Intercultural communication of Russian and English languages

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Иностранные языки и языкознание


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«The limits of my language

mean the limits of my world. «

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889−1951),

Australian philosopher.


If we take such languages, that had never mixed or had never been taken into the contact, it would all the same turn out, that they had an influence in the past and they are making an influence now on each other. This influence can be observed here as the process of language contact.

Borrowings — are words and word combinations, adopted from one language to another according to its phonetic and grammatical rules. The number of borrowings is different in each language. There are languages full of loan-words, such as Korean: it includes about 2/3 of Chinese lexical units. Others have a little number of loan-words: such as Russian, French and German. Nevertheless, there are languages — Czech, Chinese and Hungarian — which make an effort in order to avoid the input of foreign words and try to make up new words and expressions for a new concept by their own lexical units. But there is no language without any borrowings because nations can’t be separated from each other and communication — cultural, scientific and trade — can’t be synthetically stopped.

There are different types of borrowings. In the most cases the necessity of adopting some word appears with the penetration of corresponding item or acquiring new notion. In this way the word «спутник» — «spoutnik"See «Application № 4, articles» in French and «sputnik» in English was borrowed by many languages from Russian after the launch of the first Soviet artificial sputnik of the Earth.

In XIX century many loan-words, connected with philosophy and politics, appeared in Russian language. By that time some of them acquired the status of international, for example: progress, solidarity, proletariat and bourgeois, socialism and communism. Russian revolutioner M.B. Butashevich-Petrashevskiy used the process of the international words assimilation for the propaganda of the socialism. In 1845 he published the dictionary of foreign words that had got on into Russian language. The dictionary was immediately confiscated by the censorship, and Petrashevskiy was arrested. And it was expectable, because there were the detailed explanation of such words as «демократия», «конституция» etc in the dictionary. The flow of borrowing foreign words into Russian language had especially increased in 90-s. It is connected with the inflexions in such spheres as politics, economy, culture and new concepts of morality. The extraordinary expansion of foreign lexica had been observed in this period.

The realities of «new time» appeared mostly in such spheres as mass-media, advertising and IT because they present the most update phenomena of our modern lifestyle. It became fashionable for nowadays to use borrowings which came from English into Russian. It is conditioned by the tendency of American society idealisation, where the social life level is very high. Also we can’t deny the speed of technical progress in English speaking countries. It is obvious that they have a great potential in almost every sphere of modern society. That’s why we need to borrow words in order to name new concepts. The other reason and may be the most important is that English language nowadays serves as the language of international communication. May be we should wait a little and «людская речь в один язык сольется» as Sergey Yesenin wrote in his poem. Many Russian scientists are very troubled with the tendency of English and American words penetration into Russian language. There are a lot of examples in the history when one language gradually absorbed the other one. But as for me I think that Russian language is very rich and it has a great potential to get rid of everything superfluous or unnecessary and it is one of the richest language of the world while including a layer of loan-words in its vocabulary. So the study of the layer of borrowings in the system of vocabulary presents a great interest to linguists, as it shows the process of language development.

But in addition to the classical borrowings, which serve to identify new notions, there is a new tendency in Russian language — borrowing the words from English language, which already exist and are used in everyday life. For example, it is very fashionable to say «хаир» from English «hair» which means «волосы или прическа» or «фэйс» from English «face» instead Russian «лицо». It is clear that we can’t use such borrowings in the scientific speech or in literary works. Here we can talk about the process of stylistic distinction of the loan-words.

The next subpoint for investigation is the layer of terms appeared in Russian language with new technologies and inventions. Great interest of the scientists of various spheres to the problems of terminology can be easily explained by the increasing flood of the scientific and technical information and the process of integration. A.A. Reformatskiy defined the term as a «monosemantic word lacking in emotiveness». It is clear that a borrowing reflects the meaning of a term in most legible and distinct way.

There is an up-to-date tendency of assimilating terms in our everyday life. The reason is very simple — day after day people rig their houses with the most modern and high-technological equipment. So in order to use such «house-helpers» people had to study the technological information including the appropriate terminology. So that such words as «телевизор», «миксер» and many others came into our lives. The most demonstrative example as I see is the word «компьютер». Not so long ago this notion acquired the status of everyday usage word with the process of total computerization. We can hear this term almost everywhere and even from a little child. There are some other terms, with the help of which this unit can be named; they are «ЭВМ» and «ПК», where the first is «Электронная вычислительная машина» and the second is «Персональный компьютер». The main feature of these two terms is that they are abbreviations and it means that they refer to the layer of formal vocabulary, exactly to the professionalisms. After having made an analysis it becomes obvious that the first term is a Russian scientific equivalent to the English word «computer». But from the stylistic point of view this term refers to professional terminology of formal vocabulary, it is mostly used in special engineering or technological articles. By the fact of its rare usage in can be called archaic. The second term is more popular nowadays. Great interest presents the fact that it can be found not just in special literature but although in other spheres like advertising. Almost in every newspaper we can see advertisements with such a text:

«требуется специалист со знанием ПК»;

and everyone understands that it means the knowledge of various computer programs.

