Tricky Words in this week's OVI
You might have noticed that all references to "Olympic" and "Olympiad" have disappeared from the name of U. S. Steel Košice's corporate summer games for employees. This is the upshot especially of
the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, where the most draconian legal measures were applied to protect the commercial sponsors' interests, mainly consisting of banning and removing all other
products, adverts, pictorial and textual references from non-sponsoring companies.
This led in turn to a tightening-up of the rules on the use of the words "Olympic" and "Olympiad" by other organizations, because the International Olympic Committee has obtained the copyright on
these words as well as on the symbols of the five Olympic rings and the three Paralympic half-circles. "Copyright on the word Olympic??" you gasp - well, it's all about protecting business
interests.
Andy's Wordshop
So if other organizations are not allowed to use the expression "Olympic Games", then USSK has to find another name for its summer and winter competitions for employees - and here comes another
little problem due to the difference in origin comparing the Slovak "hra" with the English "game". "Hra" comes from "hrať" (to play), so it's a general word which needs to be qualified, like
"divadelná hra" (a theater play) or "športové hry" (literally "sports games").
But "sport" and "game" mean exactly the same thing - amusement (zábava) - because these words come from Old German and Latin respectively, so "sports games" is a strange combination, like saying
the same thing twice. What is more, in modern English most sports are games, but not all games are sports. The upshot of this is that I recommend the names "USSK Summer Games" and "USSK Winter
Games", because it's not necessary to translate every single word from Slovak to English.
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