AboutTomas Expertise I have done quite a lot of traveling in Slovakia as well as Europe, I have also written some articles about traveling to slovak dailies and I wrote 50-page book chapter "Traveling with internet". I can provide you with what-to-see tips about Slovakia and Central Europe in general as well as practical information about Slovakia.
Question Hi there,
I live in San Diego as does my girlfriend. She is from Bratislava (sp?)I'm trying to learn a few words to make her happy. Could you suggest a resourse? I can't even get the short version of her name right- Nadia. Something about the N. Also if you can think of anything about Slovakia that I should know, that would be great!
Thank you so much for your time!
Daniel
Answer Dear Daniel,
It's nice to hear that you want to surprise your girlfriend and learn some exotic language :-) - first, I recommend you try this site: http://www.travlang.com/languages/ - choose English as your first language and Slovak as second.
The site is intented for travelers so the vocabulary may not be exactly what you need, but the great advantage of this site is that you can also hear the pronounciation of the words and get the basic idea on how some of these strange letters :) sound.
If you need to translate any other words, try this on-line dictionary: http://www.slovnik.sk/ (or, of course, you can write me the list of the words and I will translate them for you)
The "Spectacular Slovakia" site is far best I know about these matters and I recommend you reading as much of it as you can: it is electronic version of a magazine published by Americans in Slovakia so it may be very helpful to you if you want to learn not only about Slovan language, but also about the people and culture.
I especially recommend these two sections: http://www.spectacularslovakia.sk/specials/slovak_matters.html http://www.spectacularslovakia.sk/specials/culture_shock.html
You will find observations about Slovaks by foreigners here - some Slovaks could take these articles quite badly :) since they are not always pleasant, but for me it's interesting reading and I hope you will like it too.
As for the name "Nad'a", unfortunatelly I do know know about any variation of this name - we tend to call all Nadas simly "Nada". This is short form derived from russian name "Nadezda", but we almost never use this long form.
If you need any more information or advice, feel free to contact me, even directly at tomas.bella@gmail.com
