Sunday, January 3, 2010

People and languages

Czech, Polish, Slovak: Do I speak these languages?
My generation, my parent

Polish
I don´t understand Polish at all and I think most of people in my age don´t understand ether. But some of our parents mainly who lived nearby the borders can understand Polish at least because of watching American series and movies on Polish TV channels, because on TV channels in CSSR during the communist regime there were no dramatic or action movies. My father was growing in Bohemia far from the borders, so he doesn´t understand Polish very well. But in present, we have lots of different TV channels, so we don´t have to watch Polish and we don´t hear people speaking Polish very often. A lot of people in Ostrava often go to Poland to do some shopping, but mostly they can speak Czech with Polish shop assistants.

Slovak
In contrast to Polish, I think I understand Slovak very well and I don´t have any problems with it. Maybe I can´t speak Slovak so well, but it doesn´t matter, because I don´t need it, I understand Slovaks and they understand me. Czech and Slovak are very similar languages, there is smaller difference between Czech and Slovak language then between Czech and Polish language. For generation of our parents Slovak was usual language because of living in federative republic, but the latter-day young generation has less possibilities and opportnities to speak and listen to Slovak. But nowadays we can find more and more shared TV programmes, for example Československá superstar.(Czech-Slovak Super Star)

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