Medailonky s Mucha motivy

Seen on a billboard: Medailonky s Mucha motivy. Translation: medallions with Mucha('s) motifs. The problem is that that is English, not Czech syntax. And it's not the first time I've seen it. In real/proper Czech, Mucha would have to be in the possessive adjective case, which would give us Medailonky s Muchovými motivy, or at least in the adjectival form: Medailonky s muchovskými motivy. I've even heard on occasion constructions like Medailonky s Muchy motivy (in colloquial Czech motivama), with Mucha in the genitive case, but Mucha in the nominative just isn't right.

Take a smile

That, followed by a :), is what some Czech speaker wrote on a wall. Take a smile makes me think of a bagful of smiles, from which one should be taken. A simple Smile would have been enough.

Burgery

It took me a few seconds to decipher what I saw on a sign today: Burgery. I first thought it could be an English word to denote a place where (ham)burgers are prepared and sold, i.e, a diner, a fast food joint, with the y suffix found in words like bakery, eatery, butchery, etc., but then it finally dawned on me that it is the Czech plural of burger.

Two luggage

On a Czech long-distance bus: wi-fi, newspapers, space for two luggage. They probably learned that luggage is a non-count word, so kept it in the singular!

But then at Barajas, Madrid, you see signs saying Equipajes and below it Luggages.

Extremely long name

From a Czech magazine: V loňských volbách zaujal (Augustin Karel Andre Sylor) zaujal svým aristokratickým zevnějškem i extrémně dlouhým jménem. Translation: He (Augustin Karel Andre Sylor) caught people's attention in last year's elections due to his aristocratic appearance and extremely long name.

Extremely long name? I have two aunts and a grandmother with four names just like him. I understand it can be pretty long for Czechs, who are used to two names, but that is nothing out of the ordinary in Latin America, where people commonly have between three and five names.

Letra W

Vi numa página brasileira que por sinal trata de língua portuguesa a grafia dábliu em vez de dáblio, que eu teria suposto, e pensei que se tratasse erro de digitação. Como a coisa me deixou curioso, fui procurar essa variante em alguns dicionários. A situação é mais complicada do que eu imaginava: o Houaiss 2009 registra dáblio, mas remete para dábliu. No Vocabulário da Academia Brasileira de Letras aparecem tanto dáblio quanto dabliú, que eu nunca ouvi, talvez se diga em outras regiões, mas não registra não dábliu. O meu Aurélio velhinho do início da década de 80 só conhece dáblio. Pergunto-me o porquê do u de dábliu. Não me ocorre nenhuma outra palavra em português terminada em u átono, só u átono seguido de s: ônibus, ângelus, ânus, entre poucas outras, e uma que termina em ux: hálux. Será que é porque a origem nos leva a um double u, um u dobrado? Mas se analisarmos bem, é um v, não um u dobrado, pelo menos quando se digita. Talvez o w de alguns, em escrita de mão, pode assemelhar-se a dois uu pela redondeza das formas. Terá que ver com o fato de em latim não existir w e por o v, como dizem os entendidos, na fase clássica dessa língua se pronunciar u? Mistérios...

Uma observação afim aqui.

No tag/Tag(k) ne

The English words No Tag (as in graffiti) can be seen on some Czech streetcars/trams. Even though it is technically ok, I feel No tagging would be better, as No + ing reinforces a prohibition more forcefully than a simple No + noun.

Another thing you can also find is Tag(k) Ne, a play on words with the English word tag plus the Czech word ne meaning no or the Czech tak meaning so, like this. What contributes even more to the play on words is how Czechs pronounce tak ne, which can come out as tak ne or tag ne, depending, to the best of my knowledge, on the origin of the speaker (tak ne would be more common in Bohemia, whereas tag ne in Moravia) and also how Czechs pronounce English: they devoice voiced consonants, that is why they say bag as bek, made/maid as mejt (mate), lob as lop, etc. 

Declension when there is no declension

From a Czech weekly magazine: Někdy v polovině roku 1963 ho zaujalo jméno, které britské noviny skloňovaly ve všech pádech: The Beatles. Translation: Sometime in the second half of 1963 the name The Beatles, which British newspapers declined in all cases, caught his (= Sid Bernstein's) attention. The funny thing is that there is no such thing as declension in English (except a vestige thereof in the Saxon genitive). What the sentence really means is that newspapers talked a lot about The Beatles.

Seu e teu

Ocorreu-me um caso em que não me parece possível usar teu no lugar de seu: quando se xinga alguém. Seu vagabundo, sua vaca, sua metida, etc., não funcionam com teu (e variações de gênero e número).