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From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Russian words in English
Message-ID: <Cz2t8q.ELr@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <CypEv1.Fn4@spss.com> <Cywv9p.50C@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <CyypDD.LKD@spss.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 23:57:59 GMT
Lines: 101

In article <CyypDD.LKD@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <Cywv9p.50C@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>, Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>If one native speaker of English hasn't heard of a word, this doesn't
>>have to mean anything.  If the _OED_ hasn't heard of it, things get a
>>little more serious.  Quite a few of your words aren't in the _OED_
>>-- _pravda_, for example, and the monstrosity _nikulturny_.
>
>Perhaps on your side of the big pond people carefully check the OED
>before using a word, but here this step is sometimes omitted.

That's how it should be, otherwise the language couldn't develop.
A word has to acquire word status (and this can only happen by usage)
before it enters the dictionaries.

>I've already given a citation for _pravda_, but I've also said that
>I see a scale of acceptance of foreign words, not a binary category,
>and _pravda_ falls pretty low on the scale.

Indeed it does.  So low that I (and some other netters) wonder if it
should be counted as a word that English has borrowed.  It certainly
is much, much closer to the bottom of the scale than it is to the top.
Compare:
                               _istina_   _pravda_   _truth_
# of occurrences
  in English speech/writing    0          1          uncountable
% of speakers
  who recognise it as a word   0          1          100

It seems clear to me that ?_pravda_ is far closer to *_istina_
than it is to _truth_.

>Tom Wolfe in _The Painted Word_ uses _ne kulturny_, italicized
>but unglossed, and not in a discussion of anything Russian either [...].

Well, JRR Tolkien uses _linnod_ in Appendix A of _The Lord of the Rings_,
also italicised but unglossed.  I'll count that as a word that English
has borrowed from Sindarin.

>>Last I checked, the priest Bogomil was Bulgarian, as were most Bogomili.
>
>My dictionary says that the word comes from Russian (which in turn got it
>from Bulgarian).

That may well be correct; English is likely not to have borrowed it
directly from Bulgarian.  The _OED_ thinks that it has gone via Greek,
but its entire entry for _bogomil_ has been written by someone who was
missing a few lines from his source code, so I'm inclined to ignore
the whole thing.  Listen to this:

 `*bogomil*. _Hist._ [ad. med. Gr. _Bog'omilos_, of disputed origin [1];
  the first syllable may [2] represent Russ. [3] _Bog_ God.]  A member
  of a heretical Bulgarian sect [...]'

[1] The origin ought to be obvious to anyone who has been to the zoo
and seen a Slavic language; the name can be Englished as Godlief
(or Godleof).  Bogomil's opponents from the mainstream Church called
him Bogunemil `not dear to God'.

[2-3] Russian, forsooth!  It's not as if they didn't realise that the
man was Bulgarian.  But the meaning of the name can't be doubted.

>>[A]s I suggested and M Carrasquer confirmed, the _-ium_ elements
>>are named by an international organisation, whose full name escapes me
>>at the moment.  This means that the Russian _mendelevij_ is derived
>>from the Latin (?) _mendelevium_, not the other way around.
>
>*Latin*?  The word has as much right to be called Russian as Latin.

Or English, or German, or Spanish, or Chinese, maybe (it's _men2_
in Putonghua), ...

>More accurate than either, however, would surely be to say that it's
>a compound of a Russian root and a Latin ending.

Yes, a compound which was not created on Russian linguistic ground,
and by virtue of that is not a Russian loanword, just as _Buddhism_
is not a Sanskrit word (although _Buddha_ is).

>>I thought _Soyuz_ was a particular _sputnik_, or a
>>series of _sputniki_, rather.
>
>Well, I've never heard "sputnik" in English used to refer to anything
>but the first Soviet unmanned satellites.

Not the later ones?  I thought that _sputnik_ in English was any
Soviet artificial satellite of the Earth.  Maybe I'm wrong.

>I see no reason why proper names don't count as borrowed words.  Is 
>"Moscow" a borrowed word?  It certainly isn't a Russian word, so if 
>it isn't an English word, what is it?

Then why was _Moscow_ not on your list?  Or any of the other names of
Russian cities, towns, villages, rivers, mountains, seas, hills, lakes,
que sais-je encore?  What about all Russian personal names and surnames
that have ever been mentioned in English discourse?

-- 
`That's yer oan problem, Judas', they telt him.  `It's nae concern tae us.'
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk/chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)  (The G-- G--)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
