy. Co se to s tou Evropou deje? Ceska Republika resi zaplavy jiz od kvetna a nove privalove deste se pry blizi n severo-vychod! Vlada se do rekonstrukce znicenych regionu chysta investovat kolem 5 milionu korun, coz je velmi nemila castka, kdyz se zamyslite nad nynejsi ekonomickou situaci…
Vice si teto krizi muzete precist zde (kliknete zde).

Throughout my Czechmate Diary years I have met some very nice people who were born and raised in former Czechoslovakia but no longer feel comfortable speaking the language. They emigrated in their late teens or early twenties and never came back. The communist regime either destroyed any will to speak the language or they just found no other Czechs to talk to in their new home country. The question is, if someone asks them what nationality they are, what will they answer?
CZ: Behem tech par let co bloguji jsem potkala velmi zajimave lidi, kteri se narodili (a nekdy take vyrostli) v byvalem Ceskoslovensku, ale cesky uz nemluvi. Bud v jejich nove vlasti nenasli nikoho, s kym by se mohli cesky bavit, anebo na to proste nemeli chut. Co si myslite, vy, jsou stale povazovani za Cechy?

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Slovak ladies are a hot item for Czech men. In the last 10 years there have been 6,729 marriages and those numbers are still on the rise. Czech wife material also largely consists of Ukrainian women who within the last 10 years married 5,524 Czech men. In the third place are Russian women, then Vietnamese, Polish and the list goes on (full list can be found at the end of this article).

How about Czech women? Whom do they like to pick for their life-long mate? It looks like the Slovaks are winning again, followed by Germans and men from Great Britain (the American men took 5th place by the way).

The choice of mates depends on various aspects. The Slovak language is the most similar to the Czech language so it is naturally easier to communicate with someone from that country.  The most immigrants who come to the Czech Republic on a working visa are from Ukraine and get to meet the locals via their prolonged stay. Germany, Austria and Poland, on the other hand, are  neighboring countries, hence the ‘prey’ is in a close vicinity.

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Igracek was a communist classic line of plastic toy figurines, which in the past could be found in every Czech/Slovak child’s toy basket. Supposedly a knock-off of the famous German Playmobil brand, Igracek was meant to educate kids about real-life professions, creating plastic figurines of doctors, nurses, mailmen, chimney man (no offense, but how many chimney men are still out there? I think I have seen like one in my whole life…) and so forth.

After the Velvet Revolution the Igracek company (Igra) went bankrupt since the Czech market was flooded with new and enticing foreign-made toys and only until recently Igracek became simply an expensive collectible. The new company Efko bought the rights to the brand, including the actual chemical recipe to make the mold used to make the original figurine.

Today’s updated Igracek is not bigger but it is definitely better: “The main change of the figurine was to give it new arms, with movable wrists. The arms used to be connected to the hands of the figurine, now the hands can be moved. [continue reading…]

The Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape is a lesser known part of the Czech UNESCO heritage, which is spread over the vast area of a beautiful Southern part of Moravia. It contains a romantic château (Lednice), a picturesque village (Valtice) and the largest park in the country. ‘Since Lednice was first passed into the hands of the House of Liechtenstein in the mid-13th century, its fortunes had been tied inseparably to those of that noble family.’  The current area of Lednice is laid out in a beautiful English garden style, covering almost 300 kilometers squared. Not only can visitors encounter unique types of trees and flowers but the park is also filled with serene ponds, luscious meadows, fancy sculptures and even replicas of ancient Greece ruins. [continue reading…]

While it is a well-known fact that the Czechs and Slovaks are phenomenal hockey players, the NHL draft for this year shows otherwise:

CZ: Cesi a Slovaci jsou velmi nadani na mnohe sporty, kde hokej je definitivne jeden z nich. Letosni vybery do NHL to bohuzel ale vubec neilustruji:

‘The situation in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is sad. Virtually no prospects are playing in their leagues and only a hand full play in the Canadian League. This is an area of concern for hockey.’

Even if you are not exactly a hockey fan, the rest of the article is worth reading (click here).