Tag Archives: loanwords
Russian Words of Turkic Origin Posted by Maria on Aug 8, 2019
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…
5 Russian Words That Come From Yiddish Posted by Maria on Dec 7, 2017
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…
Loanwords Frequently Mispronounced in Russian Posted by Maria 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 —…