For "Mutes", the Germans lent a lot of words

Welcome to this week’s SoundCzech, which this week sounds less Czech and more German. This time we are going to be looking at German words that are commonly used in Czech, and to introduce a popular example, I’ve chosen the song “Ksicht” by the well-known ska band Sto zvířat (“100 Animals”).

Mám svůj ksicht rád: I like my face. The words you’d usually use for “face” in Czech are “obličej” or “tvář” but sometimes the German word, “gesicht”, is used colloquially to take away any thought of a sweet, smiling, pretty face. To better understand the sense, take the verb form of the word: ksichtit se, which means to make ugly faces. Perhaps it’s because German can sound rather harsh to foreign ears that a lot of the Czech words borrowed from German mean the more distasteful version of a thing. For example a normal father is “otec” in Czech, a nasty father, “fotr”. A normal pub is “hospoda”, a more seedy pub might be called “knajpa”. Average, everyday socks are “ponožky” in Czech, literally something that goes over the foot, while the German word for the same thing becomes the Czech “fusekle”, which has a ridiculous connotation. So when the “Hundred Animals” sing “Mám svůj ksicht rád” a better translation might be, “I like my ugly mug”.

But that’s just one interesting use of German words in Czech, it isn’t representative of the hundreds of originally German words used in common, day-to-day Czech. The German word for “cushion”, for example, is “Czechified” to mean a pillow, “polštář”. And the Czech word for bottle, “lahev”, is just as often replaced with the borrowed word “flaška”.

There are so many Czech borrowings from German that have to do with work or craftsmanship, it can seem there is a whole branch of casual Czech vocabulary that is a kind of homage to German industriousness. The Czech word “kšeft”, usually meaning a job, comes from the German word for business. To work at a feverish pace in Czech is “makat” from the German word “to make”, and the borrowed word “fachčit” has a similar meaning.

That’s a lot of words from a people the Slavs call “Němci”, literally “people who are mute”, but the last one we have time for today will be the borrowed word for bye, “čus”!