Lexical Borrowings from Russian pre and post the Soviet Period into Spoken Arabic: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

 

Omar Hazaymeh ^*, Natalia Vanyushina ^**

 

 

Summary

 

Language contact is a continuous voyage that cannot be limited by time or place as long as people commute and mix with each other. The linguistic and social relations between Arabic and Russian is a good example of languages and nations contact. Hundred of thousands of Arabs studied and still study in Russia. Thousands of them married Russian women. Due to this contact, many Russian words were borrowed into Arabic through this human mix and through media. The present research aims to investigate the lexical borrowings from Russia pre and post the Soviet Union into Arabic from a sociolinguistic perspective.

 

Key Words: Arabic, Russian, Lexical, Borrowing, Soviet, Sociolinguistic.

 

Introduction

 

Language is an important tool for exchanging thought, traditions and communication within and between all nations. People communicate with each other by verbal or non-verbal languages. Through language, they are able to send and receive various norms, values, and traditions, etc. Language, is both an important means in human communication and a significant reflection of social development, undergoes rapid changes during the history. The necessities of intercourse bring the speakers of one language into direct or indirect contact with those of neighboring or culturally dominant languages. The result of continuous contact between different speaking communities is that people use each other’s words to refer to some particular things, processes, or ways of thinking. This kind of using others’ languages is called borrowing, which is a natural result of language contact and exerts a profound impact on both vocabulary enrichment and mutual understanding of cultures. Borrowing can go in both directions between any languages in contact. In fact, the human society would be a closed one without this mean of contact i.e. language. When humans use their native languages or other languages, they build culture and construct deep relations within their own societies and with other people in other places.

The need to apply and to meet the requirements of life makes humans contact each other. In fact, neither a single human being nor any one society can live alone without having relations with other members or communities. Such contact may result in different aspects of life such as economic, culture and politics.

One of the most important facets of such contact between nations is the linguistic contact. Such language influence has a remarkable role in producing new words and in increasing the lexicon of any language. Such new language products will also insert new social norms. The simplest way of linguistic inter- influencing is discussed under the term " linguistic borrowing”. Linguistic borrowing which cannot end and which renews within time as long as people develop and move forward is a cultural phenomenon and a process between languages. It has been the subject of discussion by linguists. From a linguistic point of view, borrowing usually includes phonetic assimilation which affects the structure of words that passed to the new language. Another kind of borrowing is the morphological adaption where new vocabularies find their way in the new language. Semantic change is another process affecting the borrowed words. Actually, words and expressions voyage from one language to another or to many other languages due to language contact caused by number of linguistic and social factors. Environmental, social, political, and economical motivations like war invasion, intermarriage, immigration, trading and financial exchange, studying, media besides the need for lexical gap filling, the need for new invented linguistic forms, the tendency for prestige or to avoid taboo in the received language, etc. cause the flair for borrowing.

Borrowing is the sociolinguistic phenomenon which undertakes the loanword transmission process from one variety into another among the connected languages. The language that gives is the donor whereas the language that takes the receiver. Borrowing expressions and words from foreign languages into Arabic is an issue of discussion by Arab linguists, educators, writers and defendants of Arabic. Many Arab countries have established different academics (majmaa) with the responsibility of taking care of Arabic and trying to adopt Arabic equivalents for many foreign borrowed words used in Arabic by Arabs. The present study is an attempt to collect and analyze Russian loanwords in spoken Arabic.

New words can be added directly or indirectly to the vocabulary of any languages by many processes. Straight forward borrowing (i.e. direct borrowing) of lexical items from other languages is the most common method that most languages resort to. Borrowing words can go in both directions between the two languages in contact, but often there is an asymmetry such that more words go from one side to the other as it is the case with Arabic today in the Arab world where a large number of English and French words beside other foreign expressions are utilized in the lexicon of the colloquial and standard Arabic.

In this case the source language community has some advantages of power, prestige and / or wealth that make its objects and ideas desirable and useful to the borrowing language community. The actual process of borrowing is complex and involves many usage events (i.e. instances of the new word). Generally, some speakers of the borrowing language know the source language too, or at least enough of it to initialize the words. They adopt them when speaking the borrowing language.

