Czechmatediary

Remember we had that heated discussion in one of my posts about  Americans and their poor knowledge of geography? You guys ended up leaving 102 (!!) comments! Jamie was one of those involved commentators who kept pursuing the idea that there is NO difference between us and the Americans as far as general knowledge goes. He also promised to send me a research paper on exactly this issue and he kept his word! Here is most of the article, although I could not fit in all of the questions. But you get the idea..

CZ: Pamatujete si , jak jsem jednou psala clanek o Americanech a o jejich spatnych znalostech zemepisu? Vyvolal takovou diskuzi, ze jsme skoncili se 102 komenty!!! Jednim z komentatoru byl Jamie, ktery tvrdil, ze vseobecne znalosti Cechu a Americanu jsou na stejne urovni. Take nam slibil odborny clanek, ktery jeho hypotezu pry potvrzuje. Jamie dodrzel slovo a clanek poslal. Zde je ho vetsina, ale vsechny otazky se mi tam bohuzel vmestnat nepovedlo.

OK, WHO IS SMARTER, WE OR THEY?

Author: Vladimír Kajlík

Periodically, readers are showered with newspapers articles decrying progressive decline if not outright abysmal state of American public education. The conclusion, usually supported by various sorts of statistical “knowledge surveys”, provides presumably ample evidence for such a decline. There would be not much to report if we just assembled such articles from Europe and America to state the facts and to confirm assumed trends. (more…)

When were were back in the Czech Republic the last time my cousin asked my husband: “Why did you guys get married if you weren’t pregnant?” We gave him kind of a blank stare back, not knowing how to respond. For love? Isn’t that usually the reason why do people get married? But according to  the Ceske Noviny newspaper 59% of Czechs  did get married because of their offspring. What is interesting is that 70% of those who participated in the poll think of an ideal family as having 2 children - no more, no less. This has been a wide spread thought for quite some time, say  the statistical analysts. (more…)

Breaking news! The most popular Czech car fragrance is the vanilla-scented Wunder-baum tree! Second place belongs to the “Black Classic” scent which copies the man’s cologne and third place is taken by the “New car” scent (which is also my personal favorite). Out of the liquid car scents the “Anti-Tobacco” is the winner since it covers up the smell of cigarette smoke, something that many Czechs have to deal with on every day basis. (more…)

Czechs together with Hungarians suffer the most with the  colon-rectal cancer - they are actually currently number one in the world. According to the Czech Gastrointestinal Society the Czechs have this type of cancer actually coded in their genes. How is that possible? The biggest playing factor is their bad eating habits - especially their weakness for very fattening foods - something that has been going on in the Czech Republic for centuries. Unhealthy cooking has been in fact with our culture for so long that it changed the genetic coding of the Czech gene pool altogether  and now we are paying for it (thanks a lot, great-great-great-grandma!). “If all of a sudden the whole Czech society decided to become vegetarian it will still take 2 to 3 generations for the sensitive genome to even out with the genomes of the other nations,” says Miroslav Zavoral, the vice-president of the Czech gastrointestinal society. (more…)

A recent study of the Czech Hydrometerological Institute concluded that “even with the modest warming so far experienced, hop yields in the Czech Republic have stagnated and quality declined”. The increasing temperatures (although very suttle) have been taking  the toll on the ‘beer plants’ which in turn could reduce their yield  by a further 7-10%. Perhaps the most worrying is the decline in the quality of the Saaz hops, which produce our good old Czech pilsners. “The “Alpha” acid content - “a major determinant of quality”, according to the team, as it’s the compound that produces a pilsner’s defining bitter taste - is likely to fall a further 13-32% if the predicted warming occurs. The study found that the concentration of these acids has fallen by 0.06% a year since 1954.” (more…)

The Canadian broadcast CBC NEWS published the results from a recent poll where Czechs were rated as the  4th biggest complainers in the world when they spoke up about the quality of public services. The poll included questionnaire answers from 23,000 corespondents from 23 various countries. When it comes to our country, every 2nd Czech was unsatisfied with various public services in the Czech Republic, which made them out to be complainers no. 1  in the whole Europe! Even the Hungarians, the Polish and the Russians (!!) are complaining less! So what is the deal? Do Czechs have the right to feel unsatisfied or do they just like to complain?

