Czech Language Research Articles

Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Lingual Validation of the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ)-Specific for Cholesterol Lowering Drugs in the Visegrad Countries.

The goal of this study was to translate the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire—Specific (BMQ-Specific) for cholesterol-lowering drugs, into the Hungarian, Slovak, Czech and Polish languages and test their reliability with statistical methods. For this purpose, Cronbach’s alpha, confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses were conducted. The analyses included 235 Czech, 205 Hungarian, 200 Polish, and 200 Slovak respondents, all of whom were taking cholesterol-lowering drugs. The translations from English into the target languages were always done by two independent translators. As part of the validation process these translations were pilot tested and after the necessary alterations, they were translated back into English by a third translator. After the approval by the creator of the questionnaire, nationwide surveys were conducted in all four countries. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis were exceptionally good for the Czech and Slovak translations, while the Polish and Hungarian translations marginally crossed the predetermined thresholds. With the exception of a single Polish question, the results of the exploratory factor analysis were deemed acceptable. The translated versions of BMQ-Specific are reliable and valid tools to assess patients’ beliefs about medication, especially medication adherence among patients taking cholesterol-lowering medication. A comparison between the four countries with this questionnaire is now possible.

Ethnic Music and Identity: Surveying Polka DJs and IJs

Abstract This article explores how radio disc jockeys (DJs) and internet disc jockeys (IJs) who play polka music derived from Central and Eastern European music traditions are involved in the process of promoting and preserving ethnic identity in the United States.1 We surveyed DJs and IJs and found that they believe they are keeping an important tradition alive, promoting their ethnic culture, and sometimes teaching their audiences about the Polish, Czech, Slovenian, and German languages. These cultural gatekeepers believe the future of polka music is very challenging, in that there are diminishing numbers of people attending polka events in many of the regions where polka used to be popular. There is also a decline in the number of polka bands, and some DJs and IJs perceive a decline in the quality of both musicianship and singing in the European languages. There are, however, cultural conditions that make it possible for polka music to have an evolving and relevant future.

Consequences of holocaust on physical health of survivors: bibliography review.

Period of elderly age preordains the occurrence of many health issues. People deported during World War II to concentration camps suffered from malnutrition, lack of sleep, physical and mental exhaustion. Recently, the health condition of Holocaust survivors is often complicated as a result of physical punishments and different torture methods as well as mental hardships which they had suffered during deportation. The consequences often have psychosomatic nature thus the survivors are often receivers of health care. The topic of bibliography review is based on the need to objectivize and systematically evaluate subjective health issues of Holocaust survivors in connection with trauma related to the stay in a concentration camp. The aim is to offer a review of effects of the Holocaust on health of different body systems for survivors in concentration camps and Jewish ghettos in the course of World War II. To map the subjective problems of Holocaust survivors, evidence-based medicine (EBM) method has been used with the help of scientific database PubMed, CINAHL Plus with full text, ProQuest and other sources with specific key words and Boole operators. Prognostic type of clinical/review questions has been selected for the bibliography review, which is trying to predict the probability of relation or output of illness/condition and based on diseases or symptoms seriousness to find out expectancy for treatment/improvement of care. 175 studies have been found in basic search with the use of key words both in English and in Czech language. The search has not been time-limited. The advanced search has focused on different body systems and health damage due to Nazi experiments. Fourteen studies have been used to complete the study. The research results have confirmed the significant effect of Holocaust trauma on body condition of the survivors. The reasons of this condition were insufficient nutrition, unsuitable and harmful hygienic, living and working conditions and brutality of the guards. According to the research, these factors have impacted all organ systems, mainly locomotion and cardiovascular ones. The results have shown a more frequent occurrence of osteoporosis, fractures of long bones and corresponding chronical pain of people of Jewish origin who had gone through different forms of torture during World War II. Other present symptoms include gastrointestinal problems, tumors mainly in the area of colorectum and lungs. Moreover, the stay in concentration camps had influence on women's menstrual cycle. The studies of Holocaust effects are an example of the influence of an extreme mental and physical burden on the body condition of the survivors' health. The results of the studies have shown a wide range of the effects also in mental and social areas.

‘Mothers have the power!’: Czech mothers’ language ideologies and management practices in the context of a Czech complementary school in Greece

ABSTRACT Complementary schools are an important research area of Second Language Acquisition study, involving issues of identity, linguistic socialization, second language acquisition, linguistic hegemony, etc. This article looks at the Czech Complementary School in Thessaloniki, whose main purpose is the transmission of the Czech language and culture to generations to come. At the same time, the article attempts to highlight the attitudes, identities and language management practices of mothers involved in Czech schooling and the process of language learning by their children. More specifically, the focus of the article is on mothers’ language ideologies and management practices, i.e. on the intersection of research on complementary schooling and Family Language Policy. The role of mothers as custodians of the heritage language is highlighted. The research is based on ethnographic data: interviews, class observations and student reflection (via diary) on children's language use. The results show that these mothers are making efforts to transmit Czech to their children for reasons of culture, identity and ‘good motherhood’.

