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This paper examines the influence of Hindi/Urdu on Czech in advanced Hindi/Urdu L1 speakers of Czech as a second language. At present, dozens of Hindi/Urdu L1-speakers enroll in Czech language courses in India every year, and thousands of Hindi/Urdu L1-speakers live in the Czech Republic and have acquired Czech at various levels of proficiency. The objective of this paper is to provide first empirically based insights for teachers of Czech as a foreign/second language to Hindi/Urdu L1-speakers in India and in the Czech Republic. This study analyzes language production of 10 Hindi/Urdu L1 speakers who have lived long-term in the Czech Republic. The analysis is based on recordings of informal conversations. The obtained linguistic data was compared with standard grammar descriptions of Hindi/Urdu and Czech in order to perform error analysis. With the help of contrastive analysis, errors caused by language transfer were identified and categorized according to the following language domains: phonetics and phonology, and morphosyntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Personal proper names are part of a community's language inventory. To a large extent, they verbalise gender stereotypes, expectations and norms, power relations, political circumstances, and how minorities are treated. In my paper I analyse the current socioonomastic representation of gender-neutral names in the context of naming practices in the Czech Republic. More specifically, I examine what factors might explain the decreased use of these names, which, paradoxically, differ from other names in that they have an extended functionality. From a linguistic and legal perspective I inquire into how Czech naming practices stigmatise the sexual otherness of non-binary people and trans people in Czech society. In the conclusion I set out the conditions that must be met for gender-neutral names to be freely available to the entire population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the results of the sociolinguistic survey Capitalization in Czech. The survey was conducted by the Department of Language Culture, Insitute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences, from January 1 to June 30, 2012. The aim of the questionnaire survey was to monitor the knowledge of the current capitalization codification as well as the attitudes towards capitalization and possible changes in codification. The survey yielded 12,308 completed question- naires (from 18,646 participants). The capitalization rules for names included in the survey were known to 59 % of the participants. A statistical analysis of the survey data revealed both differing levels of the capitalization rules knowledge among individual groups of participants, as well as conservative attitudes (86 % of the participants preffered the preservation of the current codification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]