Why are Czechs grumps? Because they express themselves with words.
You’ve probably noticed that we Czechs belong, at first glance, to the more frowning, gloomier part of humanity. We’re used to it ourselves, but when a foreigner arrives, it’s one of the first things that strikes them. Instead of smiling hosts, they encounter absent and expressionless faces on Prague streets. For cultures where the social convention is at least enough of a smile to show teeth, Czech poker face comes across as hostile. Things are so bad with our facial expressions that we’ve even adopted rituals to help us trick our own unfriendly appearance. For example, you enter a doctor’s waiting room, you look surly as usual, others look grumpy too, so what do you do? Even though you don’t know anyone in the waiting room, you greet everyone out loud. You signal that behind that scowl is still a fairly normal person. I even have a theory that our love of dogs arose from the need to break through the icy crust on our faces. Unlike us, dogs have a genetically encoded ability to look practically constantly in love—in love with us or with anyone we meet during walks.
Next to Czechs, a foreigner, especially a Brit or American, appears as a master of gestures. Their manly baritone like from a movie trailer rises three octaves higher in a moment when the surprised foreigner squeaks “I can’t believe it?!” And an American woman, conversely, ends sentences with a deep bubbling sound of vocal fry to momentarily deny the conventions of the female role. Next to a Czech, an Anglo-Saxon acts like a Shakespearean actor who descended from the stage to graciously chat with a nervous Czech fan. But Czech fans of the Anglo-Saxon acting school are sometimes puzzled by the vocabulary of Western charismatics. As long as people here didn’t understand English, they expected beautiful songs to contain interesting metaphors and generally colorful vocabulary.
Czech has a narrower vocabulary than today’s English, but thanks to word modifiability, it allows speakers to express their feelings. The more emotional relationship people have to an object, the more emotionally colored word variants Czech offers. We could find a palette of derivatives from the word sun or, for example, from the word beer (pivko, pivenko, pivíčko, pivson, pívo, etc.). The lightness of unaspirative pivko with a buddy is far from the shameful guzzling of pívo with cronies. Love for small human happiness with pivíčko differs from something like beer tasting. We can also express that our love of beer leads us to discover beer novelties but is dismissive of beer snobbery, for example through the word alíčko (ale).
Pivo -> Beer
Pivko -> Beer
Pivečko -> Beer
Pivíčko -> Beer
Pívo -> Beer
Pivínko -> Beer
Pivánko -> Beer
Pivítko -> Beer
Pívko -> Beer
We don’t work with theatrical gestures because we express our emotions with words. We adjust words according to our mood. We create our individual language that captures our life attitude. Our subtle choices of diminutives and less formal forms allow us to self-express through ordinary language. We use our language similarly to a distinctive style of dressing.
Because English uses a relatively basic vocabulary in everyday conversation, speakers must express emotional nuances differently. So instead of complexly describing an emotional relationship to an object, they simply act it out. Emotional tone cannot be expressed through word modification, so speakers communicate through small theatrical performances. Even Italians explain their sense for gestural expression through the need to use basic language. As foreigners from across the Mediterranean gathered on the Italian Peninsula for centuries, a gesture system developed that allows expressing everything human even with basic knowledge of Latin or Italian.
We are shy poets in twilight, while global spotlights illuminate professional actors. When the corporate mother from London orders that emotions in advertising be delivered through expressive acting performance, Czech viewers are deprived of the experience. They need to hear a catchphrase or interesting word they could add to their expressive vocabulary.