One of the odder foods here is the marinated fish roll. Often this is herring, but you can also find carp pieces pinned into a circle and soaked in brine with onions and other spices. Though it looks disgusting, it tastes delightful. If Czech were logical and clear „zavinac“ might translate to something like „under the wine thing“. This curly shape appears similar to the @ sign so common in email addresses. So when a Czech tells you how to email her she won’t say the equivalent of „at“ but „zavinac“. Therefore Bill Gates‘ email address is bill tecka gates zavinac microsoft tecka com. Please send him an email and tell him he should read www tecka slovodne tecka cz.
Co je český – to je hezký
The key to understanding long czech words is just to break them up, but you have to be careful. In this case the root word is vinout meaning to wind or roll. Zavinout is the perfective version i.e. „wind up“ or „roll up“. So zavináč just means rolled up thing.
Although I’ve used this word in both ways, I’ve never quite equated @ with rollmop before.
By the way,have you ever thought of how strange sound names of web pages in english to foreign ears? -e.g. https://www.slovodne.cz is: double you,double you,double you,dot,slovodne,dot,see,zat 🙂
I am far too lazy to ever say „double you“ three times. I just say, „dub, dub, dub“ to indicate web pages. This could be misinterpreted as having something to do with bathing, (as in „rub a dub, dub, three men in a tub“) but increasingly even this is not needed.
We can always just invite people to visit slovo dne dot sea zee.
I call it „sixtuple you“ or „triple double you“. Anyway, „zavinac“ is obviously „behind the wine thing“ or perhaps „behind the guilt thing“ rather than „under…“.
„U senku kvetl zavinac.“