This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Czech Americans article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
John Kerry cannot be called a Czech American as his parents' mother tongue was obviously German, like of the majority of the region from where they moved to Lower Austria, Austria! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.127.141.243 ( talk) 18:16, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
The question is how "descent" is defined. My point is that it is better to define descent by the mother tongue, not the country of origin. The Austrians (or Germans) in that region had a long history of living in that part of Moravia and the majority spoke German. I think that it would make more sense to call him an Austrian American or German American. But if you use the country where some of his ancestors were born to define his origin also Hungarian would be acceptable as Kerry's grandmother was born in Budapest.
I don't know if you wanna hear that, but within 270 000 000 28th great-grandfathers could be any important figure of history. And when you count those grand ... grandfathers from grandfather to the 28th great-grandfather there are more than one billion possible kings. Therefore Kerry could be of any descent you want.
85.127.141.243 (
talk) 22:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
The image File:Antoncermak222.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --11:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
Please excuse my ignorance, but I think this article confuses Czechs and people from Bohemia. The alleged first Czech, Gans, was a Jew, the second, Augustine Herman, sounds more like a Dutch or German, and the third one, Frederick Philipse, doesn't sound Czech either. Bohemia was a multiethnical country back then, not everyone from there was a Czech. Karasek ( talk) 12:26, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
FYI: Augustine Herman is really Augustin Heřman and Frederick Philipse is Bedřich Filip —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.110.61.140 ( talk) 20:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
I now added some tags. The article confuses Czechs, Jews and Germans, which are entirely different ethnic groups. A Jew or German from Bohemia can't become a Czech American, since he can't change his ethnic belonging by crossing the ocean. Karasek ( talk) 07:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
This debate sounds a bit too ethnic. If we were to apply your approach to America and exclude all the Jews and people speaking in foreign languages, there would not be too many people left. Americans are people living in America or in the US and not just people speaking English. Similarly, as defined in Webster Dictionary, Czechs are natives or inhabitants living in Czechoslovakia or Czech Republic and not just people speaking Czech.
Frankly, in their past, their country (Kingdom of Bohemia) was completely Germanized, particularly under the Habsburgs and German was the official language, Czech was not allowed and was spoken only in some remote villages. It was not until late nineteen century during the National Revival that Czech began spoken again, many of the Czechs having to relearn the language. Yet the people living in that area in the past were clearly Czechs.
Let me give you another analogy. Some half of the people living in Vienna (Austria) are Czechs, yet they are called Austrians. By your definition, these people should not be counted as such. I mind you, this would include a number of Austrian Presidents.
With respect to native Czechs living in America, such as Secretary Mme Albright, would you exclude her from the list of Czech Americans because her family was Jewish?
You say that Kerry cannot be considered among them because his mother tongue was German - how do you know this for fact? And even if that were true, so what? President Thomas G. Masaryk's mother's tongue was also German and yet nobody in his right mind would not call him German.
One could go on and on. George.Deer ( talk) 12:19, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Every country has some ethno-linguistic or cultural minorities and those who belong to them can either stick to their ethnic identity and refuse the national/majority one or live with both of them. Bohemia (now called the Czech Republic) is one of the oldest existing countries in the world and also one of the more stable in terms of its territorial extent. People who lived there for centuries became Bohemians (as subjects of the Bohemian King) regardless of their ethnicity, just like people of Switzerland were Swiss, no matter what their mother tongue was. Despite this centuries-long tradition, the 19th century nationalism and subsequent two world wars eventually ended it in a few decades. German-speaking Bohemians became Germans (or Austrians) and the Czech-speaking Bohemians started to call themselves Czechs, Tschechen, Tchèques, etc. in other languages to stress their Slavic identity (and Jews had to chose between them). This is the reason why Bohemia is called Czech Republic and Bohemian language is Czech language in present-day English. Possibly the best way how to deal with the problem of too "ethnicity-laden" term Czechs (Czech-Americans) is to return to the good old name Bohemians (Bohemian-Americans). Qertis ( talk) 17:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Aren't Henry Fonda and his family the best known Czech Americans around?! Where do they get a mention? -- MacRusgail ( talk) 13:43, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
IMHO, this article is committing a sin common to many ethnic articles. It is trying to brag. That is, it is looking for famous people to include under its umbrella. Ultimately many of us are descended from many ethnicities. But articles on ethnic groups should make meaningful distinctions. First, it should be careful about which statistics it includes. Truthfully it is probably the case that almost all Americans are of Czech descent; it's just that for most of us that ancestry is so old we don't know about it. But certainly when including famous examples the article should restrict itself to people who have a meaningful and substantial connection to their Czech heritage. A good set of criteria would be to only include famous people that fall in the following categories:
-- Mcorazao ( talk) 00:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
I see that I'm not the only one who is angered by the current state of the article. It's really insulting to all Czechs to include everyone who has ever lived in the Czech lands and then moved to the US as Czech Americans. Madeleine Albright is a Jew, not a Czech, just as many other people who are assigned the Czech ethnicity just because they lived in Bohemia at some point. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to do anything about it.-- Kohelet ( talk) 12:33, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
These two phrases in the article stood out to me: "to civilize the Indians and promote Christianity," and "the free uncultivated land in America encouraged immigration throughout the nineteenth century." It would be more accurate to say "to culturally indoctrinate or assimilate Indians and convert them from their native religions to Christianity," and to say, "the land formerly used and lived on by displaced Indian nations in America was advertised in Europe as cheap and uncultivated to encourage immigration throughout the nineteenth century." A lot of indigenous Americans certainly did cultivate crops and they hunted in combination, plus they regularly burned the prairies to bring in game, which they managed though hunting techniques that kept up the health of the herds. The rich soil that we Czech American colonists farmed here was taken from others who were violently pushed off. This article should acknowledge that instead of erasing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.81.100.27 ( talk) 16:52, 31 October 2015 (UTC)