A brief digression about Slovak legs; they are an important linguistic resource. (source: Freepik)
In order to speak a foreign language, one needs to perform, and a good actor knows how to make an exit.
Leaving (odchod, odchádzanie) is something that happens quickly and requires an immediate response, forcing slow speakers into laborious goodbyes or silent departures. Meanwhile, ending a conversation with a talkative native speaker can be even harder than starting one.
A good way to get out of such an exchange is to say, "I can't talk, I'm totally jammed" ("nemôžem rozprávať, som úplne zaseknutý") as if, perhaps, your path were blocked by logs that had to be cleared. Bearing horticulture in mind, I'm tempted to compare the phrase to the waiter's expression "in the weeds", meaning hopelessly behind. But I always imagined this to mean that the speaker had not been cutting grass fast enough and was stuck amid standing weeds, not that so many had been cut and were piling up that it was impossible to escape.
When you feel yourself rising to meet the pressure of those piling tasks on an adrenaline rush, or perhaps a caffeine high, you will not want to stop your momentum for idle chat. Then you can tell others you do not have time, as you are whistling (fičím), a verb that normally refers to the wind but in spoken Slovak means to zip or move quickly.
