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Category: Czech (čeština)
Книга
Книга /’kniga/ is a Russian word for book, and also appears in other Slavic languages: кніга in Belarusian, книга in Bulgarian, Macedonian and Ukrainian, knjiga in Croatian and Slovenian, kniha in Czech, knéga in Kashubian, kъńiga (book, character, writing) in Old Church Slavonic, książka in Polish, and књига in Serbian.
It apparently comes from the Proto-Slavic *kъniga, from Old Turkic *küinig, from the Bulgaric Turkic *küiniv, from the Uyghur kuin, kuinbitig (book-spool/scroll), possibly from the Chinese 經 (jīng in Mandarin, *kˤeŋ in Old Chinese = classics, sacred book, scripture). It is possibly also related to:
Armenian: kniќ (slab, letter)
Assyrian: kuniku (slab, document)
Hungarian: könyv (book)
Korean: 권 (kwen – book)
Mordvin: końov (paper)
Sumerian: kunukku (seal, stamp)
If all these words are indeed related, it’s possible that they come from a common source – maybe Chinese, as paper was invented in China in about the 1st century AD, and books sometime after that. Are there any similar words in other languages?
Cvičení dělá mistra / Practice makes perfect
When learning a language I usually spend a lot of time listening to and reading it, and as a result become at least reasonably proficient at understanding it in speech and writing. In most cases though, I don’t spend as much time speaking and writing it, so my speaking and writing abilities tend to lag behind my reading and listening skills.
For example, I can remember quite a few of the phrases and even whole chunks of dialogue from my language courses, and can recognise and understand them when I hear them or read them, and perhaps also use them in speech and writing, if the context permits. When I try to talk about things not covered by the courses though, I quickly find that my vocabulary runs out and I struggle to construct my own sentences.
Of course I can look up any words I don’t know in a dictionary, or ask a native speaker, if one is available, and this is fine for isolating languages like Mandarin as you can just stick the words in the appropriate place in your sentence, as long as you know that place. In synthetic languages like Czech and Russian though, you have to apply the appropriate inflections to the words, at least you do if you want to speak and write them correctly and to be understood, as I do.
So I think I need to do a lot more practise making my own sentences in the languages I’m working on – currently Czech and Breton. I could start with simple sentences from my language courses and other sources and change and/or add bits. For example, a simple sentence from my Czech course (Colloquial Czech) is Jsem student (I’m a student). I could change the person of the verb: Jsi student (You are a student), the number: Jsme studenti (We are students), or the tense: Byli jsme studenti (We were students). I could change the noun: Jsem lingvista (I’m a linguist), and add over words to the sentence: Jsem líný lingvista (I’m a lazy linguist), Jsem líný lingvista z Anglie (I’m a lazy linguist from England).
I can check these sentences by searching for them in Google to see if anyone else has used them, or something similar. That’s also a good way to find texts related to what you’re writing / talking about.
It’s probably best to start with simple sentences, and once I can construct them fairly well, I could try linking them together. Another exercise that might be useful is to take a paragraph in one of the languages I’m learning and to focus on one particularly type of word – nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. I could just try to identify each type, or change things – for example, the tense of the verbs.
Do you do anything similar when learning languages?
This post was inspired by a video on the FluentCzech channel on YouTube which discusses a similar way to learn languages – constructing simple sentences in your L2, translating them to your L1, then back to your L2.
Fušování
Fušování is a Czech word I discovered recently that appealed to me and that means “tinker, dabbling”. The related verb, fušovat means “to potter, to tinker at, to botch, to dabble, to mess about, to tinker”. Other related words include:
– fušer – quack, tinker, blunderer, boggler, botcher, bungler, cobbler, dabbler
– fušerská práce – botch
– fušersky – shoddily
– fušerský – empirical, patch work
– fušersky pracovat – tamper
– fušerství – botch, fudge, bungle
– fušeřina – patch work, tinker, botch
– fuška – elbow-grease
– fuška – job, chore, elbow-grease, hard work (also – dřina)
Sources: slovnik.cz, Wiktionary
These words could be used to describe the way I teach myself languages – I tend to do this is quite a haphazard way without any particular plan, and just follow my interests, and never know quite where I’ll end up. I keep thinking that perhaps I should try to learn things in a more structured way, but somehow rarely put such thoughts into practise. Languages are a hobby and passion for me. I dabble with them for fun.
