Let's (not) speak Russlish

At work today I stumbled upon an article by staffmember Andrew Taylor in Pulse St Petersburg (there used to be a Pulse Moscow as well - I remember way back in 2003 -, but it was discontinued in early 2004) that talks about the risible inclusion of Russified English words into the language of Pushkin and Tolstoy. It's amusing.

Every year hundreds of foreigners from all corners of the world come to St. Petersburg to study the language of Dostoevsky and Pushkin. More, in fact, study Russian in the northern capital than in Moscow. But for Brits, Americans and students from other Anglophonic countries, the language they hear and see in St. Petersburg increasingly resembles their native tongue.

Piratskie kompakt-diski are sold at a sharp diskont on virtually every corner. Bukmekery and other gambling eksperty help you place bets. Khippi, rokery, rastamany, kul’tovye fil’m-meikery, along with other friki and nonkomformisty, are all part of Petersburg’s kountr-kul’tura (you can add gangstery, prostituty, bandity, khuligany and other riff-raff to the list). Lovers of ekstrim-sport engage in snoubording, vindserfing and bandzhi-dzhamping. Kustomery and komsumery frequent supermarkety, gipermarkety and mul’tipleksy… Oh, the list is prakticheski endless.

Many native-English speakers, along with those who speak English as a second or third language, are pleasantly surprised by this Anglicization of the language they’ve arrived to study: The more English cognates, the fewer "real" Russian words they have to memorize. But there are some folks, such as myself, who came to Petersburg to study good Russian, not "Russlish," the barbarized language that assaults them in this city of Peter

For a little insight into the Russlish phenomenon, I offer extracts from a tipichnyi day.

Russlish: a tipichnyi day

8:00 a.m.

My day starts at the fitness-tsentr. I enter the sports-zal, where rich, sweaty housewives engage in dzogging on treadmills, and buff fellows busy themselves with bodibilding. By the way, I recently read the following statement: "Bodibilding – ne eksklyusivno dlia streit men" ("Bodybuilding is not exclusively for straight men"). Thus, in order to avoid any awkward misunderstandings, I try not to be over-friendly with the muscle-bound toughs.

Note: Although streit is relatively new to the Russian tongue, it’s antonym, gei, has been firmly entrenched in the national lexicon for many years. Draw your own conclusions

9:15 a.m.

At home, I sip coffee while listening to talk radio, where top-menedzheridebatiruyt ("debate") the effekty of off-shor kholdingi on the lokal’naya ekonomika. Interestingly, today’s top-menedzher in most any big-biznes is often referred to simply as boss.

Sometime around 11:00 a.m.

At work. A piarshik (i.e. someone involved in pablik releshens) sends me a press reliz via faks regarding the opening of a klab-khaus for baikery. The organizatory of the new klab (purposefully voweled with an “a” instead of the usual “u,” thereby further mutating orthography but phonetically bringing it closer to English) planiruyut ("plan") shou-programmy, khedlainery, frendli-atmosfera, rok-muzika from European and American khit-parady, along with open-eiry (i.e. "open-air" kontserty). Furthermore, the klab boasts a large number of memberz and several supporterz. My goodness, who pens this junk?

A bit later I overhear one dizeiner say to another: "Sokhrani vse khi-rez faily v folderakh na desk-tope" ("Save all high-resolution files in folders on the desktop"). The language of dizainery, kompyuterschiki, programmisty and other khi-tekh workers is so littered with Anglicisms that I often have no idea what they’re saying.

1:40 p.m.

Hunger strikes. I head to a restaurant advertising itself as a respektabel’nyi istebleshment. I order the biznes lanch (on weekends, this place offers branch, pronounced “brawnch”). For dessert, the waitress rekomenduet ("receommends") chiz-keik. I decline.

3:30

At the ofis, sitting at my kompyuter. A colleague asks me to translate a short article. The following sentence leaps off the page: "Inflyatsia, stagnatsia i dazhe defol’t – potentsial’nye rezul’taty disbalansa mezhdu eksportami i importami" (“Inflation, stagnation and even default are the potential results of the misbalance between exports and imports”). The rest of the article continues in this vein, and I finish the job in rekordnyi time. In short, it’s quick and easy to translate Russlish into English.

That evening

It’s been a hard day, one that I will kiss off in a feshenebel’nyi klub-bar. This place, like most alternativnye or anderground (not, heaven forbid, meinstrim) kluby in St. Petersburg, has a chillout (pronounced “cheel-ah-oot” by locals) room. That’s where I plant myself. I flip through the kokteil menu, which features skryu-draivery, zhin-toniki and even long-eiland eis ti. I order a domestic beer. The fellow next to me introduces himself. He’s in marketing. He diskutiruet (“discusses”) how to pozitsionirovat’ ("position") brendy so that the publika will receive the korrektnyi messedzh. This konversatsia causes me severe diskomfort. I finish my beer and take the first shans to exit.

It’s a bit dishonest, of course, to bemoan the Anglicization of Russian. All world languages, including English (especially English!), are amalgams that reflect the ebbs and tides of cultural exchange. Indeed, over the centuries, Russian itself gracefully has absorbed elements of the Greek, Latin, Tatar, German and French tongues. Many intelligent voices argue that Russian will do the same with English.

The difference today, however, is the sheer amount of English (along with Latin and French via English) words that have invaded the Russian lexicon in a relatively short time. It often seems that, when offered a choice, Russians will choose Anglicisms when a perfectly good Russian analog is available. This is unfortunate. Why not skidka instead of diskont? Podpol’nyi over anderground? Neudobstvodiskomfort? Hell, even delevoi obed over biznes lanch!

For the legions of foreign students studying in St. Petersburg – especially those from Anglophonic countries – this recent barbarization of Russian perhaps eases their task. But it is my hope that the language I chose to learn remains great, mighty, truthful, and free. Russlish, alas, will never be any of these.

Being bilingual from childhood, I had always been tempted to mix my two mother languages. Now if the resulting patois were to be used as a kind of insider's code, an idiolect that grants one access into a select circle of similarly fork-tongued individuals, then the accompanying humour alone would allow one to indulge in the use of such a mélange. However, when more than 80 million people do the same thing, it's no longer as funny.

My Russian is not exactly anything to write home about, but I still dream of speaking it fluently one day. If I even reach a hard-earned level of competence, I believe I too would feel as strongly about linguistic purity as the writer of this piece.