The year is 2005. Czech Television runs a nationwide poll: Největší Čech, The Greatest Czech. Votes pour in by phone, text and internet, and one name keeps coming up: Jára Cimrman, inventor of the yogurt, near-discoverer of the North Pole, playwright, philosopher and - crucially - a character who does not exist. He was created in 1966 by Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak for a Prague radio show.
The organizers, after consulting the BBC whose format they had licensed, rule that a fictional hero cannot compete. Cimrman is struck off and his vote count is never published; he may well have been leading. The official winner is Charles IV, the 14th-century king and emperor, ahead of Masaryk and Havel. The nation shrugs: "No jo, tak Karel Čtvrtý. Ale Cimrman by to zvládl líp."
This is perhaps the most Bohemian thing that has ever happened. Not just because Cimrman is a Prague institution (his theater sits in Žižkov, the most Prague of Prague neighborhoods), but because the entire joke operates on a wavelength that is deeply obecná čeština - dry, self-deprecating, intellectual on the surface but anarchic underneath.
But cross the Vysočina hills into Moravia, and humor changes key. It becomes warmer, more musical, rooted in wine cellars rather than beer halls, in village storytelling rather than absurdist theater. Moravians don't need a fictional genius: they have the cellar raconteur, the neighbour who can hold a room for half an hour with a story told in thick dialect, until everyone is in tears.
This lesson explores how Bohemians and Moravians laugh - and what they accidentally reveal about themselves when they do.
| Bohemian Czech (Obecná) | Moravian Czech | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
tramvaj / elektrika /tramvaj/ /ɛlɛktrɪka/The standard word, used throughout Bohemia; older Prague speech also says elektrika. Prague has no pet name for its trams - the diminutive tramvajka is the Ostrava word, not a Prague one. | šalina /ʃalɪna/THE Brno word, most likely from German 'elektrische Linie' (electric line). Using it outside Brno instantly marks you as a Brňák. Moravia in fact has two tram words: šalina in Brno, tramvajka in Ostrava - and Prague has none. | tram / streetcar |
brambory /brambori/The standard word, and the everyday one all over Bohemia. It goes back to 'Braniborsko' (Brandenburg), the land the crop was thought to come from. | zemáky / erteple /zɛmaːkɪ/ /ɛrtɛplɛ/'Zemáky' (earth-apples, like Slovak 'zemiaky') is the eastern Moravian word; 'erteple', from Austrian German 'Erdäpfel', is heard in other parts of Moravia. Ask for zemáky in Prague and you will get a puzzled look, then potatoes. | potatoes |
hadry /ɦadrɪ/Bohemian slang for clothes. Literally 'rags' - self-deprecating even about your wardrobe. 'Mám nový hadry' = 'I got new clothes.' | šaty / gatě /ʃatɪ/ /ɡacɛ/'Šaty' for clothes in general is old standard Czech ('šaty dělají člověka', clothes make the man) and stays more alive in Moravia; in everyday Bohemian speech it usually means a dress. 'Gatě' is eastern Moravian: in Slovácko the word for the men's kroj trousers, colloquially trousers in general. A Bohemian may think it sounds Slovak. | clothes / clothing |
dobrý / hustý /dobriː/ /ɦustiː/Bohemian food praise is characteristically understated: 'dobrý' (good) is already high praise. 'Hustý' (thick/intense) is young Prague slang for 'awesome' - applied to food, it means mind-blowingly good. | šmakózní / totálně dobré /ʃmakoːzɲiː/ /totaːlɲɛ dobrɛː/Neither is a regional word. 'Šmakózní' (a jokey coinage from German schmecken, to taste) is colloquial all over the country, Prague included, and 'totálně dobré' is simply 'totally good'. Food praise does not tell you where someone is from. | yummy! / delicious |
trochu / trošku /troxʊ/ /troʃkʊ/Standard diminutive system. Nothing unexpected here - Bohemians keep it simple. | kapku / malinko /kapkʊ/ /malɪŋko/Both are colloquial everywhere: 'kapku' (a drop's worth) and 'malinko' (a tiny bit) are heard in Prague as much as in Brno. Moravians are often said to love diminutives more, but that is an impression, not a marker you can rely on. | a little / a bit |
koukat / čumět /kou̯kat/ /t͡ʃumɲɛt/'Koukat' is general Bohemian for looking. 'Čumět' (to stare/gawk) is ruder - 'Nečuměj!' (Stop staring!) is pure Prague attitude. | kukat / kúkat /kukat/ /kuːkat/The Moravian form keeps the old vowel: Old Czech 'kúkati' became 'koukat' in Bohemia (the same ú→ou shift as múka→mouka) but stayed 'kúkat' or 'kukat' in Moravia. 'Kukni!' (Look!) is as Moravian as it gets. | to look at / to watch |
kluk / chlápek / frajer /klʊk/ /xlaːpɛk/ /frajɛr/'Kluk' is neutral, 'chlápek' implies a tough guy, 'frajer' (from German 'Freier') means a showoff or a cool dude - context-dependent and very Prague. | ogar / synek /oɡar/ /sɪnɛk/'Ogar' (vocative 'ogare!') is the lad of eastern Moravia: Wallachia and the Lach dialects around Ostrava. 'Synek' (sonny) is the warm Moravian default. A Prague 'frajer' is trying to impress someone; a Moravian 'synek' is just existing. | boy / lad / dude |
To understand Czech humor, you need to understand a lineage that runs from one Prague beer hall to another.
