Texas Czech Dialect Project

Project FAQs

Austin Society #112 Member John Tomecek Is Founder Of UT Czech Project

Driving across the plains of Texas, one sees the passing of signs for towns and shops that seem out of place. Czech names stand out amongst the waving prairie grasses, church steeples stand watch over lonely hilltops. These are the remnants of the once-vibrant émigré community of Moravians and Czechs in Texas. These people came largely from North and East Moravia, less from Bohemia, Silseia and Slovakia.

From the 1840s through the 1920s, a steady stream of immigration kept the communities, separated by the plains from their English-speaking countrymen, largely autonomous and isolated. This community managed to retain the use of their mother tongue and indeed, propogate it in Texas through a press many times more vibrant than the American presses.

Their language was largely uninterrupted, and used as a first language for the citizens in this "Little Czech Nation” until the coming of the World Wars. As the flow of immigration waned with the establishment of Czechoslovakia, America began to increasingly encroach on the communities, discouraging the use of Czech, and eventually stopping the transmission of the language somewhere in the 1950s-1960s, with a very few exceptions.

The speakers of these dialects of Czech brough with them their native language, much of extremely archaic, blending various dialects in settlements across the state into new, uniquely Texan dialects. Now, as the last fluent speakers of the language begin to pass on, a project has begun at the University of Texas at Austin to document, catalogue,and help the community attempt to save their language from its death.

It has been estimated that Czech in Texas might not survive another decade.

An undergraduate student, John Tomecek, who comes from the Moravian and Czech community of Texas, has founded the Texas Czech Dialect Project to combat this language death and expand documentation of the language. The project is being modelled on the Texas German Dialect Project, conducted by Dr. Hans Boas of the University of Texas at Austin, which has enjoyed great success in cataloging the German dialects of Texas.

The primary goal of the project is to conduct extensive interview fieldwork to collect as much spoken Czech in Texas with as much geographic variation as possible, to then be applied to academic research to produce a comprehensive work on the language in Texas. This material is also intended to be used to aid the Czech community in preserving and reasserting the use of their mother tongue in Texas. Currently the project is still getting on its feet and needs help in terms of collecting information. Three types of data are being collected and considered for this work.

Primarily, the project is interested in collection spoken Czech in interviews with speakers today who demonstrate their own unique dialects of Czech. These interview sessions are recorded on a digital recorder, the files of which are then usable for digital analysis. The session consists primarily of general and specific questions, covering family, town/area history, hobbies, religion, language use, and many more. Since the idea is to encourage speakers to use Czech, any topic that the interviewee is interested in presents a valid point for conversation.

Many interviews, in fact, have consisted of simply playing taroky or dominoes over a cup of coffee or a pivo. A large number of people prefer to be interviewed in groups, often with friends or family. While some may think that the interviewers would not prefer this, they could not be more wrong; group interviews allow a more easy-going, natural use of the language, which is the heart of what is trying to be catalogued.

Lastly, the interviewer presents a series of English-Czech translation tasks, designed to bring out unique variations on pronounciation. These are common phrases that have a great deal of variation in how they are said by different speakers of Czech. Outside of these new interviews, a series of older interviews, stretching from the work of Dr. Jakobson in the 1960s, to more recent recordings from the 1990s and early 2000s, are being digitized and acquired for use by the project, to present a more comprehensive set of examples of the language over time.

The earliest works of Dr. Jakobson present interviews with speakers personally known by Tomecek to have been of extremely elderly at the time of recording. As these are on reel-to-reel tape, their preservation and digitization is currently being undertaken at the University of Texas by the project, the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services, the Czech Program,and the Department of Slavic Studies.

The final set of data being taken into consideration consists of the written word, ranging from newspapers to personal corrospondance, diaries,and other such works. While the some of these are written in a literary style of Czech, as time progressed they would be composed in the vernacular of the person writing them. Through this method, it is possible to learn a little about the language and ways of speaking of Texas Czech in times gone by.

These materials, will be posted to a database website for the project and in a physical location, providing the Czechs in Texas access to them.

This will provide an unprecedentedly large, concise source for all hoping to study this unique form of Czech language. Of course, no project of this sort is complete without public appilication and giving aid to those people for whom it is being conducted. The project has adopted the motto "Nás Jazyk, Nás Dedictví, Nas Povinnost," "Our Language, Our Heritage, Our Duty” to convey a sense of unity with the Czech population of Texas.

As the project director is himself a Texas Czech, he feels a sense of duty to the language of his forebears. This has produced an impressive outpouring of community support and encouragement, and Tomecek has found fertile soil in the prospects of preserving the language.

Indeed, after having given a number of public speeches on the topic at various ethnic society meetings, he is preparing to launch an initiative to establish "Czech School” for Texas Czech youth in the communities. These classes are being conceived to be taught on Sundays in churches and community centers across Czech Texas. It is hoped that through education of the youth, use of the language will flow from creating a peer group with whom they can use this language. This in turn will strengthen the ties of the community that have become weak in our modern world. It is the hope and mandate of the Czech people in Texas that their langauge not die with them. As one speaker put it to Tomecek, "My grandkids, they can learn that European Czech any time, but they won’t. We both know that. The only way it will happen is if they grow up speaking it, and they ought to talk like we do.”

The Texas Czech Dialect Project is seeking the help of the Texas Czech community to realize their goals of preserving this unique variety of Czech, "born and raised” in Texas for future generations. Many Texas Czechs have heard or think that their Czech is "wrong,” "slang,” or "trash” Czech. This could not be more wrong! The Czech spoken is Texas is the very last place in the world that this older variety of Czech is preserved. This older form has many unique elements that no longer exist in Europe. Not only one dialect of such great importance, but many, from all across the Czech-speaking lands exist here.

We in Texas are fortunate to have such a heritage and should be proud of our Czech. Once we lose it here, however, it will be gone forever. While the project director comes from the community of Schwertner, at Corn Hill, the help of the state-wide community in finding willing speakers of Texas Czech who will share with the project their language and help save this great heritage is needed. Since the project does not only involve the Czech language in speech, but also in written word and cultural items, anyone who can contribute originals or copies of old newspapers, letters or other documents is doing a great deal.

Even things such as the knowledge of how to make or do things that were dear to our people, like sausage or bread, are of great value and interest to the project. Without the help of this hardworking, faithful people, the work of preserving the language and culture simply cannot be done.

Tell your neighbors, family, friends,and church congregations that Czech in Texas can be saved, but we all have to roll up our sleeves and get to work, just like our grandparents did. With enough work, the unique way of speaking Czech that exists in Texas will be saved, and it is very possible that today’s youth will be able to grow up knowing Czech the same way that their ancestors did.