A dumpling is a dumpling

For a brief period after graduating from high school in Germany, I found myself confused as to what course to take in life, professionally. So I enrolled for a program of study in English Linguistics.

While the financial merits welcoming students after completion of such a program are dubious at best, I certainly could see how it was an enjoyable topic to spend six years on, though I did not complete the course in the end.

Among the more fascinating terms and theories I learned about during my brief stint as an aspiring linguist were the neatly-named raspberry morpheme, the arbitrary relationship between the signified and the signifier, and the Sapir-Whorf thesis, which made quite an impression on me.

Illustrative photo: archive of Radio Prague

Hardcore Sapir-Whorfists, if that even is a word, believe that the structure of anyone’s native language strongly influences or fully determines the worldview the person will acquire as they learn the language. A common example used to illustrate this belief is the fact that the Inuit have seven distinctively different words to describe snow. So armed with a more sophisticated vocabulary for snow, their view of it will likely differ from that of a Spaniard or Englishman, for who snow is just snow. And so all of the world’s nation’s differences in mentality actually have their root in our mother tongues.

The snow example was later proven to be an oversimplification, and you’d probably have a hard time finding a convinced supporter of the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf thesis.

Nonetheless, anyone willing to suspend their disbelief and entertain the thesis for just a moment could most likely have a field day applying it to the Czech language and its speakers.

What impact do the excessive numbers of diminutives in spoken Czech have on those who are native speakers? Do they point to a need to make things smaller, more manageable? Or simply “cutify” them a bit? Are Czechs threatened by regular-size beers, carrots and dogs, and calling a pes a pejsek has a calming effect on the speaker?

Could the double negatives actually be a little-known-about war strategy dating back to the Battle of Grunwald, meant to confuse the German knights who attempted invading Bohemia?

If the Inuit have seven words for snow, each with a distinctive root, then I suppose the Czechs were simply too lazy to bother inventing additional words for one of the country’s most ubiquitous side dishes: the dumpling. No matter if it’s potato- or bread-based, laced with bacon, round or cut in slices, a knedlík is a knedlík, any way you turn it.