99-405: Kitsch ( / k ɪ tʃ / KITCH ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal taste . The modern avant-garde traditionally opposed kitsch for its melodramatic tendencies, its superficial relationship with the human condition and its naturalistic standards of beauty . In the first half of
198-779: A Germanic city called Casurgis . In the late 5th century AD, during the great Migration Period following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire , the Germanic tribes living in Bohemia moved westwards and, probably in the 6th century, the Slavic tribes settled the Central Bohemian Region. In the following three centuries, the Czech tribes built several fortified settlements in the area, most notably in
297-407: A bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics , but failed to make the candidate city shortlist . In June 2009, as the result of financial pressures from the global recession , Prague's officials chose to cancel the city's planned bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics . On 21 December 2023, a mass shooting took place at Charles University in central Prague. In total, 15 people were killed and 25 injured. It
396-702: A democratic way. The other Warsaw Pact member countries, except Romania and Albania , were led by the Soviet Union to repress these reforms through the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the capital, Prague, on 21 August 1968. The invasion, chiefly by infantry and tanks, effectively suppressed any further attempts at reform. The military occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army would end only in 1991. Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc committed suicide by self-immolation in January and February 1969 to protest against
495-402: A lesser extent, Romance languages borrowed from a variety of other languages; in particular English has become an important source in more recent times. The study of the origin of these words and their function and context within the language can illuminate some important aspects and characteristics of the language, and it can reveal insights on the phenomenon of lexical borrowing in linguistics as
594-656: A massive increase in the city's overall population caused by the influx of Czechs from the rest of Bohemia and Moravia and the increasing prestige and importance of the Czech language as part of the Czech National Revival. World War I ended with the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of Czechoslovakia. Prague was chosen as its capital and Prague Castle as the seat of president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk . At this time Prague
693-524: A method of enriching a language. According to Hans Henrich Hock and Brian Joseph, "languages and dialects ... do not exist in a vacuum": there is always linguistic contact between groups. The contact influences what loanwords are integrated into the lexicon and which certain words are chosen over others. In some cases, the original meaning shifts considerably through unexpected logical leaps, creating false friends . The English word Viking became Japanese バイキング ( baikingu ), meaning "buffet", because
792-491: A modern phenomenon, coinciding with social changes in recent centuries such as the Industrial Revolution , urbanization , mass production, modern materials and media such as plastics , radio and television , the rise of the middle class and public education —all of which have factored into a perception of oversaturation of art produced for the popular taste. Modernist writer Hermann Broch argues that
891-477: A month later, Frederick the Great was defeated and forced to retreat from Bohemia. The economy of Prague continued to improve during the 18th century. The population increased to 80,000 inhabitants by 1771. Many rich merchants and nobles enhanced the city with a host of palaces, churches and gardens full of art and music, creating a Baroque city renowned throughout the world to this day. In 1784, under Joseph II ,
990-594: A philosophy proposed by Odd Nerdrum , which he clarified in his 2001 book On Kitsch , in cooperation with Jan-Ove Tuv and others incorporating the techniques of the Old Masters with narrative, romanticism , and emotionally charged imagery. Informational notes Citations Bibliography Further reading Loanword A loanword (also a loan word , loan-word ) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through
1089-423: A political tinge: right-wing publications tend to use more Arabic-originated words, left-wing publications use more words adopted from Indo-European languages such as Persian and French, while centrist publications use more native Turkish root words. Almost 350 years of Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia have left significant linguistic traces. Though very few Indonesians have a fluent knowledge of Dutch,
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#17327810546951188-401: A popular tourist destination and as of 2017, the city receives more than 8.5 million international visitors annually. In 2017, Prague was listed as the fifth most visited European city after London , Paris , Rome , and Istanbul . The Czech name Praha is derived from an old Slavic word, práh , which means " ford " or " rapid ", referring to the city's origin at a crossing point of
