Hello and welcome to Living Czech. I'm Nick Carey, and I am joined in the studio today by Jana Kotalikova. The theme for this week is entertainment in Czech.

On the cultural side of life in the Czech Republic, there tends to be a lot entertainment available. There is a long tradition of opera here, with various díla or works being performed in a regular basis in the larger towns and cities in the divadlo, or theatre. Also available in any divadlo are činohry or plays. These tend to be available on a more widespread footing than opera, as there are a great many amatérní soubory or amateur groups performing their činohry throughout the land.

You can go to a koncert, to see some klasická hudba or classical music, written by a famous skladatel, or composer, like Dvořák or Smetana, being performed or you can even attend a balet performance, again in the divadlo.

As you may have gathered, there are quite a few words to do with culture that are almost the same in any language, such as opera, koncert, balet, whereas words such as skladatel, composer and divadlo are local in origin. This is because theatres of a sort and composers of one of another type of music have existed for a long time in Czech, but opera is comparatively new.

For other, perhaps less exquisite forms of culture, we also find a number of internationally recognisable words, such as kino, or cinema, where you can go to see a film. Another term for a film that is used less and less nowadays, as it was very common during the Communist era, is biograf. There are, of course, different types of film, such as the akční film, the action film, komedie, comedy, the horor or horror. For the children you can always choose an animovaný film, literally an animated film, or a cartoon. As the lion's share of the films shown are from Hollywood, as they are in so many countries, you should watch to see if they are s titulkami, with subtitles, or have český dabing, are dubbed into Czech.

If you fancy a bit more of an active night out than the kino, or divadlo, then you can take a turn in a herna bar, which is a bar filled with gambling machines, or you can go an play kulečník, which is pool, or billiard, which is old fashioned billiards, with four balls, no pockets and a lot less fun. Alternately, you can go bowling in the American style, or you can try the Czech equivalent, kuželky, which involves nine skittles in a diamond shape which are nigh on impossible to knock down.

If none of this appeals to you can always fall back on the traditional hospoda, or pub, a kavárna, or coffee house, or go and sit in a čajovna or tea house and wile away the evening in filosofická konversace, which is philosophical conversation.

Well, that's all we have time for this week. Next week we will take a look at the influence the German language has had on the Czech language. Until then, mějte se fajn, or take care.

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