Word of the Day

Thursday, January 8, 2015

English loanwords in Czech

Decades ago not many Czechs knew how English words were pronounced and that explains why some words were adopted and adapted according to their spelling in English, not to their pronunciation. An example is cowboy, which became kovboj in English, which sounds nothing like English cowboy. The same with tramway, which became tramvaj. But decades later things are a bit different. Runway entered the language as ranvej, which is much closer to how the English original. Funny how two words ending in way, tramway and runway, met different fates in the same language.

1 comment:

Jonathan said...

Eu nunca liguei tramvaj a tramway. Tá explicado =D