Andy’s Wordshop

Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year to All Readers!

Tricky Words in this week‘s OVI

Cooperate and cooperation. It’s not surprising a lot of people think these are simple translations of spolupracovať and spolupráca, because ­"­co-" means spolu and "work" means "function", "operate" or "operation", so together they should mean the same as spolupráca. Very often they do have the same meaning, for example "Our company is cooperating/in cooperation with XY Company on a new development project." The problem starts in situations where one person wants someone else to cooperate specifically with him/her, as when a teacher tells the class "I need more cooperation from you. Are you going to cooperate with me?" That really means "Are you going to do as you are told? If not, there will be trouble." So there’s a threat involved in "cooperate" which I don‘t feel so strongly in spolupracovať.