A History of Borrowings in the Russian Language

This article briefly describes the stages of borrowing vocabulary in the Russian language.

The process of developing a national language is always accompanied by the expansion of its ties with other languages. The penetration of foreign words into any language is a perfectly regular phenomenon, since, as E. G. Kovalevskaya puts it, “in periods of the most intensive cultural and economic relations between countries, the residents of these countries become acquainted with new objects, exchange new concepts and ideas. When new concepts, ideas, and objects are borrowed, the words that designate them are borrowed as well, which does not undermine the national originality of the people but, on the contrary, enriches the vocabulary of one language with the vocabulary of others” [Kovalevskaya 1978: 154–155].

In the “Dictionary-Guide of Linguistic Terms,” lexical borrowings are explained as “words borrowed from other languages” [Rozental 2000: 147]. The authors believe that “borrowing is a natural consequence of establishing economic, political, and cultural ties with other peoples, when along with realities and concepts come the words that denote them… Borrowing contributes to enriching the vocabulary of the borrowing language… However, the abuse of foreign words, their unjustified use without need, leads to the clogging of the Russian literary language” [ibid., 147–148]. Borrowing can occur in two ways: orally—through conversational contact with native speakers of another language—and in writing—through books, periodicals, official documents, and so on.

Our relations with other peoples, with other states, began long ago. Already in Ancient Russian there were words borrowed from Scandinavian, Finnish, and Turkic languages.