Foreign words are an integral and important part of any developing, living language. The Russian language is no exception in this regard. Foreign terms and words enrich it, make it more flexible and imaginative, help explain complex phenomena and thoughts more simply and concisely. Language borrowings serve as an indicator of the depth of interstate and interethnic interaction.
What it is?
Foreign words are words that have entered the Russian language from other languages. Borrowing words is a completely natural and necessary process, which becomes a consequence of the cultural, commercial, military, political relations of the Russian state with other countries.
During its development, the Russian language passed through a lot of foreign words, filtering out unnecessary, leaving and mastering useful ones. At the moment, foreign borrowings make up about a tenth of all Russian vocabulary. Many of them are so dissolved in the language that they are now perceived as original Russian words.
Why is this happening?
Intensive borrowing of foreign words is not a sign of language weakness. On the contrary, it is an indicator of his strength, energy, vitality. The more actively the state develops and interacts with the world around it, the more new terms and concepts the state language absorbs.
Especially a lot of foreign words in a language appear at the moment of cardinal social, political or cultural transformations. For example, on Russian soil, such transformations were the coming of Orthodoxy to Russia, the Mongol-Tatar invasion, Peter's reforms, revolutions of the early 20th century, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian language has always easily absorbed foreign words, using them for their needs.
Among the main reasons for borrowing are the following:
- contacts with other states;
- the need for terms and names that were lacking in the Russian language;
- replacement of a large and difficult to understand descriptive momentum with one foreign word;
- differentiation of concepts that are close in meaning, but differ in detail;
- the authority of a foreign language in a certain field (science, music);
- fashion for language in certain sectors of society;
- the need to identify and describe a foreign culture, customs, traditions.
How does this happen?
Foreign words in the Russian language appear in two ways: through oral speech or through writing. Oral borrowing sometimes changes words beyond recognition. So, the Italian word tartufolo turned into “potato”, and the German kringel into “pretzel”. With written borrowing, words practically do not change their appearance and sound.
Getting into a new linguistic environment, a foreign word gradually obeys the laws of grammar, phonetics, word formation accepted in the Russian language and eventually turns from cutting foreign eyes and eyes to a “foreign body” into a full-fledged representative of Russian vocabulary. Foreign words are borrowed both directly in the contact of the Russian language with a foreign language, and indirectly - through an intermediary language.
Languages Donors
The Russian state at all times led an active foreign policy, spreading its activities and interests outside. In this, it differed, for example, from China or Japan, which were reluctant to contact foreigners. Russia was open for relations with its neighbors, occupied new lands, traded and fought with other countries, readily got acquainted with foreign cultures, and studied craft, science, and military affairs from more developed states.
These contacts were accompanied by an intensive borrowing of foreign words. Russian came into contact with many languages, mastering the new and necessary foreign terms. Some of them left a very weak mark, but several languages in total became for Russian a source of hundreds of new words:
- Scandinavian languages. Ancient Russia traded with the Vikings in the 7th century. A reminder of the Scandinavians in the Russian language remained words such as sneak, vira, brand.
- Mongolian and Turkic. A huge layer of words was mastered by the Russian language during the Golden Horde, many of them finally Russified and now seem originally Slavic. Examples: pearls, watermelon, felt, treasury, warrior, esaul, balamut, guard, alarm, label, chest.
- Greek. He began to penetrate into Russian vocabulary before Christianization, but a particularly noticeable borrowing of Greek words began in the 9th century after the Baptism of Russia along with the distribution of church books. Examples: chamber, lantern, ribbon, letter, sail, angel, monastery, icon, hell, alphabet, galaxy, metal, as well as the names Sophia, Elena, Evdokia, Angelina, Kuzma, Eugene, Fedor, Stepan, Peter.
- Latin. The international language of science, religion, politics, literature, philosophy, technology, official papers, medicine, law. In Russian, there was a catastrophic lack of terminology in these areas. Latin along with Greek has become an invaluable assistant in the development of Russian sciences, diplomacy and business writing. Examples of terms: justice, administrator, operation, deputy, dictatorship, censorship, revolution, postulate, deduction, fact.
- Polish. The Russian language, as a rule, mastered the Polish names of household or military items. Examples: bacon, cattle, zrazy, jacket, delicate, strict, beg, bully, face, plaque, harness, carriage, monogram, drill.
- Deutsch. This language gave Russian a lot of professionalism, the names of everyday things and military foreign words. Examples: faucet, kitchen, sandwich, dial, corkscrew, workbench, lancet, locksmith, hairdresser, waiter, soldier, market, elevator, camp, resort, calm, rank, guardhouse, parade ground, assault, knight.
- French. He had a huge impact on Russian vocabulary. The first French words began to be borrowed even before the era of Peter the Great, but the real dawn of Gallomania occurred in the 18-19th century, when French became the main language of a higher educated society. Sometimes nobles spoke it much better than Russian. Examples: recruit, general, diamond, compote, cutlet, magazine, lipstick, attack, battalion, anesthesia, routine, coat, chandelier, shocking, limit, jargon, barricade, demarche, cafe, cognac, tomato, nightmare, chance, beach, etiquette.
