It recently came to my attention that “Ahoj” means “hello” in the Czech language. Strangely enough, it means something very similar in sailor-speak: think of all those pirate caricatures: “Ahoy there, matey…” etc. That the word “ahoy” should have a cognate in a foreign language, or even be derived from a real word in a foreign language, is not terribly surprising. But of all places, why would it come from the landlocked Czech Republic, about as far from the sea as you can get in Europe?
Tags: ahoy, Czech, linguistics
