Word of the Week: osel – ‘donkey’
This stubborn but useful animal was much liked by the Romans, who depended on donkeys for transporting goods around their empire.
It’s not too surprising then that their word for the animal, asinus, formed the basis for other languages’ donkey-words. It may have been a diminutive ‘little donkey’ (asellus) which then made its way into the common ancestor of today’s Slavic languages, becoming *osьlъ. This would in turn become Czech osel.
Far to the west of the old Roman Empire, Celtic languages like Welsh and Irish had also adopted asinus from the Romans. It was from one of these languages, likely the ancestor of Welsh spoken in Britain, that English gets ass.
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Word of the Week
Danny Bate, our resident linguist, offers a selection of everyday Czech words, to discuss their history and show how interconnected and familiar the Czech language can be.
