What's in a Prague street name

Originally published on Twitter on 25 December 2022.

Varšavská was built in 1884.

Until 1926, this was Kollárova, after Ján Kollár (1793-1852), Slovak poet, archaeologist, politician and renowned Pan-Slavist.

Varšava is obviously Warsaw, which is obviously the capital of Poland, which obviously got a lot of coverage on https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/01/27/prague-2-day-14-polska/.

And a bit more coverage on https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/01/29/prague-2-day-23-kladska/ and https://whatsinapraguestreetname.com/2024/01/28/prague-2-day-18-chopinova/.

So let’s have some Christmas Day fun with some Czech-Polish false friends.

I’ve left out the one that everybody already knows because this is a family-friendly day.

If something in Czech is bezcenný, it’s worthless. In Polish, something that’s bezcenny is the opposite, priceless (Czech: neocenitelný).

Go the shops in Poland and ask for burak, and you’ll get beetroot. Ask for the same thing in the Czech Republic and you’ll get a single peanut.

Bydlo in Czech is a dwelling; bydło in Polish is somewhat harder to live in, what with being cattle. Cattle are dobytek in Czech… which, in Polish, can be used to mean ‘possessions’ in a non-cow sense.

Czechs like their bread to be čerstvý, i.e. fresh. Give a Pole bread that’s czerstwy and they’ll never speak to you again, as czerstwy means ‘stale’.

In the month corner, kwiecień starts in Poland a whole month before květěn starts in the Czech Republic. The same is true of czerwiec and červenec.

If a Pole gives you a długopis, that’s a pen, and you don’t necessarily have to give it back to them. If a Czech gives you a dluhopis, that’s a bond, so the Czech is probably expecting to get repayment at some point.

In Czech, a doba is an undetermined time period; in Polish, that’s very much a determined time period, namely of 24 hours.

If you use the Czech word chyba in Polish to mean ‘mistake’, then that’s… a mistake. Chyba means ‘maybe’ or ‘I guess’, i.e. it’s Polish for asi.

If you ever find yourself doing an online shop in Poland, please remember that a jagoda is a blueberry not a strawberry (Czech jahoda).

In Czech, sitting on a stolec – a throne – may make you feel quite nice. In Polish, sitting on a stolec probably won’t, as… well, add an extra o and remove the e and the c, and you might get what I’m talking about.

Conversely, it’s fine to sit on a ława – a bench – in Poland, but sitting on láva in the Czech Republic will probably burn you to death.

A Czech statek is a farm. A Polish statek is a ship. There’s probably a joke about Łódź in here somewhere.

You’ll see the word kantor all over any Polish city you visit. They’re a great place to exchange money. A Czech kantor may be able to exchange money with you, but, legally, he probably shouldn’t. He’s a schoolmaster.

In Polish, you usually need to use a droga – a road – to get from one town to another; in Czech, using a droga as a travel aid is probably going to get you into trouble if you get caught.

My personal favourite: láska in Czech is obviously something we all long for. Except that, in Polish, a laska is a walking tick. Conversely, love in Polish is miłość, whereas milost in Czech is a pardon or a reprieve. Which is łaska in Polish. Crikey.

In the Czech Republic, your hand only has one palec. In Poland, your hand has four, plus a kciuk. This is despite both Czechs and Poles being human beings.

Czech midday and midnight, poledne and půlnoc, exist in Polish as południe and północ – but those are also the standard words for south and north respectively.

Keeping on with the compass, a Polish trip to the zachód (the west) will typically (and hopefully) take longer than a Czech trip to the záchod (the toilet).

Administer a poprawa to something in Poland, and you’ve corrected it. Administer a poprava to someone in the Czech Republic and you’ve just executed them.

People speak the słoweński language in Ljubljana. They’re not so likely to do so in Bratislava, where the official language is słowacki.

And a polski sklep (the one Polish phrase Brits often know) is not a Polish cellar. It’s a shop. A Polish basement is a piwnica. Which is not a pivnice.

Finally, I’ve deliberately left this one for the end: ostatní may mean ‘the others’ in Czech, but, in Polish, ostatni is the last.

Happy holidays, hezké svátky and wesołych świąt!