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Palindromes

All languages contain in their vocabulary words or sentences which have a specific property: they are invariant with respect to the order in which they are read. Such words are called palindromes (again from Greek). Thus, some words contained in the list below have been found by a special program in the Czech National Corpus: for instance, the word míněním (lit.: by opinion) is one of such palindromes found.

The list of Czech palindromes (common words only):

a, aga, aha, bab, blb, bob, cuc, cídíc, cílíc, cítíc, dohod, dud, děd, gag, i, jej, jetej, ježej, ječej, jéj, k, kajak, kecek, klk, kok, krk, kuk, ležel, lil, lišil, lál, madam, mechem, medem, mejem, melem, menem, metem, mečem, mim, minim, máchám, mám, márám, mávám, mém, míjím, mílím, míněním, míním, mísím, mířím, mýlím (only in spoken Czech), mým, nejen, nepochopen, nepotopen, nesen, nezasazen, nezařazen, nesen, nán, nón, o, oko, ono, pochop, pop, potop, píp, radar, rotor, s, ses, sis, slils, snesens, tahat, tet, tát, tít, tůt, týt, u, uchu, v, vymyv, věděv, z, zaraz, šílíš, šíš, šíříš, čuč, číč, úlů, úzů.

Having the whole repertory of the Czech palindromes at your disposal, you can form your own story out of these words. You can draw inspiration from the following tale, which is not so stupid as it may seem, given the very limited means you have at your disposal (some nice proper names are used, too):

Gag

Aha, madam Anna Soros, cídíc kajak, radar, klk a krk mým mechem. Potop jej! A děd mim ležel nejen nezasazen Ivovi v uchu, i nepotopen a nezařazen. Šílíš, Ubu? Mávám mečem nepochopen k márám a mířím k uchu a v oko. Lišil ses míněním o Chetitech a pochop Pilip lál Ivovi s medem u píp.

It is, however, a real mastery to compose and devise long and at the same time sensible palindromic sentences such as the Czech sentences:

Zeman seno dones na mez.
Jelenovi pivo nelej.
Na pět šídel hledí Štěpán.
Kobyla má malý bok.
Celkem jednu sovu sám pan knap má suvo sundejme klec.
Šenkýřko křikneš.

In these examples the differences in the quantity are neglected.

Renata Blatná, Vladimír Petkevič, ©2001

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