It starts with Jaroslav Hašek (1883-1923), who created the Good Soldier Švejk - a man so aggressively polite, so enthusiastically obedient, that it becomes impossible to tell whether he's an idiot or a genius-level saboteur. Švejk's humor is pure obecná čeština: his monologues wander through Prague pubs and army barracks in a voice that is unmistakably Bohemian working-class. Hašek himself was a legendary Prague bohemian who once founded the Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law (it was a pub joke that got out of hand).
Then comes Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997), who perfected pábitelství - the art of non-stop, stream-of-consciousness storytelling by ordinary people in pubs. His novels read like you're eavesdropping on the most extraordinary barstool philosopher in Prague. Again: obecná čeština, pub settings, an ordinary surface hiding anarchic depth.
And then: Cimrman. Created in 1966 by Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak, Jára Cimrman is a fictional Czech polymath who supposedly invented everything first but never got credit. Each Cimrman play follows the same format: a mock-academic seminar (the 'Cimrmanological' lecture, delivered with absolute deadpan seriousness) followed by a discovered one-act play 'by' Cimrman. The humor works on multiple levels simultaneously - it's parody of academic pretentiousness, Czech national mythology, theater conventions, and the language itself.
The Žižkov theater where these plays run has been the most popular theater in the Czech Republic for decades. Tickets are harder to get than opera seats. The audience - overwhelmingly Bohemian, overwhelmingly Prague - laughs at jokes that depend on specific wordplay in obecná čeština, on double meanings of Prague slang, on the self-deflating Czech tradition of never taking anything too seriously, especially yourself.
Meanwhile, across the Vysočina, Moravia developed a parallel but fundamentally different humor tradition. Where Prague humor is urban, cerebral, and dry, Moravian humor is rural, physical, and warm. Its home isn't the theater or the hospoda (beer pub) but the sklípek, the wine cellar. Its classic form is simply the story told aloud (Moravians say rozprávět, to talk, to tell): someone holds the floor with a long, winding tale in thick dialect, building to a punchline that only works if you hear the local accent.
The humor of Haná (central Moravia) revolves around the stereotype of the Hanák - the slow-speaking, deliberate farmer who is either profoundly wise or profoundly dim, and you can never quite tell which. The humor of Slovácko (southeast Moravia) is more musical - folk songs with devastatingly funny lyrics about failed courtships and drunken mishaps at village festivals.
The key difference? Bohemian humor laughs at the system. Moravian humor laughs at itself.
