Newspeak

Recently I have been thinking about simplifying Czech. This language is really unnecessarily too difficult. I would prefer something like Newspeak. Well, I would take off some words and make declinations and conjugations easier. Why should we keep thinking about it.

I thought it would be a good idea to try this on my parents first. I carefully started to make sure they would understand me. Starting talking too much at once would be difficult for them to get. Therefore I take it step by step.

For example this morning when I woke up (I was surprised to wake up in my bed and not in my parents bed :-) and when I looked around I found out mom was bundled under the blanket but daddy was gone. I started in shy manner. “Daddy not”. Mom lifted her head so I went on “daddy bye”. It took some time until mom understood the meaning and importance of what happened.

When she finally got it (she boots a bit slowly in the morning) she gave me a big smile. “You are right. Daddy went for a walk with Ája…” That was the moment I understood that my newspeak won’t help to make the conversation faster – before a man (or my mom) translates it into old Czech, it would take even more time than regular speech.

I gave mom a few days before I tried it on her again. I know you surely understand much faster than she does in the morning but just to make sure I added also the translation into parenthesis.

Recently I got much into drawing. I sort of terrorize my parents because I make them to draw me a bear, a car, or some other picture to have something to draw over. Drawing on a white paper sheet is boring. Sometimes I need some other assistance and I must admit that mom got this part of my newspeak pretty quickly. “Pen down” (Mommy, my pencil fell down, you should probably get it back for me, what do you think?)

Other small talk we had was in favor of Ája. Mommy started closing a gate on the stairways to protect me from walking steps up and down on my own. “Pat, pat Ája” (Look, Ája is coming on the stairs. Somebody should go and open the gate for her, should he not?” I said and gave mom a significant look. Mom got it quite fast although she was a bit faster with the pencils.

Most of my conversation with parents goes on in the same way. I use simple connections they are supposed to understand and usually I also use the same words.
„Birdie not, birdie bye“(I want to see some birds, why do they keep flying away?).
„Bounce“ (Hi hi, mom has dropped something again, may be it is broken – what fun!).
„Pat, pat“ (Mommy, why do you think I have two legs… you don’t believe I will let you tie my into the stroller when I want to walk, do you? I don’t care much that you are in a hurry. )

Daddy tries to take an advantage of my conversation skills development and keeps teaching me words such as “please”, “thank you” etc. He uses the technique of “cuckoo words”. He keeps repeating words I know “grandpa”, “grandma”, “Ája”, “mommy” etc. and tries to insert among them for example “please”. I like playing this game with him. All I have to do is to be careful and not let him confuse me. When he says “please” I say “grandpa” instead. We try it a few times and that daddy ends the game – I win.

The only thing I am not sure much about is that my parents will ever learn to simplify the language as well as I do.