Do you dabble or tinker with languages? Are you a linguistic botcher / bungler / tinkerer / dabbler? Or do you approach them in a more structured and focused way?
Immersion
I spent yesterday in Aberystwyth with two Czech friends and we talked in a mixture of Czech, Welsh and English, with occasional bits of other languages thrown in for good measure. When they were speaking Czech to each other I found that I could understand or guess enough to get a basic idea of what they were talking about, and in some instances I could understand quite a bit more.
While I have been learning Czech on and off (more off than on in fact) for quite a few years, I rarely get the chance to listen to Czech conversations, apart from on online radio, and I was pleased to recognise quite a few of the words and phrases my friends were using. I couldn’t contribute much to the Czech parts of the conversation myself, but that will come with practise.
Quite a lot of the vocabulary and structures they were using have appeared in my Czech courses or in Czech texts I’ve read, so I was at least somewhat familiar with them already. Hearing these things used in context really helped to fix them in my mind. It also helped that I could ask about anything I didn’t understand – this is not possible when I’m listening to online radio or watching films or TV programmes.
This kind of immersion can happen anywhere you can find some native speakers of a language you’re learning (L2) who are willing to help you. Being in a country where your L2 is spoken is an even better form of immersion, but might not be possible for everyone.
Čmeláci a včely
Recently I discovered that there are two different words for bee in Czech: čmelák [ˈʧmɛlaːk] (pl. čmeláci) for bumblebee and včela [ˈfʧɛla] (pl. včely) for honey bee. While investigating these words I also discovered the wonderful Czech word hmyz [ɦmɪz] (insect), which sounds like it might be onomatopoeic. This got me wondering about the differences between bumblebees and honey bees and the origins of these words.
Honey bees (apis) make and store honey, and live in large colonies in nests made from wax, while bumblebees (bombus) are bigger and hairier; make only a little honey for their young, and make much smaller nests [source 1 & source 2]. Honey bees are more likely to sting people than bumblebees, and lose their sting and die when they do so. Bumblebees are much less aggressive, very rarely sting people and don’t die when they sting [source].
The word bee can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰey-, via the Old English bēo [source], and the Czech word včela probably comes from the same root, via the Proto-Slavic *bьčela [source]. The word čmelák possibly comes from the same root as well, though I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of this.
Bumblebee was known humbul-be in Middle English and this was changed to sound like the Middle English word bombeln (to boom, buzz), which comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *kem (to hum) [source]. According to The Guardian though, bumblebees were known as humblebees because they hum. The name bumblebee had been around for many years and started to become more popular at the beginning of the 20th century, perhaps popularised by the name of the character Babbitty Bumble in Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse (1910).
Incidentally, a dialect word for bumblebee found in Hampshire, Cornwall and a number of other areas is dumbledore [source]. Dumbledore combines dumble, a dialect word from Southwell in Nottinghamshire meaning “a wood lined stream often in a small, steep sided valley” [source] and dore, of uncertain origin.
Spolubydlící
I came across the Czech word spolubydlící [ˈspɔlʊbidliːtsiː] on a blog I read today and was pleased to realise that I could work out what it meant from its constituent parts. Spolu means together, byd is related to bydlet (to live), I didn’t know what lící signified, but correctly guessed that the word meant “house mate / roommate”.
