Languages, like love affairs, are frustrating. Learning something new only shows you how little you knew before. Likewise, the right words always come when the moment has passed. I see my students fighting daily with the many irrationalities of English. And even my highly-educated Czech friends often doubt the use of their own language. But would we want it any other way?
Have you seen that film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? (Věčný svit neposkvrněné mysli). Where the characters wake up with all memories of the pain and trauma of failed love affairs erased. What if we woke up tomorrow to find our languages similarly free of such traumatic complexities?
Here is the idea. Czech could lose at least half of its complexities, (still leaving plenty, believe me). Less uncertainties about word endings. Tvrdý eeh (y) gone entirely (just make all the confusing words mekký). That leaves us all the flowery vocabulary for beauty, and slang for pub fun. Without having to do so much…groundwork.
English in turn could start writing things the way they sound, or saying them the way they are written. That would help a lot. And would maybe give students more time to master the billions of idioms and phrasal verbs the English wedge into the gaping hole where grammar should be. So, if the possibility existed to cut out the huge chunks of Czech and English that make life (and conversation) so tiring for us, would we take it? Would we be happier and what would we miss?
The English on English
Arguments against simplification come from the linguistic heart rather than the head. I know this personally because the idea of removing our pointless English “oughs” and “phs” fills me with a sense of apocalyptic dread. That all is being lost. That things are falling out of place. That we will be left alone in a world abandoned by our linguistic ancestors and their strange ideas of spelling. It annoys me that the Americans, with their “did you eat yet?” or the Canadian “yeah, I seen it” are phasing out the present perfect (which exists to further torture Czechs who have survived the mekký ees of their own language).
But then again, it annoys me when the Americans do anything. And I imagine that, like pulling off a plaster from a wound, simplification would only hurt for a second. English has been changed or changed itself so many times and nothing seems to be lost. English, unlike Czech, seems to revel in its simplicity. As Orwell pointed out “window-pane writing”, i.e. writing as clearly as possible so that the reader understands, is a much greater art than never-ending sentences which lose their point mid-way.
Maybe the language is not helped by all these things that make students suffer: the odd spellings, the exceptions, the blurry lines between simple and perfect tenses and sentences such as “we would have had to have had known in advance”. If they disappeared magically, if it became more spotless, I have no doubt that English would continue to evolve forward creatively. But do the Czechs feel the same about their language?
The Czechs on Czech
The greatest fear of a magically simplified Czech languages is cited by Czechs as the danger to the beauty, precision and uniqueness of Czech poetry and literature. If language gives thinking room, simplification means loss of thinking space. Eliška, a BA student of Czech language and literature argues “through our language we think, we create the world, we form ourselves. So each simplification of the language reduces our ability of thinking” Fellow Bohemist, Veronika backs this up “We would lose what makes the language itself – typical, sweet and funny. How to do without diminutives for example? How to express “Malinké miminko spinká” in a more simple way which would express the same feeling of joy?”
I am unconvinced though. It seems to me that Czech kids could comfortably learn another language entirely in the time they invest into the měkký\tvrdý eeh problem, which they would probably enjoy more and be grateful for in later life. And all my sympathy goes to the unfortunate kids of immigrants or Roma who struggle anyhow and in school have to enter into a level of linguistic ability that would only be needed at diploma level in other languages. Czechs are always surprised when I tell them that the average English person has no idea that the present perfect exists. Beyond a few handwriting lessons and spelling tests in primary school, English kids do not have to study English. (Which leaves them plenty of time to become terrible at French. But that’s another story.)
Foreigners on Czech
As someone who has reached a level of Czech where things make sense fairly often and in a fairly funny way, I have cheerfully waved goodbye to the possibility of reaching a much higher level. I remember enough of the journey I have travelled to this point to understand how much steeper the next bit will be and to be honest, I am tired. That’s me. But for my fellow foreigners, for those who need to speak and survive and make a home here in the CR, would it not be magic to make it easier to adjust to daily life and access the rich culture behind it? Because at this rate, you pretty much have to batter down the door and then climb over it to gain an insight into Czech literature and thinking.
Veronika Faktorová, who teaches Czech to foreigners at the University of South Bohemia, describes an all too familiar process (for me, at least) of an impossible beginning which rapidly gets a lot worse. “Beginners find almost everything difficult – from pronunciation to grammar. Some struggle with the sounds of “ř”, some do not understand cases, for others the biggest problem is the Czech verb. Personally, I think that beginnings are not so tough and hard times come later. Try teaching foreigners the difference between letět and přiletět, and then to simplify just the simple word to write. psát – přepsat – přepisovat, přepsávat – přepsávávat…
Despite this, Faktorová also rejects the idea of simplifying the language, fearing that students would find it easier to communicate but might lose out on what really matters. “If it suits someone to “somehow” explain something and understand “something” then that is fine. But for a knowledge of the mentality and culture of a country, so much more is needed”. But wouldn’t a halfway house be better than none at all? Than a house which is impossible to enter? Is the magic of Czech really contained in all those heavy rules and tiring conjugations? Is it not possible that it actually exists despite them and would be freer without them?
No such magic simplifying spell exists. We are stuck with Czech as Czech and English as English. And maybe languages are actually like love affairs: exactly as difficult as they need to be. Maybe, like heartbreak and wasted longing, we need to endure all the baggage of boring grammar recitation and endless exceptions to feel the depth and beauty underneath. But I really don’t think so. I think we would be happier, freer and more comfortable in our languages if all the complexities (handed down like unresolved personal issues from generations of ancestors) were let go. It would be easier to let others into our club too, to welcome others to the joys of our culture with no need to slave away for decades at the dead remains of past grammar.
If the possibility existed, to wake up tomorrow in a linguistically simpler world, why would we not take it?
Natalie Czaban 
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