Robot trivia for linguists: is there a reason robota and arbeit are more closely related than pracovat?
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And in Russian it’s closely linked to “раб”, or slave. Which might be the key.
Right, but English Robot clearly comes from Capek's robota. I guess my question is why Czech doesn't use that as a verb anymore but Russian does?
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Punting here; over last 100 years Czech has broadly tacked away from the influence of slavophile Russian toward a more Western European worldview. This has linguistic consequences too.
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Compare in Russian the well-known example where there are two words for “freedom”. There’s “свобода”, the more abstract or intellectual concept of “liberty”.
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Then there’s “воля”, a word cognate with “will” which one wag framed as the Russian’s freedom to get drunk, kick a cow, and sleep it off in a ditch, without consequences.
End of conversation
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