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rfmcdonaldIn the Czech Business Weekly, Bryn Bailer wrote that "Reports that German is kaput are exaggerated"
The German language is fairly widely spoken, Wikipedia's Eurostat-derived article claiming that 28% of the population of the Czech Republic has some fluency in German as a second language (admittedly, versus 24% claiming fluency in English). Even so, the fact that German is so relatively unimportant is rather odd, considering how Bohemia and Moravia were constituent units of first the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation then of the German-using Hapsburg empire until 1918. Within the Czech Republic, the expulsions of the Sudeten Germans in 1945-1946 and the severing of close relations with West Germany helped marginalize German. Similar processes occurred elsewhere in central Europe, complicated in countries like Poland where remnant German-identifying populations, less thoroughly purged than in Czechoslovakia, left slowly over the course of the Cold War for West Germany.
The net result of these forced migrations and interrupted cultural networks is that although German has more speakers inside the European Union than French, more people speak French as a second language than as a native language. (English, of course, has more speakers than either language.) Perhaps cultural diplomacy and economic development might promote the status of the German language throughout Europe, including the Czech Republic; perhaps not.
Reports earlier this autumn hinted that the German language was headed the way of the dinosaur and the vinyl record. "In a couple of years we won’t even need entrance examinations, and we will count ourselves lucky that anyone wants to take German," Jaroslav Kovar, head of the German language and literature department at Masaryk University in Brno, South Moravia, recently told daily Lidove noviny. "If this trend continues, the German departments may disappear completely from the country‘s universities."
But even though academics currently bemoan the drop in the number of students studying German, increasingly in favor of French, Italian and Spanish, local companies--even Germany-based ones--do not seem particularly concerned.
"If you look at the decline, five years ago there were 700,000 pupils [at primary, secondary and university levels] who were learning German in the Czech Republic," said Matthias Makowski, deputy director of the Prague branch of the Goethe Institut, which promotes German language and culture. "It is 500,000 now."
Part of the decline has to do with the Czech Republic’s declining birthrate, which translates to fewer pupils. Last year, the European Union released statistics indicating that Czech women have about 1.2 children each--far below the rate of the 2.1 children considered to be adequate to maintain the population.
The lack of German language skills hardly seems to be an issue for companies contacted by CBW. Two of them--Munich, Germany-based electrical engineering and electronic products manufacturer Siemens and Stuttgart, Germany-based auto component maker Robert Bosch--said that if an employee was transferred into a position that required German language skills, the company would pay for individual or group lessons.
"It is not even checked [at the recruitment level] whether they speak German or not," said Kveta Kubotová, public relations manager for business software company SAP ČR, which has offices in Prague and Brno, South Moravia, and employs nearly 200 Czechs. SAP ČR’s parent company is based in Mannheim, Germany.
"We don’t have an official position with regard to the need for German," Kubotová said. "It is seen as a ‘nice to have,’ but not required. Therefore, there is no special reward for German speaking employees."
In Bosch’s Prague office, the only hard-and-fast foreign language requirement is English, according to Pavel Roman, a corporate communications officer for the firm.
The German language is fairly widely spoken, Wikipedia's Eurostat-derived article claiming that 28% of the population of the Czech Republic has some fluency in German as a second language (admittedly, versus 24% claiming fluency in English). Even so, the fact that German is so relatively unimportant is rather odd, considering how Bohemia and Moravia were constituent units of first the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation then of the German-using Hapsburg empire until 1918. Within the Czech Republic, the expulsions of the Sudeten Germans in 1945-1946 and the severing of close relations with West Germany helped marginalize German. Similar processes occurred elsewhere in central Europe, complicated in countries like Poland where remnant German-identifying populations, less thoroughly purged than in Czechoslovakia, left slowly over the course of the Cold War for West Germany.
The net result of these forced migrations and interrupted cultural networks is that although German has more speakers inside the European Union than French, more people speak French as a second language than as a native language. (English, of course, has more speakers than either language.) Perhaps cultural diplomacy and economic development might promote the status of the German language throughout Europe, including the Czech Republic; perhaps not.
