The Russian language is not an exception. The reflection of extra-linguistic factors in language is easier to demonstrate on the lexical level and, in turn, on vocabulary change. As new things, concepts, and activities appear, they need to be given names, which leads to change of the lexical system. Many of the new Russian words that came into existence during the Soviet period were formed due to new social and political structures. English influence on Russian was not very pronounced until the end of the nineteenth century. The last two decades of that century are a period of great political and social tensions in Russia and the influx of foreign vocabulary is closely connected with the activities of the Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, and other radical groups in their fight with the Tsarist government.
At the same time, strong English-Russian contacts, including translations of English and American novels and poetry by such authors as Kipling, Longfellow, Whitman, and Byron, co-occurred with the revolutionary movements, leading to an increase in the rate of borrowed words.1
According to Frank E. Daulton, “Lexical borrowing typically is the adoption of individual words or even large sets of vocabulary items from another language or dialect. It can also include roots and affixes, sounds, collocations, and grammatical processes. It has profound implications for various aspects of applied linguistics, including sociolinguistics and foreign-language learning”.2
The lexical development of Russian in the Soviet period can be divided into several sub-periods, each of which is characterized by some peculiarities in the field of loanwords.
The beginning of the 20th century is characterized by intensive technological (eg. the spread of the telephone, photography, cinema, aviation, automobiles, etc.) and social progress, which is reflected in the appearance of many new words, predominantly borrowings, and represents the first period of lexical development. If in the 1900s and early 1910s German loanwords were popular and spread especially among Socialists and Marxists, during the First World War, because of anti-war consciousness, these borrowings were then dropped. It was the time of greatest danger to Russia, but at the same time the process of war drew people of different social stratas into a stronger awareness of their ethnic and civil unity that should be defended.3 During the war years 1914-1918, one can see a certain nationalistic purism in the attempts to get rid of existing loan-words of German origin.
“Purism is the manifestation of a desire on the part of a language community (or some section of it) to preserve the language from, or rid it of, putative foreign elements. It also serves to describe the exclusion from a literary language of elements from another literary code, regional dialects, or sociolects of the same language.”4
For example, such words as buterbrod was replaced with chleb s maslom; plackart with spal’noe mesto; fel’dšer with lekarskij pomoščnik; Sanktpeterburg with Petrograd; etc.
The following period, 1917-1927, can be regarded as the period of social revolutions. The October Revolution ejected the overdue Czar’s empire into a modern Soviet Union in 1917 and facilitated rapid progress in society. The seizure of power by workers and farmers meant a radical change in power structure which proved to be vastly influential on literary language. It should be noticed that the revolutions of 1917 did not accelerate the rate of borrowing, but it intensified certain processes in this area. Before this time, words of foreign origin were predominantly confined to groups of elites. The events of the 1920s, especially the Civil War (1917-1922), drew large numbers of workers, soldiers, and peasants into political and social life, which is why borrowings were few in number, were available to the masses via the press and oral propaganda. The majority of these words belonged to the semantic categories of political, military, and economic terminology. The following examples demonstrate this: eg. avtonomija←autonomy, agitacija←agitation, anarxizm←anarchism, bojkot←boycott, dezertir←deserter, demokratija←democracy, internacional←international, konferencija←conference, lozung←slogan, miting←mass-meeting, rally, proklamacija← proclamation, leaflet, revoljucija←revolution, respublika←republic, talon←coupon, federacija←federation and others.5
It should be noted that because of the low level of education of those involved in the revolution, the foreign loanwords spread very slowly, as most found it difficult to understand them.