1287-403: A review of Gneuss's (1955) book on Old English loan coinages, whose classification, in turn, is the one by Betz (1949) again. Weinreich (1953: 47ff.) differentiates between two mechanisms of lexical interference, namely those initiated by simple words and those initiated by compound words and phrases. Weinreich (1953: 47) defines simple words "from the point of view of the bilinguals who perform
1386-535: A separation mainly on spelling is (or, in fact, was) not common except amongst German linguists, and only when talking about German and sometimes other languages that tend to adapt foreign spellings, which is rare in English unless the word has been widely used for a long time. According to the linguist Suzanne Kemmer, the expression "foreign word" can be defined as follows in English: "[W]hen most speakers do not know
1485-501: A theory of kitsch that situates its emergence as a specifically nineteenth-century phenomenon, relating it to the feelings of loss elicited by a world transformed by science and industry. Focusing on examples such as paperweights , aquariums , mermaids and the Crystal Palace , Olalquiaga uses Benjamin's concept of the "dialectical image" to argue for the utopian potential of "melancholic kitsch", which she differentiates from
1584-452: A variety of ways. The studies by Werner Betz (1971, 1901), Einar Haugen (1958, also 1956), and Uriel Weinreich (1963) are regarded as the classical theoretical works on loan influence. The basic theoretical statements all take Betz's nomenclature as their starting point. Duckworth (1977) enlarges Betz's scheme by the type "partial substitution" and supplements the system with English terms. A schematic illustration of these classifications
1683-612: A verse of The Beleaguered City by Longfellow (1839) and also in the limerick There was an Old Lady of Prague by Edward Lear (1846). Prague is also called the "City of a Hundred Spires " , based on a count by 19th century mathematician Bernard Bolzano ; today's count is estimated by the Prague Information Service at 500. Nicknames for Prague have also included: the Golden City, the Mother of Cities and
1782-582: A wide range of public and private schools, including Charles University in Prague, the oldest university in Central Europe. Prague is classified as an "Alpha-" global city according to GaWC studies. In 2019, the city was ranked as 69th most livable city in the world by Mercer. In the same year, the PICSA Index ranked the city as 13th most livable city in the world. Its rich history makes it
1881-488: Is "the memory of the unconscious", which "sacrific[es] the continuity of time for the intensity of the experience". Far from denying death, melancholic kitsch can only function through a recognition of its multiple "deaths" as a fragmentary remembrance that is subsequently commodified and reproduced. It "glorifies the perishable aspect of events, seeking in their partial and decaying memory the confirmation of its own temporal dislocation". Thus, for Olalquiaga, melancholic kitsch
1980-696: Is a crescent-shaped golden sun with rays protruding. One of these banners was captured by Swedish troops during the Battle of Prague (1648) when they captured the western bank of the Vltava river and were repulsed from the eastern bank, they placed it in the Royal Military Museum in Stockholm ; although this flag still exists, it is in very poor condition. They also took the Codex Gigas and
2079-853: Is a loanword, while the word loanword is a calque: calque comes from the French noun calque ("tracing; imitation; close copy"); while the word loanword and the phrase loan translation are translated from German nouns Lehnwort and Lehnübersetzung ( German: [ˈleːnʔybɐˌzɛt͡sʊŋ] ). Loans of multi-word phrases, such as the English use of the French term déjà vu , are known as adoptions, adaptations, or lexical borrowings. Although colloquial and informal register loanwords are typically spread by word-of-mouth, technical or academic loanwords tend to be first used in written language, often for scholarly, scientific, or literary purposes. The terms substrate and superstrate are often used when two languages interact. However,
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#17327810546952178-566: Is a word or phrase whose meaning or idiom is adopted from another language by word-for-word translation into existing words or word-forming roots of the recipient language. Loanwords, in contrast, are not translated. Examples of loanwords in the English language include café (from French café , which means "coffee"), bazaar (from Persian bāzār , which means "market"), and kindergarten (from German Kindergarten , which literally means "children's garden"). The word calque
2277-541: Is able to function as a Benjaminian dialectical image: "an object whose decayed state exposes and reflects its utopian possibilities, a remnant constantly reliving its own death, a ruin". Jewish-American author Art Spiegelman coined the term " Holo-kitsch " to describe mass-market, overly sentimental depictions of the Holocaust from the end of the Cold War onwards, including works inspired by his own graphic novel on
2376-528: Is dominated by the cathedral , which began construction in 1344, but was not completed until the 20th century. The legendary origins of Prague attribute its foundation to the 8th-century Czech duchess and prophetess Libuše and her husband, Přemysl , founder of the Přemyslid dynasty . Legend says that Libuše came out on a rocky cliff high above the Vltava and prophesied: "I see a great city whose glory will touch
