Yeah it's a bit of a tongue twister if you have to say this out loud. I'm just continually encountering words I've never heard and either being completely lost or trying to relate them to something I already know. Like in that sentence:

- don't know what a "žbrnd" is

- "zdrhl" is the l-participle of some verb that I don't know

- "hrd" is not something I've seen (is it related to "hrdina" - hero - maybe?)

- "Brd" no idea

- "srn" might be like "srnec" (kind of deer) but if I heard it in a sentence I wouldn't make that connection

- "Krč" - I've seen "Krčma" as a form of pub, but idk if this word refers to that

These guesses I made are possibly miles off the mark :D

You're good! Better than me, but then I started old. 46 is a hell of an age to tackle your first Slavic language.

There's a breakdown here on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/czech/comments/1l3tdw/new_longest_c...

Brd, Smrk and Krč are places. "Zdrhl": escaped; "hrd": proudly; "srn" is a doe, a female deer.

Nobody seems to know "žbrnd", but this is admittedly purposely difficult language, showing off how much is possible without vowels.

Ha nice - so I got one (almost) right :D

Anyway it's good to know I'm not the only one struggling through. Keep it up!

Ok... and here I was thinking that a single word without vowels in Slovenian (Trst, the Slovenian name of the Italian city Trieste) was remarkable. Guess I have to reconsider that...

Yugoslavia was famed for its critical vowel shortage:

https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/clinton-deploys-v...

... However, speaking as a resident of Czechia, it's worse here.

Consider that quote. The word "čtvrť" means _quarter_, as in Latin Quarter or Arab Quarter. It differs from the word "čtvrt" (meaning a quarter of a pizza, say) by the half a diacritic on the final letter T: ť. That diacritic modifies the following vowel — for example the famous shoe company is not Bata (bar-ta) but Baťa (bar-tya).

In "čtvrť" the háček modifies the following vowel that isn't there and thus changes the meaning of the word.

Czech is czallenging.

Bonus complication while we're talking Czech orthography - "ch" is considered to be one letter. Have been stumped on some křižovky because of that.

Its time to do crowdfunding and gift them a few vowels.