Hi! My name's Katja and I'm from a nice old city of Kazan in Russia. I ran across this site when I was looking for a resourse to learn some Czech before going to Prague. You all seem to be a very friendly and welcoming community! Good luck to everybody!
Hello Katja, Welcome to the forum. Kazan seems a very isolated city in Russia, it is east of Moscow? I myself have not visited Russia, but I would like very much to. Anyway, I hope you have a good time in Prague. This site or its subsidary http://www.locallingo.com should satisfy many of your questions regarding the Czech language. Greetings from Australia, Jason
Hello Jason! Thanks for your reply and for your advice about the museum. You are right about Kazan. It's 800 km east of Moscow on the bank of the river Volga. A kind of crossroads of Islam and Christianity and we celebrate Kazan 1000 years this August. I have only evenings during 2 weeks to learn as much Czech as possible and I decided that learning the phrasebook from 'Lingo' will be the best idea. Later I can learn some grammar, which in fact has much in common with Russian (at least I'm not shocked at the number of declensions of nouns and adjectives). All the family came to listen me practicing Czech and they had great fun! A lot of Czech words sound exactly like Russian ones but they have a different meaning. 'Okurka' in Russian means 'cigarette-butt' and 'hrusky' ('pears') - 'piglets' and if I ask for 'tuzka' ('a pencil') in Russian it means I need a body of small dead animal or child... I would like to see Czech people listening to Russians speaking - I believe it can be a kind of a circus for them!
:lol: hahaha! You would want to be careful you didn't accidently offend someone by saying something you didn't mean to. :wink: I know Czech is a Slavonic language and that it is distinctly related to Russian, but it is strange that words that sound the same have completely different meanings. Take care & enjoy your time in Prague, Jason
you may find interesting this site: http://www.uni-bonn.de/~dbuncic/fauxamis/start_un.htm the subject is called the false friends of the slavist, site concerns these words in slavonic languages, which sound similar, but mean something different. i really recommend ;-]
Thanks for the site with 'false friends', Crossczech! I just didn't know how many words I should be careful with. I spent almost 3 hours reading these 'false friends' and trying to imagine the situation with them! Now I'm a little bit afraid I might say smth really terrible trying to express myself. Maybe I'll finish like 'Ellochka Lyudoyedochka' - minimum of words with different intonation!
Katja, privet! Kogda ti edesh v Prague? We are going end of May! Not much time left. I found that I can understand some Czech too because of similarity with Russian, but only separate words... well after reading all those differences in the meanings, though, I am not sure even about those words I wish I had time to learn some Czech before our trip, but I think we'll have to rely on English and Russian this time. I've heard that older people are likely to know Russian. Anyway, greetings from USA! N.
however sad i feel when saying this, i suggest to rely more on english. i know people who made certain unpleasant experiences rooting from not quite friendly attitude of some czechs to russians. as for people knowing russian language: actually it was obligatory part of education till 1989, but that does not say anything about the ability to use it in practice. however, the rule is - who wants to understand, understands :-]
hmmm.... thanks for the tip... I agree with you on the understanding part. It is sad that some people let their feelings for the country as a whole or the past history reflect on those that don't have anything to do with that past... I would say that I felt that dislike for Russians when visiting Estonia several years back. We just used English to avoid complications. Well, in France, on the other hand, speaking English was worse than Russian, I think. We received some not very nice attitude from people when traveling there. Even knowing little French didn't help to soften some hearts.. Oh well, hope that Czech people are more welcoming... So far I've heard more positive things than negative in this regard.
i believe these are mostly people who lack more cosmopolitan point of view and do not really know any people of other nationalities in person i hope so, wish you a pleasant stay :-]
Just know that the dislike you may have felt is not shared between all Estonians. People have different feelings and opinions everywhere. As for the language, many younger people really just don't speak Russian at all (even at such an age that you would expect them to have studied it in school) and are much better at English, which is a shame of course. H.
I agree with that... Overall, we had great time in Tallin and even went back there for a honeymoon I wish I could dig up the roots of my heritage there... That line got kinda lost and my family doesn't have any ties left there any more. Anyway, sorry... jumping the topic - after all, this site is about CR. N.
i believe in this respect there is a lot of common between CZR and Estonia (I do not want to dig in historical fact, am speaking about feelings in society). i am sure you can have a great time in CZR too, no matter what language you speak (well there are languages unlikely to be understood, yeah ;-])