So it is necessary to consider the following points, which are be included in this course project:

· It is essential to study and to find out the distinguishing features of each sphere of borrowings, here — mass-media, advertising and IT;

· To make the divisions through the stylistic analysis of each word;

· To determine the methods of borrowing the word;

· To establish the relation between the original word semantics and the loan word semantics in the system of the language;

· To understand weather it is so necessary to borrow words from other languages;

· To point out the peculiarities of usage of the loan-words;

· To find out the social time period connected with definite borrowings.

Everything is changeable and language especially. The reason is that the language is the most sensitive phenomenon to the changes in the surrounding world: economics, politics and technological progress with its inventions. Only language can express our feelings, actions, thoughts and relations among people, events that occur with us.

I. Loan-words of English origin in Russian Language

The process of adopting foreign words into Russian word-stock in different epoch reflected on the following development of the whole language system. So it is necessary to investigate popular etymology in order to find out, first of all, the original background of the language and then to determine a degree of penetration and the number of languages which have effected on its volume.

1. 1 Original Russian vocabulary

The process of word-stock formation is very long-drawn-out and complicated. It is also closely connected with the history of a nation. Russian vocabulary in its modern condition did not appear at once. Historical lexicology distinguishes two major ways of lexis developing:

1. a rise of original words, existed permanently from ancient times;

2. borrowing of foreign words.

By means of chronological feature there are following groups of original Russian words, combined together by its origin or genesis (Gr. Genesis — the origin): Indo-European, Common-Slavic, East-Slavic (or Old Russian) and strictly Russian.

Indo-European words are words which after the dissolution of the Indo-European ethnic community (the end of the neolith period) were inherited by ancient languages of this language family, including Common-Slavic language. In this way there are some terms common to most of Indo-European languages: «мать», «брат», «дочь», «овца», «бык», «волк», «мясо», «кость» and others.

Words that were inherited by Old Russian from the Slavic tribes languages, who occupied a vast territory of East and Central Europe and Balkans by the beginning of A.D. are called Common-Slavic. It served as a unified means of communication approximately till the VII century A.D. that is before the resettlement of Slavic tribes, when the lingual unity was collapsed. It is natural to suppose that there were some territorially separated dialectal differences in the period of one Common-Slavic language circulation, which served as a basis for formation of separate Slavic language groups: South-Slavic, West-Slavic and East-Slavic. However, each of this group has a number of words appeared in the period of Common-Slavic unity. For example:

— names of plants: «дуб», «ель», «ясень», «лист», «просо», «ячмень», «пшеница», «мак», «кора», «дерево», «черемуха» and so on;

— referred to labour: «мотыга», «челнок», «ковать», «сечь»;

— names of shelter and its parts: «дом», «сени», «пол», «кров»;

— names of poultry and birds: «курица», «гусь», «соловей», «скворец»;

— names of food-stuffs: «квас», «кисель», «сыр», «сало"and others.

East-Slavic (or Old Russian) words are words that appeared only in the language of East-Slavic tribes (ancestors of nowadays Russian, Ukraine and Belarus nations) from the beginning of VIII century. These tribes were united as a feudally state — «Kievskaya Rus'» by the IX century. The word-stock of this language has not been jet well investigated by the historical lexicology but there are some examples: «сизый», «хороший», «падчерица», «дядя», «кружево», «зяблик», «белка», «сорок», «девяносто», «сегодня», «внезапно» and others. Properly speaking, all words (except of loan-words) appeared when the language developed firstly as a language of great-Russian nationality (from XIV century), and then as a national Russian language (from XVII century) refer to the original Russian vocabulary. Here are the examples of Russian word-stock:

— actions: «ворковать», «разредить», «размозжить», «брюзжать»;

— names of everyday things: «обои», «обложка», «голубцы», «кулебяка»;

— names of concepts: «итог», «обман», «обиняк», «опыт» and others.

However to be successful in following the language developing is very complicated as the language is alive as a life itself.

1.2 Borrowings in Russian language

From the ancient times Russian nation came into cultural, trade, military and political relations with other states that certainly leaded to the language borrowings. Within the process of usage the majority of them were exposed by the borrowing language influence. Step by step loan-words, assimilated (from Lat. «assimilare» — усваивать, уподоблять) in borrowing language, had formed the layer of widespread words and by this time weren’t perceived as foreign anymore. In different epoch words from other languages penetrated into original Russian vocabulary. However, national originality of Russian language did not suffer at all from the penetration of foreign words into it, as the process of borrowing is quite natural way of any language enrichment. Russian language preserved its self-dependency and just got rich by means of borrowed words.

