Virtual Russian

So there you are, sitting in front of your компьютер, connected to the Интернет with your браузер program open to your favorite Web-сайт. After entering your логин and your пассворд (though the more “proper” Russian term is пароль), you enter a technical news форум. You скрол down the page (ignoring the баннеры at the top) and read where one company is seeking a Flash-дизайнер; another, a webмастер. A third company has announced the release of a new program, a download-менеджер, implemented as a Java-апплет. A хакер in Asia has released a new вирус. While reading the new посты, you note that there are several оффтопик messages, as well as some containing спам. Afterward, you visit an interesting блог, or maybe just do some серфинг.

As you may have noticed by now, a really important skill for understanding much of modern Russian computer-speak is the ability to transliterate. It wasn’t always this way. Back at about the time when high-powered executives at companies like DEC and IBM estimated the total worldwide demand for computers to be – at most – several dozen units, the term электронная вычислительная машина (“electronic computing machine”) was coined in Russian. This healthy mouthful was nearly always shortened to the time-saving ЭВМ (“eh-veh-em”), and as it became clear that computers would develop along fundamentally electronic lines, the first word (letter) atrophied and was often omitted.

When computers became personal, вычислительные машины became “персональные” until the early 90s, when компьютер finally overwhelmed the old, bloated collocation, and Russians started using the “персональный компьютер,” or “ПК.” In today’s jargon, even компьютер has given ground in everyday slang (and on the Web) to the shorter “комп.” Terms used for “software” evolved in a roughly parallel manner. Originally, “software” was described by the term “программно-математическое обеспечение” (“programmed mathematical support”), abbreviated “ПМО.” Many manuals still refer to “программное обеспечение,” “математическое обеспечение,” or just “обеспечение.” Today, on the Internet, the single-syllable word “софт” (or less frequently, “прога,” short for “программа”) rules.

One of the most remarkable phenomena of the past few years in Russian cities such as Moscow is the increasingly widespread mixing of Latin words and names with Cyrillic in print and broadcast media (I recently saw “Das ist fantastisch!” on a Moscow billboard for German beer, and thought: “It certainly is!”). The same mixing can be seen at a much more intense level over the extent of the entire Russian Internet (Рунет). The rules of expression are fairly simple. Names of companies (Toshiba, Dell), programs (Flash, Windows), hardware (Palm Tungsten, iPod), and abbreviations (HTML, ASP) generally remain Latinized. In addition, there is virtually no penalty for using English words for commonly used concepts (e.g., shareware, WYSIWYG, ftp) or for using English words in conjunction with Russian modifiers, e.g., CGI-скрипт (a program that generates a web page dynamically) and write-доступ (the ability to change – “write” in computerese – the contents of a файл).

This intermixing of Latin and Cyrillic in Russian computing has resulted in the curious neologism лытдыбр, often found online as a reference to an online journal entry. The etymology of this word turns on the fact that, if you type the Russian word “дневник” (“journal”) on a standard Russian keyboard but do so while the keyboard is toggled to type in Latin, the resulting characters typed spell “lytdybr” on the screen. Transliterating into Cyrillic completes the cycle and produces the neologism.

This is not to say that knowledge of a little Russian will not be useful in finding one’s way around a computer or the Internet. A variety of closely-related words are used to describe downloading. These include качать, скачивать, откачивать, and загружать. Unless you have reliable access, you will probably use a качалка, or a download-менеджер, which is a program that permits you to download portions of a file at a time, for those times when your модем keeps dropping the connection. If you’re using a дайлап connection, you’ll probably use a звонилка, or a program that manages the dial-up process between your computer and the сервер used by your Интернет-провайдер.

If you’re looking for a link to a site’s home page, you should be on the lookout for either a главная страница, первая страница, or домашняя страница (although the first is used four times more often on the Рунет than the other two combined).

In keeping with the glorious tradition of never using more syllables when fewer will do, the word хомяк is gaining ground as the name for a site’s home page (хомяк also means hamster).

If you see (or more likely, hear) a reference to ася or аська, know that the subject is ICQ, the instant messaging service. Мыло (soap) refers to e-mail. Sites that distribute варез (“warez”) should be avoided as they offer illegal copies of commercial software. When things don’t work the way they are intended, or if your computer crashes, the problem can be said to be the result of a глюк (“bug”).

A network is a сеть, which is also used to refer to the Internet, unless the adjective локальный (“local”) is used, thus referring to a LAN. And while most old-timers will understand what you mean if you refer to a винчестер (“Winchester,” referring to an early hard drive technology), you’ll sound more up to date if you speak of a жёсткий диск, or even – surprise, surprise – a хард драйв.