Walking around in Prague, there were hardly any signboards in English. (A perferctly acceptable thing really.) The bigger problem was that Czech isn’t really a phonetic language, where words are pronounced in the same way they are written. As a result, you could stare at a signboard for ten minutes at a word before realizing it is exactly the place you are looking for. But, you quickly get into the mode where you separate sounds in your head, and predict what a word might sound like. But I had my share of funnies – going in the opposite direction, missing a stop or two and feeling hopelessly lost when I was two streets away from the hotel.
In all this madness, there’s only one signboard with English that I found. Which had a few words in Czech, followed with a stern – “Military Area – Do Not Enter” in English. I have no idea why, but when I saw that signboard, I sat down on the bench near the fence and laughed for a full five minutes.
The warnings, they are always easy to read. It’s the other stuff that’s hard to read. Or in a different language.
Posted on October 16th, 2006 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: Cities, Self
God saved… other wise… dishum.. dishumm…..