 

Statement of the problem

 

When borrowed words enter the received language, they undergo linguistic changes that would affect their original form.  Russian loanwords in Arabic were subject to the Arabic phonological, morphological and semantic rules. The present study aims to explore the Arabic lexical borrowings from Russian pre and post the Soviet period and the linguistic changes they had when used by Arabs. The study will only concentrate on the types of Russian borrowed words in Arabic and on some phonological changes of them in Arabic.

 

The Significance of the study

 

The present study claims to be a pioneer as it will give those who are interested in Arabic a clarification of the domains of  Russian loanwords used in Arabic. The present study will also explore the linguistic changes of Russian loanwords in Arabic. The present study is significant and a pioneer one because it will be the first one to the best of researcher’s knowledge that discusses the sociolinguistic uses of Russian loanwords in Arabic. The present study however is not going to discuss the theories of linguistic borrowing, but it will deal with types of Russian words in Arabic and their domains in spoken Arabic that affect them.

 

The Delimitation of The Study

 

The present study is limited to the Russian loanwords in spoken Arabic. It is also limited to the Russian borrowed words used by Arabs in daily speech and not the standard literature.

 

The Questions of The Study

 

The study will attempt to answer the following questions:

A. What types of Russian words are borrowed in Arabic?

B. How are these Russian loanwords affected by the Arabic phonological, system?

 

The Methodology of the Study

 

This is a sociolinguistic study aims to have a descriptive analytical view of the Russian language interference in Arabic. The required data have been collected from different places and sources. Arabic daily newspapers, news websites, programs and series on Arabic TV channels and radio stations were a source for gathering data. In addition to these sources, published papers and theses about Russian and Arabic were another source that supported the researcher in collecting many words. The study shows the social areas and fields in which such Russian borrowed words are used. These words were classified into different categories like weapons, and proper nouns. Then, some phonological changes that affect Russian loanwords after being assimilated in Arabic were discussed. The collected data were registered on papers then categorized into various domains based on their usage in Arabic. Then the data were analyzed to find out the types and the phonological, changes of these Russian words when used in Arabic.

 

The Arab World and The Former Soviet Union and The Russian Federation

 

The contact between Arabic and Russian was strengthened and promoted due to the political and ideological developments in Russia and the Arab World at the advent of the twentieth century after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the emergence of the community party. This contact also increased after World War II when many Arabic countries got their independence and adopted the social and community doctrine for ruling. Almost all Arabic countries had communist parties that got support from the Soviet Union. The major Arabic countries (i.e. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Algeria) had very strong ties with the Soviet Union as these countries were ruled by parties who adopted the doctrine of the former Soviet Union. Other Arab countries were affected to some degree by the soviet influence because of the communist and socialist parties in these countries although they did not govern these countries.

For example, the relations between Egypt (the biggest and most important Arabic country) and the former Soviet Union was very strong as thousands of the soviet experts worked in Egypt in the fifties, sixties and seventies of the 20^th century. The period of the Egyptian former president Jamal Abed Al-Nasir who ruled Egypt from 1954-1970, witnessed strong ties with the Soviet Union in the political, military, economic, and educational levels.

Besides, hundreds of thousands of Arab students from all the Arab countries went to the republics of the former Soviet Union for education and training. The great majority of them studied medicine and engineering. These young Arab people stayed in Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union for many years and learned Russian and brought it with them when they returned to their original homelands. Many of them married Russian girls who came with them to their original Arabic countries after they finished their education. They had children whom many of them were given popular Russia names like Christina (a simplified form of the Latin Christiana, means «follower of Christ»), Nataly/Natalia/Natasha, Alexander, Vera, Vladimir, Galina. These children were also taught Russian by their parents and they still go to Russia to visit their mothers’ families.

After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the relations between the Arab World and the Russian Federation continued and strengthened in all levels. The political and military problems in the middle east increase the relation between the Arab World and Russia. The Arabic spring witnessed uprisings and civil wars which led to more cooperation between Russian as a super power and the Arab countries to solve these problems.

The educational ties between Russia and the Arab countries did not stop as thousands of Arabs still go to Russia to study and even for medical treatment.

At the university level, Russian is taught in many Arabic universities as major and minor specialization besides teaching it in the Russian cultural centers in some Arabic capitals. Many Russian books were translated into Arabic in different disciplines. The writings of Tolstoy and the poetry of Bushkin and other Russian artists and writers were translated into Arabic. Because of the direct and indirect contact between Arabic and Russian, many Russian words were borrowed from Russian either directly from Russian via those Arab students and media or through the western languages particularly English in the Arab countries in the Levant, Yemen and Egypt, or French in the Arab countries in the Arabic Maghreb (like Algeria and Libya).

