For several years, Russia has been very Russia First: eager to promote the Russian language, Russian traditions, Russian food, and basically everything made or invented or conceived on the land that is now the Russian Federation. It has been fairly successful, except in one area: language. No matter what Russia does, it can’t seem to dam up the flood of Anglicisms.
The reason to borrow words from other languages hasn’t changed much over the centuries. Russians have long borrowed words from Dutch, French, Tatar, and English to describe a new concept or object and express new connotations. They borrow when the foreign word is shorter and easier to say, or when using it makes you seem hip and cool. So, ship terminology came from Dutch, food and fashion words came from French, a lot of administrative and currency terminology came from Tatar, and technology and business terminology came from English.
Today, the English flood is connected with media, business, psychology and fashion. And speaking of flood, it’s флуд (not to be confused with наводнение). Флуд is a flood of long, tedious, wordy, annoying posts on social media. The person who does this is, of course, a флудер as in: Флудерам вход воспрещён! (No flooders allowed!)
For some reason, the favorite grammatical forms being borrowed these days are words ending in -ing, -ment, or -ist. For example, we attend тренинги (trainings) and брифинги (briefings), discuss трекинг посылок (tracking packages) or which cell provider has the best роуминг (roaming); spend evenings doing нетворкинг (networking); convince our boss to do аутсорсинг (outsourcing) and complain about the appalling троллинг (trolling) on social media. At the theater, Фильм — великолепный энтертейнмент. Экшен снят прекрасно. (The film was great entertainment. The action scenes were shot brilliantly.) That is much more fun than meeting с лоббистами и инвесторами (with lobbyists and investors).
Less common are verbs made out of imported words, although some have wiggled their way into Russian. Of course, on Facebook: текст набирает высокий положительный рейтинг, юзеры лайкают его (a text gets a high rating and users give it lots of Likes). And if there is лайкать (to like) there is хейтить (to hate), which is mostly used in the sense of bigoted hatred or ostentatious shows of dislike. Почему люди начинают хейтить то, что стало популярным? (How come people start to hate on something that has become popular?) Надо чилить! (You gotta chill.) Really.
Sometimes borrowed English words get Russified a bit. Crazy is крезанутый – which has some associations with another word that can mean screwed up – and sorry can be сорян, while a cheat sheet to help you on a test is хелпушка – what else?
If a few centuries ago it was the French who brought in fashion and all the words to describe it, today it comes in through the local аутлет (outlet), молл (mall), дисконт (discount shop), or sometimes even секонд хенд (second hand shops) or plain old ритейлеры (retailers). They flog the season’s маст-хэв (must have), which this year has been хендмейд (handmade goods), оверсайз (oversize clothes), and the essential свитшот (sweatshirt, as pronounced by someone who is not American).
Sports shoes are perplexing. There are entire treatises explaining the difference between кеды (sneakers, Keds) and кроссовки (running shoes). Converse-style sneakers are called баскетки for the basketball players who wear them. The cool kids wear Мартенсы, мартинсы, or Доки (Doc Martens).
But мейк-ап is not make-up – that’s still макияж. Мейк-ап is stage make-up or professional make-up done by a specialist called a визажист.
And there is a bit of resistance. A little black dress is still called маленькое чёрное платье.
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