Well, as far as beer services go, there is some validity there. You see, every forth Czech restaurant is serving a lesser quantity of beer than what they are supposed to (where restaurants in Ostrava and Brno are supposedly the biggest cheaters of all). The refunds are also quite bad since almost half of the respondents claim that most of them seem shady, plus one usually has to get into a fight with the  clerk in order to get somewhere (or not). (more…)

Hi you guys, here is the summary essay on a current situation of the Czech-American community in the USA (if you would like to see Ivana’s more detailed report click here.)

CZ: Ahoj! tady je zbytek diplomove prace ceske studentky Ivany Stavarove, ktera popisuje nynejsi situaci Czecho-Americanu zijicich v USA (vice podrobnych udaju muzete najit zde).

The Czech-Americans of the 21st Century

by Ivana Stavarova

The 159 respondents, the Czechs, Czechoslovaks, and Czech-Americans, put together a vivid picture of the lives of Czech descendants across the sea in America. Their viewpoints differ in relation to their age, generation, the environment in which they were bought up and also their own nature as to how they approached the origin side of their identity individually. The Czech settlements in several parts of the United States are over one hundred years old, the evidence of Czech presence on the American land is hundreds of years old, yet the Czech life and Czech ways there are still very much vibrant, as we have learned from the current descendants’ answers. (more…)

The European statistical agency ESPAD 2007 has recently released some sad data: compared to the other European countries, the Czech teenagers are the most experienced as far as drugs go. About a half of the Czech 16-year-olds who participated in the study (total of 3,914 teenagers) have used an illegal drug in their life, mostly marijuana or hashish. Every 11th student has tried a hard drug such as cocaine or speed. Drug abuse has improved within the last 10 years in all of the 26 participating European countries except in Czech and Slovakia. What is even more unnerving is that ever since 1995 the amount of drug usage in these 2 countries has actually doubled. The ‘good’ news is that since 1999 our kids do not use as many of the hardcore drugs (heroin,pervitin..) as they did in the past and ever since 2003 even the ‘dancing drug’, ecstasy, has decreased in popularity almost in one half.

The ESPAD project has interviewed more than 100,000 students from all over Europe (26 countries). Overall, the study reveals that on average  23% of all of the boys have tried an illegal drug in their life, while only 17% of all of the participating girls have followed their foot steps. The Czech Republic ‘won’ the study, where 46% (!!) of students have experiences with illegal drugs. (more…)

Can you guess, what is currently the most popular Czech name? Girls are most often named by Tereza and the most popular boy name is Jakub. ‘Tereza’ has been winning the name charts for 11 years now (!!), while ‘Jakub’ won the ‘Best of’ prize for the second time this year.  According to the Czech statisticians themselves the old fashioned Czech names such as Anezka, Amalie or Kveta are going through a great comeback, while nontraditional  names such as Sofie, Vanesa or Liliana are also popular. The boy names on the other hand have forerunners such as Oliver, Kristian, Vendelin or Florian. Here is the full list: (more…)

Hi Everyone/ Ahoj vsichni,

This is the 3rd part of Ivana’s research paper on a current situation of Czech-Americans (myself included). I found these results rather intriguing (question no. 10) and also found myself pleasantly surprised at times (question no. 11 and 12). Check it out:

PS: for part 1 click here and for part 2 click here.

CZ: Zde je treti cast Ivanina veledila zabyvajici se  situaci soucasnych Cecho-Americanu.  Jsou to opravdu velmi zajimave vysledky, zejmena otazka c. 10 a otazky c. 11 a 12 mi udelaly velkou radost. Mrkntete na to:

PS: Prvni cast najdete zde a druhou zde.

•    Question no. 10 asked about the knowledge of the Czech language among respondents (159 total). More than half, 82 answered positively, 77 acknowledged their inability to speak Czech. Out of the 82 respondents with knowledge of Czech language 31 also use it at home, 23 were relearning the language in courses. 11 respondents mentioned the way the knowledge of Czech language disappeared in their families, they all concurred in the assimilation forces and their parents desire to blend fast in the major American society from which arose the disconnection of passing the language to other generations. (more…)