Last summer while walking around Prague we came upon a cute little pastry shop in the city center. As it always is with pastries, we couldn’t resist and ducked in for a quick bite.
After looking at many delectable delicacies, we decided to settle on the WORLD FAMOUS CZECH TRDLO. What ? T-R-D-L-O ?
This wasn’t a surprise to us as Czech words tend to have an aversion to vowels. For people like us who are used to vowels, we’re left confused about how to pronounce these words. But that obviously didn’t stop us from sampling some delicious Trdlo’s.
So, we went up to the lady and asked for some “Trdlo’s” – she seemed to understand perfectly! We might have said it right! Maybe she’s just used to clueless tourists walking in and asking for “Turdlos”, “Terdlows”, “Tardlows”, “Tordlows”, etc.
They taste a bit like gingerbread because a Trdlo is bread wrapped around a stick and baked, then topped off with sugar and walnut mix. Yummy!
As from a poor student who formerly used to sell these to get money for our (wonderful and one of a kind) beer: Yes, we’re used to people pronouncing it all kinds of weird ways. (The most common one is something sounding like “tooduo”.) Trdlo (which you actually pronounce just as you read it, with a simple, non-english sounding o at the end) means in Czech “someone, who is being silly or behaving in a stupid (but cute) way”. And it’s hard to pronounce for some of us as well. :)
Hahaa.. that’s funny that you call TRDLO to someone who’s being silly. Even though I don’t speak Czech, it sounds right (and yes, very cute too)!