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The Soviet Union endured for over seventy years and I know lots of Russian words were borrowed into the languages of the Soviet Republics around Russia during this time.

But are there some words borrowed into Russian from the various Baltic, Caucasian and Central Asian Soviet Republics which are still very commonly used in Russia today?

hippietrail
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  • I hope you mean words borrowed exactly in soviet period. Not all of the words with baltic or turkic origin. – default locale Jun 14 '12 at 08:24
  • Actually I meant any period but in my ignorance I assumed the cross-fertilization would naturally be higher during the existence of the USSR. – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 08:27
  • I believe this question isn't appropriate: if these words have become very common in Russian language, nobody would actually recognize them as loaned without a dictionary. Also, "most common" sounds like very subjective characteristic: people who migrated to Russia from different republics would use certain sets of words more or less frequently. – xyzman Jun 14 '12 at 08:28
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    I'm torn. It's an interesting question, but it's super broad. Anyway, here's a funny titbit: the Russian word for "shed" (сарай) comes from Turkish, where it means "palace". – kotekzot Jun 14 '12 at 08:31
  • "Common" is objective and can be verified by word frequency analysis for instance. "Best" and "favourite" are subjective. If nobody recognizes loanwords in Russian then this is a very different language to the English, Georgian, German, Japanese, and Spanish I'm familiar with where there are words that stand out as being non native alongside words we think are native ones. Are we saying that consulting a dictionary would be a practice we don't want to encourage on this site? – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 08:32
  • In fact let me find some lists ... – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 08:32
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    @xyzman does it really matter if they couldn't be recognized as such without a dictionary (regardless of the validity of that assertion)? The site is, at least in part, dedicated to the finer points of language, not just what you'd hear on the street. – kotekzot Jun 14 '12 at 08:33
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    @hippietrail, most of the words borrowed from russian language during soviet era were borrowed with new concepts. Russian language was influenced by languages of neighbouring folks during language formation. And there are plenty of russian words of turkic, persian, baltic origin borrowed way before the Soviet era. – default locale Jun 14 '12 at 08:38
  • The point about learning more (and possibly something unknown) about familiar words is valid, but I feel that this question would turn into the dictionary itself. Wouldn't it be better to have a tag for loanwords so interested people would be able to look up questions for specific words and meanings? – xyzman Jun 14 '12 at 08:42
  • @hippietrail, wiktionary has a helpful category – default locale Jun 14 '12 at 09:17
  • @defaultlocale: Yes it does, I was actually going to seive through a bunch of such categories on en.wiktionary, which I'm more familiar with. But I got deep into multitasking... (-: – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 09:19
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    I wonder why you fixate on the Soviet Republics. Russia initially was and still is a multi-ethnic country with a lot of different languages. On the lands of Muscovy, a significant part of the local population spoke Baltic and Finno-Ugric languages. The Golden Horde invaders spoke Turkic. All these factors largely influenced the development of the modern Russian language. That's why there is even such an opinion that Russian isn't a pure Slavic language. Though I don't agree with this, there is something in it. – thorn Jun 14 '12 at 09:57
  • Because it's an interest field for many people. I wonder why you accuse complete strangers of having fixations? )-: I'm aware of some of the diversity in and around Russia but thought this was one good way to restrict the scope of the question that would seem familiar to many people. – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 10:05
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    Oh, looks like 'to fixate' is more offensive in English than its Russian cognate (фиксироваться). Sorry. – thorn Jun 14 '12 at 10:29
  • Oh OK sorry for misunderstanging @thorn (-: – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 10:54
  • It's really interesting to find and trace Georgian and Armenian words. Because those are not numerous. However the history of the interaction between Russian and Turkic languages is so long and tangled, that it's a completely another matter. – thorn Jun 14 '12 at 12:30
  • Yes since I had decided to focus my question on the fromer USSR I wasn't sure how to avoid words from the Ottoman period or modern Turkey, but Sovet-era borrowings might more likely be from the Turkic former Soviet republics. (The same would apply to words from neighbouring Iran vs former Soviet Tajikistan I suppose). – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 13:22
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    I doubt if your list (not including proper names and currencies) contains any word that is a Soviet era borrowing. – thorn Jun 14 '12 at 13:52
  • And in general, I'm sure it is incorrect to call proper names loanwords. – thorn Jun 14 '12 at 14:08
  • Yes I just picked the English Wiktionary because I have lots of experience in processing the data there - not because I believe it's particularly good. But it is a sample so I left in the good and the bad. – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 14:11
  • Айвазовский is a name. – Philip Seyfi Jun 14 '12 at 15:01
  • @PhilipSeyfi: Yes "default locale" already pointed that out but I decided to leave the chaff in with the wheat partly to remind us that Wiktionary while useful has some crap in it (-: – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 15:05
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    @hippietrail If you want to explore the word usage over time, use this site: http://www.ruscorpora.ru/en/index.html – thorn Jun 14 '12 at 18:13
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    Closing this for the time being - I'm not exactly sure what a gigantic list is going to accomplish here. What problem are you trying to solve? If that's answered, I can recommend two different strategies for accomplishing this: ask for help in choosing a reference, or establish a Community Wiki answer and ask folks to contribute words and their backgrounds to it. – Shog9 Jun 17 '12 at 00:44

