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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Jun 2009
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I know of only two words of Russian origin(other than food or drink) that have entered the English language. They are:
Intelligentsia
Ukase
Anybody know others; surely there must be some.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Borscht, blintz, knish latke (ultimately from Greek), (all via Yiddish, although some may be Ukrainian in origin), kvass, knout (via French), boyar, tsar (also spelled czar), duma, ruble, pogrom, refusenik (part calque of отказник ( otkaznik), glasnost, peristroika, gulag, sputnik, soyuz, samizdat, soviet, Bolshevik, menshevik. Though my favorite Russian loan is Japanese ikura 'salmon roe' < Russian икра ( ikra). For more, see Wikipedia article.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
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Does anyone have a way of defining when a word is officially accepted into a language? For example, from the wikipedia list, I only identify mammoth, bridge, steppe, pogrom, vodka, pavlova and maybe shashlik as being English words. The others are merely Russian words which English speakers use when appropriate.
Similarly, I would consider chauffeur to be an English word from French, joie de vivre to still be french and jus to be somewhere in the middle (it has caused no end of Scrabble arguments).
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Joined: Nov 2007
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2007
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Does anyone have a way of defining when a word is officially accepted into a language? Only the french and if i understand it the answer is simply jamais.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Does anyone have a way of defining when a word is officially accepted into a language?
The short answer is no. Most people cannot even agree on a definition of what a word is, let alone at what point an immigrant is naturalized. Many of the words I cited were used during the Cold War (and at its end) in Anglophone newspapers without an accompanying (parenthetical) definition or explanation. It may be in these new-fangled times they have slipped into archaitude. Not every user of a language has the complete lexical inventory at her tongue-tip.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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at what point an immigrant is naturalized. When it gets a green card?  Not every user of a language has the complete lexical inventory at her tongue-tip. That's why I'm so glad I know you, Honey!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Exactly. I agree on that. I alway consider those that are called loanwords to be borrowed and still foreign words in whatever language has them in loan. As long as they stay untransformed it still are French, Russian, Italian, German you name it, even if they have long been accepted in official dictionaries.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I alway consider those that are called loanwords to be borrowed and still foreign words in whatever language has them in loan.
Yes, once they get respelled or repronounced that's usually a pretty good indication that they've been around for a while. So, hoosgow 'jail' < Spanish juzgado 'tribunal' < 'judged'. But what about words like German Brutto 'gross' or Netto[/i] 'net' (in the economic sense). They used to be Italian, but that language doesn't even use brutto anymore for 'gross' but lordo. But another part of it is how familiar are most speakers with the term. If I can use a word without footnoting it for my interlocutors then it's pretty much a native English word with all rights thereto.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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il Buono, il Brutto ed il Cattivo. (ah, good movie)
My Kramer Italian dictionary gives brutto still for brutto weight as well as for ugly. It doesn't give any lordo, but then it isn't the fattest of dictionaries.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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stranger
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stranger
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Spasiba? Plausible but it's not in my dictionary.
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Carpal Tunnel
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No, sorry, neither in mine. It's Russian Russian meaning thank you. I also love the 'dasvidanja': be seeing you.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Nyet.
Reminds me of Krushchev back in the 50's pounding his shoe
on the desk at the United Nations.
----please, draw me a sheep----
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Carpal Tunnel
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That's about the shortest word in Russian. I remember how my sons, with geography, struggled and had fun with the word Dnjepropetrovsk, a city in the Ukraine. Hard to pronounce.
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