2475-572: Is fake art, expressing fake emotions, whose purpose is to deceive the consumer into thinking he feels something deep and serious." Tomáš Kulka, in Kitsch and Art , starts from two basic facts that kitsch "has an undeniable mass-appeal" and "considered (by the art-educated elite) bad", and then proposes three essential conditions: The concept of kitsch is a central motif in Milan Kundera's 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being . Towards
2574-433: Is frozen as an emblem of itself, becoming a cultural fossil. In contrast, melancholic kitsch functions through "remembrance", a form of memory that Olalquiaga links to the " souvenir ", which attempts "to repossess the experience of intensity and immediacy through an object". While reminiscence translates a remembered event to the realm of the symbolic ("deprived of immediacy in favour of representational meaning"), remembrance
2673-480: Is given below. The phrase "foreign word" used in the image below is a mistranslation of the German Fremdwort , which refers to loanwords whose pronunciation, spelling, inflection or gender have not been adapted to the new language such that they no longer seem foreign. Such a separation of loanwords into two distinct categories is not used by linguists in English in talking about any language. Basing such
2772-438: Is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously). Kundera's concept of "totalitarian kitsch" has since been invoked in
2871-643: Is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia . Situated on the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.4 million people. Prague is a political, cultural, and economic hub of Central Europe , with a rich history and Romanesque , Gothic , Renaissance and Baroque architectures. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia and residence of several Holy Roman Emperors , most notably Charles IV (r. 1346–1378) and Rudolf II (r. 1575–1611). It
2970-489: Is the word tea , which originated in Hokkien but has been borrowed into languages all over the world. For a sufficiently old Wanderwort, it may become difficult or impossible to determine in what language it actually originated. Most of the technical vocabulary of classical music (such as concerto , allegro , tempo , aria , opera , and soprano ) is borrowed from Italian , and that of ballet from French . Much of
3069-575: The Bethlehem Chapel . Inspired by John Wycliffe , these sermons focused on what were seen as radical reforms of a corrupt Church. Having become too dangerous for the political and religious establishment, Hus was summoned to the Council of Constance , put on trial for heresy , and burned at the stake in Konstanz in 1415. Four years later Prague experienced its first defenestration , when
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3168-631: The Codex Argenteus . The earliest evidence indicates that a gonfalon with a municipal charge painted on it was used for the Old Town as early as 1419. Since this city militia flag was in use before 1477 and during the Hussite Wars, it is the oldest still preserved municipal flag of Bohemia. In the following two centuries, Prague strengthened its role as a merchant city. Many noteworthy Gothic buildings were erected and Vladislav Hall of
3267-542: The Hispano-Jewish merchant and traveler Abraham ben Jacob . The Old New Synagogue of 1270 still stands in the city. Prague was also once home to a slave market. At the site of the ford in the Vltava river, King Vladislaus I had the first bridge built in 1170, the Judith Bridge (Juditin most), named in honor of his wife Judith of Thuringia . This bridge was destroyed by a flood in 1342, but some of
3366-566: The Prague astronomical clock , the Jewish Quarter , Petřín hill and Vyšehrad . Since 1992, the historic center of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites . The city has more than ten major museums, along with numerous theatres, galleries, cinemas, and other historical exhibits. An extensive modern public transportation system connects the city. It is home to
3465-647: The Red Army took the city almost unopposed. The majority (about 50,000 people) of the German population of Prague either fled or were expelled by the Beneš decrees in the aftermath of the war. Prague was a city in a country under the military, economic, and political control of the Soviet Union (see Iron Curtain and COMECON ). The world's largest Stalin Monument was unveiled on Letná hill in 1955 and destroyed in 1962. The 4th Czechoslovak Writers' Congress, held in
3564-530: The Thirty Years' War , a particularly harsh period for Prague and Bohemia. Ferdinand II of Habsburg was deposed, and his place as King of Bohemia taken by Frederick V, Elector Palatine ; however his army was crushed in the Battle of White Mountain (1620) not far from the city. Following this in 1621 was an execution of 27 Czech Protestant leaders (involved in the uprising) in Old Town Square and
3663-489: The US Army Air Forces . 701 people were killed, more than 1,000 people were injured and some buildings, factories and historic landmarks ( Emmaus Monastery , Faust House , Vinohrady Synagogue ) were destroyed. Many historic structures in Prague, however, escaped the destruction of the war and the damage was small compared to the total destruction of many other cities in that time. According to American pilots, it
