{"id":1429,"date":"2013-04-25T12:26:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T10:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1429"},"modified":"2013-07-01T22:30:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T20:30:20","slug":"czenglish-and-englech-i-speaking-goodly-yours-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=1429","title":{"rendered":"Czenglish and Englech: I Speaking goodly yours language’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Confused<\/a>Boss: “Can you work overtime tonight?”<\/p>\n

Her: \u201cOnly if you get down on your knees and please me.”<\/p>\n

Him: “Yes Ma\u2019am!”<\/p>\n

The beginning of 83% of the porn you’ve ever seen? Nope, it’s the mixture of English and Czech that makes one glorious, confusing language: Czenglish!<\/p>\n

The main culprit of Czenglish is when a Czech speaker uses a direct translation of a Czech word or phrase in English. The above is a perfect example. In Czech, the word pros\u00edm<\/i> idiomatically means please,<\/i> but it comes from the verb prosit<\/i> which means to beg<\/i>. Our girl is using the word literally in English and thus instead of telling her boss to beg, she offered him the single greatest recompense on Earth.<\/p>\n

Her: \u201cI think Paris is the most beautiful city in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Him \u201cYou have true!\u201d<\/p>\n

OK, she has true and may now pass into the valley of the Elves, right? And dialogue for this blog has been brought to you by J.R.R Tolkien? No! It\u2019s Czenglish again! In this case, he is directly translating the Czech phrase M\u00e1\u0161 <\/i>pravdu<\/i>, which means you are right<\/i> but is literally translated into English as you have true<\/i>.<\/p>\n

There are other fun tidbits, like the use of the directly translated word \u2018fantasy\u2019 instead of \u2018imagination,\u2019 which might be why people think the Czechs are so open sexually.<\/p>\n

So, this kind of strange embarrassment is unique to Czechs? No, no\u2026<\/p>\n

Waitress: \u201cCo si d\u00e1te?\u201d What will you have?<\/i><\/p>\n

Me: \u201cHm, minul\u00fd \u010das, jsem m\u011bl ku\u0159e.\u201d Last time I had Chicken.<\/i><\/p>\n

If only.<\/p>\n

Minul\u00fd \u010das<\/i> directly translated in English means last time<\/em>, but in Czech it is used to refer to the past tense. So, I actually said:<\/p>\n

\u201cHm, in the past tense I had chicken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Awesome. Yes, it is the combination of English and Czech common to English native speakers living in the Czech Republic: Englech! Englech is a language spoke moderately well before alcohol and fluently after four glasses of alcohol.<\/p>\n

And you people in the U.S. wonder why we drink so much over here?<\/p>\n

Another.<\/p>\n

Her: \u201cDneska horko.\u201d It is hot today.<\/i><\/p>\n

Me: \u201cT\u00fd jsi doprava.\u201d You are right.<\/i><\/p>\n

OK, so in this case, dorkman (me) is directly translating the phrase he knew for you are right<\/i>, but T\u00fd jsi doprava <\/i>means literally, you are on the right<\/i>. Czech is a phrasal language, and if you remember our embarrassing lesson from above, m\u00e1\u0161 <\/i>pravdu<\/i> means\u00a0you\u2019re right<\/i>, so in this case I actually responded to the woman\u2019s comment on the weather by telling her that she was on my right side.<\/p>\n

This, I am sure, relaxed her weather woes.<\/p>\n

A wonderful attribute of Englech is the \u2018Czechification\u2019 of English words.<\/p>\n

Waitress: \u201cDobry den, Co si d\u00e1te?\u201d Good day, what will you have?<\/i><\/p>\n

Dorkman: \u201cPromi\u0148te, I don\u2019t speakovat \u010de\u0161tina.\u201d Excuse me, I don\u2019t speakovat Czech. <\/i><\/p>\n

Where does it go from here? Who the hell knows? Linguists believe that English will continue to evolve, as it has since the first Angle shared a joint with the first Saxon. For example, there are theories that in a few generations we will not be using S in the third person verbs:<\/p>\n

He wins<\/i> will become He win<\/i>.<\/p>\n

They also believe that prepositions and phrasal verbs will start to shift again as they did in the past. Like this:<\/p>\n

1413 CE: \u201cEgad, my feet hurt, I need to put off my caribou-skin ankle boots.\u201d<\/p>\n

2013 CE: \u201cBoy my feet hurt, I need to take off my Nikes.\u201d<\/p>\n

3013: CE: \u201cBoy, my feet hurt, I need to bring off my titanium moon boots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t believe me? Just watch the hilarious and informative video below about the history and future of the English language.<\/p>\n

Who knows, maybe we will all be speakovating Englech.<\/p>\n

\u00a0http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rexKqvgPVuA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boss: “Can you work overtime tonight?” Her: \u201cOnly if you get down on your knees and please me.” Him: “Yes Ma\u2019am!” The beginning of 83% of the porn you’ve ever seen? Nope, it’s the mixture of English and Czech that makes one glorious, confusing language: Czenglish! The main culprit of Czenglish is when a Czech […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-n3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1538,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions\/1538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}