The growing separation also touches other aspects of society. The number of Slovak books in the Czech Republic is diminishing. My wife has started to write her television scripts in Czech, and I have caught myself saying Home, at last when I reach the Czech-Slovak border. I now have several Slovak friends living in my apartment who have decided to emigrate. I am not saying that a Slovak-Czech aversion is developing, but we are witnessing an estrangement and a growing communication gap.
Communication is one of the most dramatic issues for emigrants.
The ability to use and master a language dominates their experiences. I know all too well the difference between specialists who use the language of their discipline and can adapt their professional terminology with relative ease, and those who want to be accepted into a wider community. The latter are dogged by an inability to reproduce the accent, the vocabulary and the expressions around them. Slovaks in Great Britain tell me of the undeniable social stratification that stems from various accents in England. I know an older woman, for example, who has lived in the English countryside for fifty years, and yet she still has the feeling of being a foreigner there simply because she cannot say a particular word or sentence quite like the locals.