3762-671: The oldest university in Central Europe. His father John of Bohemia began construction of the Gothic Saint Vitus Cathedral , within the largest of the Prague Castle courtyards, on the site of the Romanesque rotunda there. Prague was elevated to an archbishopric in 1344, the year the cathedral was begun. The city had a mint and was a center of trade for German and Italian bankers and merchants. The social order, however, became more turbulent due to
3861-431: The terminology of the sport of fencing also comes from French. Many loanwords come from prepared food, drink, fruits, vegetables, seafood and more from languages around the world. In particular, many come from French cuisine ( crêpe , Chantilly , crème brûlée ), Italian ( pasta , linguine , pizza , espresso ), and Chinese ( dim sum , chow mein , wonton ). Loanwords are adapted from one language to another in
3960-517: The Šárka valley , Butovice and Levý Hradec . The construction of what came to be known as Prague Castle began near the end of the 9th century, expanding a fortified settlement that had existed on the site since the year 800. The first masonry under Prague Castle dates from the year 885 at the latest. The other prominent Prague fort, the Přemyslid fort Vyšehrad , was founded in the 10th century, some 70 years later than Prague Castle. Prague Castle
4059-610: The ʻokina and macron diacritics. Most English affixes, such as un- , -ing , and -ly , were used in Old English. However, a few English affixes are borrowed. For example, the verbal suffix -ize (American English) or ise (British English) comes from Greek -ιζειν ( -izein ) through Latin -izare . Pronunciation often differs from the original language, occasionally dramatically, especially when dealing with place names . This often leads to divergence when many speakers anglicize pronunciations as other speakers try to maintain
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4158-601: The " normalization " of the country. In 1989, after riot police beat back a peaceful student demonstration, the Velvet Revolution crowded the streets of Prague, and the capital of Czechoslovakia benefited greatly from the new mood. In 1992, the Historic Centre of Prague and its monuments were inscribed as a cultural UNESCO World Heritage Site . In 1993, after the Velvet Divorce , Prague became
4257-421: The 14th century had the highest number of loans. In the case of Romanian, the language underwent a "re-Latinization" process later than the others (see Romanian lexis , Romanian language § French, Italian, and English loanwords ), in the 18th and 19th centuries, partially using French and Italian words (many of these themselves being earlier borrowings from Latin) as intermediaries, in an effort to modernize
4356-418: The 17th century, Prague's population began to grow again. Jews had been in Prague since the end of the 10th century and, by 1708, they accounted for about a quarter of Prague's population. In 1689, a great fire devastated Prague, but this spurred a renovation and a rebuilding of the city. In 1713–14, a major outbreak of plague hit Prague one last time, killing 12,000 to 13,000 people. In 1744, Frederick
4455-463: The 1860s and the 1870s, describing cheap, popular, and marketable pictures and sketches. In Das Buch vom Kitsch ( The Book of Kitsch ), published in 1936, Hans Reimann defined it as a professional expression "born in a painter's studio". The study of kitsch was done almost exclusively in Germany until the 1970s, with Walter Benjamin being an important scholar in the field. Kitsch is regarded as
4554-497: The 20th century, kitsch was used in reference to mass-produced, pop-cultural products that lacked the conceptual depth of fine art . However, since the emergence of Pop Art in the 1950s, kitsch has taken on newfound highbrow appeal, often wielded in knowingly ironic , humorous or earnest manners. To brand visual art as "kitsch" is often still pejorative , though not exclusively. Art deemed kitsch may be enjoyed in an entirely positive and sincere manner. For example, it carries
4653-560: The Great of Prussia invaded Bohemia. He took Prague after a severe and prolonged siege in the course of which a large part of the town was destroyed. Empress Maria Theresa expelled the Jews from Prague in 1745; though she rescinded the expulsion in 1748, the proportion of Jewish residents in the city never recovered. In 1757 the Prussian bombardment destroyed more than one-quarter of the city and heavily damaged St. Vitus Cathedral. However,
4752-517: The Heart of Europe. The local Jewish community, which belongs to one of the oldest continuously existing in the world, have described the city as עיר ואם בישראל Ir va-em be-yisrael , "The city and mother in Israel". Prague has grown from a settlement stretching from Prague Castle in the north to the fort of Vyšehrad in the south, to become the capital of a modern European country. The region
4851-526: The Indonesian language inherited many words from Dutch, both in words for everyday life (e.g., buncis from Dutch boontjes for (green) beans) and as well in administrative, scientific or technological terminology (e.g., kantor from Dutch kantoor for office). The Professor of Indonesian Literature at Leiden University , and of Comparative Literature at UCR , argues that roughly 20% of Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words. In
4950-639: The Prague Castle was added. In 1526, the Bohemian estates elected Ferdinand I of the House of Habsburg . The fervent Catholicism of its members brought them into conflict in Bohemia, and then in Prague, where Protestant ideas were gaining popularity. These problems were not preeminent under Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II , elected King of Bohemia in 1576, who chose Prague as his home. He lived in Prague Castle, where his court welcomed not only astrologers and magicians but also scientists, musicians, and artists. Rudolf