Linguistic borrowing are words (morpheme or syntactic construction) and set expressions, moved from one language to another. The beginning of English borrowings in Russian language refers to the beginning of XVII century. Later by the middle of XIX century loan-words entered Russian to become its essential part. The word-stock of international vocabulary was being arisen. «Литературный энциклопедический словарь», Москва «Советская энциклопедия» 1987, В. М. Кожевникова, П. А. Николаева.

As for nowadays a great interest of linguists is concentrated upon the Russian-English lingual communication. Intensification of informational flow, appearance of Internet, expansion of international relationships, development of world trade, economy, informational technologies, participation in various international competitions, fashion shows are the reasons that caused the new words entering into Russian lexis.

The openness of our society leads us to a considerable enlargement of mental outlook and range of interests, and to the improvement of foreign languages knowledge. The spheres of international business, trade, culture and tourism have been raised after the long period of Soviet «iron curtain». So that the necessity of communicating with the users of other languages has evolved in our lives. Consequently the necessity of borrowing English words in modern society fits with the above mentioned reasons.

Adopted words come into system-defined relations with original vocabulary:

1) Loan-word can be a synonym to the original one:

For example: Файтер — боец;

Мониторинг — наблюдение;

Киллер See «Application № 4, articles» — убийца;

Пиар — связи с общественностью;

Контракт — договор; etc.

2) Loan-word can replace the Russian word:

For example: Секонд-хэнд — комиссионный магазин;

Компьютер — ЭВМ;

Шоу — представление; etc.

3) Loan-word that has no equivalent in Russian language, new notions borrowed from another culture with the respective unit or concept:

For example: Спрэй;



Лэптоп See «Application № 4, articles»;

Дайджест; etc.

There are two different extremes, which occur with respect to loan-words: on the one hand, oversaturation of a speech with foreign words, on the other hand — the negation of them, the effort to use only the original word. At the same time it is often forgotten, that most of adopted words have been assimilated in Russian language and even have no equivalent, turning up the essential name of corresponding concept. The absence of scientific approach to the problem of foreign vocabulary familiarization reveals also in the fact that its usage is occasionally regarded in isolation with the functional-stylistic attaching of linguistic means. In some cases the application of foreign words is not appropriate, in others — it is necessary, as these words make up an essential part of lexis, fixed over the definite style.

The number of new concepts and phenomena Russian in origin is very limited. That’s why the adoption of already existing nomination with the respective notion and item is considered to be the most prestigious and effective way of enlarging the vocabulary. It is possible to distinguish the following groups of loan-words:

1. Direct borrowings. The words are met in Russian in the same form and in the same meaning as in the initial language. They are: «уик-энд» — weekend, leisure time; «блэк» — black (man) or Afro-American; «мани» — money or cash.

2. Hybrids. These words were formed by addition of Russian suffixes, prefixes and endings to the foreign root. In this way the meaning of the word often changes. For example: «бузить» (busy — беспокойный, суетливый).

3. Calques. Word of foreign origin using with the preservation of its phonetic and graphic shape. They are: «код», «вирус», «клуб», «диск», «сленг», «бакс», «ди-джей».

4. Half-calques. Words which after being grammatically assimilated were put under the grammatical rules of Russian language (suffixation). for example: «драйв» — «драйва» (drive) «давно не было такого драйва» — в значении энергетика, кураж.

5. Exotisms. Such words are characterized by specific national customs or manners of foreign nations and are used to show the atypical for Russian reality notions. The distinctive feature of them is that they have no equivalent or synonyms in Russian. For example: «чипсы» (chips), «хот-дог» (hot-dog), «чизбургер» (cheeseburger).

6. Foreign lingual spots. Such words usually have lexical equivalents, but they stylistically differ from these equivalents and are used in the sphere of communication as expressive means to add a peculiar emotiveness to the speech. For example: «о'кей» — O. k!; «вау» — Wow!

7. Composites. Words which were made by means of two or more English lexical units. For example: «видео-салон» -a special apartment for watching movies, «секонд-хэнд» — a shop that sells the goods which have already been used, «лаунж-бар» — a comfortable coctail bar.

8. Jargonisms. These are words appeared in consequence of some sounds distortion. For example: «мыло» — e-mail, «крезанутый, шизанутый» — crazy.

The joining of borrowings into Russian language increased especially in 90 years of XX century. The tendency of expansion foreign words could be observed in almost every sphere of life. It occupied the leading position in political sphere of the country getting accustomed with new concepts: president, inauguration, speaker, impeachment, electorate and others. Such words began to form the layer of new social and political vocabulary. This group is typical for the periodical press and then to the publicistic-functional style.

If to speak about the time period there are two major types of borrowings. The first type is presented by old borrowings which were actualized during last years with respect to the political and economical systems modification. The second type includes the number of loan-words which were made directly during last years.

