Thread: English attack on Russian

Pwned!

Well, it's not just stupid Americans (or American domination as someone brought up the Pentagon) contributing to the Moscow/Moskva problem (is there really even a problem?). Seeing english as a west germanic language, and west germanic languages pronounce it Mos-kow, as well as spanish and french. Slavic countries and countries close to the soviet union (finland, sveeeeeeeeeeden, norway, denmark, estonia, latvia, etc.) pronounce it Moskva. Others go for a combination of the two, and say Mos-ko-va.

Oh my god. Not another "owner."

My point is...that it's usually much easier for foreign words to be written and said correctly than it is for English words to be written in foreign languages...and it's kinda lame and stuff...

Some examples, please?

Originally Posted by TriggerHappyJack

You know what I was thinking..
Like, for us...we could spell Москва as Moskva real easy like right, so it's really ridiculous that we don't...but in cases like Washington they'd have a world all not...the way it usually looks and weird you know...

My point is...that it's usually much easier for foreign words to be written and said correctly than it is for English words to be written in foreign languages...and it's kinda lame and stuff...

You know? Lol.

I disagree. Until the whole world starts writing in some kind of comprehensive phonetic alphabet with some sixty letters, plus diacritics and stress marks and about fifteen punctuation marks, no language will be able to perfectly copy a word from another language in spelling, pronunciation, stress, intonation and meaning all at the same time. English certainly doesn't have a phonetic alphabet. Russian is a lot closer to being perfectly phonetic, the only problem it has in pronouncing foreign words is that there aren't enough letters in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Besides, you yankie , you can't even spell sulphur, encyclopaedia, flavour, jewellery or any verb ending in -ise correctly, so don't claim that you know how to spell in English. Talking of encyclopaedias, you may want to look up the definitions of the words "pants", "chips", and "football" - pants are what you call underpants, chips are what you call French fries (only thicker cut and much, much tastier) and football is played using goals where you have to kick the spherical ball under the bar and into a net. You seem to be using those terms in place of "trousers", "crisps" and "a game a bit like rugby, but where the men aren't as tough, so they have to wear kevlar body armour and stop every thirty seconds, and actually very little kicking is done, which goes against what the name 'football' suggests". A "sidewalk" is actually called a "pavement" and "gasoline" is called "petrol" - there are various other examples that you should learn.
Also, "like", "you know", "whatever" and "stuff" are not punctuation marks. :P

Anyway, now that my rant is over, let's get back to the topic at hand:

Originally Posted by chanchal

hello friends,It is apparent that now english is showing its presence in each and every language,so russian is also not an exception .I want to ask my russian native friends that wheather they are able to tell me about 50 words related to colloquial russian and literary russian which are really taken from english .then it will be my turn............

Originally Posted by Ядерное лицо

Russian is a lot closer to being perfectly phonetic, the only problem it has in pronouncing foreign words is that there aren't enough letters in the Cyrillic alphabet.

There is an interesting note in my copy of Dead Souls that talks about the use of the Greek theta in Cyrillic, and how it slowly became an "f" sound because Russians were incapable of saying the "th" and only did so for words of Greek origin anyway.

It also referred to the Russian Revolution as a "czarectomy"--which I thought was funny (and possibly a great band name).

Originally Posted by mike

it slowly became an "f" sound because Russians were incapable of saying the "th"

For vose of you oo fink ve Russians are ve only ones wot can't say ththththth - wevver, muvver, bruvver, bovver, fink, teef, feoof - ring any beh-ooz?

Originally Posted by VendingMachine

Originally Posted by mike

it slowly became an "f" sound because Russians were incapable of saying the "th"

For vose of you oo fink ve Russians are ve only ones wot can't say ththththth - wevver, muvver, bruvver, bovver, fink, teef, feoof - ring any beh-ooz?

OK, an initial voiced th is not pronounced v in cockney. For some reason they are able to pronounce that one.

I wonder how the Greek theta is proounced by Greeks. Is there anywhere I can hear it?

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ancgreek/ ... guide.html

Thank you very much, Mike.

I wasn't saying that the world should spell EVERYTHING the way it originally sounds no matter what. I was just saying that it was weird how we don't say things like a country's name as what it IS. I don't do a very good job of explaining myself, but like would it be hard to say Nippon instead of Japan?
And with the alphabet thing, in Japanese they have a consonate (SP) and then a vowel all the time, unless it's ended by an n. So I was saying that in Japanese and a lot of things it makes sense for them to not say Russia, Germany, et cetera because they can't write those in their alphabet. (Not counting Romanji) And in Russian, there isn't REALLY a W. And there isn't a th sound either. So they couldn't write Wisconsin, or like...a country that starts with a th...O_o Do you getting my point? I'm not saying the world should have one universal alphabet, I'm saying I never really got why we don't say Rossiya, instead of Russian, Nippon instead of Japan, Deutschland instead of Germany, etc.

