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From: gfowler@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (george h. fowler)
Subject: Re: Russian words in English
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Date: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 12:53:12 GMT
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I happened to notice this thread. One word nobody has mentioned is
"refusenik". This word was supposedly coined in *English* incorporating
the Russian morpheme -nik, which forms various nominalizations,
especially agentive nouns, PLUS the English verb refuse. Does this
demonstrate that -nik is now a suffix in English!? The word was
subsequently calqued back into Russian as "otkaznik", where "otkaz"
translates "refuse". I'm not aware of any other penetration of Russian
morphemes into English, except for the jocular use of -ski in things
like "tough-shitski" (or however that would be spelled), "brewski", etc.
And, come to think of it, I suppose that could be Polish rather than
Russian.


     George Fowler                       GFowler@Indiana.Edu [Email]
     Dept. of Slavic Languages           (812) 855-2829 [office]
     Ballantine 502                      (317) 726-1482 [home]
     Indiana University                  (812) 855-2624/-2608/-9906
[dept.]
     Bloomington, IN  47405  USA         (812) 855-2107 [dept. fax]
 


