Except, nearing forty, I am not looking for an afternoon date. And if I want a coffee, I am now at the stage where I just want it to be me, the coffee and a good book. Why? Because at current I have my three year old son clinging to my legs and my two year old daughter trying to climb out of her stroller. So, in my best Czech, I plead with the first person who passes, “Dobrý den, můžu se Vás prosím na něco zeptat? Nevíte náhodou kde je tady ta restaurace s vláčkama?” Which in English is simply: ‘Excuse me. Where’s the restaurant with the trains.’
The woman turns after hearing my textbook Czech, smiles, and says not in Czech, but in English: ‘Sure, it’s at the top of the square. It’s above the Irish pub Flannigan’s.’
Times have changed in Prague
When I first arrived in Prague, way back in the nineties, English was a rarity. Few people spoke it, and those who did were nervous or embarrassed to speak as many had learned the language in schools and not via living or having travelled abroad. And though many foreigners who live in Prague now think that my trial by fire must have made learning Czech a breeze, the Prague of yesteryear was not filled with the bright billboards and decorative signs that make associating Czech words with pictures easier. In fact, Prague was pretty much dull and gray. And if you went into a vegetable shop looking for cauliflower, and you didn’t see cauliflower, chances were they didn’t have cauliflower so there was no point in asking. Which is of course a way to learn a foreign language—via asking for things.
And now?
I would love to tell you that I have mastered the language, but I have not. Though things aren’t as bad as they used to be. I still mix up breasts (prsa) and pig (prase) in conversation, and I only recently discovered that for the past fifteen years I have been calling chicken (kuře) skin (kůže). And last summer in Turkey, there were three main topics of conversation: a small dog that was always wandering the premises (pejsek), the state of the beach’s sand (písek), and a small boy’s addiction to whistling (pískat). And damned if I could tell the difference between which word was which. But, in truth, someone was always on hand to explain things to me in English, making my holiday that much more relaxing.
But truthfully, it has honestly been years since my level of Czech has left me feeling for want of anything—though, perhaps, it’s the new Czech level of English.