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Marie Novotná: Adaptation of foreign words into Czech 119
3.3.3  Rules of Czech Spelling 1957
The Rules of Czech Spelling, introduced in 1957, brought the spelling
of foreign words closer to their pronunciation, though only for those
words that were used by a limited number of people, strictly scientifi c
words, expressions from literary language and words that relate only
to phenomena from the country of their origin (e.g. abbé, amenorrhoea,
rendez-vous, vaudeville etc.). There is also a group of words writt en
in the original way, because their pronunciation diff ers signifi cantly
from their writt en form, and the Czech transcription would be “very
unusual” (Rules 1957:45). Most loanwords, including current scien-
tifi c terms, are then adapted to Czech following these principles: ae,
oe pronounced as [e], [e:] should be writt en as such (sféra, enologie),
c as [k] (abstraktum), y as [j] (tramvaj), gu as [gv] (lingvista), rh as [r]
(rapsódie), th in Greek words as [t] (antropolog); double consonants
are omitt ed (tenis, alergie) and pronounced length is usually marked
(akvárium, limonáda) even if not always (lokomotiva, kultura). A special
problem that continued to develop was the use of s where it is pro-
nounced as [z]: in some words, only the variant that is phonetically
closer was allowed (bazén); in most cases doublets were allowed (iluze
or iluse, izolace or isolace), while in some classical words the s was ac-
cepted (impresionismus, president, fi losofi e). Russian words should also
be writt en according to their Czech spelling (kombajn), as should some
of French or English origin (atašé, bift ek, bujón, dispečer, donchuán, gauč,
kečup etc.). The original spelling is usually retained as concerns x (in-
dex) and other graphemes not occurring in originally Czech words at
all. Further, the original spelling is retained in writing y/i (gymnasium,
gigant, dynastie, diktát) – even if it collides with the general Czech rules
for using y/i, and in prefi xes (absence, subtilní). Nevertheless, the fi -
nal statement in the chapter expresses a tolerant att itude towards the
transcription of loanwords, as each case may depend on the purpose
of each particular text; i.e., the same term might be writt en diff erently
in a strictly scientifi c article than in a popularized text (Rules 1957:51).
In the paragraph on proper names it is mentioned that in cases of
famous personalities, the fi rst name – and sometimes also the second
name – is writt en in an adapted form (Kryštof Kolumbus, Jan Kalvín,
Vilém Tell, Ludvík XIV). For the fi rst time in its history, this version
of Rules also mentions the transliteration and transcription principles
for languages not using the Latin alphabet: rules introduced by spe-
cialists should be followed and their main principle is to suggest a
tunga_18.indb 119 11.3.2016 14:41:18