Things Just Don't Translate

Translations, translations, translations. They can't be explained too easily. Let's take "my name is" in Slovak. You would say it like this, "Volam sa". I you translate this back to English literally, it would be, "I call myself" If your asking someone age you would say, "kolko maš rokov?" or "How many years do you have?" Words like grandmother or grandfather are translated to "old mother" and "old father". The word "auto" means car, so what does "autobus" mean. Bus! Some improper English is proper in Slovak. "Ja nikdy nemam nič" means, "I never don't have nothing". Double negatives are proper Slovak. You can sometimes have triple, quadruple, or more negatives. The word for light in Slovak also means easy. My Slovak teacher once told me to do something and said, "It is light, is it not?" Slovaks would not say, "Do you like it?", they say "Do you have like it". That was odd to hear the first time I was in Slovakia. So if you ever learn a foreighn language, don't expect literal translations all the time.