Sklep (shop) - crypt (burial vault) Keidy (when) - gym-shoes Dywan (carpet) - divan, couch Ssaki (mammals) - pees Zaba (frog) - toad Cma (midges) - nonentity (about a man) Zapomniec (forget) - to memorize Pensja (wage) - a pension Zasada (rule) - an ambush or just some problem Lustra (mirror) - a chandelier Prosze pukac (please knock (at the door) - please fart Podstawowy zasady (main rules) – perfidious maneuvers Pierogi (ravioli) – pies Prosto (straight ahead) – easy Hulajnoga (push-cycle) – walk leg Szczeka (jaw) – a cheek Puzon (trombone) – a belly Pytanie (question) – a nutrition Uroda (beauty) – an ugly person, fright Tania (cheap) – Tania (diminutive of Tatiana – girl’s name)
Anyone who speaks polish please don't hesitate to correct words and meanings on the left since I don't know Polish and took this info from Poland's fans group in vkontakte.ru (russian analogy of facebook.com).
These are all typical "false friends" as found within any randomly chosen language family. There are loads of those in Czech/Polish as well, with the seemingly easiest and most similar words actually being quite different in meaning. This gives a Slavonic language speaker a feeling of false security - "I can understand Czech / Polish / Russian because I am Russian / Czech / Polish" - but it does not work that way... ;-)
As a Polish 'speaker' (using the term loosely, LOL) with all but the most superficial knowledge of Czech, just wondering whether the word cited 'plavidlo' for 'ship' (in Polish 'statek', of course!) is related to the Polish (pan Slavic...??) verb root 'pływ-' e.g. 'pływać' meaning 'to swim'/'float', or am I seeing roots which aren't there-:)-:)?
Merely curious!
PS When I once mentioned to my Polish teacher apropos imagining connections between words, she retorted: "You know, Marku, there's a cure for that.....It's called 'study'. Ouch!! Ask a stupid question and see what happens? (he-he)
Sorry mate, but no ;-) It's "vlak". Vozidlo means vehicle. There you go!
Speaking of perfume and stink -
Polish "puch" means fluff. Czech "puch" means extreme stink. Polish "zapach" means "smell" (nice or nasty, you need qualifiers). Czech "zápach" means a very bad smell.
All this reminds me of an anecdote about somebody famous (a Czech I think) who tried to say a compliment to a Russian lady at a ball (pre-WW2, maybe pre-Revolution even), and, as she had a red rose pinned to her dress, said the following:
Kakaya u vas krasnaya rozha - What a red snout you have
instead of:
Kakaya u vas krasivaya roza - What a beautiful rose you have...
Krásná růže would be beautiful rose. In Czech though, not Russian.
povidla is Czech for preserve/a type of jam, it is also a Polish word - powidła. in this particular case our respective languages haven't wandered very far apart ;-)
actually russian has both words 'stul ' (u - sounds like in book ) and 'kreslo'. BTW, you should know being in Russia, that verbs 'to write' and 'to pee' have the same writing form and may be differed only by stress.
I heard that russian 'chetire' (four) make a great impression on Spaniards
Yes, false! The Russian for that is 'something druzhya' (??) and refers precisely to those pesky, sometimes identically written, words in both languages,e.g. 'pismo' in Russian meaning 'letter written to someone' vs. 'pismo' in Polish which means 'a work, opus, written text or creation (close synomym 'dzieło') etc.
I think this problem comes when you try to translate these worlds so simply, just looking at pronounciation.
If you know the roots, look at the stem you can quite easily guess the meaning (especially when you have it in context). So of understanding spoken Czech (also becouse of different accent) is not easy for me, then reading (of course sth. like short notes, ingridients of food, newspapers, not literature)is possible, but of course slower.
Also if you are familiar with old Polish (for example Rej's or Kochanowski's poems) you have less problems, becouse in these times our languages were much colser.
The funny thing is with Czech names for months. They are mostly the same instead of kveten which means Polish maj (May), while in Polish kwiecień is April (I never know why becouse in Czech flowers should blossom earlier)... So if you are making an appointment with Czech better make it in English...
How many do you actually and truly recognize? I think three of them - èerven, srpen, listopad. How about the rest? ;-p To be honest, I am half Czech but still find it confusing sometimes...
I recently called the Czech Rep. on some official business. Reached a (private!!-:) firm and the youngish-, oh mid-twentyish, sounding operator answered. I tried basic Polish, since my Czech is downright lousy and she started laughing a bit, switching then to equally basic English. I asked then in English, if only to be polite, mind you, whether she understood German. She answered tartly, 'Sir, English is fine!' I then proceeded slowly, yet not condescendingly to explain matters. 'Did you understand?', I finally asked, in normal native speaker caden- ces. 'Please, sir. It's clear. Thank you for your phone call. I tell Mr. Pravicek you called from New York!' (click - no Good bye!, Na sledanou! - nix, zippo, zilch)
The next morning when my co-worker arrived, he angrily told me that 'Prague had f_ _ _ _ d it all up!' and 'got the dates wrong too!!' Immediately, I tele- phoned the Prague office and spoke with someone else, who assured me that it was OUR fault. I responded cooly, 'Ma'am, do you perhaps understand German, since
English didn't seem to work the other day?' 'German was my first second language all though school.' she replied. So I translated for about ten minutes exactly what I wanted. Later that day, an e-mail came to my attention, apologizing for the other person's rude behavior and for the, rather costly, misunderstanding.
The next time, advised friend Pravicek, PLEASE use an interpreter!
A little off topic, but what's kinda cool to me is when speaking in a closely related second language from the same family, fo example from Dutch into German, and saying things in the other language using root-related words which, however, sound ludicrous to a native speaker!
I once heard a Dutchman state in German that he (re-phrasing now in English) wanted to 'leave someone a phone message'. Instead, by using words in German which sounded like direct calques or cognates with Dutch, he ended up saying somthing like 'I'm transmitting an official decree..' or words to that effect. The German interlocutor couldn't help from chuckling over that one-:)
Czech female names sound very sexy,more than polish ones.For example Marketa,Martina,Veronica sound sexy.Also Radka(happy) or Sarka.Sarka means flesh in greek.So imagine a girl called happy,another flesh,another lovely(Milena).
