I practiced my new phrase in the bathroom at work, furrowing my brow and emoting sturdy facial expressions in the mirror. I alternated between singing the phrase and declaring it with grave conviction. It was a dedicated practice, done in the midst of my morning routine of coffee, lesson-planning and avoiding the German teachers.<\/p>\n
I checked the phrase again: Zvl\u00e1dnul to \u2013 It has been managed<\/p>\n
Eager to use the phrase, I completed a minor task and stomped over to my boss\u2019s office, which houses all the heads of the language departments at the university. I set my chin, knuckled the table and announced to the room, \u201cJa to zvadnul.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had dropped the L.<\/p>\n
Everyone in the room, including one of my beautiful students who was having a consultation with her French teacher, erupted into laughter. In my patented method of self-defense, I began sweating like John Goodman and shifting towards the door. They finally regained their composure enough to tell me through teary eyes and red faces that I had just announced, in round about, grammatically poor Czech (insult\/injury), that I had just gone impotent.<\/p>\n
I had been rendered impotent by an L. This hardly seemed fair.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My current handle on the Czech language balances precariously upon phrases such as \u201cI will give me the another beer,\u201d and \u201cWhere my mother lives, there is hot.\u201d To assist in my unending quest to rise above the beginner (pub) level, my boss leaves a Czech phrase on a Post-it attached to my keyboard every morning. I have to use that phrase three times during the day, making it a (barely) working part of my vocabulary.<\/p>\n
Czech is phonetic. So, how a word looks is how it\u2019s pronounced. The word Dobry, is pronounced how it looks. For a student of Czech that is advantageous. One disadvantage, however, is that any minor deviation from the correct pronunciation and you say a non-word. Or worse, you say something which sounds similar but with a completely different meaning. Thus, my deflated erectile state.<\/p>\n
I was enraged at the Czech language for harboring such word booby traps for innocent foreigners. It\u2019s as though the language is lined with a million purposeful landmines that blow up in your face as you try to use them. I grumbled about this and other issues during my embarrassment-shuffle to the cafeteria for a shame-dog.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, I thought, what if I had actually gone impotent? It\u2019s not out of the realm of possibility for a man to be struck with a cruel, spontaneous and acute case of impotence. Just ask a Philadelphian named Teresa Jacobs who hasn\u2019t spoken to me in eleven years. Suppose I had gone impotent and sought the support of my colleagues. They\u2019d laughed at me. Explosively.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the last time I go to them for help with my erectile dysfunction.<\/p>\n
Then, on the wings of my mid-morning hot dog, I was pulled away from the stress of reality and into a land of meditation and reflection that can only come with dangerously low-grade pork.<\/p>\n
My meditative revelation was that English is not exactly unarmed when it comes to linguistic booby traps. For example, in English, our prepositions are deadly. Consider that changing one preposition in the statement, \u201cI get along with my grandmother,\u201d is \u201cI get off with my grandmother.\u201d Change two prepositions and it\u2019s, \u201cI get off on my grandmother.\u201d This, obviously, changes the tone of the statement. And perhaps the speaker’s mental stability.<\/p>\n
Add the preposition ‘in’ among those statements and it worsens the predicament to an unmentionable degree.<\/p>\n
After my shame dog, I celebrated with a victory dog, and then walked back to the office. I was stuffed with mystery meat, physically whole again and momentarily satisfied with English\u2019s contributions to linguistic embarrassment.<\/p>\n
Opening the door to my office, I saw another Post-it on my keyboard.<\/p>\n
Three-hot-dog days are rare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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