Levels of understanding other slavic languages
oh we also have X and it means the same!
that looks like X but misspelled
that's just the archaic variant of X
this sounds a lot like Y from another slavic language I know which means X in mine so this almost 100% also means X
this word is completely different but I can kinda tell the meaning from the morphology
what
okay right now I'm gonna have to dissect the entirety of this language's history to figure out how the FUCK did y'all get to the point of calling X that and not something more normal
I wanted to ask for X and accidentally called someone a whore
I don't even have to look at the blog and I just know this is from a Pole about Czechs
suffering
KAKAOVY CHLEBICEK???!!!???
hissing growling scratching you etc etc
for example
(Polish: are you looking for a squirrel?, Slovak: excuse me, he is doing what to the squirrel?)
(also "hladna pića" means "cold drinks" in Croatian. means "hungry cunt" in Slovak and Czech)
("you're weird" in Czech is the same as "you're amazing" in Croatian, while "you're amazing" in Czech is the same as "you're terrible" in Croatian)
My favourite recent-ish example of #8:
Don't forget this:
And of course pomoć (help) vs pomoč (ordering you to piss on something)
Also remembered this shop from my trip to Croatia (piko means meth in czech and slovak)
przepraszam w CZYM ta restauracja????
This reminds me of that time my (Czech) family went to Poland for my uncle's wedding (because my aunt - his wife - is Polish and they decided to get married in Poland).
The wedding afterparty was in full swing, everyone was drinking and partying.... and an elderly Polish lady approached my two aunts (who were also drinking a lot and partying hard) and commented something along the lines of "jesteście odporne". Which in Polish means "you're resilient" (as in they're handling the alcohol well) but in Czech it means "you're disgusting".
It took my aunts a bit to remember that it means something different in Polish. 😅
another beautiful case of n.8 from @someidioticurl
Czech vision: ah yes an emergency button to press in case of emergency
Polish vision:
Oh, I have a few!
'pozor' in Czech means 'watch out!', but means 'shame' in Russian
droga in czech means drug, in polish it means road
záchod in czech means toilet, zachód in polish means 'west'
odchod 'to depart' in Czech means very specifically 'to depart by foot', while in Slovak it has a bit wider meaning, and buses and trains also combine with 'odchod'. To a Czech speaker this gives the funny implication that departing trains grow legs and walk out of the train station
Croatian 'mrdati' = to wiggle, means 'to have sex' in Czech
'Čerstvý, voňavý chléb' is Czech for 'fresh, nicely smelling bread'. In means the opposite in some slavic languages 'stale, stinky bread'. This kind of 'good meaning in one but bad meaning in other' duality happens surprisingly often actually, see also úžas and odporný above
otrok in Czech means 'slave' but in Slovenian and perhaps other South slavic languages it means 'child'. Very funny when combined with bazaar, turns a perfectly fine baby bazar into a slave bazaar
My friend has a fun sentence from Slovenian - "Hitri otroci kuhali jed na Dunaji". Literally none of the words here mean what a Czech thinks they mean. No not even Dunaj. Czechs read it as 'smart slaves were disemboweling poison by the Donau river', original Slovenian meaning is 'fast children were cooking food in Vienna'
Edit: wait one more. "srpanj" in Croatian means July, "srpen" in Czech means August. Listopad in Croatian means 'October', in Czech means 'November'. rujan in Croatian means 'September', říjen in Czech means 'October'. kwiecień in Polish means 'April', kviteń in Ukrainian also means 'April', květen in Czech means 'May'. Months are fucked up.
Slavic languages is what happened when God decided that the Tower of Babel was getting too tall.
And he spinned it like a code puzzle before that, just for good measure.
