Excuse My English!

Not all anglicisms in Russian are “false friends” (see page 54). For instance, when you hear your Russian friend say he’s just eaten a гамбургер (hamburger), there’s no linguistic trap – he does mean a piece of ground beef with that distinctively dull, rubbery taste. (Inventive Russian journalists and literary critics have recently created a hybrid borrowing – ловбургер, “love-burger” –blending the notion of hamburger tediousness with cheap, romantic fiction translated from English.)

Indeed, the list of borrowed Russian words you need not suspect of being false friends of interpreters is lengthy: такси, метро, бар, аэропорт, видео, шоу, etc. Take them for granted and thank modern civilization for sparing you the trouble to learn them. Oh, and don’t forget to give thanks for the fall of the USSR. With the arrival of a market economy and a new political era, the list of borrowed words has enlarged considerably.

For instance, even communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, in spite of his paranoic hatred for things foreign, talks about Yeltsin’s tarnished имидж and works on improving his own. His colleagues from the former Soviet Communist Party didn’t care much about their имидж, or рейтинг for that matter – they were always “elected.” They could never be impeached either, only “removed” by death or some secret пленум. Today even children know the word импичмент, borrowed from U.S. democracy and often brandished so threateningly by the communist faction in the Duma against Yeltsin.

The most difficult wave of borrowings from the English has been adopted by Russian students and vendors, and distorted to such an extent that they have become unrecognizable to native English speakers.

If a Russian asked you how many баксы you’d paid for your трузера or шузы, you probably wouldn’t realize he was asking you how many bucks you’d paid for your trousers or shoes. Because of linguistic adaptation of borrowings to local pronunciation, Russians tend to pronounce the English plural “s” as well as the Russian plural “ы”. This is what makes some borrowings an inalienable part of the slang, e.g.: “Мои пэрентцы сегодня домой не придут – давайте устроим у меня сэйшн и позовём герлов.” (“My parents won’t be coming home tonight, so let’s have a party [session] at my place and invite some girls over”). This is the kind of language you’d expect from the son of well-known Russian diplomats who spent a long time in the U.S..

One can only guess how many батлы or ботлы (from the English “bottles”) they might дринкануть (drink) in the absence of the пэрентцы. And then, if they have too much вискарь (i.e. whiskey), the next day most of them будут в дауне (will be down).

When trendy Russian students flag down a taxi, meanwhile, they won’t be offering the driver пять тысяч рублей (five thousand rubles) but rather a файфушник or тен (from the English “five” or “ten”).

The first thing these guys look for when they buy something for themselves is the лейбл (label). They hope it is real стейтсовый (from the States) and not sporting a fake Levi’s лейбл stuck on the джинсы (jeans) by the vendor. In these circles, people are what they wear, so they would laugh at anyone dressed like a кантри or кантрушник (i.e. country bumpkin). They really make you крейзануться (go crazy), because their primitive mentality fits the look on their фэйс. All they dream of is to drive their own мерс (Mercedes) or вольвушник (Volvo).

The electronic revolution has inevitably brought another wave of anglicisms to the Russian language. Words like компьютер, принтер and факс are obvious, but many are obscured by that old Russian habit of adding suffixes. Hence a Russian computer programmer might spend a day tuning up his писюк (PC) and working on a файлец (file), then go home and relax in front of the телик (television) or put on a видик (video) or сидюк (CD).

OK, now let’s say you’re in Moscow. After an long day of exercising your best survival Russian skills, you feel like relaxing your tongue a bit and speaking a bit of pure English with a “local” expat.

Dream on. Once you start talking about local realities, you’ll be amazed by the inadequacy of English. Apart from such obvious Russianisms as borshch and politburo, you’ll hear plenty of novelties taken from contemporary Russian life.

An expat veteran would make a point of telling you that he has just remonted his apartment (a verb from the Russian ремонт – renovation), and how much valuta (currency) or dengi (rubles) he has spent to make his kvartira (apartment) a place he looks forward to coming home to after a long day.

The seasoned traveler would remind you to buy a proyezdnoy (monthly pass) for city transport unless you want to pay a shtraf (fine). And note: you never cross a street or transfer trains, you always perekhod.

If you ask an expat how to get tickets to the Bolshoi he won’t say you have two options but rather two variants – to buy the tickets from the kassa (cashier) or from spekulyanty (black market dealers).

For expats in Russia, the usage of such words as these is a way to show off one’s immersion in local culture. The result is the continued mingling of our two languages. Thus, whatever debts Russian owes to English for the borrowing of words have been (or are being) generously paid back. And as the Russian saying goes, Долг платежом красен (The beauty of a debt is in its payment).