A Little Medicine By Darren Baker

česky

Somebody once told me that Czech is the fourth hardest European language to learn. While living in Germany a few years earlier, another person told me that German was the fourth hardest to learn. After years of studying both languages, I'm not sure which one deserves the honor of fourth place. But I do know this: God help those learning one of the top three.

I realized I was going to be in for a rough ride with the Czech language after my first look at a newspaper. I couldn't believe all those hooks and accents floating above the words, hundreds, maybe thousands of them per page. At a distance, the whole text looked like it could've easily passed for Chinese. Jan Hus may have been burned at the stake for being a heretic, but his new Czech alphabet couldn't have helped his case any. And I know there are plenty of people in the computer world who would gladly burn him again today for all the problems his hooks and accents have caused them.

Then there's that grammar. In English, a bear is a bear is a bear, unlike the word in Czech, where a bear changes form whenever you feed him. Two bears and you've got twice the trouble. This declension is made worse by the fact there are a lot of words in Czech. It is said, exaggerating only slightly, that the Czech language has three words for every meaning. English, on the other hand, has three meanings for every word, meaning it's quite possible to get by in England on only a few hundred words a day.

Of course, the real task isn't learning a few hundred words, but remembering them when you need them. Like the time this pharmacist insisted on explaining to me in English the dosage for some cough medicine.

"First you must take uh...uh...jak se řekne anglicky lžička?" she asked her co-worker.

The co-worker didn't know, so I told her. "Spoon."

"Ah yes, spoon. First you must take spoon and uh...uh...jak se řekne anglicky polovina?"

This time the co-worker pretended not to hear her, so I helped the lady out again. "Half."

"Ah yes, half. First you must take spoon and half uh...uh..."

On and on it went, with me, and no doubt the customers behind me, thankful I was there to get only the one medicine.

And simply knowing the word isn't enough. One day I rode up to the gates of a company and asked if I could leave my bike by the guardhouse.

"Sure, do you have a zámek?" asked the guard.

Zámek? I thought. Why is she asking me if I have a castle? Certainly I don't look like Prince What's-his-name, not riding a bike, anyway.

"No, I don't have a zámek," I told her. So she went inside the guardhouse, then reappeared with a lock in her hand. At that moment, she noticed the lock below my seat.

"But you do have a zámek!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, you mean that zámek," I replied. "I thought you meant, well, uh, I mean, uh...uh..."

So much for pretensions to nobility.

Czech people often point out that the nicest thing about their language is the diminutive form, like voda and vodička. In English, you have just water. Less than that and you have no water at all. Nice as they are, diminutives are often, however, a reflection of baby talk. I was once discussing travel arrangements with this man and told him, to his eternal amusement, that I was going to Prague via choo-choo train.