Author: owen

Corrections

As I should preface with every entry: I’m a student of Czech, not an expert. So I’m always grateful for help, advice, and corrections. I received one recently from Darja who pointed out that I left the acute accent off the Y in Celý and Růžový (hey, what do you know: I’m the 7th result in Google for a search on ‘Růžový’). I’ve corrected the offending images.

Then Darja asks, “Actually, do you know, how to pronounce these words;-)?” Ouch! Sadly, it’s not so simple for those of us just learning. The mistake is probably as offensive to Czech eyes an ears as it would be to an English speaker if someone misspelled gripe as grip and expected everyone to understand them. But to those of us still learning, the difference between mleko and mléko is subtle, and it’s hard to understand how one word could be meaningless and one could be milk.

Update: Sorry the special characters aren’t coming through in the last couple of posts. Moveable Type seems to have changed the way it handles accented characters in the last upgrade, and I’ll need some time to sort it out. Turns out Moveable Type has improved the way they handle character encoding, but my template was specifying it incorrectly. Looks better now.

Hey Doll, how ’bout we neck?

The requests continue: Doll, Neck. Krk is one of those great Czech words that teachers of Czech trot out to scare their students. It’s an example of the letter R acting as a vowell in some Czech words. The phenomenon is demonstrated in the well-known tongue-twister, Strč prst skrz krk, or “Stick finger through neck.” Not as quaint, perhaps, as selling seashells by the seashore, but you’ve got the work with the material you’re given.

When I Googled the phrase I found two interesting things: Wikipedia has an entry on it. And you can buy a T-Shirt with the phrase printed on it, designed by Slovakian typographer Johanna Balušíková Biľak . I totally need one of those.