Living in Prague and Learning Czech: Part 2

So, there I was, five days into my stay, and I introduced myself in the virtual classroom using my very broken Czech. Grateful that I had been studying Czech since early January in preparation for my arrival, I was able to at least stumble my way through a few sentences. 

Ja jsem Americanka. Pracuji jako vyzkumnik. I am American. I work as a researcher. 

“Super! Just one thing,” the teacher said in English. “Unfortunately, in Czech we have gender when we are describing ourselves. When you said 'Americanka,' you used the feminine. When you said 'vyzkumnik,' you used the masculine. You just have to be consistent."

Her voice was kind and understanding. Just her use of the word “unfortunately” to describe the gendered language made me feel seen and understood. 

People can usually tell from my haircut, my clothes and my name that I’m genderqueer. The teacher and I had been emailing earlier, so she knew that my given name was Sarah. But in the virtual classroom, I had signed in as Saar. For more aware people, this discrepancy between official name and preferred name is an immediate tip-off that someone might be genderqueer. 

Besides, the teacher was a volunteer for a liberal organization and was clearly very aware of identity politics. While it was awkward for her to point out that I needed to choose a gender when speaking Czech, she did it in a thoughtful way. After all, I am still just fumbling through the language, and at least getting the gender down will help people understand what I’m trying to say through my accent and other grammar mistakes. 

The feminine and masculine as a major feature of the basic grammar structure of a foreign language is new for me. Besides she/he as third person pronouns, we don’t really have gender in English. Chinese and Uyghur don’t have gender in their language at all, not even in the third person. The third person pronoun in Chinese is “ta” and Uyghur is “u”; there are no aspects of gender at all in their respective grammars, except for words for relatives like brother and sister. But it's not like Spanish, for example, which has gendered articles (el/la) and nouns (la puerta as feminine for "door"). 

The gender-neutral language in Chinese and Uyghur was really nice when interacting with the queer community there, since you didn’t have to navigate genderqueer or non-binary identities in the language. And my girlfriend in China could talk about me freely with her co-workers, often telling them about her foreign partner (Ch: duixiang), without worrying about accidentally disclosing that she was a lesbian. She couldn’t be out at work, but she liked to talk about me anyway. She could use “ta” and not worry. It was the same. People assumed she was talking about a boy, but since there were no features in Chinese that suggested otherwise, it was never an issue. And duixiang was a gender-neutral term. 

Besides the gender-neutral grammar of the language, of course the society, especially Uyghur society, was still extremely gendered. I’ve written about this elsewhere. For example, I remember when I was learning how to have simple conversations in Uyghur, the first three questions I learned—the ones most important and most common—were: Where are you from? How old are you? Are you married?

Now, in Czech I’ve learned the first question: where are you from (Odkud jste/jsi?). And I’m learning other questions to ask people: What do you do? What are your interests? Typical of a more privileged society, where our jobs and hobbies are two of the most important aspects of our lives. 

But the second two questions? I’ve learned “how old are you” in the context of talking with children, but I don’t expect to use those questions in everyday life—at least so far, those are not questions that have come up and it does not seem normal to ask people if they are married or not. I’ve written elsewhere about the fact that because Uyghurs experience territorial anxiety, getting married and having kids is a central concern of any adult’s life. But for Czech people? This does not seem to be an issue. It has been really nice not to be interrogated about my age and marital status everywhere I go while I've been here. 

A related but tangential comment about race and our society: It has been really different to blend in racially here. When I walk down the street or exercise in the park, go skiing or ride on public transportation, nobody knows that I’m not Czech. In China, people constantly wanted to talk to me, whether on the bus or the bank, in a restaurant or in a store.

Now, of course, the second I open my mouth and start speaking Czech, they know immediately that I’m a foreigner and start asking me where I’m from, why I’m here, etc. But until then, I can walk around with the privilege of white skin and blue eyes. 

As I'm remembering how hard it was to live in China and constantly be stared at and interrogated, I know that was only a fraction of what people of other skin colors must feel living in white majority countries. It is so interesting how race really does affect our life in so many insidious ways without us even realizing it. 

And the grammar of the language you speak is the same way. It structures thought and therefore structures your reality. Structures, not determines. But still, linguistic grammar has an influence in how you think. 

Gendered language is no different. 

The masculine and feminine aspects of the Czech language will be one of the main new grammar features that I will have to get used to. 

In the end, I decided I would use the feminine with myself. 

"If you are using the feminine, you should have said 'vyzkuminice,' not 'vyzkuminik" my Czech teach explained patiently. "I'll put the spelling in the chat." 

As I've learned more Czech since then, the gendered aspects of language are frequent, since adjectives and nouns have to agree in gender, similar to Spanish. But occasionally, I also have to gender myself. When talking about what I like and dislike, and what I would like and would I would not like (such as when I'm ordering food), I need to use different forms of the words if I'm going with the feminine (rada instead of rad, chtela instead of chtel).  

Why is this even a question for me?

Stay tuned for more commentary and analysis on my gender and my queerness. 

NOTE: I'm sure in the queer community, non-binary or genderqueer people probably use a form of neutral verbiage with themselves and each other. But I'm not skilled enough at the language yet for this. So for now, I am conforming to the grammar rules until I learn the basics well enough.