Languages commute as people do. The mobility of language affects people at all levels. As for Russia, it commutes to the Arabic media through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, textbooks and new technology (i.e. the internet). The cultural boundaries between Russian and Arabic is enhanced too much through the political cooperation, translation and marriage.

When words travel from one language to another, they by no doubt will be affected by the linguistic rules of the received language. The borrowed words will undergo the phonological, morphological and semantic rules of the second language. This is the case of the Russian words in Arabic. The process of Arabization affects the borrowed words not only from Russian but also from English and French.

 

Review of Related Literature

 

Hopwood (ibid by Hine, 2010:1) stated that Russia had begun to establish a tangible presence in the Levant from 1843, when a need to protect the pilgrims travelling from Russia to the Holy Lands came to be seen as essential by both the Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities in the Levant and by the pilgrims themselves.

As Tsvetkov &Dyer (2016:67) stated that borrowing is a distinctive and pervasive phenomenon: all languages borrowed from other languages at some point in their lifetime, and borrowed words constitute a large fraction of most language lexicons. Another important property of borrowing is that in adaptation of borrowed items, changes in words are systematic, and knowledge of morphological and phonological patterns in a language can be used to predict how borrowings will be realized in that language, without having to list them all. Therefore, modeling of borrowing is a task well-suited for computational approaches.

Janulienė & Andriulaitytė (2016:81) investigated the English IT field borrowings in modern Russian by pointing out that Language is a reflection of society, which is developing with alterations in political, economic, and social spheres. As a result, some words lose their importance and fade into obscurity, whereas others come into existence. Despite the fact that the occurrence of borrowings is a global phenomenon, some spheres are more prone to accept foreign words, the dynamic IT field among them.

Goshkheteliani & Kikvadze (2017:460) assured that a language is a living organism as it changes with the development of the society. If this does not happen, the language begins to die gradually. Therefore, borrowing is one of the ways enriching vocabulary. Appearance of foreign words in the language is inevitable, but we should pay attention to the purpose and reasons of borrowing.

Li-na (2016: 211) stated that compared to other source languages, very few of the loan words in English come from Russian. Direct borrowing picked up heavily in the 20th century with the establishment of the Soviet Union as a major world power. Most of them are used to refer to things and concepts specific to Russia, Russian culture, politics, and history. Common usages are cosmonaut intelligentsia, glasnost, Lunokhod, Mir, Lunik, Politburo, sputnik, icon, mammoth, muzhik, samovar, Troika, etc.

Zanoon (2016: 255) studied the problem of Universal Grammar with Multiple Languages: Arabic, English, Russian as Case Study. Bustanov & Kemper (2013:269) argued that “Arabism” is the variant of “Islamo-Russian” that is characterized by the use of an almost unlimited amount of Arabic terms, often without translation into Russian. Arabic nouns can easily become loanwords by subjecting them to the Russian inclination. This massive use of Arabic loanwords (borrowed from national languages or directly from the Arabic) leads to the production of insider texts that can hardly be understood by non-Muslims, or even by “born Muslims” who are not familiar with the specific ideological and dogmatic frameworks of the respective groups that use this vocabulary. We found that this variant, “Arabism”, is most characteristic for Sufi and Salafi groups in various parts of the Russian Federation. The insider character of the style corresponds to the focus that these groups put on internal coherence, and on isolating the own group from others.

 

Discussion and Analysis

 

The following is a discussion of the Russian loanwords in Arabic

 

Weapons and Related Products

 

After independence in the fifties and sixties of the former 20^th century, the Arab countries sought building national armies with modern weapons. Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Yamen, Libya, Sudan and Algeria were strongly depended on the Soviet weapons. Other Arab countries like Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, and Arab gulf states were less dependent on the Soviet weapons because they did not adopt the communist doctrine. Due to this; many Russian military words entered Arabic. Besides; thousands of Russian experts worked in Arab countries and many Arab officers received their mastery training and education in military institutions in the former Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation. The following table shows some of the Russian weapons imported by Arab countries.

