Franz Kafka and his Prague Contexts (Ukázka, strana 99)

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Franz Kafka’s Languages

The form of his Czech can be demonstrated using all these written texts.

Some were authentically drafted by Kafka: two or five official texts to the insurance company, six short texts to Josef David (4th week of January 1921; 4 March 1921; June 1921; 22–23 August 1921; 3 October 1923; mid-December 1923) and some text fragments in letters to Ottla, further quotations in diaries and letters to Max Brod and Milena Jesenská as well as one text to Marie Wernerová (16–19 January 1924) and another to Růžena Hejná (1 October 1917), a draft for Olga Stüdl (Franz Kafka to Otlla, end of March 1919) and the draft of a tax declaration for 1920.117 It is not a large corpus but it enables us to say a great deal. The diacritical orthography and typeface of Kafkaʼs texts were essentially correct but Kafka seems to have had a problem with vocal quantity. He used not only vúbec instead of vůbec, but also short vowels for long – especially at the end of words, such as nepotřebuji (3.ps.pl.), dělaji (3.ps.pl.), hezky (adj.) or (oprav) ji (to), which is possible in non-Standard Czech pronunciation, particularly in Prague. He also used a hypercorrect lengthening in děkují instead of děkuji (1.ps.sg.), as well as a lengthening in totíž instead of totiž, cený instead of ceny, and possibly also hebrejský instead of hebrejsky (adverb). Further, he used long instead of short vowels in the first syllable, stressed in Czech, such as náděje, Jíříček, dívadlo, s ními, láhvička, nábidka etc. The last feature is a clear interference from German where all long vowels are stressed, and the lengthening of the first stressed syllable gives the impression that he was a speaker of Czech with a German accent. The influence of German is also present in the German-like spellings Horáz instead of Horác, kommunisté instead of komunisté, o Berlinském eventu instead of o berlínském eventu etc.

His declension of nouns and adjectives is on the whole correct, including correct inflection of words with genus that are different in Czech and German: horečka (f.) vs. ‘Fieber’ (n.), na přátelské noze (f.) vs. ‘Fuß’ (m.) / ‘Bein’ (n.), čas (m.) vs. ‘Zeit’ (f.), as well as use of allomorphs and suppletive forms: na přátelské noze (loc. sg.) vs. ‘noha’ (nom. sg.), na druhé stránce (loc. sg.) vs. ‘stránka’ (nom. sg.), dobrý – lepší (good – better). There are only a few special features in Kafka’s declension of Czech. He used progressive, more colloquial substantive forms: vojáků, vůdců, papírů, řádků, vkladů, závodů, dnů (gen. pl.) instead of ‘vojákův, vůdcův, papírův, řádkův, vkladův, závodův, dnův’ (standard at this time). He also employed non-standard substantive, pronominal and verbal forms: slinama, s těma kalhotama instead of ‘slinami, s těmi kalhotami’ (instrumental fem.), celé noce instead of ‘celé noci’ or nehet pravého malíčka instead of ‘nehet pravého malíčku’, nepotřebuji, dělaji instead 117 See Nekula, Jazyky Franze Kafky, pp. 503–521, as well as Kafka, Briefe an Ottla und die Familie, p. 117 f., 122, 128, 130 f., 139, 151 (J. David); Kafka, Briefe 1914–1917, p. 341 (R. Hejná); Kafka, Briefe 1918–1920, p. 885 (for O. Stüdl).

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Franz Kafka’s Languages

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of ‘nepotřebují, dělají’, zatrh jsem si instead of ‘zatrhl jsem si’, and agrammatism (non-declension) of some proper names and toponyms: čtu v ‘Selbstwehr’ instead of ‘čtu v ‘Selbstwehru’’, mohl koupit ‘Kid’ instead of ‘mohl koupit ‘Kida’’ and u Waldek & Wagner instead of ‘u Waldeka & Wagnera’, je tu Tatra instead of ‘jsou tu Tatry’. Similarly, we find female and other special forms of names given without marking as e.g. female through derivation: Hálka instead of ‘Hálková’, Bugsch instead of ‘Bugschová’ and rodina Gross instead of rodina ‘Grossova’ or ‘Grossovi’. In the address of letters to Ottla he used the simple ‘German’ form Kafka,118 whereas in the address of letters to Ottla David he used the derived form Davidová, but preferred the form David.119 The use of non-standard forms shows that his Czech was based primarily on conversation, and the last listed feature reveals the indirect influence of standard German usage as acquired in the formal acquisition of language.