The most typical example of the first type is the word «президент» — president. As far back as the Council of People’s Commissars took place, M.S. Gorbachiov rectified one of the representatives' error when he called him with the term «господин президент». He asked the representative to be more accurate next time as this term «президент» — is the different post and it refers to the other reality and so on. The adopted word «президент» was popular that time as the nomination of foreign political and social realities (for example: «президент США», «президент Франции»). Since that time the political situation in the country has been changed and so extralinguistic factors have modified the function of the word «президент» into actual term appropriate for our modern lifestyle (for example: «Президент Российской федерации», «Президент Республики Казахстан»). Such words as «электорат» and «легитимный» can be observed in the same way as they received a wide spreading in Russian language in the last decade of XX century within the process of actualization of the respective notions.

Hence foreign terminology became predominant in the most progressive spheres of science, techniques, politics and financial activities. Such words as «бестселлер», «вестерн», «триллер See „Application № 4, articles“», «хит» have broken into the sphere of culture. Our everyday speech has keenly begun to adopt new notions with its foreign nominations — «сникерс», «твикс», «гамбургер» and others.

Time will show us if these borrowings can change, enrich or deteriorate the image of Russian language. Time will define the future destiny of each loan-word which is to be finally adopted or rejected by linguistic flavor of the epoch. Russian language has a long history of adopting words dictated by the necessity to perceive useful information in the form of new words drawing on international experience. Such words are named in many ways, most commonly: borrowings and loan-words. The process of new words adoption is determined by nations' contacts which generate a necessity of new concepts and ideas nomination. Such words are usually the results of some nation’s innovation in any sphere of science or techniques. They may also appear as a consecutive result of snobbery, fashion. Nevertheless, there are essentially linguistic reasons: for instance, the necessity to express polysemantic Russian words by means of foreign word or to widen the expressive means of a language, etc.

For those who are fond of sports such new notions appeared: «виндсерфинг», «армрестлинг», «фристайл», «скейтборд», «кикбоксинг», «файтер», «овертайм», «гол», «хоккей», «футбол», «баскетбол» and even the word «спорт».

In the sphere of non-manufacturing business many new notions appeared: «презентация», «номинация», «видео», «шоу», «хит», «дискотека», «диск-жокей» (ди-джей) and many others.

Loan-words usually refer to the layer of bookish words and special terminology and are used mainly in bookish speech genre and in the scientific or technical articles. At last time, the main source of linguistic stuff became contemporary mass media.

Modern life is hardly possible without information. The mass media plays an important role in our life. Millions of copies of newspapers are printed in our country every day. The role of the press can hardly be overestimated, particularly at present. It keeps you to be informed in the latest news, different events, home and foreign affairs, news of culture, science and engineering development. While reading newspapers or watching TV every person is confronted with a great number of borrowed words. As to the rule words occur in the newspaper pages and magazines can be divided into three groups:

1. Words which have synonyms in Russian:

For example: «бренд» the synonym is «торговая марка».

2. Words which have no equivalents in Russian:

For example: «спортсмен», «футбол», «проблема».

3. Words which are printed in newspapers in English:

For example: «non-stop»

1.3 Assimilation of new words

All words getting from one language (from which the word is borrowed- Source language) into another (language that adopts a word — Target language) come through the first stage of assimilation. On this stage words are still connected with the reality that created them. Also when the word hasn’t got yet acclimatized in the target language it can have variants of pronunciation and spelling; for example: «доллар», «доллер», «долар» (Eng. «dollar») See «Application № 4, articles»

The characteristic features of these lexical units at the survey period are their mass character, novelty and uniformity against the source language. The overwhelming majority of new words are to be borrowed from English language. The sphere where loan-words usually assimilate is quite specific. First of all, it is a «professional terminology» of any sphere specialists' (computer engineering, financing activities, trade business, sports) and also spheres of politics, art, fashion, music, dancing and others.

Total computerization has leaded to the appearance, in Russian language and especially in the youth midst, a peculiar computerese jargon. It is obvious, that all innovations are held inside the system of the language and are formed up by means of Russian language grammatical rules. Consequently, the users of this jargon, aimed at making their speech distinctive and colorful can not manage without normal Russian language and rules mentioned above. There are a great number of computerese jargonisms which were changed or purposely mangled. English verb «to crack» (раскалывать) was changed into «крекнуть» or in humorous form «крякнуть», a verb «to hack» (кромсать, разбивать) — became «хакнуть» with the help of Russian suffix «-ну», which serves to denote a momentary action (that is to do something once; for example: «стукнуть» — to knock once and «стучать» — to knock during some time). By the way, there is no category of such kind in English, but in Russian language it is very common. Two ways of reproduction of one English word «game» (игра) have resulted into two varieties of its handing over:

1) After the way of writing:

«гамесы» that is «игры» (games, plural form);

2) After the way of pronunciation:

«геймер» that is «игрок» (player, a person).