Czech gender linguistics: Topics, attitudes, perspectives

The aim of the present article is to analyse the existing publications dealing with Czech gender linguistics, and attitudes of their authors. Firstly, the authors of the article present an overview of the development of the discipline, beginning with its rejection to today’s acceptance. They then deal with the various ways to label people with regard to gender, and consider the formation of nouns labelling women as one of the strategies to make women visible in the language. The authors also inform readers about the psycholinguistic testing of the “generic” masculine in the Czech language and about the possibilities of Czech gender-fair language. The authors discuss the proper names of persons from the perspective of gender and personal identities, while they briefly mention translatology publications which reflect the gender perspective. Additionally, the authors present a call for further research in certain areas.

German surnames in the south-bohemian borderland and their word-formation aspects

This paper deals with the German surnames used by the inhabitants of the South- Bohemian border region and with their specific features. The first of these is the higher frequency of such surnames in the region (over 18 % in South Bohemia compared to the national average of about 13 %), the second aspect is their word-formation. In the process of integration of German surnames into the Czech language, the ending most commonly employed in South Bohemia turned out to be -a, followed by other productive suffixes, such as the diminutive suffixes -ek, -ík/-ik, -ka and -ko. The most productive suffixes employed at the national level were -ek, -ík (with variants) and -ák.

Česká vojenská příručka z roku 1618

In the early modern period, only a few military handbooks were printed in the Czech language in the Kingdom of Bohemia. The first of them was a translation of Kriegs Discurs written by Lazarus von Schwendi, which was published by Daniel Carolides in Prague in 1618 as Discurs o běhu válečném [A Discourse on the Course of War]. The book was translated from German by Bartoloměj Havlík of Varvažov and edited by his son Jan Havlík of Varvažov. It was published only six months after the beginning of the Bohemian Revolt, which started the Thirty Years’ War. It is possible that this handbook was printed because its originators wanted to support the Bohemian Revolt. The book was dedicated to one of the main figures of the revolt – Albrecht Jan Smiřický, who however died only a few days after the publication of the title. Discurs o běhu válečném presented military thoughts from the 1550s together with some later ideas from the 1570s. The publication discussed the military organisation, various military ranks and offices and the obligations of soldiers. The book has been published in Czech only once, but there are at least four editions in German.

(DIS)KONTINUITA ČEŠTINY 16.-18. STOLETÍ NA PŘÍKLADU HLÁSKOSLOVÍ

A majority of the earlier scholarly publications (literary and linguistic) contain negative assessments of the Czech language from the 17th and 18th centuries. This valuation is in accordance with the political, social, religious and cultural developments in Bohemia after the battle of White Mountain (Bílá hora) on 8 November 1620. Following the battle, the Habsburg Monarchy was established and Bohemia was yet again subjected to the Catholic Church. The function of the Czech language was limited with German becoming the main language spoken by the Bohemian aristocracy and city dwellers. German was the official language and, along with Latin, the language of science. As a result of the functional restrictions, Czech books were printed in limited literary fields, especially religious, historical and practically-oriented texts. The language in which they were written was described as degraded, unstable and incorrect. It was connected with the decline of the standard language, deformed by dialectisms, neologisms and an enormous number of loan words from German. However, is this interpretation of the Czech language from the 17th and 18th centuries correct? I have analysed over 100 prints from the 16th to the 18th centuries, focusing on four phonological phenomena: prothetic v-, dipthongisation ú- > ou- and ý (í) > ej and the change é > í. These changes occurred in texts from the 16th century (or even earlier), then some of them were repressed (ej, í in word ending, prothetic v-) or fixed as a part of Czech print (initial ou-, v- by words stabilized with this nonetymological consonant). It is evident that 1) there was continuous development instead of discontinuity, 2) the earlier negative estimation of the Czech language after 1620 was inaccurate. It is imperative to investigate the Czech language from a historical perspective in detail, without prejudice or ideology.