| Bohemian Czech (Obecná) | Moravian Czech | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
ty vole /tɪ volɛ/The universal filler. It can mean anything from 'wow' to 'are you serious' to a comma, and a Prague teenager can build whole sentences from it. Moravians hear the Prague version as quick and flat; Praguers themselves are parodied for drawling 'vóle'. | ty vole /tɪ ˈvolɛ/The same words everywhere in Moravia too. Many Czechs hear eastern Moravian delivery as more melodic, but that is an impression. The one regional difference you can document is in the Lach dialects around Ostrava: stress falls on the next-to-last syllable of the word group, so it is ty VO-le, with every vowel short. | 'dude / man' (universal filler) |
Pražák / Pražačka /praʒaːk/ /praʒat͡ʃka/Praguers use the very same word for themselves, and at home it is neutral, even proud: 'Jsem rodilej Pražák' (I'm a born-and-bred Praguer). The word only changes colour when it crosses the Vysočina. | Pražák /praʒaːk/When a Moravian says 'Pražák,' it contains multitudes: snobby, rushed, thinks everything outside Prague is a village, probably doesn't know wine can come from Moravia. It's not quite an insult - more like a diagnosis. | a person from Prague |
Hanák /ɦanaːk/Bohemian stereotype of Moravians: speaks slowly, thinks slowly, loves his fields, has deep folk wisdom or is just deep in his wine. Prague comedians do Hanák impressions the way Americans do Southern accents - affectionate but condescending. | Hanák /ɦanaːk/But Hanáci use it about themselves with pride! The Hanák self-stereotype: 'I'm slow because I think things through. You're fast because you haven't thought at all.' It's the original Moravian comeback. | stereotypical Moravian from Haná region |
kecat / blábolit /kɛt͡sat/ /blaːbolɪt/'Kecat' (to yap, to talk rubbish) is colloquial all over the country, Brno included - dismissive, implying the other person is talking nonsense. 'Nekecej!' = 'Stop talking rubbish!' | rozprávět / povídat /rospraːvjɛt/ /poviːdat/'Rozprávět' (to talk, to tell) sounds bookish in Bohemia but is everyday speech in eastern Moravia, as is Slovak 'rozprávať' next door. It is warm, unhurried talk. Where Prague says 'stop talking nonsense', Moravia says 'tell me more'. | to chat / to gossip / to BS |
pařit / vyrazit /parʒɪt/ /vɪrazɪt/'Pařit' (to steam/party hard) is intense - implies clubs, late nights, possible regret. 'Vyrazit' (to head out) is more casual. Prague nightlife vocabulary is speed-oriented. | hodovat / jít na hody /ɦodovat/ /jiːt na ɦodɪ/'Hodovat' (to feast) tells you everything: Moravian fun centres on food and wine, not nightclubs. 'Jít na hody' - going to the village church fair (see lesson 8) - is the highlight of the Moravian year. Slower pace, more singing, no regret (except the hangover). | to have fun / to party |
kravina / pitomost /kravɪna/ /pɪtomost/'Kravina' (literally: a cow-thing) is the pan-Czech dismissal, but Prague uses it with special venom. 'Pitomost' (stupidity) is harsher. Bohemians express skepticism aggressively. | hlúpost / blbina /ɦluːpost/ /blbɪna/Eastern Moravia keeps the old long vowel: 'hlúpost' and 'hlúpý' where Bohemia and the standard say 'hloupost', 'hloupý' (the same ú→ou split as múka/mouka). 'Blbina' is soft, almost playful. The crude 'chujovina' you may hear is not regional at all: it is vulgar slang all over the country. | nonsense / rubbish |
Prague intellectual humor has a clear institutional home. Divadlo Járy Cimrmana in Žižkov is the summit, but there's also Divadlo Sklep (literally 'Cellar Theater,' but a Prague cellar, not a Moravian wine one) with its surrealist sketch comedy, and the whole tradition of Svěrák & Smoljak films - Marečku, podejte mi pero! (1976), a comedy about an evening school for working adults, where bookish standard Czech and everyday obecná čeština keep colliding. These are Prague artifacts: the jokes work because they play with the specific register of Bohemian Czech.
Then there's the phenomenon of Brno humor, urban Moravia's own thing. Brno has cultivated a gloriously self-deprecating identity: 'Brno je Brno' (Brno is Brno, meaning: don't expect Prague). Its people joke about their trams, their brutalist estates and the nickname Šalingrad with genuine affection. This is a different flavor than either Prague intellectual humor or village Moravian humor: ironic, urban and deeply local.
Village Moravian humor lives in masopust (carnival, called fašank in much of Moravia), a pre-Lenten celebration where villagers dress in outrageous costumes and poke fun at local events. The songs that go with the verbuňk (traditional men's dance) often carry sharp, witty verses about village life. And the told story is alive and well in places like Slovácko, where a good raconteur in a wine cellar can spin a tale in dialect so thick that even Brno Moravians can't always follow.
The two traditions even handle national self-deprecation differently. Bohemian self-deprecation is intellectual: 'We invented the Greatest Czech poll and our greatest Czech turned out to be fictional - how perfectly Czech.' Moravian self-deprecation is earthy: 'We made the best wine in the country and nobody in Prague knows it exists - but that just means more for us.'
When Czech comedians cross the divide, it's revealing. Bolek Polívka, born in 1949 in Vizovice in Moravian Wallachia, became one of the best-loved clowns and actors in the country, then opened his own theatre in Brno in 1993. In 1997 two Wallachian enthusiasts founded the tongue-in-cheek Valašské království (Wallachian Kingdom) and asked Polívka, who often joked about Valašsko in his TV show Manéž Bolka Polívky, to be its first king. His humor is warm, physical and built on the Moravian archetype of the shrewd simpleton: the inverse of Cimrman's deadpan erudition. The fact that both work brilliantly shows the depth of Czech comic culture.
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