Learning languages

MP Miroslava Němcová of ODS said that before her trip to Moscow with Václav Klaus, she opened up "Eugene Onegin" to brush up on her Russian. Gospodi, no wonder the pre-revolution generation has trouble learning foreign languages! Russian has undergone huge changes since Pushkin started publishing his classic in 1823. Trying to relive a high-school Russian experience just won't hack it in today's world. Languages are living beings that don't wait for piddlers to catch up. Patrik Ouředník, a Czech writer who emigrated to France, told Czech Radio that this is one of the big problems of written Czech. The literary language isn't spoken by anyone, he said, so Czech suffers even more than other languages as the vernacular develops. He said we're entering a period when the written word isn't so important anymore. Next time Němcová goes to Moscow, she might do better to download some songs by the Russian girl group t.A.T.u.