Monday, July 28, 2008

My first Czech word

Over the last couple days, I've been perusing The Essentials of Czech Grammer by James Naughton. I went straight to Chapter 3 on Nouns because everyone expresses intimidation for the various cases, genders, and pluralities of Czech nouns.

To be intimidated, I have to know what a case is. And what declension is. I know neither! But as I started to read, I did see one Czech word I knew: hrad.

In English, I probably have occasion to utter the word castle once every five years. It just doesn't come up in daily life. I find it fascinating that of all the words that could be my first word in Czech - 'castle' is it. In this instance, C.R. lives up to it's highbrow image, no?

Non-native English speakers, what was your first English word you recognized? I'm curious to see what my culture is projecting. Or what other cultures are projecting since the same question can be as interesting no matter what second or third language it is that you learned.

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