the mystery of the backwards N

“Rodina” means family, roughly, in Czech. Lots of gravestones are marked “Family Blahblah”. Anyway, I’m puzzled as to why rodina Hajkova fancied having their N backwards. It’s a Cyrillic letter, but Czech doesn’t use Cyrillic letters (and it’s not the Cyrllic N, either).

Too much becherovka for the stonemason, perhaps? Answers on a postcard, please.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 11:01 am. It is filed under documentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

5 Responses to “the mystery of the backwards N”

  1. ib says:
    May 2, 2007 at 3:26 pm

    “N” backwords is an “e” ir an “i”. my name starts with backward “N” in russian..

  2. the countess says:
    May 2, 2007 at 3:38 pm

    Я знаю! It’s definitely the Cyrillic “i” — but what’s it doing in a non-Cyrillic word? Why? How? And even if it was meant to be there, it would turn “rodina” (family) into “rodi-i-a”. I remain mystified.

  3. irina says:
    May 4, 2007 at 11:23 am

    it was supposed to have “H” in rodina..”H” = “N”…
    weird. you know in russian “rodina” mean the motherland, ie. the old country ;)

  4. irina says:
    May 4, 2007 at 11:24 am

    damn! i always misspell something!!

  5. the countess says:
    May 4, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    Hmm, I wonder what it is in Slovak… I’ll have to check my handy Russian-Slovak dictionary.

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