Purism continued at this time, although the usage of some ‘educated words of foreign origin’ was popular and fashionable among Bolshevik members; V. Lenin was the first in Soviet Russia who fought against the absorption of loanwords instead of the usage of available Russian variants. He stated: “We are spoiling the Russian language. We use foreign words without need. And use them incorrectly. Why say defekty ‘defects’, when one could say nedočėty or nedostatki or probely.”6 Analysing the wrong use of foreign words, Lenin concluded in his usual uncompromising style: “Is it not time to declare war on the corruption of the Russian language?”7
We can also observe the tendency to replace obsolete words denoting aspects of party, social, administrative and political life, eg. ministr (minister)→narodnyj komissar (People’s Commissar), policija (police)→milicija (militia), advokat (barrister)→ pravozastupnik.8
It can be surprising, but some words from cultural and entertainment life were also borrowed at this time, eg. kino←cinema, radio←radio, fil’m←film, sviter←sweater, fokstrot←fox-trot.9
Besides European languages the languages of the Union Republics were the sources of such loanwords as aryk (irrigation canal), basmač – basmach, čadra – yashmak, kišlak – village.10
The paradoxical phenomenon that, during a time of such great changes in social and political structures, the need for new lexical means to name these processes was not satisfied through borrowing, can be explained with the fact of the country’s isolation from the other, bourgeois world; moreover, the intra-language mechanisms of word-formation were particularly active. Nevertheless, some loan affixes and prefixes were widely used, eg. -izm – bol’ševizm ‘Bolshevism’, leninizm ‘Leninism’; -izacija – kulakizacija ‘kulakisation’, mašinizacija ‘mechanisation’; anti- – antinarodnyj ‘anti-national’, antirevoljucionnyj ‘anti-revolutionary’.11
In Russian English terms were absorbed more intensively in the semantic category of ‘sport’ than in any other part of the vocabulary. The influx of Anglizisms for sports after World War I became so massive that a reaction set in. Certain borrowings, especially those for football and tennis, provided Russian equivalents,12 eg. chends ‘hands’→igra rukoj, gol-lajn ‘goal-line’→licevaja linija (linija vorot), vaterpolo ‘water polo’→vodnoe polo, net-boll ‘net (ball)’→setka, servis ‘service’ (tennis)→podača.13
The essential conclusion to be drawn from the above is that in the period after World War I, Russian absorbed a low number of Anglicisms, the largest groups being in sports, polical and economic terminology, and technology.
At the end of the 1920s, the Russian language was marked by such qualities as stability and standardization. The characteristic signs of these processes were puristic tendencies and, in turn, the elimination of variants of loanwords and the building of one normative form, eg. aéroplan/samolėt (norm) ‘aeroplane’, éksport (norm)/vvoz ‘export’ and import (norm)/vyvoz ‘import’.
The 1930s faced the first five-year plans, which were aimed at modernization and industrialization intended to lead to the groath of the working class. This was reflected in the influx of technical and industrial foreign words. These loan words can be divided into two groups: those naming new objects and those replacing Russian forms.
To the first group belong the following words: eg. detektor←detector, kombajn← combine, konvejer←conveyer, kontejner←container, pikap←pick-up, teletajp← teletype, trollejbus←trolley-bus, televizor←television; also words denoting everyday things: eg. džaz←jazz, kovboj←cowboy, džemper←jumper; sporting terms: eg. ping-pong←ping pong, regbi←rugby, sprint←sprint.
To the second belong the words which already existed in Soviet times, but whose main reason of usage was due to a language economy, eg. servis (obsluživanie)←service, sejf (nesgoraemyj škaf ‘fire-proof cupboard’)←safe, snajper (metkij strelok ‘marksman’)← sniper.
