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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Roman" data-source="post: 1786816" data-attributes="member: 1845">Sorry ladies and gentlemen - the thread originally slipped to second page without any responses and after that happened I did not check on it again until I by chance decided to search for a different thread by going through older threads and lo and behold - suddenly there was a multitude of responses! Well, now I know that someone must read beyond the second page.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> This is actually quite remarkable - you got extremely close in the pronounciation, it is pronounced as LAIY-chiahk. I am very impressed by your linguistic skills and intuition.  This is indeed correct.Now as to the explanation of the meaning of the word. 'Lajka' is an ancient Slovak word for 'black sheep'. 'Lajciak' is derived from that and means something like 'eater of black sheep' or 'herder of black sheep'. This could be interpreted as a wolf or a shepherd dog and this interpretation is supported by the fact that 'Lajka' is now a reasonably common name for dogs in Slavic countries (heck, even the Russian experimental space-dog was called Lajka). If you are wondering why I asked this question, it was just out of interest what image some words in Slovak may conjure up in English speakers, especially since this word is also a surname and of course for fun. There was obviously no real way any of you could have guessed it, but it was interesting and fun nonetheless. I am sure we all had fun with this - I certainly did. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I can supply more such words for guessing if you want and even make somewhat them related to D&D (well, this one could be considered tangentially related - wolf, black sheep... and all <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ).</blockquote>

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