5049-631: The Romance language's character. Latin borrowings can be known by several names in Romance languages: in French, for example, they are usually referred to as mots savants , in Spanish as cultismos , and in Italian as latinismi . Latin is usually the most common source of loanwords in these languages, such as in Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc., and in some cases the total number of loans may even outnumber inherited terms (although
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#17327810546955148-463: The Vltava river. Another view to the origin of the name is also related to the Czech word práh (with the meaning of a threshold ) and a legendary etymology connects the name of the city with princess Libuše , prophetess and a wife of the mythical founder of the Přemyslid dynasty . She is said to have ordered the city "to be built where a man hews a threshold of his house". The Czech práh might thus be understood to refer to rapids or fords in
5247-483: The ability to be quaint or "quirky" without being offensive on the surface, as in the Dogs Playing Poker paintings. Along with visual art, the quality of kitsch can be used to describe works of music , literature or any other creative medium. Kitsch relates to camp , as they both incorporate irony and extravagance. As a descriptive term, kitsch originated in the art markets of Munich , Germany in
5346-540: The capital city of the new Czech Republic. From 1995, high-rise buildings began to be built in Prague in large quantities. In the late 1990s, Prague again became an important cultural center of Europe and was notably influenced by globalisation . In 2000, the IMF and World Bank summits took place in Prague and anti-globalization riots took place here. In 2002, Prague suffered from widespread floods that damaged buildings and its underground transport system. Prague launched
5445-622: The city in June 1967, took a strong position against the regime. On 31 October 1967 students demonstrated at Strahov . This spurred the new secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party , Alexander Dubček , to proclaim a new deal in his city's and country's life, starting the short-lived season of the " socialism with a human face ". It was the Prague Spring , which aimed at the renovation of political institutions in
5544-469: The city militia fought bravely under the Prague Banner. This swallow-tailed banner is approximately 4 by 6 ft (1.2 by 1.8 m), with a red field sprinkled with small white fleurs-de-lis, and a silver old Town Coat-of-Arms in the center. The words "PÁN BŮH POMOC NAŠE" (The Lord is our Relief/Help) appeared above the coat-of-arms, with a Hussite chalice centered on the top. Near the swallow-tails
5643-664: The country was occupied by Nazi Germany , Hitler took over Prague Castle. During the Second World War , most Jews were deported and killed by the Germans. In 1942, Prague was witness to the assassination of one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany — Reinhard Heydrich —during Operation Anthropoid , accomplished by Czechoslovak national heroes Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš . Hitler ordered bloody reprisals. In February 1945, Prague suffered several bombing raids by
5742-411: The donor language rather than being adopted in (an approximation of) its original form. They must also be distinguished from cognates , which are words in two or more related languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin in the ancestral language, rather than because one borrowed the word from the other. A loanword is distinguished from a calque (or loan translation ), which
5841-557: The empire, such as Albanian , Bosnian , Bulgarian , Croatian , Greek , Hungarian , Ladino , Macedonian , Montenegrin and Serbian . After the empire fell after World War I and the Republic of Turkey was founded, the Turkish language underwent an extensive language reform led by the newly founded Turkish Language Association , during which many adopted words were replaced with new formations derived from Turkic roots. That
5940-414: The end of the novel, the book's narrator posits that the act of defecation (and specifically, the shame that surrounds it) poses a metaphysical challenge to the theory of divine creation: "Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner". Thus, in order for us to continue to believe in the essential propriety and rightness of
6039-437: The essence of kitsch is imitation: kitsch mimics its immediate predecessor with no regard to ethics—it aims to copy the beautiful, not the good. According to Walter Benjamin, kitsch, unlike art, is a utilitarian object lacking all critical distance between object and observer. According to critic Winfried Menninghaus, Benjamin's stance was that kitsch "offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without
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#17327810546956138-407: The exiling of many others. Prague was forcibly converted back to Roman Catholicism followed by the rest of Czech lands. The city suffered subsequently during the war under an attack by Electorate of Saxony (1631) and during the Battle of Prague (1648) . Prague began a steady decline which reduced the population from the 60,000 it had had in the years before the war to 20,000. In the second half of
