Je to pivo?

[sofiaviolet]

In my class on Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, we are learning some Czech. Or at least how to pronounce it.

Je první lekce.

Comments

Czech

[susanandleonard.livejournal.com]

Cool!! Okay, I'll bite. What the heck do they mean?

[sofiaviolet]

Je to pivo? = Is there beer?
(Was actually a line in the little block of text we were reading. I was the only one who knew that pivo means beer. Also the best at pronouncing stuff.)

Je první lekce. = It's the first lesson.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Vilém and Stepán are undoubtedly proud of you.

[sofiaviolet]

\o/

Maybe we'll learn some Hungarian, too.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Zsuzsa has already taught you ONE word (she uses it all the time).

[sofiaviolet]

Yeah, I'm not all that sure how to pronounce it, though. ^-^

[looneyluna.livejournal.com]

Jedno pivo prosim. "One beer please"

And you've brought my back to my days of studying abroad in Prague :D

[sofiaviolet]

One day I'm going to go to Prague, and I'm just going to wander around going "oooooh, pretty!"

[arrowwhiskers.livejournal.com]

They always want to make you say "beer". I had a Polish NUcalls teacher last semester who'd make me say sentences like "I like to drink beer" and then giggle at me when I was done.

[sofiaviolet]

I loathe beer. *poutyface* What's beer in Polish?

[arrowwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Piwo, so basically the same thing, phonetically speaking.

And the whole sentence, "je to pivo" looks suspiciously like "to jest piwo", which means "that is beer", though I think "is that beer would be "czy to jest piwo?", employing a question particle rather than switching the syntax. I don't think you can make questions in Polish that way, though I could be wrong...also, I have no idea if you can say "Is there..." in Polish that way.

I wish I knew more Polish. It's a really amazing language, but frankly, it's way too hard. And it's legitimately the only language that I've ever seriously tried to learn that's been *so hard I gave up*. I think that Czech might be a little easier, if only because its orthography and consonant clusters don't immediately make you want to cry.