On the whole, English suffix «-er» turned out to be very customary for denomination of any kind figures; for example: «юзер», «дилер», «киллер». Nowadays labour-market becomes wider by means of new professions which come from the most developed countries. There is an interesting and a very up-to-date profession called «фрилансер» (from English freelancer — «free lance», a person working out of stuff). This nomination refers to the number of words which have never existed in Russian language. So that mass media as the most sensitive organ of modern society tries to introduce us with such notions:

«…но в душе уже тогда знала, что стану фрилансером…» Статья из журнала «MINI», декабрь 2005, рубрика «карьера» стр. 77; см. «Application № 4, articles»

A lot of words like «компьютер», «дисплей» See «Application № 4, articles», «файл», «интерфейс», «принтер», «сканер», «ноутбук», «браузер», «сайт», «провайдер» and many others are reflections of new lifestyle generated by total computerization.

On the whole, computerese jargon is very similar to a general jargon (Jargon — is a speech of any social or professional group which contains a large number of terms and expressions peculiar to only such group, including imitation or relative words.) Электронный словарь «ABBYY Lingvo 11 шесть языков», 2005. and is developing within its rules. Research workers of Russian language strive for fixing novelties emerging in a system of language. Special dictionaries of neologisms serve to this problem realization. There are annual and anniversary dictionaries were observations about borrowings are collected together. It is significant that neologisms are new words which have not yet became day-to-day objects or concepts or corresponding items or notions. They are to be generated by two ways: firstly, neologisms appear on the original base of a language and secondly, some notions come from one language to another in one of the forms of borrowings.

Gradually foreign term gets assimilated due to its frequent usage in spoken language and in written form. Its morphological shape acquires stable form and as a result the adaptation, according to the norms of language, occurs. On this stage of foreign word assimilation in the sphere of native speakers' popular etymology begins its operation. When a foreign word considered being incomprehensible people usually make an effort to fill its sound form with the contents close and most easily understood to the users of borrowing language. For example: the word «пиджак». When it was just borrowed from English «pea-jacket» it sounded as «спинжак» in respect to the Russian notion «спина».

And the last stage of foreign word penetration is striking root, when the word becomes widely used in the vocabulary system of native speakers and completely adapts within the grammatical rules of this language. From then on the word is included into all processes that occur with other words of the word-stock: it can produce words of the same root, abbreviations, acquire new nuances of definition. For example the English word «попса» that is popular music, pop music. This word is very frequent in usage, so it produced a lot of word-forms and combinations: «популярный», «поп-культура», «попсовый» and «поп-звезда».

Sometimes words of English origin in Russian language can be defined by the ending:

— with the ending «-ер» or «-ор» is presents the largest group: «бартер», «блейзер», «брокер», «ваучер», «гамбургер», «спонсор», «компьютер», «триллер», «инвестор»;

— with the ending «-инг», stress is placed on the first syllable: «брифинг», «лизинг», «рейтинг», «серфинг», «холдинг»;

— with the ending «-мент», always trisyllable or tetrasyllable nouns: «импичмент», «истеблишмент», «менеджмент»;

— ending with a vowel sound: «лобби», «шоу», «ноу-хау».

1. 4 Stresses in loan-words

One of the most important aspects in the process of borrowing is placing stresses. In most cases a stress, correspond to the original language is the same in its borrowed variant. There are a lot of examples: «менеджмент», «дефолт», «спикер», «сайт», «инвестор» and so on. Unstable character of stresses in loan-words is inevitable; it proves that borrowed words come into cooperation with Russian vocabulary and gradually assimilate with it becoming a system-defined phenomenon. Nevertheless, a great number of new words which came from English language do not reveal unstable character of stresses. The exception is the word «маркетинг» (in English [`m??k?t??]) where the stress can change its position from the first syllable to the following one.

II. Loan words in English language

Contemporary English language with its specific sound structure, grammatical order and lexis appears before us as the product of long-lasting historical development. Within this process English language was exposed to a many-sided modifications determined by different reasons. Over the history of the language a lot of considerable changes, rapid or more gradual, were made in the areas of sound structure, grammatical order and vocabulary. In most cases it happened by virtue of its internal evolution and sometimes, particularly in its lexical structure, under the influence connected with the historical fortune of English nation. Such changes make an influence on every aspect of linguistic structure but affects differently on each of them.

2. 1 Original English vocabulary

It turned up that the vocabulary of a language is to be found in the condition of persistent modification. Such mobility as well as changeability is conditioned by the fact that a language and first of all its vocabulary are directly connected with manufacturing and other social human activities.

