Saturday, November 17, 2007

Learning a New Language Can be Fun!



Dobry den kamarady!
(Good day friends!)

Before I started blogging, and during the time I began blogging, I was researching my ancestry. I was also in the process of learning Czech language. I have decided to get back to learning. I can not afford a tutor, so I am on my own and learning the way my little brain learns.
You may wonder why I don't try to learn a more common language, like Spanish, French or even German. Like I said, I have been into genealogy off and on. My mitochondrial, female, side is from Bohemia. For those of you who are even more science tech impared than me I shall explain. Mitochrondrial DNA is the DNA you get from your mother. Both boys and girls get this. Just girls can pass it onto their children. So what this means, for me, is that through my mother, her mother, her mother, her mother, her mother came from Nosalov, Bohemia. Where my ggg-grandmother's mother was from I do not know. She herself could have been from Nosalov also.
The family does not know too much about the Frank Kallis and Elizabeth Selinger/Seliger families. I have heard many stories throughout growing up. One being that they could have been Roma (gypsies). I have been in contact with a very distant cousin, who knows more about the family than my side does. I found out Frank had a really cool brother who travelled through Serbia, Turkey and Russia, as a traveling musician. Frank "straddled both fences." He was an organ player at the Catholic Church on weekends, during weeknights he worked at a saloon.
I want to get more info on the family and be able to travel to the Czech Republic, someday. I want to do genealogy research there and see historical places. While most people in Prague, the Czech capitol, can speak English, in the country villages it is a bit different. Plus, I think it only proper to show respect to the native tongue of a country one goes to visit. As an American, I expect the same from people who come here to visit or live.
I have noticed there are really great websites about the history and museums. Some of them are in Czech and English. But the Czech sites seem to offer more info. Obviously there are more websites to help learn about the culture, in terms of music, food, beer and whatnot.
While I am back to learning Czech, I am not going to completely abandon blogging about Mike Huckabee and Michigan. I just will be doing it less. I have a few books and a book/Cd that I will be learning from. One is really cute. It is a picture book for children. There are pictures with the Czech words, English words and pronunciation. Also a good thing is that while I know a few words and phrases I am going on the Czech search engine www.seznam.cz and playing around there, just to get a feel of the grammar and sentence structure. Sometimes I will try to read my horoskopy in Czech. Sometimes my Czech horoskopy is more accurate than my American. Every once in a while I will add a Czech word and/or phrase to my posts, just for fun. Unfortunately, I can not add the accents. I am trying to figure that one out. when I have tried I get a pop-up telling me that I need some disk to that with. I will wish someone a happy name day (svatek), in Czech, everyday. While I am learning I will listen to Czech music.

Na Shledanou!
(good-bye!)

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