Can you say zmrzlina? (source: Katya Wolf via Pexel)
With my first Slovak summer approaching in 1999, I was warned by expats who had endured the brutal summer of 1998 of a hellish season to come. I was made to imagine a Bratislava of steaming-hot asphalt, fainting senior citizens, trams packed and sweaty like saunas, broken down old buses, and boiling-hot auto parts sloughing off cars in the afternoon sun. And through it all, per local custom, I would have to wear long pants.
Only the sauna-tram part turned out to be true, and yet three years later I still can't decide if I enjoy (vychutnám) or endure (vydržím) summer. The problem is the heat (horúčava) and the humidity (vlhkosť), exacerbated by overcrowded public transportation (preplnená verejná doprava) and too little air conditioning (klimatizácia). Summer in Slovakia (leto na Slovensku) comes too late and stays too long.
The greatest linguistic challenge posed by leto is zmrzlina - five muscular consonants strangling a single enclosed vowel.
I use zmrzlina, which means ice-cream, to impress my friends back home that I can speak Slovak. What I neglect to say is that a vowel is voiced between the 'm' and 'r', making the pronunciation 'zmerzleena'. Of course, a fortress remains to be stormed - an unbroken three-consonant chain including a rolled 'r'. Once you can pronounce zmrzlina, you're in the Slovak language big leagues.