I learnt spolu (together, along with, jointly, in company with) yesterday in the Czech lesson I was working my way through. It appears in the context, Musíme si někdy spolu zahrát (We must have a game together sometime). I’d come across bydlet before in such expressions as Bydlím v Praze (I live in Prague) and Bydlíte tu někde blízko? (Do you live somewhere near here?).
Other words containing spolu include:
- spoluautor – co-author
- spolucestující – travel companion, fellow traveller, passenger
- spoluhráč – playmate, team mate
- spolumajitel – co-owner, joint owner
- spoluobčan – fellow-citizen
- spolupráce – cooperation
By the way, what do you call someone you live with or share a house, flat, apartment, room or other dwelling with?
I would say house mate for someone you share a house with, flat mate for someone you share a flat with, and room mate for someone you share a room with.
Remembering words
When learning a language one challenge is to memorise the vocabulary, and to be able to use it when you need it. I’ve tried a number methods to do this: repetition, flash cards, SRS, associations and so on. A method for learning individual words that works quite well for me involves making associations between the sounds of the new words and familiar words, especially if I build mental pictures to illustrate the words and their meanings. For example, a Welsh word for field is maes, which sounds like mice, so I picture a field full of mice.
Another way to remember things that I came across the other day involves giving inanimate objects character and life. The example I found discusses using this method to remember where your keys are:
[…] imbue your keys with character and life: this is my preferred gambit. Think of your keys as a living, breathing creature, and you’ll automatically know where they are.
Our brains like living things, it seems, they have more time for them.
Specifically, I deliberately experience my keys as a needy brood of motherless koala-bears on a hoop. When I drop them somewhere, my mind quickly wonders if they’re warm and comfortable, away from predators, in need of some amusing noises from their owner.
The location they’re in thus immediately gains my interest and attention, so I remember it automatically.
After reading this I started wondering whether you could do the same for words – endowing words for inanimate objects and abstract concepts with life and character might make them more memorable. You could also give masculine or feminine characteristics to nouns as appropriate. For verbs maybe you could picture conjugations as accessories – hats, scarves, gloves, bags, etc.
I haven’t actually tried this yet, but will give it a go and let you know if it helps.
The image on the right is a possible way to remember the Czech word for breakfast (snídanĕ) with the breve over the e filled with breakfast cereal and milk.
Have you tried this memory trick, or similar ones?
Christmas
Colds, streams and rivers
It’s rather cold here at the moment with daytime temperatures not much above freezing, and nighttime dropping to -10°C (14°F) or even -20°C (-4°F) in places. As a result, some of the snow that fell last week has frozen solid and been trampled down on pavements and ungritted back streets making them decidedly icey and slippery.
I also have a cold at the moment, so I thought I’d look into how to say “I have a cold” in a number of languages. In French it’s “Je suis enrhumé” or “I am enrhumed”. Enrhumé comes from rhume (cold), which comes from the Old French reume, from the Latin rheuma, from the Greek rheuma (stream, current, a flowing), from rhein (to flow), from the Proto-Indo-European *sreu- (to flow). The Proto-Indo-European *sreu- is also the root of the Irish sruth (stream, river), the Welsh ffrwd (stream) and the Polish strumyk (brook). [source].
The Czech word for cold rýmu appears to be spring from the same source – mám rýmu is “I have a cold” by the way – as does the English word rheumatism. You can also say jsem nachlazený for “I have a cold” in Czech, which has a similar structure to the French phrase – “I am colded” or something like that.
In Welsh you don’t have a cold but rather a cold is on you: mae annwyd arna i, and the other Celtic languages use the same structure, “Is cold on/at me”: tá slaghdán orm (Irish), tha ‘n cnatan orm (Scottish Gaelic), ta feayraght/mughane aym (Manx).
In German “I have a cold” is Ich bin erkältet (“I am becolded?”), with erkältet coming from kalt (cold).
In Mandarin Chinese you say 我感冒了 (wǒ gǎnmào le) or “I catch cold [change of state particle]”.