New Russian Elements in Contemporary German

NEW RUSSIAN ELEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY GERMAN Nikolai Safonow Nikolai Safonow (Study at University of Berlin; Ph.D., University of Munich) is now associate professor of Russian and German at Temple Buell College. The following paper was read at the 1967 Annual Meeting in Albuquerque at the session Modern Languages I: Linguistics. An interrelationship between the Russian and German languages has existed for a long time. One of the first loanwords adopted from Russian goes back as far as the period of Old High German. At that time the fur trade between East and West Europe was established and the Germans took over the Russian word sobol, which became Zobel in German.1 The influx of Russianisms into German may be divided into three clearly distinguished periods, which coincide with important historical epochs: first, Tsarist Russia; second, the period from 1917 to 1945; third, the period after World War II up to the present. Until 1917, a total of approximately 230 Russianisms were counted in the German language.2 Of these, 225 were loanwords, and six were loan creations . Most of the Russianisms of that time were used with reference to Russia. Although 75 words were used in connection with German life, only about 20 words became a part of the German vocabulary, for instance: Droschke, in Russian droshki; Steppe, in Russian step; Juchten, in Russian iuft; Samowar, in Russian samovar. All Russian expressions were nouns, and they pertained to such areas as merchandise, coins, measurements, means of transportation, government, and musical instruments. During the second period of linguistic influences, between 1917 and 1945, about 60 new Russian terms entered the German language. Of these, 33 were loanwords, and 29 loan creations. Most of these expressions were connected with the Bolshevik Revolution and with the Soviet Union and were of a political and economic nature, for example: Sowjet and sowjetisch, in Russian sovet and sovetskii; Arbeiter- und Bauernrat, in Russian sovet rabochei i krest'ianskoi obomy; Kulak, in Russian kulak; and Kollektivwirtschaft , in Russian koUektivnoe khoziaistvo (kolkhoz). During the Nazi period, from 1933 to 1945, no new Russianisms are known to have been adopted. The largest wave of Russianisms came after 1945. Unlike the previous Adolph Bach, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, 8th ed. (Heidelberg, 1965), p. 142. o 2ThJs and the following numbers were taken from the article "Russisches lexikalisches Lehngut im deutschen Wortschatz der letzten vier Jahrhunderte," by Siegfried Kohls, Sprachpflege (Leipzig, 1965), VIII (1965), pp. 161-164. 196RMMLA BulletinDecember 1968 influx, the adoption of new Russian terms is now limited to East Germany or the so-called German Democratic Republic. There is no evidence of new Russian elements in the Federal Republic of Germany, except in comments on the other part of Germany. Obviously, this one-sided influence is connected with the fact that East Germany has taken over the Soviet political and economic system, for which there had been no adequate German terminology .3 In 1961 a new dictionary of contemporary German began to appear in East Germany.4 So far the letters A through F have been published. This dictionary divides the new imported lexical elements into: a) Neuwort, b) Neuprägung, and c) Neubedeutung. The new Russian terms in the German language include all three categories of newcomers. The Neuwörter, which means neologisms, are mainly loanwords. They concern primarily international terminology which entered the German language through Russian and are semantically identical with the Russian words: for instance, Aspirantur, in Russian aspirantura—which means post doctoral study. Other examples of such loanwords may be found in the German-Russian Dictionary by Leping and Strakhovoi,5 such as Diversant, in Russian diversant; Okkupant , in Russian Okkupant or zakhvatchik. In this connection, only a few purely Russian words were borrowed, mainly the word sovet. With this word the East German press has gone so far as to use the term sowjetische Sprache—Soviet language, instead of Russian language; and sowjetisches Mädchen—Soviet girl." The second category of new Russian elements are the Neuprägungen; that is, new expressions coined from existing native word material. These are mostly loan translations or loan creations, and they constitute the majority of the new Russian borrowings. Examples are: Arbeitseinheit, in...