Dialogue act based expressive speech synthesis in limited domain for the Czech language

This paper deals with expressive speech synthesis in a dialogue. Dialogue acts - discrete expressive categories - are used for expressivity description. The aim of the work is to create a procedure for development of expressive speech synthesis for a dialogue system in a limited domain. The domain is here limited to dialogues between a human and a computer on a given topic of reminiscing about personal photographs. To incorporate expressivity into synthetic speech, modifications of current algorithms used for neutral speech synthesis are made. An expressive speech corpus is recorded, annotated using a predefined set of dialogue acts, and its acoustic analysis is performed. Unit selection and HMM-based methods are used to synthesize expressive speech, and an evaluation using listening tests is presented. The listeners asses two basic aspects of synthetic expressive speech for isolated utterances: speech quality and expressivity perception. The evaluation is also performed for utterances in a dialogue to asses appropriateness of synthetic expressive speech. It can be concluded that synthetic expressive speech is rated positively even though it is of worse quality when comparing with the neutral speech synthesis. However, synthetic expressive speech is able to transmit expressivity to listeners and to improve the naturalness of the synthetic speech.

Orthographic neighbourhood in Czech language and its use in research of reading impairment

Abstract Reading is a complex function that affects our daily living. It requires the cooperation of many structures and functions and is influenced by many different factors. One of the factors influencing the word reading process may be the characteristics of the word, such as its frequency of use in the language, its length, orthographic neighbourhood, and others. These characteristics can affect the speed and accuracy of reading in readers with and without learning disability. The following paper presents some aspects of our current research focused on the influence of the properties of the word on their reading in the Czech language environment. The concept of orthographic neighbourhood will be explained in more detail including some specifics in its calculation and use in the Czech language.

Передача русских имен и фамилий в чешском языке: теория и практика

Передача русских имен и фамилий в чешском языке: теория и практика

KE KONKURENCI GENITIVU POSESIVNÍHO A INDIVIDUÁLNĚ POSESIVNÍCH ADJEKTIV V SOUČASNÉ MLUVENÉ ČEŠTINĚ

Abstract This article deals with the linguistic competition of the possessive genitive and possessive adjectives in contemporary spoken Czech language. It focuses on the differences between the constructions of the type Barbořin byt (Barbora’s flat), byt (naší) Barbory (the flat of (our) Barbora) and (naší) Barbory byt ((our) Barbora’s flat). The paper’s aimis to find out which of the possessive structures are preferred by speakers (and alternatively for what reason) or whether the frequency of their usage is equal. At first, both ways of expressing the possession with all their restrictions are described from the theoretical point of view. Moreover, the semantic relation of possessivity is specified. The next section suggests the influences which may govern the preference of the speaker. Within empirical research, data from the corpus of spoken Czech (ORALv1) are examined and it is seeked for explanation of factors that influence the choice of the structure. This also demonstrates whether one of the possessive structures has a dominant position or whether they occur in similar numbers.

Once again about the hapax grammar: Epigenetic Linguistics

Abstract In this article, we deal with the similarity between epigenetic marks in DNA and hapax legomena in language; based on the so-called hapaxes, a grammar description is designed. We reflect hapax analysis of Czech language provided by Novotná (2013) and avoid random selection of the corpus. For this reason, we analyze a corpus of 12 authentic books from 12 authors who elaborated the theme “What’s new in…” concerning their field of science, assigned by Nová beseda publishing. By analyzing a middle-sized corpus, we expected results similar to those of large-scale national corpus (see Novotná 2013). We chose to classify hapaxes into different categories in comparison to Novotná, yet the results show similar language productive categories. This kind of language potentiality seems to be analogical to epigenetic processes in biology, which is briefly introduced.

Analýza slovenskej a českej dabingovej verzie audiovizuálneho diela Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu?

The paper deals with a comparative analysis of Slovak and Czech language versions of the contemporary French movie Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu? (in Slovak: Čo sme komu urobili?, in Czech: Co jsme komu udělali?). The analysis focuses on the expressive level of the given audiovisual work. The aim is to examine the adequacy and functionality of information transfer when translating expressive lexical units, colloquial vocabulary and culturally conditioned units. The process of analysis is based on our own experience as a viewer (the knowledge of both the original and translated versions of the audiovisual work) and subsequent interpretation of the adopted translation solutions. These are categorized from the viewpoint of changes at the expressive level that necessarily occur in the translation process, and in case of a negative transfer, we present our own translation solutions.

