[mcprwklzpq]

Robota means different thing in czech than rabota in other slavic languages. Czech robota means corvee. There are different words for corvee in other slavic languages - "barshhina" (in russian), "panshhina" (in ukranian, polish and belarusian, spelled a bit differently in each), and rabota in them means any work, in czech work is called prace.

Edit: This is a good example of "false friends of a translator" - words in different languages that sound similar but have different meanings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend

That said rabota and robota still have a common root which means slave in most slavic languages. So how is it the czech is such an outlier is a curiosity.

[whoisburbansky]

Corvee is a great term to bring up here, because some of the comments below strike me as being along the lines of “but corvee means chore in French, how can it mean forced labor in English?”

[theSIRius]

It might have to do with the Czech National Revival[1]. The Czech language and culture was being suppressed in favour of Austrian/Germanic one. Prominent Czech figures worked to preserve the Czech language which included distancing from German words and phrases, redefinition of words and even invention of new ones.

It was pretty much a success and we ended with what could be called Czech 2.0. How many false friends were introduced because of the Revival, I am not sure.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_National_Revival

[mcprwklzpq]

In this article [1] i see quite a lot of funny examples of false friends for czech to russian translation. Stale is cherstvyj in russian, but in czech cherstvyj is fresh. A corpse in russian is a torso in czech. Shame is attention. A cigarette butt is a cucumber. Toadstool is buckwheat. Looseness is speed. And so on. Some words like zivot in czech are closer to old russian meaning (life) than current (stomach). Between some i can see some other relation. And with some i have no idea how it could coincide that way.

1. https://zen.yandex.ru/media/solo/takoi-zabavnyi-cheshskii-ia...

[theSIRius]

It's funny to see how languages branch out and develop independently. I specifically remember that Czech "Šukat drogy na záchodě", which means "To fuck drugs on the toilet", would be "Look for medicine in the west" in Polish. I'm not 100 % sure that the Polish is right but it shows pretty well how large the overlap between Slavic languages there is. And also how many false friends we have.