A small town outside Dallas passed an "English-only" law the other day, which has led to the usual head-shaking -- do Texans speak English now? (George W. Bush being exhibit "A").
I found this story on one Texas political website:
You know there used to be so many Czech immigrants in Texas that it was called "the third language of Texas" at one time. They asked an old timer whether it wasn't difficult coming to a new country where you didn't know the language, and he replied: "Oh no! Most of us already spoke enough German to get by." See, the Czechs tended to settle near the Germans.
There's a story that a Czech from the Old Country was visiting Texas in the late 1800s and he was surprised to hear two boys speaking Czech while he was riding a train. Well, he looks around and sees two young BLACK boys sitting in a corner chattering away in Czech. O.K., now I gotta 'splain a coupla things to make the joke work. See, on the frontier there weren't any orphanages, so orphans tended to get adopted by whichever family was handiest and willing. And there are two types of Czechs, Bohemians and Moravians, with the Moravians always complaining about being given the bum's rush by the Bohemians. Now back to the story . . .
So our visitor walks up to the two Black boys and says in wonderment in Czech, "Are you boys Bohemians?" And they reply proudly, "NO! We're MORAVIANS!"
Good story.
At the Smithsonian's National Folk Life festival a couple of years ago I watched a dozen women from Praha, Texas make a huge apple strudel as they do every year for a family reunion, an elaborate process that started with making a cake a day or two before so that there would be cake crumbs to line the pastry with.
I still don't get it. Would Bohemians be more likely to adopt two little black boys for use in their bum rushing activities?
Funny, but...,
Since we are on this branch, would he really say in Czech "Are you boys Bohemians?" ?
Bohemia is English (from Latin), Böhmen is German, but in Czech it's called Čechy. The Czech Rep cosists of Czech and Moravia (Čechy a Morava).
To my knowledge, the name "Bohemia" isn't used in Czech language (other than a foreign word).
Fieldgate, but in RichTX1's story the Czech question, which naturely contained the Czech word "Čechy", was translated into English. And since the English equivilant of "Čechy" is "Bohemian", it can be considered an appropriate translation of the actually sentence said. :)
To get it absolutely correct:
The Czech Republic (Èeská republika), also called Czech or Czechia (Èesko), consists of Bohemia (Èechy), Moravia (Morava) and Silesia (Slezsko).
#5 -- That's absolutely correct today but at the time of the story (c. 1900), there was no Czech republic. Moravians were Moravians and, like Bohemians, subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Moravians weren't citizens of any entity that called itself Czech.
I was surprised to see the number of places selling kolaches all through east Texas. They don't seem to have any more ethnic connotation there than does pizza or chili.
#6 - Yes, I know the history of my country :-) I was referring to #3 where it says "the Czech Rep consists of..."
No wonder about the number of kolache shops, as Texas is the place with the largest Czech community worldwide.
trusted partner
