As in English, religious curses are regarded as the mildest ones also in Czech. Exclamations such as sakrament, Ježíš Maria, krucifix and the originally German herrgott or himmelherrgott were once a safe way of evoking the wrath of the heavens — and the church — and therefore extremely well-suited as taboo words. But thanks to the declining role of religion, a phenomenon that has taken place all over Europe, but especially among the Czechs (see: Battle of White Mountain), these curse words have lost their force more or less completely.
Zatraceně (damned) is reduced to a literary expression, and some of the other religious taboo words have even been further trivialized into sakra and krucinál. It’s also worth noticing that the Czech equivalents of devil — dábel and čert — never became popular as curses (while they are very frequent in Russian). Čert is perceived as a rather nice figure from fairy tales, while peklo (hell) is not a place where a Czech would send people he or she doesn’t like.
This may suggest two things: either that the Czechs think Earth is bad enough, or, in what may be the more plausible explanation, that they haven’t found the Catholic Church even worthy of offence.
Same thing goes for the use of fuck. While vulgar (American) English uses it in every other sentence, it’s almost totally absent in Czech (but widespread among Czech Roma!). There are, of course, several vulgar verbs for this activity (mrdat, šukat, šoustat), but they very seldom appear in a defaming or negative context. In other words, the Czechs take some activities really seriously...
On the other hand, the Czechs are extremely happy to fill this gap with the word kurva (whore). So expressions like: Co to kurva má znamenat? or Šéf je zkurvenej hajzl correspond fully to English What the fuck/hell is this supposed to mean?, and The boss is a fucking ass-hole.
Another remarkable Czech specialty is the term debil used instead of idiot. Actually, this might be interpreted as a demonstration of factual precision. While the statistical chance you'd bump into an idiot (IQ below 35) is relatively low, it’s not so unlikely that you meet a person suffering from debility (IQ between 50 and 70). It might also prove the often-maintained hypothesis that the Czechs tend to avoid extremes (see: Egalitarianism).
However, there can’t be any doubts whatsoever about the ultimate star among Czech curses: prdel (ass).
When a Czech drops a brick on his toe, he’ll probably exclaim do prdele! Literally, it means up the ass, but in nuance and strength it corresponds fully to English shit! Similarly, a Czech will not tell somebody to go to hell, but do prdele! An even stronger variant is vyliž/polib mi prdel! (lick/kiss my ass), or if necessary the somewhat acrobatic vyser si oko! (shit your eye out!). A vlezdoprdelka or prdelolez is a slippery fellow who “creeps into somebody’s ass”, and if you have a really bad day, you’ll probably feel that everything is v prdeli — i.e. in deep shit. The Czechs even make prdel — asses — of each other.
Logically, where English uses the adjectives “bloody” or “fucking”, the Czechs go for an adjective closely linked to the body’s rear end, namely variations of the verb srát (to shit). Your neighbour might be a zasranej kretén (a bloody cretin), your colleague posral to (fucked it up). An extraordinary stupid individual may be titled as sráč (a bloody fool), and anything of poor quality is a sračka. Needless to say, nouns such as hovno (shit), prd (fart) and hajzl (bog), also enrich this group.
Surprisingly enough, the Czechs are more modest with vulgarities connected to the genitals. True, an unsympathetic person may be described as a čurák (prick) or píča (cunt) — the latter is also used in the composition do píči (up the cunt, as a variant of do prdele!). But compared to related languages such as Russian and Polish, the rear part of the body so completely dominates over the genitals that it’s tempting to conclude that the Czechs, in this respect, are utterly anal fixated.
What’s more, the Russian obsession of referring to sexual intercourse with your mother is practically unknown among the Czechs (which, of course, doesn’t mean they don’t regard sex between parents and children to be a taboo).
So, what does all this tell us? If four-letter words can be seen as an authentic expression of popular culture, then the Czechs are definitely more influenced by their anal-fixated German and Austrian neighbours in the west and south than by their blasphemous and incestuous Slav relatives in the east and north. In other words, the tradition of cursing confirms the Czechs’ deep roots in Central Europe.
Curtains
For more than 40 years, the Iron Curtain represented an almost impenetrable barrier that isolated the Czechs from everything coming from the West (see: Ocean). Curiously enough, the stuff that the Czechs themselves put up in their windows and call curtains (záclony), are almost as penetrable as an open door.
Actually, they are a net, and are only meant to screen off the sunlight. A Dane or some other Scandinavian, for instance, who gazes at a block of flats from a distance, may get the impression that the Czechs don’t bother to hang up curtains at all.
Well, they do. On each side of the net curtains, most households have what the Americans call drapes (závěsy) — fabric curtains. But the drapes can’t be seen from outside when they’re not drawn, which they usually are not, because it might evoke the impression that something really naughty and subversive is going on inside. So while the Iron Curtain is gone, the mental atmosphere from that period lingers on in windows all over the country.
Czech Cuisine
Czech culture has produced astonishing achievements in a wide range of disciplines, but in one field the result is more than depressing: the country’s cuisine.
It’s not that the average Czech is that bad at preparing food. Even many of the country’s most image-conscious macho men (see: Feminism) love to portray themselves as affectionate cooks (according to a recent survey, 45 percent of Czech men claim they are capable of preparing a number of different dishes), and most Czechs make extreme efforts to please their dinner guests. The problem is only that the result, with a few exceptions, such as the mushrooms, is so, well, dull and fatty.
And that’s quite strange, considering the diversity and imaginativeness that generally characterize Czech culture. Thanks to a location in the middle of Europe, Czech literature, architecture, theatre and arts in general have been influenced from all parts of the continent (see: Central Europe), and the result is a magnificent blend of domestic and foreign elements.