Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/499

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STUDENT LIFE

17

is not entirely unknown in America. Its meaning, as a common noun, is falcon, or hawk; but as a proper name it designates a member of a Czech organization devoted to athletics and physical culture, which, however, has more recently developed into something of a political party in Czecho-Slovakia. Americans knowing of the society speak of it as “the Sokols.” Almost every Bohemian settlement of any size in America has a Sokol lodge, and among Czechs themselves the word sokol has acquired the common meaning of gymnast.

Jednota (unity, union; hence, a society, an organization) occurs in the designation of several Czech fraternal orders, as for instance, Západní Česko-Bratrská Jednota (Western Bohemian Fraternal Union,) Jednota Českých Dám (Union of Czech Women;) and, in such connections, appears occasionally in American papers. Presumably editors using the word know its meaning; one, however, certainly did not, who, in an obituary notice stated that the deceased was a member of the “Zapadni Cesko-Bratrska Jednota society.” ^[1] The simple name Jednota came into prominence a few years ago in connection with Czecho-Slovakian religious struggles, as designating an association (now practically defunct) of some matrimonially inclined Bohemian Catholic priests. American papers, especially the religious press, sometimes referred to this organization as “the Jednota,” but more frequently the word was spelled Yednota.

Karel Čapek’s “R. U. R.,” produced in this country by The Theatre Guild, Inc., of New York in 1922, introduced at least literary and theatre-going Americans to robot. The robota (rob, a serf, slave) was a form of serfdom peculiar to some European countries since about the fifteenth century which continued in Bohemia until comparatively recent times. Robot is rather rare in modern Czech as a synonym for rob, but has become fairly popular in the personal meaning of an automaton, a slave to custom or routine, a standardized individual, since the appearance of Čapek’s play; Americans, of course, have practically forgotten it. In the April 1928 issue of the “Ladies’

↑ Similar duplications are common with Americans even though they be familiar with foreign words. I have heard soldiers, on their return from France, talk about drinking “vin rouge wine”; and, despite the explanations of school geographies that nyanza is a native African word for lake, and that kiang and ho are Chinese words for river, one invariably hears people pretending to considerable education speak of “Lake Victoria Nyanza,” the “Hoang Ho River,” and the “Yangtse Kiang River.” I do not know if the American woman in Montreal knew French: she was frantically demanding of a policeman if an approaching street car was the proper one to take her to “the église Saint Jacques church!”

[1] Similar duplications are common with Americans even though they be familiar with foreign words. I have heard soldiers, on their return from France, talk about drinking “vin rouge wine”; and, despite the explanations of school geographies that nyanza is a native African word for lake, and that kiang and ho are Chinese words for river, one invariably hears people pretending to considerable education speak of “Lake Victoria Nyanza,” the “Hoang Ho River,” and the “Yangtse Kiang River.” I do not know if the American woman in Montreal knew French: she was frantically demanding of a policeman if an approaching street car was the proper one to take her to “the église Saint Jacques church!”

[1]