Orð og tunga - 01.06.2016, Side 131

Marie Novotná: Adaptation of foreign words into Czech 121
publications: the Akademický slovník cizích slov [Academic Dictionary
of Foreign Words] (1995), or Slovník spisovné češtiny pro školu a veřejnost
[Dictionary of Standard Czech for the School and the Public] (1994).
3.4 Current situation
The latest codifying publication is the Akademická příručka českého
jazyka [Academic Handbook of the Czech Language], published in
2014. In Paragraph 6, concerning the adaptation of foreign words into
Czech, proper names included, we can read the following general
rules: The way in which borrowings are writt en depends mainly on
the frequency of their usage – the original way of writing is retained
in words which are rare or are fi xed phrases from Latin or other lan-
guages (ad hoc, curriculum vitae, pour féliciter), words that are strictly
technical, scholarly terms (brutt o, allegro, leasing), international units
(joule, watt ), and words that relate to the country of their origin (green-
horn, yeti, lunch). One also fi nds the same principle as is mentioned
for the fi rst time in Rules 1957 (see above): there is a group of words
that are writt en as in the original language, even if these are common
words, because – to a native Czech – their pronunciation is very dif-
ferent from their writt en form (bulletin, interview, outsider, revue, base-
ball, dealer, leasing, hat-trick), i.e., any changes, if adopting the Czech
transcription, would be too extensive (Akademická příručka českého ja-
zyka 2014:54).
The process of adapting the writt en form is described in the hand-
book as a long, gradual (basin – basén – bazén) and complicated one,
where a lot of factors play a role. Apart from the frequency of a par-
ticular word, there are also the lexical and morphological features,
similarity with domestic words and their domains of usage. Exam-
ples of recently adapted words, where two ways of writing still exist,
include the following: business – byznys, briefi ng – brífi nk, break – brejk,
manager – manažer.
In contrast to these cases, where the language publications just
codify an existing state, scientifi c terms constitute a special case since
the decision on their writt en form is made by a particular authority.
E.g. the International Society for Theoretical and Applied Chemistry
decided in 1960 that oxid is to be writt en with an i (in contrast to oxyd
which is how the spelling was earlier, since y is the regular lett er aft er
x in Czech). This is an analogy to chlorid, bromid. In the fi rst part of the
word, however, the y is retained (oxygen).
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