 

 

Diplomatic and Political Terms

 

The Arab world witnessed revolutions in some of its countries by political parties that adopted the communist and socialist ideas of the former Soviet Union. The political ties between the Arab World with the former Soviet Union and next with the Russian Federation never stopped. Many Soviet and then Russian political terms are internationally common and are used in the Arab World such as table 1. shows:

 

 

Proper Nouns

 

Names are very important source of information. They show gender, marital status, birthplace, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and social position within the one family or the society. Actually, names are the personal identities by which people are known and distinguished. However, naming practices vary enormously across nations. Names commute between people as goods travel from place to place. This travelling never stops as long as people contact with each other. In this situation and due to direct and indirect contact with Russia through media, travelling, living and studying; many Russian proper nouns entered Arabic. Many Russian male and female names are used and it is not easy to limit these names as long as there is a civilized mobile between Arabs and Russia. Many Arabs like to use foreign names for their new born children as a sign of prestige and to show others that they have something new or strange to be proud of. Table 2. shows some Russian personal names used by Arabs.

 

 

Mass Media

 

Very few Russian means of mass media (newspapers, news agencies and TV satellite channels) entered Arabic as table 3.:

 

 

Currency

 

 

Beverages

 

 

Monuments

 

 

Phonological Change

 

Phonological adaptation process is a method that a language uses to adapt a loanword from its original native phonology to a secondary language phonological system.

The phonological changes for Russian loan words in Arabic occur in accordance with native Arabic phonology. The general rule is that when a Russian sound has no equivalence in the Arabic phonetic inventory, the Arabic sound that is perceptually closest to its Russian equivalent replaces it.

Russian has sounds that do not have Arabic equivalents and vice versa. The following is a description of some of the phonological changes of Russian sounds of Russian loanwords in Arabic.

 

Consonant Sounds Changes

 

1. /p/ → /b/

The Russian /p/ sound is shifted into /b/ in Arabic. The cause of this is that the Russian sound /p/ is not part of the Arabic consonantal system which forces Arabs to pronounce it as the Arabic consonant /b/ as in /tupolev /→/ tublov/ whereas it is pronounced /туполев/ in Russian.

2. /v/ → /f/

The Russian sound /v/ is not in the Arabic phonology system. It is devoiced into /f/ in Russian loanwords in Arabic like / antonov / →/ antonof/ while it is /антонов/ in Russian.

3. /t ʃ /→ / ʃ /

The Russian sound / tʃ / is changed into / ʃ / in Arabic as in / Tochka / → / toʃka/ while it is pronounced /точка/ in Russian.

4. /t /→ / d /

The Russian sound / t / is changed into / d / as in / Tochka / /→ / doʃka/ although the Russian pronunciation is /дочка/.

5. /ʃ /→ / dʒ /

The Russian consonant sound / ʃ / is changed to / dʒ / in Arabic as the final /ʃ / in Hermitage which becomes / dʒ / in Arabic whereas the Russian pronunciation is /эрмитаж/. 

 

Vowel Sounds Changes

 

1.  / ə /→/ - /

The vowel sound / ə / in the Russian word Kalashnikov is omitted in Jordanian Arabic to pronounce the word as Klashinkoaf

2. /u: / →/ ᴅ /

The long high back vowel/ u:/ becomes low back vowel/ᴅ/ as in /spᴅtnik/for/spu:tnik/.

3. / ə /→/i/

The middle front / ə / becomes short front vowel in words like /ilu:ʃən / for /ilu:ʃin /.

 

Conclusion

 

Arabic Russian contact is an example of language interference. This contact is enhanced by time through direct social, educational, political and economic relations. The present study aims to explore the Russian lexical interference in spoken Arabic. The study shows that many Russian loanwords of various domains are used in Arabic. The study also aimed to show some of the phonological changes of such Russian borrowed words in Arabic.

 

 

Bibliography

 

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Goshkheteliani, Irine & Kikvadze, Maia. 2017. The Influence of English Borrowings on The Georgian language. Journal of Teaching and Education,07(01), 459-464.

Hine, Alyn. 2010. The Influence of Russian Literature in Two Twentieth Century Arabic Periodicals. Eras Edition 12(1), 1-24.

Janulienė, Aušra & Andriulaitytė, Justina. 2016. On English IT Field Borrowings in Modern Russian. Darnioji daugiakalbystė | Sustainable Multilingualism, 8, 81-100.

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