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
I agree with Michael. My Czech husband would sometimes use the informal "no" to agree to me when communicating in English, so I would think he was actually disagreeing. Took a couple of years before I became accustomed to this.
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!
It gets even better in Spanish, where "ano" means "anus". Just imagine a Czech-Spanish wedding ceremony, with the Spanish part of the wedding party bursts out laughing in the most romantic moment!
Needless to say that my Spanish boyfriend also gets crazy with the "no" meaning "yes". Only now I realise how many different things you can express with a simple "no", depending on the intonation!
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