2 Answers2

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Found an interesting list of Georgian words in Russian on Russian Wikipedia. I'd say the most common of them are тамада and козинаки. I didn't even know that they are Georgian.

thorn
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  • Ah yes "tamada" is very very Georgian and I didn't know it was used in Russian at all. In the case of "gozinaki" I was pretty sure I was told by somebody here that they thought it was a Russian word. Interesting! (-: – hippietrail Jun 14 '12 at 10:56
  • That list is actually surprisingly short and has a decisive gastronomical bend (apart from words popularized by the film Mimino and geographical names). – kotekzot Jun 14 '12 at 11:05
  • The list of Turkic words integrated into Russian on the other hand is quite diverse and extensive. – kotekzot Jun 14 '12 at 11:08
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Let me speak from my heart try to split your question in two.
If you want to find out russian words borrowed from the native languages of people of former Soviet Union then wiktionary has a category for this: Слова по происхождению (Words by origin). For example subcategory of words of turkic origin:

Also, thorn already gave a couple examples of Georgian words.

The second part is about republics.

All of the examples above are the results of a long-term influence of neighbouring turkic folks in VII-XIII centuries, but it's nearly impossible to tell exactly how much are they related to the modern republics of former Soviet Union. Words are borrowed from languages, not officially loaned from foreign countries %)

Usually loanwords came with the corresponding concepts. Soviet Union was founded less than a century ago. When the Soviet Union was established most of the "common" words were already present in the native languages. AFAIK, most of the words borrowed from russian language during the soviet era were neologisms, at least from the point of view of the borrowing language. The same goes for russian words borrowed during Soviet period.

There are proper names for territory-specific types of food (хачапури, манты, бигус, плов, шаурма, люля-кебаб, бешбармак), musical terminology (домбра, домра, кобыз, дутар, акын), geographic and ethnic names (абхаз, аул, аил, кишлак), etc. I believe that there are plenty of russian native-speakers who understand what does these words mean. But I also believe that most of them understand what are the origins of the word.

Comments to your update: *IMHO*
Common words:
- кочерга (poker) - etimology is unclear. Wiktionary links to Acharian's deduction to Armenian. But Vasmer's etymological dictionary derives it from Ukrainian/Polish or Turkic (thanks to thorn for remark)
- козинаки (gozinaki)
- ишак (donkey)
- бархан (barchan)
- мечеть (mosque) - both turkmen and russian words were originated from arabic مسجد (mæsdʒɪd)
- кинза (coriander)

I would separate well known proper names:
- Айвазовский (artist)
- Петросян - Comedian Yevgeniy Petrosyan, is sometimes used as a common name for not very funny comedian last years (mostly on the web). Generally Петросян is a quite popular Armenian last name. Consider, for example chess champion Tigran Petrosyan.
- аджика, боржоми, сацебели, сациви, харчо, чахохбили, чача - food and drinks
- драм, лари, лат, лит, манат, сомони, тенге - currencies
- Ингушетия, Осетия, Севан, Сочи, Тбилиси, Цхинвал, Цхинвали - toponims
- абрек, хач , хачик - ethnically specific terms (some of them are offensive)

default locale
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  • I'm not sure about кочерга. See Vasmer's dictionary: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/main.cgi?flags=wygtmnl – thorn Jun 14 '12 at 12:17
  • @thorn Nice point. Currently I didn't recheck the etimology of words from the OP's question. I just made a couple of comments about their usage nowadays. – default locale Jun 14 '12 at 12:21
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    The list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Turkic_origin seems to be more extensive than the one at Russian Wikipedia. – Philip Seyfi Jun 14 '12 at 15:04