Thanks, espadrilles and agender: why don’t we have enough Russian words
MOSCOW, 9 Jan — RIA Novosti, Anna kocharov. Foreign words that are in circulation, borrowing from English and other languages often reflect important social processes.
Maxim krongauz, a renowned expert, head of laboratory of linguistics at the Higher school of Economics, told RIA Novosti, why the Russian survives English vocabulary and how it affects communication.
Crazy nineties
Since the 1990s, the language is the flow of borrowing in all areas, both professional and domestic.
Most likely, the reason was the sudden openness of the society. There are many new phenomena, areas of activity: Finance, advertising, business. Already known areas of Economics and law, for example — has been enriched with new concepts. Since then formed a habit to borrow the word, and not invent their own.
Slang and professional jargon
Significantly enriched sports (primarily due to extreme types), culinary arts, and this resulted in a lot of debt. Basically, we take words from the English language, but not always. For example, in cooking, cosmetics, and high fashion is dominated by French language.
For example, the word “sommelier”, which, incidentally, was revived. It was used and came into use again. In sport among the extreme types I know only one French borrowing — parkour.
If the word is included in everyday language, mastered it quickly, as happened with the words “computer” and “glamour”. But technical or economic terms known only to experts.
It used to be that the word must exist in the language, then its included in the dictionary. Now life is faster, I think, the time is now shorter. Agents of borrowing are educated people: it is easier to learn foreign languages, they use foreign words, and then they pick up other sectors of society.
But there are other examples. Sometimes children quickly begin to use new words is common, including among gamers. But most of the borrowing still come through texts, and they are dealing with professionals, journalists and bloggers.