Many foreign words acquired negative connotations, because they were considered to be alien and hostile, eg. biznes←business, pacifizm←pacifism.14
It is worthy of note that the number of loanwords during the period of 1928-1938 increased and, that English took over as the dominated source. The most significant event that influenced all sides of Soviet life, including the development of vocabulary, was the Soviet-German war of 1941-45. This period was characterized by a noticible decrease in the number of new lexical borrowings and a reduction in the use of the already existing loanwords; the main reason for it was a negative attitude among the Soviet people towards everything foreign, especially foreign words. It was accompanied by the political regime’s language policy and tendency to eliminate servility to the Western world.15 German words, mostly war-born and thus having negative connotations, did not manage to stick within literary language. The ideological struggle led to a disapproval of borrowings and loan words. However, this policy failed overall, as some loanwords did enter the Russian language, they were mainly of German origin and connected with military matters, eg. blickrig←Blitzkrieg (Russian calque – molnienosnaja vojna), érzac←Ersatz ‘replacement’, messeršmitt←Messerschmitt, fjurer←Führer, abver←Abwehr ‘defence’. Another result was with the English loanwords, some terms were replaced by Russian variants, eg. golkiper ‘goalkeeper’→vratar’, skreper ‘scraper’→traktornaja lopata ‘tractor shovel’. English loanwords were very few in number, eg. bul’dozer←bulldozer, grejder←grader, gangster←gangster, džip←jeep.16
In the post-war period, the aversion to foreign words became more pronounced and purism took on the form of a struggle against cosmopolitanism and the condemnation of any foreign influence in science, culture, or language. The assimilated foreign words were often those with a negative overtone in regards to life in the West, eg. reket←racket, gembling←gambling, kidneper←kidnapper.17 To purify the language existing loan-words were rejected or changed and native terminology was reinstated. “The Russian language is so rich in its vocabulary, so flexible and so picturesque that those skilled in it should be able to expound the most complex issues from the worlds of science, engineering, literature and the arts without using foreign words.”18 For instance, cooking and sports terms were replaced or renamed, eg. cukaty ‘candied peels’→kievskaja smes’ ‘Kievan mix’, francuzskie bulki ‘French rolls’→gorodskie bulki ‘town rolls’, korner ‘corner’ (kick)→uglovoj (udar), ofsajd ‘off-side’→vne igry.
Despite the hostility towards the influence of the United States and Western Europe, some new loanwords were adapted into Russian, eg. allergija←allergy, bojler←boiler, gandbol←handball, ofis←office, drandulet←jalopy.19
The Soviet Union developed better international relations in the 1950s. The relationship between the English and Russian languages was never as intense as in the years after World War II, i. e. in the years 1953-1988.
After the end of the epoch of Stalin’s oppressive power and with the beginning of the Second Thaw, the attitude to the importation of foreign words changed, it became more tolerant.20 Moreover, such events as signing several trade and economic agreements with western countries, the first post-war conference of the heads of government of the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union held in Geneva in 1955, and the Festival of Youth held in Moscow in 1957 accelerated the influx of loanwords. The new loanwords related mainly to technology, agriculture, sciences, tourism, sports, and everyday life: eg. fen←fan, mikser←mixer, bojler←boiler, kondicioner←air conditioner, lazer←laser, autbriding←outbreeding, moxer←mohair, nejlon←nylon, settl’ment←settlement, xeppening←happening, xippi←hippy, akvalang←aqualung, kruiz←cruise, kemping←camping, motel’←motel, bobslej←bob-sleigh, badminton←badminton, tajm-aut←time out, klipsy←clip-on earrings, chula-chup←hula hoop, etc.21
The use of new loanwords was a distinctive feature of many Soviet poets of the 1960s, eg. Andrej Voznesenskij, Evgenij Evtušenko; with the help of these words they wanted to show their intellectualism and fight against xenophobia.22
After all the upheavals of the earlier Soviet era, the years 1970 to 1985 can be called the period of conservative stability, although later it was called ‘stagnation’, because the society lived under ideological control in all spheres of life and had no hope that anything would change in the future. Nonetheless, contacts with overseas countries expanded, because of the need of the Soviet Union to develop native engineering and technology to be one of the most powerful states in the world arena.23 Regarding the influence of Anglicisms, it could be mentioned that the number of borrowings decreased in this period because of two reasons: the first one consisted in the overwhelming number of English loanwords in the 1960s, which was criticized in several press articles by N.T. Fedorenko, F.P. Filin, and A. Petrova; it was seen as a continuation of the struggle between the Soviet Union and the USA; the second one was a colder political climate and a harsher attitude towards loanwords. To the small number of new borrowings at this time belong: big-bit←big beat, impičment←impeachment, isteblišment←establishment, menedžment←management, pank←punk, sving←swing, flomaster←flowmaster ‘felt pen’, disk-žokej←disk jockey, singl←single, vindsërfing←wind surfing, fal’start←false start.24 In attempt to decrease a number of borrowings many calques appeared: eg. baza dannyx←data base, belye vorotnički←white-collar workers, ljudi dobroj voli←people of good will, železnyj zanaves←iron curtain, faktory riska←risk factors, mozgovaja ataka←brainstorm.25
