Saturday, August 12, 2006

korkinet

Last week we got our son a kick scooter - in Hebrew a קורקינט korkinet. What is the origin of this word in Hebrew? Korkinet is a corruption of the French trottinette - which also refers to the same kind of scooter. Trottinette is related to the English word "trot", in the sense of "moving forward". Almagor explains that the corruption was probably via children, who heard "kro-" instead of "tro-", and from "kro-" they changed it to "kor-".

What is the official Hebrew word? Galgilayim גלגלים.

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