Poem

Jamie and I have enrolled in a Czech Lanugage for foreigners class in Policka. There are two of us and three other Dutch people. It is a great time speaking Czech with foreigners, and seeing that I'm not the only one in Policka who can't seem to get my Czech grammar in order.

One of our recent assignments was to write a poem in Czech. The idea stemmed from the Dutch tradition of passing out poems to your closest family members to commemorate St. Nicholas day. Our Czech teacher thought it to be a wonderful tradition, so she told us to write poems; however, Jamie and I missed the whole point of writing poems 'about each other.' Since St. Nicholas day is this weekend, last night we were to read our poems in class.

Jamie and I both felt kind of silly, as none of our writing had to do with our fellow Dutch students, but we had a great time anyways.

For your enjoyment here are the two poems that we wrote:


Žaba, žaba (frog, frog)
malinká žába (little frog)
hop hop hop (hop hop hop)

a kam skáče ta malinká žába? (and where is the little frog hopping to?)
do obchodu? (to a shop?)
do školy? (to school?)
nevím, možná (I don't know, maybe)
do hospody! (to a pub!)

- Jamie


První rok s češtinou

Hle,

Jde to, jde to.
Ach, to je vedro.
Fakt jo?
Ach jo...

Pozdrav rodinu.
Všichni maji chřipku.
Doufám že mam jedníčku...

Česky? To je těžký.
Všechno nejlepší.
Mějte se hezky!

-Jeremy


My poem is a little more difficult to translate, because it doesn't make much coherent sense. I have entitled it 'My first year with Czech language." I wanted to write a poem that was a little satirical and a play on words. To do this, I went through my memory and picked out the most common phrases that I've heard in spoken Czech and put them together into a rhymn. Collectivley they make some sense, but the meaning is really only in my head and from my experience.

Our teacher thought they were great.