Saturday, June 20, 2009

Slovak Word of the Day 2: diel


diel n. masc. part

Whenever a member of my wife's family comes to visit, they bring a range of Slovak food, including ryža (rice). I've tried to explain that you can get perfectly good rice from the rice fields of England, but to no avail...

Anyhow, today it was my job to make the rice. I usually use 3 parts water to 2 parts rice, but I could see from the side of the rice packet that the proper proportions were 2:1. Unfortunately, in showing off to my wife that I had managed to make sense of the instructions, I inadvertently referred to the Czech word díl rather than the Slovak for part, diel.

It was an understandable mistake, because my Slovak still isn't good enough to notice that I'm reading Czech (unless I notice a stray ř or ě in there somewhere). And, in a nakedly discriminatory manner, they always seem to print the Czech on top of the Slovak. But I am already in trouble for pretending to think that Czech and Slovak are really the same language, so I had to apologise fast.

In penance for that statement, diel is today's Slovak Word of the Day.



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