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Re: More modern russian derivativesPosted by Marian on March 12, 2002 In Reply to: Re: More modern russian derivatives posted by TheFallen on March 11, 2002 : : : : I wonder if there are any russian derivatives in modern English? : : : There are English words which are "borrowed" from the Russian, such as "dacha", "samovar", "troika". : : : Having "borrowed" them for such a long time it is unlikely we shall give them back. : : : Then there are more recent terms, such as "glasnost" and "perestroika", but they appear to apply to a specific period rather than being in general use. : : : psi : : There's gulag, too, but not a whole lot more. The Russian language is on a decline mirroring the deathspiral of the Soviet empire. In the '60s when I was in college, those of us who studied Russian called ourselves the optimists. (The pessimists would study Chinese....) : These days I am told that the languages most useful to study are Spanish, Cantonese Chinese and Arabic. Trust me to have picked French and German. : Anyway there are a fair few more. Balalaika, yurt, taiga (Russian tundra), steppe and cossack (from the same roots that give us Kazakhstan, one of those newer-fangled countries that sound like a death-rattle in a tuberculosis ward. There's also any slangy construct ending in "-nik", as in peacenik, beatnik and so on. Plus a number of socio-political terms such as bolshevik, tsar and pogrom. I also believe that intelligentsia comes to us from the Latin BUT via the Russian. Parka is borderline, since it's Alaskan Russian. : However, and I am staggered that anyone could have forgotten this one... there's also vodka, the prime ingredient of any decent martini (any gin-loving Philistines can go take a running jump if they disagree here). Shame on you for omitting this vital word :) I don't see tsar much in my reading of modern English, but I see a lot of czar, as in drug czar.
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