The years 1985-1992 were marked by profound changes in the political, economic and social life in the Soviet Union. Perestroika and its affiliated hopes, freedom of expression, the possibility of new reforms, the establishment of the multiparty system, the deterioration of local economic and social situation, all that shook the society. These transformation processes found their reflection in the dynamic level of language, in the vocabulary, especially in such spheres as economy and technology, eg. bankir←banker, barter←barter, biznes←business, giperinfljacija←hyperinflation, investor←investor, lizing←leasing, marketing←marketing, nou-chau←know-how, privatizacija←privatization, rejting←rating, tenevaja ékonomika←shadow economy, cholding-kompanija←holding company, etc.26
According to data on the number of Anglicisms in Russian by Corbachevich, the 20th century witnessed an intensive growth of English loanwords; it counts 1314 loans, as compared to the 19th century’s 714 loans.27
The greatest number of English loanwords was borrowed in the 1920s and 1960s. As evident from the examples, the great majority of English borrowings is comprised of nouns. There is a list of reasons, which were enumerated at different times, to explain the spread of borrowings (eg. changes in morals, standards of a community, shift in the focus of interest, intensity of contacts, etc.). Possible reasons for the existence of English loanwords in Russian are28:
• the need to fill in the lexical gap (eg. in the language of technology and research)
• a language economy (i. e. slight structural borrowing)
• the internalization of communication
• prestige
• generally accepted professionalisms
• being a welcome wordplay in political competitions
• being an attention getting means in mass media
• miscellany
• the negative impact of de-semantized loanwords
Intellectual or supernatural matters, on the one hand, and power and violence, on the other, are the main reasons for the borrowing of Russian words into English usage, but the number of these words is small and this fact proves that English still has more to offer to Russian by way of loanwords.29 “Nor do we have to resort to ‘Aesopian’ language to smuggle our offering into their midst. The linguistic relationship is a close reflection of the cultural realities.”30
3. Some developments of Croatian vocabulary in the 20th century
Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the founders of modern linguistics, thought of language not as an external means of communication within society, but as a means to recognize the world, an instrument for the development of human thought and creation of his philosophy of life itself. This perception of language as immediate reality of thought is part of an extensive and overall popular scientific tradition.31
Croatian has been subjected to strong foreign influences for centuries. The German-speaking influence in the Croatian area is mainly due to the geographical proximity of Croatia to German territory. For a long time, Yugoslavia was under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially in the times of the Habsburg dynasty, which lasted until 1918. This was marked by contact with the political and cultural center in Vienna. Since then, German influence has remained in Croatia. Thus, the countries of the former Yugoslavia acquired most products of industrial civilization in the nineteenth century and earlier from Germany and Austria. This was probably caused by the particularly high cultural and technological development in Germany and Austria. Vienna became the center of educated Croats and Serbs. Some authors were strongly influenced by their stays in Germany (Vuk Karadžić and Dositej Obradović). In Croatia, newspapers, magazines and literature, scientific journals, and the theater, were under German influence. Specifically in the industrial sector, the Serbs and Croats tried to adapt to Germany; such that many technical terms were taken from the Germans.32 The linguistic result of this historical fact is a large number of German borrowings in Croatian, especially technical and scientific terminology, eg. knjigovođa ‘book-keeper’←Buchführer, poslovođa ‘manager’←Geschäftsführer. In the 20th century the most common type of borrowings from German was the so-called juxtaposed word, eg. zubotehničar ‘dental technician’←Zahntechniker, drvosječa ‘wood-chopper’←Holzhacker, kućepazitelj ‘caretaker’←Hausmeister. The German language also provided an avenue for the spread of calques, eg. pravopis ‘orthography’←Rechtschreibung, pregled ‘survey’←Überblick, savjetodavac ‘counselor’←Ratgeber, krvni tlak ‘blood pressure’←Blutdruck, riblja juha ‘fish soup’←Fischsuppe,33 svjetonazor ‘world view’←Weltanschauung, poslodavac ‘employer’←Arbeitsgeber, ležaj tech ‘bearing’←Lager, štednjak ‘cooker’←Sparherd, čvorište ‘node’←Knotenpunkt, etc.34
After the revolution in the Soviet Union many new words referring to concepts of Soviet reality entered the international vocabulary, also appearing in Croatian, eg. kolhoz, stahanovac, udarnik ‘front ranker‘, sputnik, lunik and etc.
