🙋🏾 🧑🏼 👨‍🍳 Anglicisms capture the Russian language: why this happens 🍼 👩🏽‍🍳 👂🏽

“If he fills this task, and again I have to fix bugs, I’ll submit a report to my boss and I won’t be able to correct the engagement for the next project.”

Such a monologue can be heard in some IT-office. If you translate it into normal Russian, you get something like:

"If he fails and this task is over, and again I have to correct the errors, I will submit a report to my boss and simply will not participate in the next project."

But why not use normal Russian? After all, Anglicisms are gradually capturing it, and now instead of meetings in many companies, rallies, instead of personnel officers - eychars, and instead of features of the product - features.

Language is a plastic system

To be honest, we at EnglishDom ourselves often use Englishism. And we see nothing wrong with that. Instead of “native speaker” we say neutral, and instead of “deadline for the completion of the project” we have “deadline”.

Any language is a very flexible system that changes under the influence of other languages. This is a natural process.

This has happened before. For example, the word “routine” is a typical borrowing from the French “routine”. In Russian-speaking lands, the word became popular in the 18th century, when everything French was fashionable.

Aristocrats loved to screw a French word in the midst of a conversation. And the "routine" became so familiar that it entered into everyday life.

Today you can find tens of thousands of words that migrated to Russian from other languages. Default, pub, killer, shredder, thriller, burger - all these are quite ordinary words for us that do not cut the ear. Among the literary vocabulary there are also a huge number of them: vary, emphasis, infection, reconstruction, elastic.

With the advent of the Internet, the speed of such changes has increased hundreds of times. That is why many slang words taken from other languages sound very strange - people do not have time to get used to changing the language.

In narrow circles, borrowed words are used more actively. For example, in the fields of IT and digital. And there is a logical explanation for this.

To begin with, it is worth explaining why the source of the vast majority of borrowings is now English. The reason is simple: English is the most common Internet language.

Borrowings from other languages also exist, but there are far fewer of them than from English. For example, from Japanese to Russian came the words aikido, karate, sushi, wasabi, ramen, anime, manga. And there are many such examples. But English here has an overwhelming advantage.

There are 4 reasons why borrowings from other languages take root in Russian so quickly.

Reason 1. There is no word in the language to denote a new process or concept.

Sometimes changes in politics or economics occur too quickly. And more often than not, there is no time to come up with new designations.

That is how the words summit, impeachment, default, investor appeared in Russian.

There is no direct correspondence - the easiest way is to take a word from a foreign language and add it to your needs. For example, the words provider, display, browser, traffic and many others moved to the IT sphere.

In English, these concepts have already been created and used everywhere, so it would be much better not to try to invent a bicycle and just to adjust.

Typically, this group includes those Anglicisms who accept almost everything. They do not seem to be something wrong or foreign.

Reason 2. The Russian word does not fully or inaccurately reflect the meaning of the concept

There is a word "brand". In Russian, it’s kind of like a “trademark”. But in reality, “brand” matters much more widely than “brand”.

According to the dictionary, a brand is a complex of representations, associations, emotions, value characteristics about a product or service in the minds of consumers.

This is not just an icon or image, it is the feeling that customers receive from contact with a product or service. That is, the Russian word exists, but it cannot fully explain the meaning of what is meant.

IT professionals often use the word "expertise." For example, “I have a lot of expertise in setting up servers.” We ourselves often use it.

In Russian, there is the word “examination”, and it means “consideration, research of something by experts, experts for the correct assessment of something, conclusion”.

But in IT, the English meaning of the word "expertise" is meant, which means "a high level of specialized knowledge and practical experience."

In fact, once a borrowed word was borrowed again to expand the meanings that it means.

Philologists are rather cold on borrowings of this type. But the fact is that they have already become part of the language - albeit not recognized by official rules.

Here are a few more such concepts: glamor, fitness, image, hater. All of them, in principle, can be replaced by Russian counterparts.

For example:

glamor - charm
fitness - charging
image - appearance
hater - ill-wisher

But you yourself see that with this replacement definitions lose a bunch of shades of meanings or distort them. After all, a “glamorous girl” absolutely does not correspond to a “charming girl”.

Reason 3. Youth and trends

Sufficient reason for all sorts of different words to penetrate youth slang. The process itself began after the fall of the Iron Curtain in the USSR.

Many of us, as teenagers, used newfangled loanwords.

Here, for example, are some of these borrowings, popular in the 80s and 90s.

Shoes -
Haer Boots - Hair
Session - Concert

But if earlier such borrowings made up only a small part of the whole slang, now now it is clearly more than half. And the main donor for him is English.

Agrit -
angry Log in - send voice messages
Gamat - play
Crash - a person who really likes
Proof - proof
Flofl - laugh
Follow - follow me on social networks

Interestingly, youth slang is its own almost closed linguistic system, which has very little effect on the language. Actually, that’s why trash, fumes and sodomy can occur in the youth language from the point of view of linguistics, but this will not affect the language as a whole.

Only a tiny part of youth slang passes into the "adult" language. And even then, for the most part, it remains somewhere at the level of passive vocabulary. It seems like you understand, but you do not use it yourself.

Reason 4. Borrowing allows you to shorten a long phrase or phrase in Russian

Probably the most controversial reason. Actually, it is these borrowed words that cause the maximum butthert (yes, that's right).

Meeting - working meeting
Skip - miss
Day-offs -
Fakap off -
Task failure - task

The only reason such borrowings are used is because it is shorter. Actually, precisely because of the saving of time, borrowing and reduction take over offices in different companies.

When one long phrase is replaced by a short word, this can still be "understood and forgiven." But sometimes whole phrases are completely replaced.

Say "Task on Hold" is shorter than "I will do this task later."

Linguists call such attempts “ruglish” or “ruglish”. When Russian and English words are mixed in an attempt to shorten a phrase or somehow supplement its meanings.

But when it comes to the following phrases, then we get lost.

Zapapruvili my forkast, it is necessary to incapacitate sales Kipiay.
The sprint ends, but our increment is not deflated.
Asain Tasku Asap!

Do you have any ideas how to translate the phrases into normal Russian above? Write them in the comments!

Yes, the examples are a little exaggerated, but we really met companies in which they communicate in a similar language. We don’t know whether it really saves time and improves performance, but the reality is that in narrow social groups, the language can change as much as you like.

And you know, we support that.

The meaning of communication is that two people find a common language. If the interlocutor understood all the meanings of the phrase that the speaker put into it, then it has a place to be.

EnglishDom , . , , . , .

Languages are extremely flexible systems. And with the development of the Internet, they have become even more flexible. And borrowing words from other languages is a natural process. The only problem is that the changes are happening so quickly now that we do not have time to get used to them.

Not only Russian, but also other languages are changing. Keep this in mind when learning English or any other foreign language. And in order not to learn the grammar that was common a hundred years ago, learn English with competent teachers.

How do you feel about English in Russian?

EnglishDom.com online school - inspire you to learn English through technology and human care

Only for readers of Habr the first lesson with the teacher on Skype for free ! And when you purchase classes, get up to 3 lessons as a gift!

Get a whole month of premium subscription to the ED Words app for free .
Enter the promotional code for anglicisms on this page or directly in the ED Words app . The promotional code is valid until 05.27.2021.

Our products: