Once Russian learners whose first language is a Romance or Germanic one get past the “this language is like nothing I know” stage, they may start noticing that Russian has acquired and assimilated scores of loanwords. Many navigation terms come from Dutch (киль — keel); art, from French (бале́т — ballet) and Italian (пиани́но — piano); technology, from English (файл — a computer file); engineering, from German (винт — screw); science, from Greek and Latin (матема́тика — mathematics; медици́на — medicine); and multiple borrowings from Turkic languages (арбу́з — watermelon). However, these borrowings were often pronounced differently from the original language or from similar borrowings into English. I will go over some features of loanwords that tend to cause the most confusion.

Greek

• words with Χ (chi)

Many loanwords from Greek have the letter Χ, which is normally transliterated into English as “ch.” Words with that combination tends to be pronounced with a “k” sound in English, like “technology” or “mechanism.” As I wrote in an earlier post, the Russian pronunciation of these words tends to be closer to the Greek, with “ch” rendered as a “х” — техноло́гия, механи́зм, меланхо́лия, etc. English speakers tend to substitute the х with a к and say things like меканизм.

• words with Ө (theta)

Another common letter in Greek borrowings in the theta, which is usually rendered into European languages as a “th”or “t,” depending on the language. Russian used to have a letter corresponding to the theta — fita. It was pronounced the same as an “ф” and was reserved for words of Greek origin. The spelling reform of 1918 replaced all these instances with an Ф – cf. Фёдор (Феодо́р). However, words borrowed via Latin were often transliterated using the “т” — теа́тр, теоре́ма. That means that there is no easy way to tell what a Russian equivalent of a Greek word with a theta will look like — for example, you have ритм (rhythm) but ри́фма (rhyme).

Latin

• “c” before “i” or “e”

Russian follows Eastern New Latin pronunciation when “c” before i/e was pronounced as “ts,” as opposed to the classical pronunciation “k.” So words that may be pronounced with an “s” sound in other languages are spelled and pronounced with a ц in Russian. Examples include конце́рт (concert), реце́пт (recipe/prescription), and центр (centre/er).

• feminine nouns ending in -tio

For the same reason, Russian pronunciation of Latin words ending in “tio/tionis” may be different from that in other languages that borrowed these words. Again, Russian uses the ц sound, resulting in words like конститу́ция (constitution), а́кция (promotion/market share/planned event), and инфля́ция (inflation).

Japanese

• words with し (shi/си)

The most common system of transcribing Japanese in Russian is the Polivanov system. According to that system, the Japanese Kana character shi (し) should be transliterated into Russian as си (si). For example, the Russian equivalents of bushido and shintoism are бусидо́ and синтои́зм, respectively.

However, when Russians who did not know any Japanese first encountered words of Japanese origin in English, they conveyed them using the Hepburn system, which calls for “shi.” As a result, Russian ended up with certain words that violate the convention for transliterating Japanese — су́ши (sushi), саши́ми (sashimi), Тоши́ба (Toshiba) instead of the more consistent transliterations су́си, саси́ми, Тоси́ба.

• words with じ (ji/дзи)

A similar discrepancy arises for Japanese borrowings with the ji/дзи sound. Traditionally, they would be transliterated using дзи in Russian, so Mount Fuji is Фудзия́ма. However, because many Russians first encounter Japanese words via English, they erroneously adopt the English transliteration (Фуджияма).

Are there any Russian words that you recognize but are never sure how to pronounce? Do you know of any trick that helps you remember their pronunciation?