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Comment by cleorama | Hacker News Reader

In Czech, 'robota' is an archaic word for 'work'. I remember my great-grandaunt use it when I was a kid. I think Karel Capek credited his brother Josef, poet/painter, for coining the term 'robot'.

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It's still in use as the regular word for work in East Slavic languages

The secondary meaning is corvée.

Yeah, one of the reasons why Čapek chose the word was to express that robots do menial, undignified work.

In Polish, 'robota' is casual word for 'work' and is used in normal conversations.

To me it has negative connotations. I'd be way more likely to use the word "robota" (as opposed to just "praca") when I'm not too happy about what is involved.

It better translates as "labor" as in "manual labor", or as "toil".

In Ostravian dialect of Czech it survives as well.

"Kaj ideš?" - "Do roboty." (standard Czech would be "Kam jdeš?" - "Do práce.")

"Ostravian dialect" is that what you call Silesian language in Czechia?

Yes and no. Ostrava, as a huge industrial center, had an unique mix of ethnicities (Czech, German, Jewish, Slovak, Galician, Silesian, Polish etc.) that interacted and created a mixed language. As a result, the dialect is different from the one used in the Silesian countryside. There is a lot of very specific words that probably weren't used in the original agricultural setting of Silesia (such as "papaláš", meaning a high-ranking official).

And reading collections of old Silesian folklore from the villages, I noticed the rustic language having some extra features no longer present in Ostrava as well.

But the staccato accent is pretty much the same, yes. As is the preserved pronunciation of hard "y" which died out in standard Czech some 600 years ago.

I’m familiar with the staccato accent (first time I heard was an angry train station janitor in Bohumín :D) but what’s the hard “y” sound? I’d known of tvrdé y/ý and měkké i/í depending on some consonant but I think you’re talking about something different (and interesting!)

Tvrdé y/ý and měkké i/í exist in written form in standard Czech, but they have been pronounced in the same way, softly, across most of the country since the late Middle Ages or so. That is why many pupils struggle with "where to write y and where to write i", because it does not correspond to their daily experience with spoken Czech.

An interesting exception is the region around Ostrava, where "y" remained a clearly different vowel in pronunciation until today.

I was just curious what the difference is, but that might be hard to convey over text :-D I have a friend from Frydek-Mistek, I’ll ask her for a demonstration :)

Czechs typically dont use “robota” to mean “work” (they use “prace” for that).

Robota is more common in Slovak than in Czech.

Depends, I am from a region where we use robota regularly.

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