Genetically and typologically similar languages can demonstrate purism tendencies to different degrees. It is a fact that the Slavic languages that are nearest to the West have the highest level of purism, one of them being Croatian. We can suppose that the reason for it is to be found in the widespread opinion of the Croats that their language is endangered mostly by German and other non-Slavic languages.35
The process of purifying the language of foreign words was accompanied by a strong language policy relating to the neighboring state of Serbia.
“Language needs to be continually defended, sometimes from itself at other times from us. It needs to be defended from itself because it enables itself and us to become routinized and ideologized. It needs to be defended from us because we are prone to use language and to “identitization” of language.”36
In this battle between Croatian and Serbian was reflected a preference by the Croats to adapt phonological and morphological patterns from Latin and Greek forms by the Serbs, eg. /b/ (Cr.) – /v/ (Ser.): Cr. Abraham – Ser. Avram ‘Abraham’, Cr. Betlehem – Ser. Vitlejem ‘Bethlehem’, or the verb suffixes -isa- (Gr.) and -ira- (Ger.), eg. Ser. formulisati – Cr. formulirati ‘to formulate’, definisati – definirati ‘to define’, distribuisati – distribuirati ‘distribute’.37
The end of the World War I was also the end of the constitutional relationship between Croatia and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Croatia entered the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, i. e. a multilingual country again. Although there were no political ties anymore, cultural ties with the Germanspeaking world were still very strong and Croatian-German bilingualism persisted.38
When, in 1918, the common state of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was created the Serbian officials and government representatives moved into Croatia, this led to the influx of Serbian words into the Croat lexicon. Responding to the perceived threat that this could destroy the individuality of the Croatian language, a purist reaction was manifested in the form of a struggle against the impact of the Serbian language, especially after 1929, when Serbian was acknowledged as a state language in Croatia.39 The aim of purism, for the Croats, was to introduce obsolete or new Croatian words, especially in the treatment of internationalisms and Serbian words. The highest degree of purism was seen in the years 1941-45, when Croatia was occupied by fascists and Croatian was declared an independent language. At this time, both Serbian elements and words of foreign origin were eliminated or replaced by Croatian ones, eg. munjovoz ‘lightning vehicle’←tramvaj ‘tram’, osposoba←kvalifikacija ‘qualification’. During Tito’s rule in Yugoslavia, the western variant of the joint language was preferred by Croats, eg. rajčica ‘tomato’←paradajz ‘paradise’, nogomet ‘football’←fudbal, also the names of months: siječanj ‘January’, veljača ‘February’, ožujak ‘March’. When Yugoslavia was broken up, many adminstrative terms, which could earlier be used in two variants, were replaced with the forms considered to be native Croatian, eg. lična karta ‘identity card’→osobna iskaznica, pasoš ‘passport’→putovnica, ambasada ‘embassy’→veleposlanstvo.40
Croatian tendencies of linguistic purism continued; neologisms were formed to replace international terms, eg. brzoglas←telephone, krugoval←radio, promičba←propaganda, slikokaz←kino. Also the words, which were fell out of use in the 19th century, reappeared in the 20th century and acquired new meanings, eg. samovoz←automobile, slikopis←film, svjetlopis←photography.41
Besides loanwords, hybrid words or compounds combining one translated into Croatian part and one modified loan origin part, eg. protuakcija←counteraction, besklasan←classless, naftovod←pipe-line, reizbor←re-election, traperice←blue-jeans.42
Since the end of World War II, the constant source for lexical innovation in the area of industrialization and technology has been American English, Anglicisms came mostly through British and American films, TV, and popular music.