Kulturní orientace Vietnamců v ČR: generační srovnání

This article introduces the Czech version of the General Ethnicity Questionnaire (GEQ), which is designed to measure majority and minority cultural orientation. Cultural orientation includes different ways of behaving in various life domains (i.e. language use, eating habits, media preferences, or relationships) and attitudes (cultural pride and preference). The questionnaire was administered to two groups of Vietnamese living in the Czech Republic. The second-generation group (N = 279) is made up of ethnic Vietnamese who were born in the Czech Republic and the 1.5-generation group (N = 119) is formed by ethnic Vietnamese born in Vietnam who came to the Czech Republic before they were 12 years old. Using Principal Component Analysis a more complex (six-factor) structure of Czech cultural orientation and a simpler (four-factor) structure of Vietnamese cultural orientation were extracted. The research revealed that the second generation is less oriented towards Vietnamese culture than members of the 1.5 generation, but the degree of orientation towards Czech culture is the same for both groups, and both groups are also oriented more towards Czech culture than Vietnamese culture. A comparison of cultural domains shows that Vietnamese from both generations have a better knowledge of the Czech language than the Vietnamese language, and they claimed to have more contact with Czechs than with Vietnamese people, but both generations also indicated that they were prouder of their Vietnamese cultural heritage than of Czech culture. The results of the research indicate that the Vietnamese from our research sample are successfully adapting to life in the Czech Republic.

Low Bit-Rate Coded Speech Intelligibility Testing in Czech Language Using Parallel Task

Low Bit-Rate Coded Speech Intelligibility Testing in Czech Language Using Parallel Task

Zapisy toponimicznych poloników i bohemików wobec zagadnienia powstania i rozwoju polsko-czeskiej granicy językowej w średniowieczu

An analysis of the material presented in the article (geographical names, hydronyms, oronyms as well as anthroponyms) makes it possible to draw geolinguistic, onomastic and historical-linguistic conclusions concerning the Polish-Bohemian language borderland (between Silesia, Moravia and Bohemia) in the Middle Ages and to establish the areas in which the two languages could influence each other. In the 12th century, Silesia was strongly linked linguistically to the other provinces of former Poland. In the 13th century, direct contact between the Polish and Czech languages occurred in an area from Ostravice to Prudnik. In the 13th and 14th centuries contacts between the two languages in the area overlapped with German–Polish and German–Bohemian contacts. This resulted in changes of names, mixed names, spread of new naming models. Part of the language area of the Polish-Bohemian borderland became a German-speaking area. This determined the local nature of the Polish-Czech or Polish-Bohemian linguistic neighbourhood.

Stylistic features of the surrealistic experimental prose of Věra Linhartová

The article illustrates specific stylistic features of Věra Linhartová’s late prose, written in the Czech language during the period of her cooperation with the Prague surrealist group from 1962 to 1965. We focus our attention on the style-forming potential of different syntactic structures, code-switching and intertext, explaining their relation to the author’s poetics and the surrealist tradition.

"V jednoho Boha věřiti budeš": Anonymní dědictví Kanisiových katechismů

Czech Catholics use a special form of the first commandment of the Decalogue, which could be translated “Thou shalt believe in one God”. Although it allegedly originates with Augustine, it is in fact a much later composition used only in the Czech and German versions. An inquiry revealed that it was first used by Peter Canisius in the German version of his Short Catechism (probably 1568, but at latest 1575). Canisius dared to reformulate the first commandment because others had done it before: using either another biblical commandment “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (Deuteronomy 6,13; Matthew 4:10) or even the short summary “unum credas deum”. Canisius’ version spread in monotheistic Europe as it was more comprehensible and easier to remember. It was incorporated into the Austrian Great Catechism for schools (1777), which was also translated into Czech (1778). From this source, Canisius’ version of the first commandment spread in the Czech language space.

Adaptation of password strength estimators to a non-English environment—the Czech experience

Passwords are among the most commonly used methods of user authentication. Password strength estimators can significantly help users to choose passwords of reasonable strength. These estimates are, however, useful for end users and administrators only in those cases where they provide sufficiently precise password strength estimations. Tools for estimating password strength have mainly been tested against English, or in some cases Chinese or other widespread and global languages. Only very few studies can be found in the literature regarding how to adapt these tools for other, less widespread languages, and what results are produced by so adapted tools.This article presents the approach and reports the results of adapting the zxcvbn estimation engine for the Czech and Slovak languages. The results of this work – an adapted version of zxcvbn (including various dictionaries) – are available for download on GitHub as open-source software. For testing password strength estimation quality, we used a large set of leaked passwords from the Czech environment (approx. 3.1 million passwords), which we divided up into 12 categories. The main results are: (1) The password strength estimation improved for all 12 of the categories. (2) The overall size of zxcvbn did not increase significantly, thanks to adjustments and optimizations of both the original English dictionaries and the newly added Czech and Slovak ones. (3) The speed of operation increased by 4 to 12% depending on the version of the dictionaries used. (4) Besides the direct results for Czech and Slovak, the method described in the article can be utilized as a methodology for adapting zxcvbn for other less-widespread European languages.