- Italian. The language of art, music, theater. From it came into Russian such words as impresario, clown, cantata, recitative, aria, opera, tenor, bass, mandolin, flute, baroque, duet, arch, balcony, mosaic, dome, sweatshirt, drawers, vermicelli, passport.
- Dutch. First of all, he enriched the Russian language with marine terms, but not only with them. Examples: boat, mast, inch, pennant, shout, sailor, shipyard, galley, boatswain, yacht, gangway, chintz, sprats, anchovy, umbrella.
- English. Another language that has had and is having a significant impact on Russian vocabulary. Moreover, English words are famous for their versatility, they are used by the Russian language in various fields of human activity. Examples: train station, rail, tunnel, knockout, leader, hockey, default, realtor, rally, trolley, car, quark, spin, laser, crossword, jeans, raid, finish, poster, show.
- Soviet republics. The USSR was an international state in which republican languages retained their identity, actively interacting with the main state language. The Russian language assimilated such words as: teahouse, aryk, tkemali, rushnyk, hut, divchina, farmer, adjika, lavash, khachapuri.
Types of foreign words
All foreign words mastered by the Russian language can be divided into four large parts:
- Borrowed.
- Exotisms.
- Foreign inclusions.
- Internationalism.
Borrowed words
Borrowed (or mastered) foreign words - these are words that originally appeared in a foreign language, and then were introduced into Russian and mastered by him. Borrowed words are completely settled in the new language environment. Such words are transmitted by means of graphic and phonetic means of the Russian language, obey its grammatical rules, have a definite, stable meaning, are widely used in various fields of knowledge and activity. Examples: clown, rocket, corps, arsenal, saber, shark, sandals, office, square, kefir, zenith, welter, fakir, verse, fiesta, cavalier, firm, tea, vacation, postulate, oval, fruit, canister, backpack, peat, film, flask, ottoman, table, fair, driver, locomotive, orange.
Exoticism
These are words that will allow you to localize, clarify the description of something for which there are no specific words in the Russian language. Exotisms help figuratively and succinctly describe a foreign reality, convey the national flavor, the uniqueness of the region, people, country. With their help, you can create the effect of presence, endow with special national characteristics of literary characters. The most common types of exotisms are:
- Institutions - Diet, Hural, Reichstag, Parliament, Parliament.
- Drinks and food - whiskey, gin, feather, goulash, pilaf, pudding, risotto, paella, posture, pasta.
- Items of clothing - sombrero, kimono, sari, zupan, geta, poncho.
- Money - dollars, yens, drams, francs, dinars.
- Titles, professions, officials - Lord, Labor, Abbot, Beck, Chancellor, Gondolier, Rickshaw, Geisha, Hetman, Burger, Mr., Don, Mrs.
- National holidays - Purim, Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, Shabbat, Kurban Bayram, Uraza Bayram, Pongal, Vesak, Asala, Fiesta.
- Dances, songs and musical instruments - hopak, minuet, sirtaki, yodel, khoomei, duduk, bagpipes, sitar, maracas.
- The name of the winds is sirocco, tornado, snowstorm, marshmallows, boreas, mistral.
- Dwellings - yaranga, wigwam, hut, needle.
Foreign inclusions
These foreign words differ from exoticism in that, as a rule, they retain their original phonetics and graphic spelling. Often foreign language impregnations become winged expressions, which are used in scientific works, fiction, journalism and direct speech. Often they are playful or ironic.
Examples: alter ego, post factum, c'est la vie, tete-a-tete, happy end, ok, post scriptum, terra incognita.
Internationalism
These are kind of cosmopolitan words that sound almost the same in many languages. International scientific terms often become universal scientific terms that are easily understood without translation throughout the world. The greatest contribution to the creation of such foreign words was made by Latin, English and Greek.
Examples: television, philosophy, republic, civilization, constitution, space, satellite, chaos, gas, car, democracy, monologue, atom, student.
Foreign words in modern Russian
Recent decades have brought the Russian language two major waves of borrowing. The Union collapsed, the ideological curtain collapsed, harsh party censorship disappeared, a grandiose socio-political reorganization took place in the country. In the vocabulary of Russians, on the pages of books and newspapers, on television screens, a lot of new words or words that have been mastered for a long time, but out of use, have appeared.
At the same time, an information technology revolution was unfolding all over the planet, resulting in hundreds of phenomena, processes and things that did not have a name and that received them, as a rule, with the help of the English language. These new terms were quickly absorbed into other languages. In Russian modern language, foreign words appeared or began to play with new colors. These, for example, are words such as:
- in politics - separatist, corruption, legitimate, inauguration, public relations, oligarch, prime minister, image, president, senator;
- in the economy - brand, default, outsourcing, business, voucher, inflation, investment, holding, issue, company, consulting, holding, management, merchandiser;
- in the information technology field - blog, Internet, website, avatar, update, installation, cursor, browser, click, offline, interface, login, posting, link;
- in sports - snowboarding, freestyle, curling, kiting, overtime, kitesurfing;
- in music - rap, punk, house, hip-hop, rave, mix.