a few months ago, n. introduced me to her friend from bratislava. b. doesn't speak any czech, but she doesn't need to, because czech and slovak are so similar, that slovaks can speak their own language in the czech republic and be understood, and students even have the option of taking their exams in slovak. the language is closer to russian in the "relaxed" way words are pronounced, and there is no dreaded ř sound, making slovak much easier for me to understand. sometimes, when talking groups of people passed, i would get excited that i could understand a lot of what they were saying, and then n. would say "slovaks," smothering my fragile hopes. i think a lot has to do with czech pronunciation, seeing as i understand written czech so much better than spoken. and then there is also a prague dialect, which i can hear sometimes in individual words such as mléko (milk; "mlee-ko" in prague-speak) and polévka (soup; praguers say "po-lee-vka").
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