My cousins and I want to get matching tattoos. We’re thinking about getting “FAMILY” written in Slovak.
I don’t know anything about the Slovak language so i’m not sure if there’s a certain “tense” or part of speech we need to use or whatever (like if there’s different words for “the family” “my family” “family as adjective” etc).
If anyone could tell me what word I’m looking for I’d appreciate it. Please don’t give me the wrong thing (like “suck an egg, fatty!”) I’m going to cross-reference it 
Paging Punkyova. . .
I’m half Slovak, but can’t speak a lick of it.
Tripler
A big help, I am.
Not a Slovak speaker, but apparently you have options.
rodina
It would be “rodina” in Czech, a very very similar language as well. Trouble is, Czech and Slovak nouns decline, much as verbs conjugate; verbs have tenses, nouns have cases. This means the ending of the word is different depending on how it’s being used in the sentence: rodina, rodiny, rodinovi, rodinou, etc. (very important note: These are Czech cases, not Slovak, they may or may not be the same). What exactly do you want your tattoo to say?
Also, hopefully Tomcat will be along shortly: his Czech is much better than mine, and he’s in a better position to find the Slovak you’re looking for.
Ok so according to Fang’s somewhat helpful link, there are 9 words for “family.”
I’m not sure what I want the tattoo to say because in English there’s only one word and I’m not sure what tense I am thinking of. I suppose just the common noun “family.” As in “we are a family.”
Maybe someone could tell me what these words for “family” actually mean?
skupinový
èe¾aï
rod
trieda
druh
služobníctvo
rodinný
rodina
skupina
I can tell you in Czech, and bet you a donut it’s the same meaning as the Slovak words you gave, although I wouldn’t get it tattooed without quadruple checking. Also, some words have accents over the letters I can’t type. Without those accents it’s misspelled.
skupina–group
skupinovy-- group or grouped
rod–gender or breed, in the sense of “family” would be “genus”
trida–class, classroom or genus
druh–fellow, associate, classmate, genus, kind
sluzebnictvo–household, family
rodinny–familial
rodina–family, household, lineage, kin
In Czech, I believe “rodina” would be the word you want (in the nominative case).
pravnik nailed it for Czech. (and don’t cut yourself out man, my grammatically correct Czech sucks, I just seem to be able to communicate better than most expats because I don’t stop for mistakes.)
OK, just phoned Wifecat and she confirmed that rodina is the same in Czech & Slovak. And if you wanted to use it in the sense ‘we are family’ then you would say in Czech: My jsme rodina, in Slovak: My sme rodina. Phonetically it is ‘Me smay ROwdeena’
Actually, you can drop the ‘my’ because the jsme & sme are the we declination of the verb to be. (I am is jsem, you are is jsi, he is is je, we are is jsme, y’all are is jste and they are is jsou) So, if you want to get a tat with the meaning ‘we are family’ in Slovak, and want to keep it simple, ‘Sme rodina’
Curious- why?
-Tcat
Thanks all very much for your posts, and Wifecat.
The term I was looking for is “kin” and rodina is the right context.
As for “why?”, my cousins and I are a close group and we’re very into the idea of “family” and our Slovak heritage (we’re third generation Americans - all the actual Slovak-born relatives are long dead however). We wanted to get matching tattoos and I don’t want another picture tattoo, just some text to augment my existing one, so I figured something written in Slovak would be a good idea.
We’ve been toying with the idea for a few years now and since my out-of-state cousin is moving here soon, now’s a good time.