Every language has its peculiar charms. English, with more than three million terms, is beautiful in its precision, even if it remains largely a dull knife in the hands of many of its users. Slovak, in the right hands, achieves great heights in those expressions which are not to be found in any other language, at least not in the way Slovaks mean them. Here are some of the best.
1. Sedlák. This word, meaning roughly peasant or hayseed, draws on Slovakia‘s agricultural past, but is greatly enriched by the nation‘s experience of having peasants moved en masse to communist cities from the 1950s to 1980s. Imagine a village dweller who has moved to a Slovak city, and is doing his best to ape what he thinks city living requires. Sedláci wear suits with white socks, and slip-on shoes (known in Slovak as mokasíny). Sedláci, like Canadian hockey fans in the 1980s, favour a hairdo that is short on top and long in the back. Sedláci, particularly if they have privatised a firm in the 1990s, will never wait in traffic if they can drive down the sidewalk in their sports utility vehicles. Sedláci enjoy Euro-pop, don‘t read books, and pick their noses (vŕta si v nose – literally to bore in their noses, related to the English drilling for oil) in public. Every country has sedláci, but only Slovakia has come up with the perfect word to describe them.
There is a great difference, however, between the boorish sedlák and the honourable sedliak, a person who works the land and has no urban pretensions (sedliak may come from sedlo, a saddle for the horses which peasants used). Ty si sedlák is a powerful insult, while calling someone a sedliak is a statement of fact. The mass of sedláci are known as sedľač.
2. Prehadzovač. Literally, one who throws over, but in this case referring to older men who comb what few wisps of hair they still own across their heads to create the impression of youth (or hide their baldness). The hairdo is called a prehadzovačka.
3. Dojížďák. The finisher. We‘ve all seen him, this bendy oldster who haunts pubs and pounces on the few inches of beer left in mugs by departing patrons. But while dojíždet is a Czech word which means to finish a journey, when you want to chug or down a full beer in Slovak, you must say doraziť or kopnúť (to kick).
4. Štrngnúť. While we‘re on the subject of alcohol, here is an onomatopoeia for the act of clinking glasses. It is accompanied by the polite na zdravie (to your health), or na hada (to the snake), which is said on New Year‘s Day and expresses the wish that the massive quantity of alcohol you have consumed may neutralise the poison from any snakes that bite you during the coming year. Incidentally, regarding the act of clinking, many Slovaks will clink first the tops of each glass, then the bottoms, and then touch them on the table while looking in the eyes of their fellow clinker. Rumour has it the fad was started by electrical engineering students, working off the positive-negative-ground principles of their profession.
TOM NICHOLSON
and MARTINA PISÁROVÁ