6237-834: The first restaurant in Japan to offer buffet -style meals, inspired by the Nordic smörgåsbord , was opened in 1958 by the Imperial Hotel under the name "Viking". The German word Kachel , meaning "tile", became the Dutch word kachel meaning "stove", as a shortening of kacheloven , from German Kachelofen , a cocklestove . The Indonesian word manset primarily means "base layer", "inner bolero", or "detachable sleeve", while its French etymon manchette means "cuff". Prague Prague ( / ˈ p r ɑː ɡ / PRAHG ; Czech : Praha [ˈpraɦa] )
6336-421: The four municipalities of Malá Strana, Nové Město, Staré Město, and Hradčany were merged into a single entity. The Jewish district, called Josefov , was included only in 1850. The Industrial Revolution produced great changes and developments in Prague, as new factories could take advantage of the coal mines and ironworks of the nearby regions. The first suburb, Karlín , was created in 1817, and twenty years later
6435-431: The grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch. According to the narrator, kitsch is "the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements"; however, where a society is dominated by a single political movement, the result is "totalitarian kitsch": When I say "totalitarian," what I mean
6534-708: The language, often adding concepts that did not exist until then, or replacing words of other origins. These common borrowings and features also essentially serve to raise mutual intelligibility of the Romance languages, particularly in academic/scholarly, literary, technical, and scientific domains. Many of these same words are also found in English (through its numerous borrowings from Latin and French) and other European languages. In addition to Latin loanwords, many words of Ancient Greek origin were also borrowed into Romance languages, often in part through scholarly Latin intermediates, and these also often pertained to academic, scientific, literary, and technical topics. Furthermore, to
6633-661: The late 17th century, the Dutch Republic had a leading position in shipbuilding. Czar Peter the Great , eager to improve his navy, studied shipbuilding in Zaandam and Amsterdam . Many Dutch naval terms have been incorporated in the Russian vocabulary, such as бра́мсель ( brámselʹ ) from Dutch bramzeil for the topgallant sail , домкра́т ( domkrát ) from Dutch dommekracht for jack , and матро́с ( matrós ) from Dutch matroos for sailor. A large percentage of
6732-494: The learned borrowings are less often used in common speech, with the most common vocabulary being of inherited, orally transmitted origin from Vulgar Latin). This has led to many cases of etymological doublets in these languages. For most Romance languages, these loans were initiated by scholars, clergy, or other learned people and occurred in Medieval times, peaking in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance era - in Italian,
6831-476: The lexicon of Romance languages , themselves descended from Vulgar Latin , consists of loanwords (later learned or scholarly borrowings ) from Latin. These words can be distinguished by lack of typical sound changes and other transformations found in descended words, or by meanings taken directly from Classical or Ecclesiastical Latin that did not evolve or change over time as expected; in addition, there are also semi-learned terms which were adapted partially to
6930-403: The meaning of these terms is reasonably well-defined only in second language acquisition or language replacement events, when the native speakers of a certain source language (the substrate) are somehow compelled to abandon it for another target language (the superstrate). A Wanderwort is a word that has been borrowed across a wide range of languages remote from its original source; an example
7029-461: The more commonly discussed "nostalgic kitsch". These two types of kitsch correspond to two different forms of memory. Nostalgic kitsch functions through "reminiscence", which "sacrifices the intensity of experience for a conscious or fabricated sense of continuity": Incapable of tolerating the intensity of the moment, reminiscence selects and consolidates an event's acceptable parts into a memory perceived as complete. […] This reconstructed experience
7128-586: The novel's setting in Prague around the time of the 1968 invasion by the Soviet Union —to communism and totalitarianism . He gives the example of the Communist May Day ceremony, and of the sight of children running on the grass and the feeling this is supposed to provoke. This emphasis on feeling is fundamental to how kitsch operates: Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on
7227-462: The opposite side of the river, as well as the Lesser Town beneath the existing castle, appeared only later. The English spelling of the city's name is borrowed from French . In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was pronounced in English to rhyme with "vague": it was so pronounced by Lady Diana Cooper (born 1892) on Desert Island Discs in 1969, and it is written to rhyme with "vague" in
7326-556: The original foundation stones of that bridge remain in the river. It was rebuilt and named the Charles Bridge. In 1257, under King Ottokar II , Malá Strana ("Lesser Quarter") was founded in Prague on the site of an older village in what would become the Hradčany (Prague Castle) area. This was the district of the German people, who had the right to administer the law autonomously, pursuant to Magdeburg rights . The new district
