Word of the Day

Friday, August 22, 2008

Metathesis "between languages"

It's fairly common to find metathesis between Romance languages, as in Spanish preguntar and Portuguese perguntar (to ask), Spanish perjuicio and Portuguese prejuízo (damage), but yesterday I ran into one in two Slavic languages: Czech plukovník and Poslih pułkownik (colonel). This was the first one I've found but I'm sure there must be others, it was just that I haven't been looking. I'm also trying to think of similar cases in Germanic languages, but I can't think of anything right now.

1 comment:

Jana said...

English: carp
German: Karpfen
Russian: карп
Polish: karp
Czech: kapr