We don't say those things for historical reasons. People have always had a way of calling other groups of people or they heard the way these people called themselves and eventually muddled it up in their own language. And just as it is impossible to write certain words with the Japanese syllabaries, it is impossible to write the names of several countries and people with our alphabet. BTW, how do you think most Americans would pronounce "Deutschland"?

BTW, how do you think most Americans would pronounce "Deutschland"?

Let alone pronouncing Tskhinvali, saavdmqopo, Mtsketa...

There are many words of German origin that are being replaced by English ones now:

прейскурант - прайс-лист
бухгалтер - аккаунтант
регистратор - ресепшенист
шлягер - хит
брандмауэр - фаерволл
канцелярские товары - офисные товары
патрон - картридж
фломастер - маркер
лозунг - слоган
штекер - коннектор
шлюз - портал, гейт.

Originally Posted by TriggerHappyJack

And in Russian, there isn't REALLY a W

I disagree. Have you seen that cult comedy Brilliantova Ruka? Apparently you haven't. "Такси на Дубровку", "всё", "Козлодоев", etc. are all pronounced by one of the characters with a "w", not "v".

бухгалтер - аккаунтант

Never heard anyone say аккаунтант in Russian.

регистратор - ресепшенист

See above. Ресепшенист sounds rediculous.

шлягер - хит

I've asked a DJ about this one and he says that there's actually a difference between шлягер and хит: шлягер remains шлягер even if it doesn't make it into the top ten, while хит ceases to be one and enters oblivion.

брандмауэр - фаерволл

Hmm, I think that it's actually much cooler to say брандмауэр, it sounds more sophisticated than файервол.

канцелярские товары - офисные товары

Give me a break. It's neither. It's канцтовары.

патрон - картридж

If you're talking about printers, sure, картридж (and it's never been патрон in this case), but if you're talking about guns, it's патрон.

фломастер - маркер

Фломастер (flowmaster - German??? give me a break) refers to the actual "ink flow control" system used in this type of pen and the word is also used in Russian to talk about this type of pen itself. Маркеры (markers), that "mark on every surface", use a somewhat different "flow control" mechanism and the word маркер in Russian suggests "whiteboard marker", while фломастеры suggests smaller pens with a flowmaster type ink flow control system for kids to draw with. They often come in packs of 20 and more.

лозунг - слоган

Did you know that slogan is not an English word at all? It comes from Scottish Gaelic.

штекер - коннектор

These words aren't synonyms. Штекер means "plug", коннектор means "connector", therefore they aren't interchangeable. BNC connector, T connector (there's your коннектор) but a 220V plug (i.e. штекер or вилка). Different things.

шлюз - портал, гейт

Again, not synonyms. Шлюз means "lock" (as on a canal). It is also used in computing. For instance, you could have your interrupt vectors organised as a LUT and that would be your шлюз (шлюз has other meanings too, I'm too lazy to list them here). Гейт cannot be used in this way. It's to do with routing. Порталы generally refer to (huge) gateways on the web.

In response to the original question of why those darn English speakers (although I really think he is referring specifically to Americans) are infiltrating Russian, I would pose this question: Who is really responsible for this infiltration? Is it the English speakers who are simply doing what English speakers do (ie. speak English) or is it the speakers of other languages who succomb to the tyranny of Americans who dare to speak English. Perhaps if Russians or anyone else for that matter do not wish to use English words, then simply don't use them. Am I being unreasonable here.

Are Americans telling you you MUST use English words in place of your Russian ones?

The Spanish word for Mosva is Mosc

It's true that there are many words from English making their way into the Russian language, however it works the other way round too:

Click here

Granted, the words from Russian to English are perhaps not as widely used as those from English to Russian, and more restricted to particular areas of knowledge, but nonetheless, there are a few that are well-known.

For instance:
babushka (apparently the babushka look is back in! Says who? Why, none other than Mr.Prada!)
balaclava (probably not a favourite garment of the aforementioned Mr. Prada)
balalaika ("Let me hear your balalaikas ringin' out / man, it's good to be back home / I'm back in the U-S-S-R!" Lennon-McCartney)
cosmonaut (basically, a Russian astronaut - no technical difference)
mammoth (-th- !?!? from Russian !?!? Yep, apparently)
sable (bit smaller than a mammoth)
steppe ("...na steppe krugoooooooooooom")
tundra (where the mammoths used to live)
vodka (well, I couldn't possibly leave that off the list!)

plus one word they don't list, presumably because it's an english word with a Russian suffix - beatnik !

I want to learn Sambo That looks cool!

balaclava (probably not a favourite garment of the aforementioned Mr. Prada)

Funny they should think it came from Russian - we don't call that type of mask "балаклава" in Russian. Rather it owes its name to Balaclava in the Crimea where the British troops were stationed during the Crimean war. Moreover, the origin of the name Балаклава is clearly not Russian.