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Yes, difficult (Welsh/Czech)

I first started learning Czech when I was 17. I am a Welsh-speaker and during the first few weeks of class, the teacher would be teaching us phrases in Czech and we'd have to repeat. After quite a few of the more tricky sentences she'd look up and say Ano?... this sounded so much like the Welsh word anodd (which means hard, difficult). Naturally I would nod and say Yes. It wasn't until I was speaking excitedly to a fourth-year Czech student a few weeks later about my discovery in the Welsh-Czech similarity that I discovered that Welsh and Czech did not share the word for difficult. The teacher was merely asking 'Yes?' ('It's OK?').

Sent by: Llyr ap Iwan

Comments

Michael, Zvolen, Slovakia 2009-07-06

This applies to both Slovak and Czech - the world for "yes" is "ano", which is often abbreviated to "no?" with a rising intonation. Slovaks and Czechs tend to use this even while speaking in English, which can be quite confusing!

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