People borrow words to name new objects and concepts, for which they do not have terms in their own lexicon. English is fast becoming a lingua franca. It has attained a status of prestige among languages, and young people, in particular, use English words to show their sophistication and to ascribe to themselves the higher social status that knowledge of English symbolizes. According to Jovan Čirilov’s dictionary of new Croatian words, published in 1982, approximately 85% of all loan words and loan-translations come from English and only 0.05% from German. This presents a strong contrast to data from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when the highest percentage of loan words comes from German.43 At the period 1954-1984 many terms relating to science, technology, film industry, sport, music, political and social phenomena, etc. were borrowed from English, eg. teleprinter←teleprinter, deterdžent←detergent, flashback←flashback, bejzbol←baseball, meč←match, ragbi←rugby, tenis←tennis, trener←trainer, džez←jazz, plejbek←playback, hit←hit, mobing←mobbing, buling←bullying, aparthejd←apartheid, menadžment←management, hardver←hardware, displej←display, klaster←cluster, tender←tender, etc., also at the level of calques, eg. banka podataka←data bank, kritična masa←critical mass, mikrovalna pećnica←microwave oven, operativni sustav←operating system, staklenički efekt←greenhouse effect, odljev mozgova←brain drain, hladni rat←cold war, neboder←skyscraper, visoka tehnologija←high technology, zračni jastuk←air bag, ljudska prava←human rights, sukob interesa←conflict of interest, kvaliteta života←quality of life.44
Even before the collapse of power structures in the former soviet states, a change of official communication took place, firstly in the design of certain textual mediums and then in non-private communication. In former Yugoslavia, a single state language was not declared; the constitution stated that law texts had to be written in “the language of the peoples of Yugoslavia”; the major role in the unification of the language was played by the Novi Sad Agreement of 1954. After the fall of Yugoslavia, the goal of a unified Serbo-Croatian language fell apart and was replaced by Macedonian, Serbian, Slovenian and Croatian; for former Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) Serbian was made the official language, in Croatia it was Croatian, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina it was Bosnian.45
The Croatian standard language tried to separate itself, as much as possible, from the Serbian standard; thereby focusing on dialects and the dialect around the capital Zagreb. The main lexicological changes were the following:
• no more use of newspeak: new concepts such as Cr. privatizacija, domovnica ‘Heimatschein’;
• replacement of earlier Croatian-marked words by common Yugoslavian words, e.g. putovnica, punica and pasoš ‘Reisepass’;
• use of old, non-communist words;
• for Croatian: replacement of terms that seem to be “Serbian” and of international words with Croatian words, eg. oporba←Opposition; dionica←Aktie.46
“Croatian, as a traditionally moderately purist language, has not accepted foreign language models passively, and has instead developed an active relationship with them. It has adapted the necessary loanwords according to its phonological and grammatical rules, and created calques based on foreign models. In this manner it enriched its lexical and semantic levels, preserved its expressive self–identity and took its place in the European linguistic convergence.”47
4. Differences and similarities of loanwords in Russian and Croatian
The Russian and Croatian people at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century defended their national identity, but at the same time they wanted to cooperate with other countries and among themselves. Firstly it was reflected in their vocabularies and marked by purism. Despite some common features for the source of its lexical enrichment, because of historical contacts, social factors, political circumstances, and the prestige of individual languages, each language tended to look in a particular direction.
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