Hello, I'd like to propose a post discussing about words common between german and czech, in my experience there are words derived from German, that are used as main terms, and other that have czech equivalent so they were used only in mixed families or before the 40 ties. For example, flek, laintuch, flinta, I went t oFrankfurt recently, and it is surprising to realise that german uses lot of czech-heard terms! can you suggest other words? thanks a lot Miro
e Flasche / flaška e Tasche / taška Most words was taken from german to czech in times of Austro-Hungarian empire and later during WWI and WWII. But there are some czech words adapted by austrians, for example rybíz (currant) - Ribisel (austrian german) - Johannisbeere (standard german)
Thank you DJ, I don't use frequently czech, so don't put so much attention wether a word is a new adaptation or has been elaborated through a continuous use and exchange... not to mention the slav-sanscrit origin of Cai, sto, and so on... I could say some words come from english, huligani is adapted and transformed to czech rules Kraval is kravalle... my grand-grandparents were of german origin, so maybe many words were typicla of the Sudet area... "schkrampi" I should keep a look at german sites, it is always a good font of memories cau Miro
No, the decline of words of German origin started before the emergence of Austria-Hungaria. For example these loanwords are more than seven hundert years old. (But the original meaning of Tasche/taška in both German and Czech was only “pocket”.) The German words are common in colloquial Czech and slang.
Thank you Wer, it is nice to make these considerations and have thoughts about language we use, do you mean pocket the same as in kapca? so taska was meant not as a bag? interesting! best regards Miro
It was a sort of bag. The ancient pockets were different (see Wikipedia). There is a related word “taškář”. In modern Czech it means “joker/prankster”, while the original meaning is “pickpocket”.
Czechs when they are gonna take a nap, so I hear, will take a "schlafik!" (The spelling is surely off) But it seems to come from Schlafen, or to sleep in German.
Dát si šlofíka // to take a nap as well we use Dát si dvacet // lit. "to take twenty" with the same meaning but there is no german origin
Thank you DJ, and thanks for the wide audience and interest in discussion, I'd like to stress two other examples: kapuce (na perelin) is like german Kapucz mahler/ma'lir' and the verb for painting, has the same roots like malova'ni probably originated in a very early slav-european age so, there are forms very localised (as Aschkenazy people speak an Eastern Europe ancient dialect) or just slang (fixed in a specific group of people, Argot... I'd like to hear more examples, all the best Miro
This is interesting... I know I've come across some similar words, and I've only been learning Czech for a few weeks (so I'm not the most qualified to be answering this question...but I do speak German, so I'm partially qualified). I feel like most of the common words aren't actually either German or Czech, but foreign words that entered both languages. There are some words from French like restaurant, bonbon, and the words for mushroom, and level of a building (actually, I don't know that word in Czech, but in Russian it's the same as the German/French "etage"). Others are a lot of newer words that are shared in many languages, and either entered them only recently, or somehow managed to sneak into a language alongside local versions of the same word, and many come from English, French, or other languages, such as: the words for radio, hotel, bank, passport, police, taxi, museum, opera, park, post office, address, television, telephone, computer, problem, ocean, student, credit card, check, lamp, map, to plan (planen/planovat), kino (movie theatre), and others. Food is one category that has some shared words: schinken/šunka (ham), lachs/losos (salmon), krebs/krab, ananas (pineapple), salat, torta/dort, schokolade/čokolade, zitrone/citron (lemon), limonade/limonada, obst/oroc (fruit), gurka/okurka (cucumber), zweibel/cibule (onion), and mandel/mandle (almond). There are also a few similarities in recreation, such as sport, tennis, football, etc. Some other words I found are: Stuhl/stůl (table), teller/talíř (plate), schnee/sníh (snow), minute/minuta, tiger/tygr, decke/deka (blanket), wanna/vana (bathtub), krawatte/ kravata (men's tie), sweater/svetr, brille/bryle (eyeglasses), purpur/purpurovy (purple), tanzen/tanec (dancing), koch/kuchař (cook), papier/papír, koffer/kufr (suitcase), son/syn, and zentrum/centra. I'm sure that there are also colloquial phrases and such that may have come from German, but I would have no idea, since I'm over here in the U.S. with only language books to guide me. I also apologize for not having the correct characters over all of the Czech words, as I couldn't figure out how to do all of them on my English keyboard.
But sometismes those similarities makes you think you know the word, but it has changed its meaning in centuries. For example, you mentioned: Stuhl/Stůl Stuhl in german means "chair", but in czech "Stůl" means "table" There are a lot of these examles in between slavic languages: čas/час In czech it means "time", in russian it means "hour" hodina/godina In czech it means "hour", in croatian it means "year" čerstvý/czerstwy In czech it means "fresh", in polish it means "stale", the very oposite Misleading, isn't it?
How about the Czech words vonět (smell nice) and pachnout (stink) versus the Russian вонять (stink) and пахнуть (smell nice)?
Or the Czech word for guest being "host." ...A few more common words I found are rat/rada (advice) and similarly rathaus/radnice (town hall), paprika/paprika, knödel/knedlik, roman/roman (novel), aktentasche/aktovka (briefcase), referat/referat, kugel/koule (ball, sphere), and my personal favorite: Schade/Škoda! And just guessing here, but I'm also convinced that nie and nikdy are related, despite the second half of the Czech word, as well as Rücken and ruka, both being body parts, despite the difference in which.
Thank you everybody, and thanks Ktot, I went through a check similar to Ktot, and the conclusion is that there is the base of words in common between slav and german, that are not present in english and romance languages, then there are words common with english and/or romance languages, and words of new origin, so they are present everywhere being a novelty. For example, Bluza is present also in italian. Tanze has common roots, in italian Danza... Balcon is common, Balkon, balcone... Roketa, is more similar to english than to german /(Rakete) Sestra is more near to sister than to Schwester... (indo-european origin) Va'sa, vase, vaso.... ša'lek, Shal , scialle Klavier has fresh origins... Dra'K , drake, drago... for the german/slav words, is propose: Klika = klinke Deka = decke Zop, zopka = zopf Kompot (these two countries share this original product) then ,there are words of which I can't say if there is a counterpart in german, but are interisting... hu'l: is there a correspondent term in German? kbelik: I used to say a different term: ky'bl, which I think originates from this word probably nobody use the term ky'bl, can you say if it's true? then, there are real czech words, like zvon for me, this was a tool used before the use of washmachines, in the vocabulary I found: Tlouk na pra'dlo thnaks again for all your contributions Miro
I know absolutely no German so can make no meaningful contribution but I was interested to learn dát si dvacet because it's like the English to have forty winks!
I have never before heard the phrase "to have forty winks." Slightly obscure phrase, maybe? It's ironic though when I learn English when trying to study a foreign language; like learning the word "defenstrate" (to throw someone out a window) when I learned the German word for window, Fenster. It is interesting though how different phrases work in other languagues. I like the German "Ich hab' Hunger wie ein Bär" vs. the English "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." I was also reading The Good Soldier Švejk recently (in English) and the phrase "faster than he could say Jack Robinson" stood out to me. I'm sure the Czech did not include the name Jack Robinson, and it really intrigued me as to what was written there in the original.
Did you enjoy Osud dobréhp vojáku Švejk mezi Svetové válku? It seems to be a very well known piece of literature. It's written in a comical tone, right? That is a very specific german word...defenstrate. They must throw a lot of things out the window to have felt the need to create a verb for that specific action.
