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Tag Archives: loanwords

Russian Words of Turkic Origin Posted by on Aug 8, 2019

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Russian is a Slavic language that has shares its origins with such languages as Ukrainian or Belorussian and, earlier, Polish or Bulgarian. Most of its vocabulary comes from this common Slavic “stock.” However, a few words in Russian have Turkic origins. They probably entered Russian from the Turkic languages (the group that includes Turkish, Tatar…

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5 Russian Words That Come From Yiddish Posted by on Dec 7, 2017

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We may be familiar with Yiddish words in English, such as chutzpah or bagel, but Russian has its share of Yiddish-origin words. Yiddish (идиш) is a Germanic language traditionally used by Jews (евреи) in Eastern and Central Europe. Many of them are thought to have entered Russian via the secret language of the criminal underworld…

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Loanwords Frequently Mispronounced in Russian Posted by on Mar 16, 2015

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 —…

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