Russian rules, Czech geography

[Martin Votruba]

> Now what if the Slavic place name were a cognate of a Russian
> word like "selo" - for me this is purely hypothetical as no

It would probably be declined, Francoise.  (The Russian rule about 
not declining foreign names ending in -o has not developed 
spontaneously in the spoken language, cognates or not).  Such a full 
cognate could be Borovno -- a Czech village, and a Russian village 
and lake.  It would hardly occur to a native speaker not to decline 
it should they make a reference to the quite obscure Czech place -- 
the rule would have to be imposed by an editor or someone like that.

You can find, for instance, the Czech version (Kladsko) of the Polish 
place name Klodzko declined in Russian:

www.brocgaus.ru/text/006/381.htm

... and the Czech place name Blatno (scroll down the page):

http://stasdm.onego.ru/phillumeny/labels/czech/page1/page1_r.html

There are also instances of such Polish place names used with the 
locative ending in Russian.


Martin

votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu

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