Concerning the verbal aspect, Kafka sometimes had problems with it, as demonstrated in the first chapter. He used most verbs correctly, but his grasp of aspect could be shaky: buď bude třeba abych se dále léčil totiž bude náděje že bych se mohl ještě dále vyléčit instead of ‘buď bude třeba abych se dále léčil totiž bude náděje že bych se mohl vyléčit’, že bych snad z Vašeho dvora mléko pravidélně dostati mohla instead of ‘že bych snad z Vašeho dvora mléko pravidelně mohla dostávati mohla’, Písemně Vám ale děkovat nemůže instead of ‘Písemně Vám ale poděkovat nemůže’ and ‘Na Křivanu jsem se dal vyfotografovat jak to na druhé stránce vidíš’ rather than Na Křivanu jsem se dal fotografovat jak to na druhé stránce vidíš, or ‘znáte tu uzávěrku, že? Ta se vždy časem rozpadne’ rather than znáte tu uzávěrku, že? Ta se vždy časem rozpadá.

This specific use has more to do with aspect semantics in specific contexts and situations than with purely formal inflection but still indicates that his grasp of Czech aspect – effectively acquired by native speakers in pre-school years and fixed later – was “influenced” indirectly by German as a dominant language that makes more elaborate differentiations in school language teaching of grammar than Czech does. A similar case is the hypercorrect use of adjective mluví […] hebrejský (she speaks Hebrew) instead of the adverb ‘mluví […] hebrejsky’. This suggests Kafka’s uncertainty about the differentiation and may be explained by the fact that German does not differentiate between adverbs in adverbial phrases and adjectives in the predicative (both in the context of verbal phrase), whereas Czech does.

118 Envelopes of letters from Franz Kafka to Ottla Kafka, 27 February 1919, November 1919, 13 November 1919, 6 April 1920, 17 April 1920, 8 May 1920, 21 May 1920, 11 June 1920; 28 June 1920. Bodleian Library, Oxford.

119 Envelopes of letters from Franz Kafka to Ottla Davidová / David, 28 July 1921, 8 August 1921, 14–15 August 1920 vs. 25 July 1920, 21 May 1921, 26 September 1923, 26 Septeber 1923, 2 October 1923, 13 October 1923, 14 October 1923, 16 October 1923, 17 November 1923. Bodleian Library, Oxford.

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Franz Kafka’s Languages

On the syntactic level we can point out that Kafka’s Czech sentences are grammatically correct and mostly well formed including congruence in the sentence as well as in specific nominal phrases with numerals; Kafka correctly combines the numeral ‘five’ with the genitive numerative: pět slov (five words). Otherwise syntax provides the best examples of the dominance of German in Kafka’s use of language in his everyday life. In contrast to Czech with its ‘free’ word order governed by differentiation of topic and focus, Kafka tends in Czech to keep to the grammatically bound second position of finite verbs in a independent clause like neboť já zacházím už s tím ústavem, jako dítě s rodiči by se zacházeti neodvážilo instead of ‘neboť já už s tím ústavem zacházím, jako dítě s rodiči by se zacházeti neodvážilo’ (because I already treat my company in a way that no child would dare to treat its parents) etc. as well as to placing a finite verb last in a subordinate clause as in German: …že bych snad z Vašeho dvora mléko pravidelně dostati mohla instead of ‘…že bych snad z Vašeho dvora mohla pravidelně dostávat mléko’ (so that I might be able to obtain milk regularly from your farm), …u kterého Vaše slečna sestra byla zaměstnána instead of ‘…u kterého byla zaměstnána Vaše slečna sestra’ (with whom your sister was employed) etc.

We also find many phrases and sentences in his Czech texts based on and formed according to German models: correct Czech ‘mít strach z Berlína’ or ‘strašit Berlínem’ × Kafka’s dělat strach před Berlinem (instrumental) ↔ ‘Angst vor Berlin haben / machen’ (have / make fear for Berlin), ‘Hakoah prohrála se Slavií’ × Hakoah proti Slavii prohrála ↔ ‘Hakoah verlor gegen Slavia’ (Hakoah lost to Slavia), ‘(být) mimo domov (accusative)’ × (být) mimo domova (genitive) ↔ ‘außerhalb + genitive (sein)’ ((be) outside of), ‘psaní řediteli’ × psaní na ředitele (accusative) ↔ ‘Schreiben an den Direktor’ (letter to the director), although the Czech models already looked different at the beginning of the 20th century.

We now move on to vocabulary. In the chapter on Franz Kafka at school I point out that the school provided good conditions for the intensive acquisition of rich vocabulary. Comparison of Kafka’s use of lexical units with a dictionary of frequencies shows that more than 40% of the words that he used came from outside the set of 2000 basic words.120 Though he certainly had an excellent vocabulary, the codeswitching in To je tak jako Eulen nach Athen tragen (It is like carrying coals to Newcastle), těch dvacet korun předal jsem jednomu Kinderhortu (I gave those twenty crowns to a kindergarten) or referát o Berlinském eventu (report about the event in Berlin) reveals that it was not without gaps. There are also some semantic interferences, such as use of přijít instead of ‘přijet’, reflecting the situation in German which lacks the Czech differentiation between přijít / kommen (come) and přijet / 120 See Nekula, Jazyky Franze Kafky, p. 421 f. and pp. 440–502.

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