For Slovaks, blood really is thicker than water

Everyone knows that for Slovaks krv nie je voda (blood’s thicker than water) but you can see just how important it is, or was, when start studying the language in depth. Ivan Paulicka’s blog has a fascinating article about all the terms Slovak has for identifying relationships in surprising detail (in Slovak only, unfortunately).

I’ll try and explain some of them (see his blog for correct spelling etc.):

• manzel husband of manzelka
• test: father of a man’s wife, testina: wife’s mother (together testovci)
• svokor: father of woman’s husband, svokra: woman’s mother-in-law (together svokrovci) though in everyday Slovak these refer to all parents-in-law
• zat: son-in-law, nevesta: daughter in law
• a really strange idea is “co-in-laws”. After your children get married, the parents of your son’s or daughter’s spouse are your svat (man) and svatka (woman), together svatovci.
• stryc: father’s brother, married to stryna
• ujec: mother’s brother, married to ujcina
• teta: sister of mother or father (phew!), married to svak
• NB: in everyday Slovak any aunt tends to be teta and any uncle stryko or ujo, and little children refer to any grown up person by these terms.
• zolvica: the wife of a woman’s brother, though they will let you say svagrina now, which is the word for other sorts of sister-in-law, and all sorts of brother-in-law are svagor.
• bratranec and sesternica are male and female cousins respectively
• Do you think nephew is synovec and niece is neter? If only it were so simple! sestrenec and sestrica are how you talk about the children of your sister and bratovec and bratanica should be used for children of your brother (though apparently this is dying out too…)
• One last Slovak only relationship is kmotor and kmotra who are people who act as god-parents to your children when they are baptised. The children call them krstny otec and krstna mama.
• Another one I like that Paulicka mentions is pobratim, a blood brother, as in the sense of really close friend.

Paulicka says that he finds babka and dedo offensive ways of talking about old people/grandparents (if you are a vnuk (M) or vnucka (F), try stary otec/stara mama), though it is rather widespread. He likes the term kmet, which means a wise old man.

Paulicka says that a lot of these old relationship words are dying out. In the old days people really depended on their families and there were probably customs on how to relate to all the different degrees and types. These days, when people move to cities and mix more with their rovesnici (people the same age, peers), we need different words for the new rules of relations.