Imperial Valley press., 1939-03-26
Czech Language
One Difficulty
Nv CHARLES p. STEWART

The truth is that American diplo--
Macy has no very clear idea OF
what has just happened unoef Herr
Hitler's auspices in WhaG was
Czechoslovakia and thereanouts;
I'm certain that references 10 the
Czechs and Slovaks, TO Bohemla-
Moravia. to Ruthenia and TO the
Carnatho- Ukraine sum up as
pretty meaningless tumble to inc
average citizen of this republic. He
recognizes the names OF lew
cities mentioned in dispatches, sueh
as Vienna, Budapest, Pllsen Ton ac-
count of its beer and Prague. But
nlaces like SvalaVa, kendefske,
Torhegyalac and Bratislava? Nat
urallv the signs on their Whlstllng
posts don't mean a tnlng. ooiile
of them are not even pronounce
able except locally. For instance
the important city OF Przmysl?
An eminent American geographer
is on record to the effect that IL
isn't pronounced at all; it's sneez-
ed Then there's the neighbofmg
CITY of LwoW. w, III that places
vicinity is mixture of w, V, and
F.. The authority just previously
quoted points out that hWoW Is
neithed pronounced nor sneezed;
it's coughed
How ii Works
once knew an American, quite
prominent in the publicity world,
whose name was Siddall - pro-
nounced. in our language, with the
accent on the first syllable and
with the vowel in the second syl-
liable considerably slurred. One day
/ wrote it down like this-Sczdi.
And asked a Slovak friend what II
sounded like to him. He pro-
nounced it perfectly
Well, as I was saying, l think
that area is a good deal of a myS-
terry to us.
We have some experts in the
state departments division of east
ern European affairs who probably
understand this geography and
weird spelling somewhat, but the
state department, as whole, does
Mt understand. l don't believe that
even western European diplomacy
does either.
It's notorious that peoples often
clash because their respective Ian
guages differ and they don't fully
understand one another
Why can't they clash also be-
cause one side can't pronounce
Przmysl or LWoW, and the other
side can't pronounce Kalamazoo or
YpSilanti? Such misunderstanding
can give rise to frontier disputes
and such things.
I've seen it occur even in Eng
land. when an American tourist
wanted to get a ticket from Lon
don to Birming- HAM and the rail-
road agent insisted that he must
mean BRUNG- -'m-ng'm. I've seen
it in Germany too-a foreign tour
ist hustled into the wrong train,
, because he or she was little oil
on an accent.
l expect it happens here also.
What Did Hitler Do?
To summarize: what did Herr
Hitler accomplish-so far as we're
: concerned-by his central Euro
9 pean grab?
We don't know at all clearly.
We don't know just what he's
grabbed.
He may have grabbed it, for all
we know, to Italy's prejudice. II
: SO We'll hear Italy squawk present.
= ly 1t seems likely.
! Italy started totalitarianism. Ger
= many is trying now to take posses
sion of it. Italy is to be squashed
: into the background. One would
S think that Signor Mussolini would
holler. He's being too much extin-
6 guished
: Between 'em Hitler and MusSo-
lini have had democracy on the
e run.
: But aren't there signs that Nazi-
ism is becoming threatening to Fas-
cism?
!, Hitler rapidly is developing into
Il the whole thing" l wouldn't sup
e pose Mussolini would like it.
But as to details?