Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/488
Czech Influence Upon the American Vocabulary.
(Copyright 1928 by J. B. Dudek)
For the Student Life by Monsignor J. B. Dudek, K.C.H.S.
| EDITOR’S NOTE.
Here is another literary treat for Student Life readers from Msgr. J. B. Dudek, Chancellor of the Oklahoma Diocese. He tells us that this article is one chapter from his unpublished book, THE BOHEMIAN LANGUAGE IN AMERICA, and, except for some slight adaptation in the first paragrah, is here presented without alteration, although a few explanatory passages may seem superfluous to Student Life readers, who are, presumably, familiar with the Czech language. It is, of course, to be remembered that the work was designed for the general public having little or no knowledge of that language. The other chapters of Monsignor Dudek’s work deal with the changes that the Czech language has undergone in America. |
HE influence that the native tongue of nearly a million persons of Bohemian origin domiciled in this country has had upon the language of Americans is almost microscopic compared to the metamorphosis that the mother tongue of these immigrants has undergone here. Any Bohemian-American newspaper will, to one familiar both with the American vulgate and the language of the greater part of what is now Czecho-Slovakia, soon betray that there has been wholesale linguistic harlotry and miscegenation. The resulting hybrid, upon analysis, is found to consist largely of American nouns and verbs, declined or conjugated (more or less correctly, especially in speech) according to Czech grammar, with an orthography that inherits most of the vices and few of the virtues of either parent. Idiomatically, the quaint locutions of ancient either pure or mongrel Czech, but, translated literally, are only the every day lingo, or even the slang, of Babbitt America. Amer- Bohemia have given way to phrases whose words may be icans, on the other hand, have been so anesthetic to the language of the Czecho-Slovakians that a Bohemian proper name or common noun finding its way into their own prints is as unintelligible something as French or Albanian, and as apt to be mistaken for one or the other as not.
The extra-Slavic world, as a matter of fact, has not taken kindly to Slavic words in general, or to Bohemian words in particular. In consequence, whatever effect the languages of Slavs have had upon our vocabulary is not important because there has been much, but interesting because of the surprise generally evoked by the information that