Socrates - Comenius 1: 
School Project “We are all living under the same sky”


English

Project lSURVIVAL BOOK or rather Getting to Know the Czech Lifestyle

Can you say “Good morning” in Czech? That is

(pronounce ’dobri: ’den).  

The Czech language is difficult for foreigners to learn and pronounce, e. g. the Czech: 

It belongs to Slavonic languages. Here you can read some words and phrases of everyday conversation:

Good-bye.

(’naschledanou)

Thank you.

(’diekuji)

Please.

(’prosi:m)

I am sorry.

(’prominjte)

If you come to see an average Czech family, it usually has two children. It celebrates birthdays and holidays together, watches TV every evening and rests on Sundays. On Saturdays the Czechs do housework and gardening. Many Czech families go to their cottages at weekends and to warm countries on holiday (Croatia, Italy, Spain).

And what about school children and young people? They go to school five days a week. In their leisure time they go to the cinema, to the pub or a disco. A great time for amusement comes on Friday nights when they go to a disco and usually come home very late. At eighteen they can drive a car and drink alcohol. A lot of young Czechs spend time playing computer games, going to fitness centres or surfing on the Internet

Once you are in the Czech Republic, you must taste Czech beer, our national drink. For example, Pilsner or Krusovice beer from the former royal Krusovice brewery or Jezek beer produced in Jihlava, a town near Velke Mezirici. A well-known Moravian drink is plum brandy called “slivovice”. It is made from fermented plums that are distilled into a very strong drink, not suitable for children, of course. They can have mineral water (e. g. Mattoni or Hanacka kyselka), instead.

Our national dish is roast pork, dumplings and cabbage, or sweet plum dumplings with poppy seed. But our eating habits have changed and now we eat more foreign food, such as pizza, Chinese cooking, pasta and chips. For lunch we eat hot meals. Lunch has two courses. The first course is soup (noodle, potato, vegetable, mushroom, milk soup). The second courses are varied. Wiener schnitzel (escalope) or smoked meat with potato salad is a typical Sunday lunch. At weekends we bake “buchty” (yeast buns filled with plum jam, cottage cheese or poppy seed baked in the oven) or “babovka” (marble cake). It is no wonder that many Czechs are quite fat.

Have you ever tasted Czech food? Have you ever tasted Czech food?
Have you ever tasted Czech food?

But on the other hand, a lot of people practise sports, and our national number one sport is ice-hockey. Our team became Olympic champions in Nagano in 1998. We have won a lot of international tournaments and world championships. Everybody knows the names like Dominik Hasek and Jaromir Jagr, both of them play ice-hockey abroad.

The younger generation speaks English. If you come, you can talk about anything you are interested in.

Czech-English phrase book. How about learning Czech?