{"id":6903,"date":"2019-11-29T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=6903"},"modified":"2019-11-28T17:54:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T17:54:10","slug":"ahoj-the-nautical-origins-of-a-slovak-hello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/ahoj-the-nautical-origins-of-a-slovak-hello\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahoj!: The Nautical Origins of a Slovak Hello"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For a landlocked country,\nSlovakia has a very nautical way of saying hello.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pronounced \u2018Ahoy\u2019 and spelled\n\u2018Ahoj\u2019 in Slovak, the term harks back to the English greeting for people on boats\nor ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts say the term was\noriginally adopted from English by young people in the 1930s who used it for\ncanoeing and kayaking activities; the word then caught on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, Scottish-born\nAmerican Alexander Bell who invented the telephone originally suggested \u2018Ahoy\u2019\nas a standard greeting when answering a telephone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, possibly to his\nannoyance, the word \u2018Hello\u2019 suggested by American inventor Thomas Edison was\ntaken up instead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happily for Alexander Bell,\nthe word \u2018Ahoy\u2019 did catch on in some countries as well as Slovakia.  The word \u2018Hoi\u2019 is used in Dutch and Swiss\nGerman and \u2018Oi\u2019 is used informally in Brazilian Portuguese and likewise \u2018Oh\u00f8j\u2019\nin Danish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, although the word \u2018Ahoy\u2019 didn\u2019t enter everyday use in the English language, it is derived from the English word \u2018Hoy\u2019. Curiously, this was commonly used in the 14th<\/sup> century to help herd cattle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Slovak language is the\nofficial language of the Slovak Republic, spoken by 5.5 million inhabitants in\nthe country as well as more than one million emigrants in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is known as the\n\u2018Esperanto\u2019 of Slavic languages because many people find it the easiest to\nlearn of this group of languages which include Russian, Ukrainian, Polish,\nCzech, Slovenian, Bulgarian and Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing Slovak will also help you understand some Czech and Polish, among other languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovak makes things a little easier for Western learners by using the Latin alphabet although, if you want to write it, there\u2019s some diacritical marks to get your head round. A diacritical mark is a point, sign or squiggle added to a letter or character to indicate appropriate stress or special pronunciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We think this makes a very\ngood case for learning to speak the language first and learning to write it\nsecond!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also another incentive for people interested in speaking Slovak \u2013 some of the vocab will already be familiar to you. That\u2019s because it\u2019s common practice to change the spelling of more modern foreign words into Slovak to establish a new Slovak word eg weekend = vikend, taxi = taxik, ham and eggs = hemendex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another example of this is\nthe Slovak word for a tram: elektri\u010dka (pronounced\nelectric car) which is a common form of transport in Slovakia\u2019s capital city,\nBratislava.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But beware of traffic jams when buying a ticket on the elektri\u010dka<\/em>.  Locals in Bratislava, known colloquially as Blavaci, buy tickets according to their journey time \u2013 not distance.  Get it wrong and there\u2019s a penalty fine!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as avoiding penalty\nfines, if you do go to Slovakia ever, there\u2019s another pitfall to avoid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its inhabitants are fed up of\npeople confusing Slovakia with Slovenia! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nhas been famously done by former US President George W Bush who said: \u201cThe only thing I know about Slovakia is what I\nlearned first-hand from your Foreign Minister, who came to Texas.\u201d  Unfortunately, he was talking about the\nSlovenian Foreign Minister. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While,\nat a news conference in Rome, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi,\nintroduced Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop with the words: \u201cI\u2019m very happy\nto be here today with the Prime Minister of Slovakia.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr\nRop later commented: \u201cIt was very strange, we asked journalists not to mention\nit in their reports.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One\nworld leader who hasn\u2019t confused the two countries is US President Donald Trump\nbut as commentators have been quick to point out, he has a good reason not to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His wife, First Lady Melania Trump, was born in Slovenia whereas his ex-wife Ivana was born in Czechoslovakia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nwhere does all this confusion come from? Well clearly the similarity of country\nnames doesn\u2019t help. Slovakia calls itself Slovensk\u00e1 republika while Slovenia is\nRepublika Slovenija.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written in their native tongues, the language names are even more similar; one is sloven\u010dina and the other is sloven\u0161\u010dina.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both\ncountries are also former socialist republics and emerged in their modern form\nin the early 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovenia\nachieved independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. \nSimilarly, the state of Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and\nSlovakia in 1992 in the so-called Velvet Divorce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brings us to another important point – the common history of the Slovak and Czech languages. Because of their previous close ties, the languages are largely mutually intelligible. But, with each nation now having an independent identity, they are gradually becoming less aligned in spelling, pronunciation and vocabulary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, even in Slovakia as a whole, there is more than one dialect of Slovak. Standard Slovak, which is voiced on the uTalk app<\/a>, is the official language of the Slovak Republic and is broadly based on the dialect spoken in Central Slovakia. The other major dialects are the ones spoken in Western and Eastern Slovakia but all three are understandable by speakers of the others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Endearingly, languages are not just a key skill for Slovakians but also something very close to their hearts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a Slovak phrase, ‘Ko\u013eko jazykov vie\u0161,\nto\u013eko kr\u00e1t si \u010dlovekom’, which means the more languages you speak, the more of\na person you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if you\u2019d like to become more of a person and are interested in speaking and understanding some Slovak then go here and give it a try!<\/a> And, if learning Slovak isn\u2019t your thing but you\u2019re going to Slovakia sometime soon, it might be worth keeping the word \u2018ahoy!\u2019 in mind, alongside a friendly smile. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a landlocked country, Slovakia has a very nautical way of saying hello. Pronounced \u2018Ahoy\u2019 and spelled \u2018Ahoj\u2019 in Slovak, the term harks back to the English greeting for people on boats or ships. Experts say the term was originally adopted from English by young people in the 1930s who used it for canoeing and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[979],"tags":[1783,1018,1776],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}