It is reasonable that, in order to fulfill its fundamental function — to be the primary means of communication, the language’s word-stock have to react quickly on every modification in all spheres of human activity, reflecting and fixing new concepts and notions.

The vocabulary of modern English is undoubtedly richer then the Old English one. This enrichment of English language proceeded due to its inner resources — wordbuilding, affixation and reformation of definitions as well as over the process of borrowing foreign words.

There are a lot of events which have effected on the process of English vocabulary formation; such as acceptance of Christianity (which pushed English nation into contact with Latin civilization), Scandinavian and Norse conquests (after which English vocabulary have lost a portion of its original lexis, including words of everyday usage), centennial war, the growth of bourgeoisie, the Renaissance, the rise of English nautical dominion, colonial usurpations, the development of trade, industry, science and literature, the development of self-consciousness of the working class and finally the first and the second world wars. As a result the lexis of modern English vocabulary presents the mixture of different elements, including only 30% of originally English words. This circumstance gives occasion to many research workers to exaggerate the significance of borrowings and to reckon English language in a German-Romanic group of languages and not just Germanic. They usually point out the compound character of English lexis as the most significant peculiarity and bring the whole English lexicology to the problem of borrowings. Nevertheless, the majority of borrowed words are perceived by people in contemporary language as English words, whatever real origin they have.

Many words used to be in application in early times vanished from the living language either because items or notions, denoted by them became out of date and quitted of usage in altered conditions of life or since they were replaced by new nominations which became generally used. However such words which gone out of usage are still commonly used in literary language with a peculiar lexical purpose.

Indeed words of English origin are those which refer to the Old English period. The other portion is foreign words which came from Latin, Greek, French, Scandinavian and other languages. There are two ways of new words penetration. The first is spoken language, that is, owing to the vivid communication of two nations using different languages the adoption of new words denoting material items or cultural notions appears. In this way new words assimilates completely faster. The second way is literary or written, that is, borrowing of new words from foreign texts during the translation of them into Target language. In this way new nominations preserve their phonetic, grammatical and orthographic features for a long time.

English language was formed by two major layers of English lexis: Anglo-Saxon and Romanic. Romanic layer in its turn can be divided into Latin and French. Moreover there are a lot of words which were borrowed from about 50 languages of the world, including Russian during the period of 1500 years.

Upon the whole such easiness of the new words adoption lays within the fact that England is an island and its geographical position was always the main reason for the attempts to conquer it by many other communities.

2. 2 Classification of borrowings

Borrowings which are included in the vocabulary of a language can be classified into three groups:

1) according to the source of borrowings See «Application № 3» — Etymological structure of English language.;

2) according to the aspect which was borrowed;

3) according to the level of assimilation.

According to the aspect that was borrowed, loan-words are divided into: phonetic and transcription, when the sound structure is rendered to be completely new, so this is when the sound structure remains unchanged in the borrowed word it only acquires some phonetic peculiarities of the Target language; calque-translations (the blue-print translation of the notion); semantic loan-words and the borrowing of wordbuilding elements.

Under the semantic borrowing we should understand the adoption of new nomination; it is often a figurative meaning to the already existing notion. The words «pioneer» and «brigade» have already existed in English word-stock before the penetration of sovetisms into it, but the definitions «» and «» they acquired under the influence of Russian language of Post October period.

As to the Russian language, in Before October period the words were borrowed mainly referring with the peculiarities of Russian nature, life and objects of trade: sable «соболь», astrakhan «каракуль», starlet «стерлядь», steppe «степь», verst «верста», izba «изба». There are a lot of sovetisms in English. Among them there are phonetic borrowings, where new notion and new sound structure are borrowed together: soviet, sputnik, bolshevik, kolkhoz, activist. After having made the analysis of new word definition with the original language one it turned out that it preserves just a part of definitions, often one of them and besides not the primary, but derivational one and it is quite often becomes a term (for example: sputnik and soviet.)

Calque-making — is the process of borrowing new words within adopting its associative meaning and the structure of the word or word combination 9for example: house of rest — «дом отдыха», five-year-plan — «пятилетний план, пятилетка»). During the process of calque the words or word combinations are translated separately and then combined together according to the foreign pattern of the word or word combination. According to the structure of the Target language calques can be divided into three groups:

1) word-formative calques — the morphological structure is reproduced;

2) phraseological — the process of blue-print translation of each word;

3) semantic — to attach figurative meaning to the already existed word according to the foreign pattern.

So that the process of calque-making realizes a very important function, being the guide of intercultural influence between languages. Word-formative calques can be inexact: during the translation one of the morphemes can be interpreted with the help of approximate equivalent.

Calque-making and transcription as the means of borrowing should be distinguished from the of the same name methods of translation. They do not differ by the mechanism but they do by the final result: the enlargement of vocabulary doesn’t take place during the process of translation, whereas during the process of borrowing new lexical units appears in the language.

