"Na shledanou!"
Translation:Goodbye!
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How is this correctly pronounced ? Following the introduction sh = sch and l as in English I would come up with schledanow. However I hear sredanow...
This is kind of funny, because based on how people pronounce this, you can tell whether they're from Bohemia or from Moravia. Moravians pronounce the first "s" as if it were a "z" and then they simply pronounce the "ch" as "h" (the way "h" is pronounced in "hand"). Bohemians pronounce it with an "s" and then with a "ch" sound which is not very common in English, but in German for example in the word "machen" it is pronounced like that.
And some people actually do say "naskledanou", pronouncing the "ch" like "k". It might also be regional though.
If you want to use the standard pronunciation then the Bohemian version with the "ch" like in "machen" is probably the one but Moravians might disagree :-)
As a Moravian, I almost never hear it pronounced with z h. When I asked one linguistic about this, she told me bohemians pronounce it with z h. So I think it can be a regional pronunciation that's spread all over the Czech republic and people from Moravia think they pronounce it differently in Bohemia and více versa.
It is mostly a Moravian/Silesian feature, but with many exceptions and, of course, it always reflects the origin of the persons, not their current location. One of our professors, who was born in Ostrava, spoke like that. Maybe not in "na shledanou" in particular, but in many sh groups and really just in many word initial s- in general.
Zjednodušeně řečeno výslovnost [sch] převládá v Čechách, [zh] pak na Moravě a ve Slezsku; toto rozdělení však nemusí platit absolutně, záleží rovněž na konkrétních výrazech obsahujících skupinu sh, nechovají se totiž vždy zcela jednotně.
To doublecheck pronounciation, you can try this site. All 3 samples sound correct there
I would just like to clarify: is the h sound in this word like the х sound in Russian? That's what I seem to be hearing in the audio from Forvo.
yes, pretty much. The sound is as if it was spelled with a CH instead of just H. Many Czechs actually misspell this word as Na Schledanou or even Naschledanou
I have heard something like "das vedanyu" many times. It that from a related language?
Or, also, my wife's mother speaks Czech (is 2nd generation American) , and so do her sisters, a little. Could I have have heard (mis-heard) that from them?
lived in Prague for a month and my Czech friends always said it like 'naskladanou'. they taught me to say 'nasklad' for short..?
I've seen many translations for this phrase, wouldn't "farewell" or "until we meet again" technically be the translation or am I missing something?
In fact, this fits a pattern from several languages. "Na shledanou" in Czech, "Auf Wiedersehen" in German, "På gensyn" in Danish. All literally meaning "on re-visit" or "on re-seeing" in English.
You mean the literal translation? The closest to a literal translation would be "to meeting!" (with "to" in the same sense as if you wanted to make a toast). But it translates as "goodbye". Another way of saying that is "sbohem" which literally means "with God - s Bohem". But you only use that if you don't expect or want to see someone again and it would be rude to say it to someone otherwise. Kind of like "farewell" in English.
With friends you usually say "čau", like in Portuguese "tchau" (and almost the same as in Italian) or also "čus", which comes from the German "Tschuss/Tschüss"). You can also say "ahoj" for both "hello" and "goodbye", but again this is used among friends or people you know well. With strangers you usually say "dobrý den", i.e. "good day" and "na shledanou", i.e. "goodbye".