7425-468: The original phonology even though a particular phoneme might not exist or have contrastive status in English. For example, the Hawaiian word ʻaʻā is used by geologists to specify lava that is thick, chunky, and rough. The Hawaiian spelling indicates the two glottal stops in the word, but the English pronunciation, / ˈ ɑː ( ʔ ) ɑː / , contains at most one. The English spelling usually removes
7524-488: The people rebelled under the command of the Prague priest Jan Želivský . Hus' death, coupled with Czech proto-nationalism and proto-Protestantism , had spurred the Hussite Wars . Peasant rebels, led by the general Jan Žižka , along with Hussite troops from Prague, defeated Emperor Sigismund , in the Battle of Vítkov Hill in 1420. During the Hussite Wars when Prague was attacked by "Crusader" and mercenary forces,
7623-544: The population exceeded 100,000. The revolutions in Europe in 1848 also touched Prague, but they were fiercely suppressed. In the following years, the Czech National Revival began its rise, until it gained the majority in the town council in 1861. Prague had a large number of German speakers in 1848, but by 1880 the number of German speakers had decreased to 14% (42,000), and by 1910 to 6.7% (37,000), due to
7722-410: The process of borrowing . Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything (i.e., the loanword). Loanwords may be contrasted with calques , in which a word is borrowed into the recipient language by being directly translated from
7821-671: The region of Bohemia, which means "home of the Boii people". In the last century BC, the Celts were slowly driven away by Germanic tribes ( Marcomanni , Quadi , Lombards and possibly the Suebi ), leading some to place the seat of the Marcomanni king, Maroboduus , in Závist. Around the area where present-day Prague stands, the 2nd century map drawn by Roman geographer Ptolemaios mentioned
7920-533: The reign of his son, King Wenceslaus IV (1378–1419), a period of intense turmoil ensued. During Easter 1389, members of the Prague clergy announced that Jews had desecrated the host (Eucharistic wafer) and the clergy encouraged mobs to pillage, ransack and burn the Jewish quarter. Nearly the entire Jewish population of Prague (ca 750 people) was murdered. Jan Hus , a theologian and rector at Charles University, preached in Prague. In 1402, he began giving sermons in
8019-427: The requirement of distance, without sublimation". In a short essay from 1927, Benjamin observed that an artist who engages in kitschy reproductions of things and ideas from a bygone age deserved to be called a "furnished man" (in the way that someone rents a " furnished apartment " where everything is already supplied). Kitsch is less about the thing observed than about the observer. According to Roger Scruton , "Kitsch
8118-433: The rising power of the craftsmen 's guilds (themselves often torn by internal conflicts), and the increasing number of poor. The Hunger Wall, a substantial fortification wall south of Malá Strana and the castle area was built during a famine in the 1360s. The work is reputed to have been ordered by Charles IV as a means of providing employment and food to the workers and their families. Charles IV died in 1378. During
8217-464: The river, the edge of which could have acted as a means of fording the river – thus providing a "threshold" to the castle. Another derivation of the name Praha is suggested from na prazě , the original term for the shale hillside rock upon which the original castle was built. At that time, the castle was surrounded by forests, covering the nine hills of the future city – the Old Town on
8316-605: The stars". She ordered a castle and a town called Praha to be built on the site. The region became the seat of the dukes , and later kings of Bohemia . Under Duke of Bohemia Boleslaus II the Pious the area became a bishopric in 973. Until Prague was elevated to archbishopric in 1344, it was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Mainz . Prague was an important seat for trading where merchants from across Europe settled, including many Jews, as recalled in 965 by
8415-511: The study of the art and culture of regimes such as Stalin's Soviet Union , Nazi Germany , Fascist Italy and Iraq under Saddam Hussein . Kundera's narrator ends up condemning kitsch for its "true function" as an ideological tool under such regimes, calling it "a folding screen set up to curtain off death". In her 1999 book The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience , cultural historian Celeste Olalquiaga develops
8514-490: The subject, Maus . The term is usually used to criticize works seen as relying on melodrama and mass recognition to commercialize the experiences of Holocaust survivors , such as Life Is Beautiful or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas , but also includes more positively received works like Polanski's The Pianist . The Kitsch movement is an international movement of classical painters, founded in 1998 upon
8613-487: The transfer, rather than that of the descriptive linguist. Accordingly, the category 'simple' words also includes compounds that are transferred in unanalysed form". After this general classification, Weinreich then resorts to Betz's (1949) terminology. The English language has borrowed many words from other cultures or languages. For examples, see Lists of English words by country or language of origin and Anglicisation . Some English loanwords remain relatively faithful to