2.3 Periods of Russian words' penetration into English language

Most of research workers divide Russian influence on the English lexical system into two periods:

1) borrowings of the pre-revolutionary period;

2) borrowings of Soviet period.

However, V.V. Akulenko in his Ph.D. thesis (candidate's dissertation) divided the history of Russian language interaction with other Occidental languages, including English, into four periods.

The first period covers the influence of Old Russian language of the Kiev Russia on the Old and partially Middle English languages.

The second period is closely connected with the development of trade and political communication of Russia and England, the upgrowth of Russian nation’s power; it begins from the second half of XVI century and continues up to the middle of XIX century.

The third period begins from the 60 years of XIX century and lasts till 1917. Here the modifications in economical and social spheres are in the focus of interest, the increasing power of revolution struggled with the reaction and a great progress in the development of native science and culture.

The fourth period of Russian influence is the Soviet epoch. One could say about a new stage in the development of political and social-economic vocabulary of Russian language and also about the further development of its international significance in the post-war period connected with the beginnings of powerful camp of peace, democracy and socialism as far as the creation of UNO (United Nations Organization), where Russian language was declared as the international language along with English, French, Spanish and Chinese.

Today we can speak about the fifth Post-Soviet period.

2.3.1 The first period

The mutual attention between English, French and Russian nations may be observed from ancient times. The Kiev state had extremely wide connections with different nations of Asia and Europe, including ancient Englishmen. As far back as in the XI century Novgorod was well-known by English people first of all as the supplier of furs and jewelry. The marriage of Vladimir Monomakh with the daughter of the English king Gerald had taken has taken place by this time. The cultural level of Kiev Russia was so high that occidental people thought it to be a rival to the Constantinople. Undoubtedly, the importance of Russian language must have been very considerable with such position of Russian state. Especially with the regard of the fact that Russian nation have already made a significant progress in its economical, political social and cultural spheres by this time. However, the process of borrowing new words by English language were not so large in number and the interpenetration of languages in this period did not occur, though it presents itself very probable that Russian language was able to make some influence on the vocabulary of English language.

There are a number of words which were borrowed in different periods from Slavic languages into the Old Germanic. The main part of them got into the Scandinavian languages, the native speakers of which had a direct connection with the Slavs. As to the Old English, the number of Slavic borrowings is not so numerous in it. Thus, for example English words «talk» (разговор, беседа) and «to talk» (говорить, разговаривать, болтать) goes back to the Scandinavian root «tolk» from Russian «толк» (that is: толковать, толковый). At the same time the word «sable» from Russian «соболь» appears not just in English but in many other occidental languages as the expansive fur of this small animal was selling to many countries by East-Slavs. But during the period of assimilation this word acquired the second meaning — the adjective «dark».

Even in ancient times Old English as many other German languages had a number of words which went back with the roots of words Slavic in origin. It is obvious that they were already borrowed in XII century. They are: «мед» — meodu (Old English) and mead (contemporary English), «молоко» — meolk (Old English) and milk (contemporary English), «плуг» — ploz (Old English) and plough (contemporary English) and others. Professor A.I. Smirnitsky have distinguished a more early Slavic borrowing in Old English language: the word «syrce» (рубаха, панцирь, кольчуга) which goes back to the Old Slavic «sork» which can be compared with Russian «сорочка».

It is interesting that there are the same Slavic borrowings in both Old English and Scandinavian languages and it is hard to find out weather they were borrowed from Slavic language into each separately or they penetrated directly from Slavs into Scandinavian and then to Anglo-Saxons.

2.3.2 The second period

This period (XVI-XVII centuries) is well-observed by means of three sources:

1. «Словарь московитов» (French-Russian, 1586);

2. «Записная книжка» — Richard James' Russian-English dictionary (1618−1620);

3. «Русская грамматика» by Henry Ludolf (Oxford, 1696).

Stable relations between Russia and England nations were settled only in XVI century. This time is characterized by lasting commercial and diplomatic relations between England and Muscovy and by real interest of London merchants in maintenance of business connections with Russian nation. On the other hand the ignorance of foreign languages, including English in Moscovy was at that time an extremely important motivation towards the studying Russian languages by foreigners. Consequently, owing to the development of capitalism in England and the expansion of traffic by sea England was very interested in communications with Moscovy. English government in XVI-XVII centuries took care of permanent trainings for translation staff from Russian language.

The most of Russian borrowings of this period penetrated into English by writing — over the different reports, diaries and descriptions of Englishmen who visited Russia. In most cases they were nominations of marketing articles, household goods, officials' names, geographical names and others.

