{"id":3744,"date":"2018-04-10T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T14:54:02","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T18:54:02","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-czech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-czech\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From the Czech Republic … Featuring Marky @ Books Are My Life …, Karol\u00edna Melounov\u00e1, & Anna Alatriel"},"content":{"rendered":"


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<\/span> It’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last week’s  So Your Character is from Poland … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span><\/span>
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<\/span> Disclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts is as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/span><\/span>
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Hi everyone! My name is Marky and I\u2019m from the Czech Republic, a little country in the middle of Europe. I\u2019m a high school student at a language school and I speak English, German, French, and obviously Czech, my native language. I love reading, taking photos, playing the guitar and dancing. I also bake very often and spend some time with my cat.<\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n


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<\/span> Hello! My name is Karolina and I\u2019m from the Czech Republic, city Olomouc. Olomouc is one of the biggest city in the Czech Republic, but it has only 100,000 inhabitants. Olomouc is also a city with a big and old university and in the school year, there are almost 50,000 students. Is really fun, because that means there is always something to do\u2013lots of parties, public lectures, some festivals and so on. I also study at Palacky University and my major is history. <\/span>
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<\/span> Hi, my name is Anna I am 18 years old. I live in the city on the northeast of the Czech Republic in Hradec Kr\u00e1lov\u00e9. The city has about 100 thousand people so isn\u2019t small. I am a student of high school. I have a lot of hobbies for example–reading, playing computer games, DIY, photography or what I  think is really interesting–historical fencing (swordplay).<\/span>
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<\/span> What do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/b><\/span>
\nMarky:<\/b> We certainly do have a ton of traditions. For Christmas, we put a coin under everyone\u2019s plate for luck. We float little candles in a basin and from their movements we \u201cpredict\u201d the future (although it\u2019s more the families with little children who do that). Also, it\u2019s baby Jesus Christ who brings the presents, not Father Christmas or Santa Claus.<\/span>
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<\/span> But the \u201cweirdest\u201d celebration we have is Easter. We don\u2019t search for treats in the garden at all! The boys go around the houses with a \u201cpoml\u00e1zka\u201d (that\u2019s kind of a braid from willow twigs). The girls open the door, the boys hit them with their \u201cpoml\u00e1zka\u201d sing a song and then the girls have to give them eggs or chocolate. It\u2019s supposed to bring the girls health for a year but I\u2019m not really sure about whether that works so well…<\/span>
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Karolina:<\/b> How I say\u2013 the Czech Republic is a really small country in the middle of Europe and it\u2019s truly beautiful here. We have lots of landmarks, but nothing really special. The one thing which Czechs really proud about it is Czech beer.<\/span>
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<\/span> Anna:<\/b> We have same celebrations like other Europe (religious) \u2013 Christmas, Easter, but I think it\u2019s funny, that most of us do not believe in God. Maybe the celebration of Easter is different: Boys whip girls with \u201cpoml\u00e1zka\u201d which is some kind of a small whip from twigs.<\/span>
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Hradec Kr\u00e1lov\u00e9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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Tell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/b>
\nMarky: <\/b>We don\u2019t have any sea but except that, there\u2019s quite everything in nature: fields, meadows, forests, mountains, rivers… Our country\u2019s specialty is probably all the castles, fortresses, and chateaux. As the country was not hit by almost any bombs, all the old buildings remained and you can see them everywhere. Not just the castles but also churches and regular houses from medieval ages are to be found in almost every town. And they are so beautiful!<\/span>
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Karolina:<\/b> The Czech Republic has really beautiful countryside. We have lowlands and also mountains (but not big\u2013the highest point is 1600 meters above sea level). We have big cities and also small villages. I live all my life in one of the big city, and I really like it. I like sitting in a cafe, drinking my favorite tea, looking out at people. I like going to the park, feeling the sunshine on my skin, reading my favorite book outside. And\u2026 if I want I just pick up the right train and I will be in the forest in 15 minutes.<\/span>
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Anna:<\/b> My country is in moderate weather belt so we have big differences in the seasons. In my country are lowlands, big rivers, and mountains, where you can ski. Unfortunately, there isn\u2019t a sea. I think our nature isn\u2019t famous, but there are many national parks in the mountains. My favorites places are in the city. I really like historic center and buildings.  <\/span>
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Tell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/b>
\nMarky: <\/b>We have many traditional dishes for certain occasions. For example we always eat lentils on 1st January to have a lot of money for the upcoming year. On Christmas Eve we always have carp soup, carp and special cookies, that are just made in December. <\/span>
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<\/span> My favorite Czech meals are fried cheese and fruit dumplings. How do you make these? For fried cheese you need to put your cheese in eggs, flour, and breadcrumbs. Then you just fry it and it\u2019s delicious! For fruit dumplings you make some dough (I\u2019ll not describe it here, it would take too long), cut squares from it, put some fruits in, wrap them up and boil them in water.<\/span>
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Karolina:<\/b> I really like food! Well, when I think about traditional food here I have to say few. On Christmas day we usually eat carp with potato salad. One of my favorites is also <\/span>duck with cabbage and dumplings. It\u2019s really unhealthy but it tastes so good! Czech dishes are mostly really unhealthy and really heavy. But you can\u2019t say no to it.<\/span>
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Anna: <\/b>I don\u2019t like our national dishes because the most of them are same like dumplings, sauce, and meat. For example \u201csv\u00ed\u010dkov\u00e1\u201d it\u2019s a sauce from vegetables (carrots, celery \u2026 I don\u2019t know :D) with dumplings and usually beef.  We cook also sweet dumplings stuffed with some fruit. What isn\u2019t a food but a drink is beer which is really important for the most of people (I don\u2019t know what they like about it). The Czech Republic is one of the biggest producers of beer in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/b>
\nMarky: <\/b>Czech is very different from the English language. We don\u2019t put accent on words nor have stressed syllables. The official language tends to be quite different to the language you speak with your friends. As Czech is written phonetically, we have many letters that are quite special: \u010d, \u010f, \u011b, ch, \u0148, \u0159, \u0161, \u0165, \u017e. Some of them are explainable: \u201c\u0161\u201d is like \u201csh\u201d in \u201cshoe\u201d, \u201c\u010d\u201d is like \u201cch\u201d in \u201ccheck\u201d. However the letter and the sound of \u201c\u0159\u201d exists only in our language! We also have long vowels (\u00e1,\u00e9,\u00ed,\u00f3,\u00fa,\u016f)… and many other beautiful things! Also, the words \u201crobot\u201d and \u201cpistol\u201d come from the Czech language.<\/span>
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<\/span> Karolina: <\/b>The Czech Republic is divided into a few regions and every region has special slang. But the difference is not so big. It\u2019s not big deal, actually.<\/p>\n

Anna: <\/b>The Czech Republic is also Czech but Moravia and Silesia. In these regions people use slang and they have different expressions for some words. Some places sound more like Slovak.<\/span>
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