The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia

I never had any experience with the languages of Central Europe before I moved there. Up until adulthood, English had been the only language I had ever spoken. However, I did know that German is from a very different language “family” (German is from the Germanic family) than Slovak (Slavic), and also significantly different from the Hungarian (Finno-Ugric) language. When I moved to Vienna after having lived in Slovakia, I realized I was living in an interesting location between Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest; three completely different language families in such close proximity!

The first time I learned a word in German that was similar to the Slovak equivalent, I thought it was a coincidence. When it happened again, and was also comparable in Hungarian, I knew there must be an explanation, and of course, there is.

The Habsburg monarchy and the subsequent Austro-Hungarian Empire existed over a period of more than 400 years and at its height encompassed 12 “nations” spanning from northern Italy to Ukraine. Wouldn’t you figure that over such a period of time, words would be borrowed and loaned from peoples of different language families who were constant neighbors, sharing land, and rubbing shoulders with one another in many cities and towns—often not by choice or under pleasant circumstances.

Most of the words with similarities I came across are food words, which is not surprising because cuisine isn’t really defined by political borders but rather by regions. The pastry called strudel, for example, is mainly considered to be an Austrian specialty, but in Slovakia almost every grandma knows how to make štrúdľa.

I wouldn’t say that there are a lot of words that are similar in all three languages—just a handful in contrast to the tens of thousands of words in each language, but there are enough to serve as a reminder of the huge empire that once was and the millions it affected. It’s not just history, the stuff you read about in books, it’s more like a footprint; you move beyond it but it’s still there, and if you take a second to look you can actually see it! For me, experiencing this sense of timelessness and connectivity was one of the most interesting discoveries of living in Central Europe.

Here’s a sample of some food words that are similar in all three languages. Notice the contrast between the two versions of German from Austria and Germany (Germany was never part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire).

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