1. Names of officials, subordinate people and governors, nominations referred with the state arrangement: tsar, voivode, knes, bojar, mouzhik, Cossack and others;

2. Measures of weight, distance and currency: verst, arshin, pood, rouble, copeck, chervonets;

3. Objects of clothing and food which were exotisms for Englishmen: shuba, kvas, shchi, borshch, calash, vodka, nalivka, bliny, okroshka and many others;

4. Household goods: troika, izba, telega, balalaika, samovar, tarantas, droshki, kibitka, makhorka;

5. Geographical peculiarities and animals: steppe, tundra, taiga, suslik, borzoi;

Later on English language borrowed another words like: kokoshnik, khorovod, beluga, obrok, zolotnik, otrezok, vedro, matrioshka. Thus for example the word «mammoth» was borrowed by English language as the name of prehistoric animal which was founded in Russia.

word english russian language

2.3.3 The third period

This period is characterized by the developing of industry and at the same time the working class. The struggle of leading people against tsarist government, the growth of people’s democratic liberation movement and further strengthening revolutionary movement in XIX and the beginning of XX centuries were reflected in borrowing of such Russian words as: nihilist, nihilism, nihilistic, intelligentsia.

The word narodnik and narodism appeared in English language as a result of the narodnik movement’s development.

The English lexical system is rapidly enriches itself by many new neologisms which express social concepts. From the latter half of the XIX century Russian literature became the matter of interest for deep and serious studying in Occidentals. Thus, the word «nihilist» penetrated into English after the translation of the novel «Отцы и дети» by Turgenev.

Undoubtedly, the roots of such words as «Decembrist» or «intelligentsia» are Latin and there already existed words of the same root, but, nevertheless, it is absolutely correct to treat them as Russian because their new meanings were acquired in accordance with the Russian reality of that days. The word «Decembrist» refers to the range of political ideas, which appeared as a result of armed revolt against autocracy and serf-ownership which took place in Saint-Petersburg on the 14 of December 1825.

In the very beginning of the XX century the words «duma», «pogrom» were borrowed by English language.

2.3.4 The fourth period

The language is directly connected with the human activity and as the result it reflects all changes in industry, society, politics and other spheres. As more significant the event, occurred in one country, so much attention it stimulates in other countries.

As far as the XX century begun, the new Socialistic state was formed in Russia. Russian political terms became well-known in the whole world, they entered into international usage and filled up the word-stock of many languages.

Such words as «Bolshevik», «Menshevik» and others became widespread. This fact shows the interest of English nation to the political situation in Russia. The grate number of Marxist-Leninist terminology was borrowed by many languages, including English after the victory of the Great October Socialistic revolution.

Words which were borrowed from Russian language in this period are called sovetisms which serves to denote the ideas, concepts and institutions appeared owing to the revolution and appearance of the first socialistic state — the Soviet Union.

For example the word «Soviet» was fixed by English dictionaries in 1917 and was very common in English and American periodical press and literary in 1918−1919 years. However, the Russian word «совет» has an appropriate equivalent in English — «council» with the meaning of administrative, social organ (e.g. Council of ministers — Совет министров), but it did not became established as it could not express the whole range of concepts which were included in this notion.

This period is characterized by appearance of such words as: sovkhoz, kolkhoz, Komsomol, Leninism, bolshevism, commissar, collectivization, industrialisation, subbotnik and many others.

The development of socialistic agriculture which was the foundation for the appearance in English language of such words as: «jurovisation» (яровизация) and the verb «to jarovize», «podzol» (подзолистая почва) and the adjective «podzolic».

During the Second World War English language enriched with such words as: stormovik (штурмовик), partisan (партизан), Yak (самолет — як).

Russian borrowings played a great role in the perfection of contemporary philosophic and political terminology of many countries, including English.

Also, during the Soviet period English language was penetrated by such new phraseologisms as: hero of labour (герой труда), socialist construction (социалистическое строительство), indestructible moral-political unity (нерушимое морально-политическое единство), vital interests of the people (жизненные интересы народа), reclamation of virgin and unused lands (освоение целинных и залежных земель).

2.3.5 The fifth period

The first Russian word which was borrowed in this period was the word «glasnost» See «Application № 4, articles» that was used in English since 1986. It was registered in the dictionary of neologisms as «the willingness of the Soviet government to be more open about its affairs» (Longman Guardian New Words Ed. By S. Mort — Bristol, 1986). During the process of assimilation the word «glasnost» formed new word «preglasnost». This fact proves that this word became widespread in English vocabulary.

In 1987 the word «perestroika» penetrated into English word-stock. It is often used in the meaning of restructuring or economic reform.

The pages of English newspapers became full of such words as: novoe muishleniye, democratizatsia See «Application № 4, articles», hozyaschotSee «Application № 4, articles», gospreyomka.

The Canadian communistic newspaper wrote the following about the word democratizatsia: Democratizatsia… does not mean the same thing as its English equivalent — democratization. In fact the Soviet concept of democracy is quite different and may turn out to be far more comprehensive and liberating («Canadian Tribune», 1988).

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