8712-439: The universe (what the narrator calls "the categorical agreement with being"), we live in a world "in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist". For Kundera's narrator, this is the definition of kitsch: an "aesthetic ideal" which "excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence". The novel goes on to relate this definition of kitsch to politics, and specifically—given
8811-472: The way the name would sound in the original language, as in the pronunciation of Louisville . During more than 600 years of the Ottoman Empire , the literary and administrative language of the empire was Turkish , with many Persian and Arabic loanwords, called Ottoman Turkish , considerably differing from the everyday spoken Turkish of the time. Many such words were adopted by other languages of
8910-695: The word and if they hear it think it is from another language, the word can be called a foreign word. There are many foreign words and phrases used in English such as bon vivant (French), mutatis mutandis (Latin), and Schadenfreude (German)." This is not how the term is used in this illustration: [REDACTED] On the basis of an importation-substitution distinction, Haugen (1950: 214f.) distinguishes three basic groups of borrowings: "(1) Loanwords show morphemic importation without substitution.... (2) Loanblends show morphemic substitution as well as importation.... (3) Loanshifts show morphemic substitution without importation". Haugen later refined (1956) his model in
9009-478: Was a true European capital with highly developed industry. By 1930, the population had risen to 850,000. Hitler ordered the German Army to enter Prague on 15 March 1939, and from Prague Castle proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia a German protectorate . For most of its history, Prague had been a multi-ethnic city with important Czech, German and (mostly native German-speaking) Jewish populations. From 1939, when
9108-403: Was an art lover as well, and Prague became the capital of European culture. This was a prosperous period for the city: famous people living there in that age include the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler , the painter Arcimboldo , the alchemists Edward Kelley and John Dee , the poet Elizabeth Jane Weston , and others. In 1618, the famous second defenestration of Prague provoked
9207-662: Was an important city to the Habsburg monarchy and Austria-Hungary . The city played major roles in the Bohemian and the Protestant Reformations , the Thirty Years' War and in 20th-century history as the capital of Czechoslovakia between the World Wars and the post-war Communist era . Prague is home to a number of cultural attractions including Prague Castle , Charles Bridge , Old Town Square with
9306-544: Was on the bank opposite of the Staré Město ("Old Town"), which had borough status and was bordered by a line of walls and fortifications. Prague flourished during the 14th-century reign (1346–1378) of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and the king of Bohemia of the new Luxembourg dynasty . As King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, he transformed Prague into an imperial capital. In the 1470s, Prague had around 70,000 inhabitants and with an area of 360 ha (~1.4 square miles) it
9405-426: Was part of the ongoing cultural reform of the time, in turn a part in the broader framework of Atatürk's Reforms , which also included the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet . Turkish also has taken many words from French , such as pantolon for trousers (from French pantalon ) and komik for funny (from French comique ), most of them pronounced very similarly. Word usage in modern Turkey has acquired
9504-569: Was settled as early as the Paleolithic age. Jewish chronicler David Solomon Ganz , citing Cyriacus Spangenberg , claimed that the city was founded as Boihaem in c. 1306 BC by an ancient king, Boyya. Around the fifth and fourth century BC, a Celtic tribe appeared in the area, later establishing settlements, including the largest Celtic oppidum in Bohemia , Závist, in a present-day south suburb Zbraslav in Prague, and naming
9603-483: Was the deadliest mass murder in the history of the Czech Republic. Prague is situated on the Vltava river. The Berounka flows into the Vltava in the suburbs of Lahovice . There are 99 watercourses in Prague with a total length of 340 km (210 mi). The longest streams are Rokytka and Botič. There are 3 reservoirs, 37 ponds, and 34 retention reservoirs and dry polders in the city. The largest pond
9702-399: Was the result of a navigational mistake. In March, a deliberate raid targeted military factories in Prague, killing about 370 people. On 5 May 1945, two days before Germany capitulated, an uprising against Germany occurred. Several thousand Czechs were killed in four days of bloody street fighting, with many atrocities committed by both sides. At daybreak on 9 May, the 3rd Shock Army of
9801-582: Was the third-largest city in the Holy Roman Empire. Charles IV ordered the building of the New Town (Nové Město) adjacent to the Old Town and laid out the design himself. The Charles Bridge, replacing the Judith Bridge destroyed in the flood just prior to his reign, was erected to connect the east bank districts to the Malá Strana and castle area. In 1347, he founded Charles University ,
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