Russian – the strong and mighty language – has an estimated range of 150.000 to 500.000 words (depending on what is counted). And many of them sound challenging, some might sound “harsh” while others don’t sound like Russian at all.
It’s because they’re not!
Russian possesses at least 2000 words of turkic origin, that is words loaned from proto-Turkic languages and changed to fit the Russian phonetics and spelling rules. Many of these include what we would consider “regular”, day-to-day words like “watermelon”:
қарбыз —–> арбуз (watermelon)
алмас ——> алмаз (diamond)
қамыс ——> камыш (reeds)
Most of the times the phonetical change is so drastic that many, even native speakers, would have never noticed that certain Russian words were derived from a non-Slavic group of languages that are traditionally situated in the Asian subcontinent. But what’s the history behind that?
Russia has been a trans-continental empire for the last 3 centuries, engulfing large territories that stretch from Eastern European grasslands to Siberia’s eternal tundras and covering the Northern part of Caucasian mountains. From both colonial and non-colonial interactions such as conquest and trade respectively, Russian as a language been in tight-knit contact with its Turkic neighbors for a while which left a considerable impact on its vocabulary. Whether it’s Kazakh, Turkish, Tatar or Yakut (Sakha), porto-turkic languages have given Russian a range of useful terms that we keep on using in our everyday lives.
A more in-depth history of Turkish’s in Russian originates in the middle of 13th-century, commonly referred to as “pre-Mongolian period”. That’s when Russian as a language gained words like “шатер”- tent, “богатырь”-soldier, “жемчуг”-pearl and even “лошадь”-horse! The borrowing of the word “horse” attested in the inventories of the 12th century, and caused a reverse restructuring in the semantic relationship of Russian lexicon.
Beginning in 14th century, Russia has been under economical rule of the Golden Horde that consisted of various Turkic tribes that will further progress into modern-day Turkic ethnicities. During this period, a number of important words entered the Russian language related to the state (yam, yamshchik, yarlyk, kazak, to roam), military (esaul, karaul, ensign, dagger, ataman, saber, koshevoy) and economic system (denga, treasury, treasurer, tamga, profit, owner, food, and even possibly bondage). Other borrowings relate to such areas of life as construction (brick, tin), jewelry (earring, emerald), drinks (braga, buza), vegetable garden (watermelon, rhubarb), fabrics (satin, braid), clothing and footwear (shoe, caftan, trousers, sheepskin coat, pimy, bashlyk, sarafan, cap, veil, stocking), everyday life (glass, chest), weather.
But in 16th century is when Turkic influence has grown even bigger. Borrowings from this period are particularly numerous, which is explained by the enormous cultural influence of the Ottoman Empire. This influence extends even to the early 18th century: such well-known borrowings as the bashka (head), the ocher (imperfection), the pencil (pencil), and porcelain (porcelain) date back to the Petrine era.
Turkic expansionism in Russian vocabulary of that era is also directly tied to Russia’s colonial expansion in Central Asia and Siberia. Imperial conquest did a number of indigenous culture and languages but ironically enough made Russian “absorb” a list of terms, and words from the languages that Russians considered to be of “lower culture”.
So the next time you stumble across a word that sounds “weird” — you have photo-turkic languages to thank for that linguistical diversity!
