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IN SLOVAKIA #155 (215)
Projective lexicon of the Russian language September 24, 2006

Series "Words about language" (3)
Topic of the week: Ruslish - Russian-English language

The autumn series of our issues is dedicated to “metalinguistic” words - those that denote phenomena from the life of the language itself. Today we are considering the question: how to designate the hybrid language that arises from the combination of Russian and English? This linguistic mixture has already become widespread in Russian business, science and technology, in the Internet, and also, of course, in the speech of the Russian diaspora (as in Brighton Beach).

I’ll give an example from Elena Mulyarova’s article “ Case by Face ” from the newspaper “Business” (31.3.2006):

An unprepared person attending a marketing meeting can have his head spinning. Because this is not a meeting, but a rally with a brainstorm , and other people’s cases , their own research desk are discussed , a complete fak-up is recognized , which can only be survived by rafting as part of a team building , at which team spirit will reach unprecedented heights.

This phenomenon is familiar to everyone, but, oddly enough, it does not have a generally accepted designation. The impact of English on different languages of the world has given rise to many hybrid formations, which already have their own stable names: Spanish-English - Spanglish, French-English - Franglais, Japanese-English - Japlish, Chinese-English - Chinglish. It seems to me that the most appropriate designation for Russian-English would be ruslish , Russlish .

Ruslish ( Russian + ing lish ; Russlish , Russ ian + English ) is a mixture of Russian and English, which is used both in emigration and in Russia itself (especially in business and technical circles).

He says something strange, I don’t understand much. - So he speaks Russian . The vocabulary is mainly English, and the grammar is Russian.
Poor American students: they are interested in new Russian words, but are faced only with distorted English ones, with Ruslish instead of Russian.
Once upon a time, macaroni poems were written in a mixture of Russian and French (I. Myatlev and his Madame Kurdyukova), and now Ruslish dominates literary experiments .

Three words are currently used to denote the Russian-English language, and the degree of their prevalence is far from being in favor of “Ruslish”. According to Google, the most commonly used word is Runglish (1060), then Ruglish (525) and only in last place is Ruslish (72 in total). on the side of Ruslish depicts the Russian-American space crew as speaking Russlish . However , is the authority of the writer Arthur C. Clarke, who in his novel “2010: Odyssey 2 ”

The word " Ruslish " has several advantages over others. First of all, it is euphonious, then “ Runglish ” scratches the ear as “barbaric” and contains a jumble of consonant sounds that are difficult to combine in Russian (there are five of them for just two vowels). But most importantly, in the word “ Ruslish ” the names of both languages are represented equally, each with three letters. Whereas in the word " Runglish " the Russian component is generally difficult to guess, since it is represented by only two letters ( ru ), while English, "English" - by five ( nglish ). Maybe the word “ Runglish ” should be reserved for such a mixture of Russian and English, where the latter lexically greatly predominates and only function words remain from Russian? For example, in this phrase:

"Bodybuilding is not a business exclusive to straight men"

For five significant English words there are two Russian prepositions: this is, perhaps, really Runglish.

It may be objected: what about the words “Spanglish” and “Chinglish”, where English is represented by the co-letter ng? But it is clear that the "n" here represents not only English, but also Spanish ( Span ish) and Chinese ( Chin ese) - a motivation that is missing in the word " Runglish ".

As for the Ruglish variant , this name is most suitable for such a language hybrid, where the Russian side is represented mainly by abusive words and untranslatable obscenities (I will refrain from examples).

Thus, “ Ruslish ,” which is a mixture of Russian and English in equal proportions, seems to be the most appropriate, “fair” name for this language hybrid. In English, this equality is observed in the word "Russlish", where each language is represented by four letters; it was precisely this that Arthur Clarke introduced into the English language.

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Aphorism

A politician is an acrobat. He maintains his balance by saying the opposite of what he is doing.
Maurice Barrès (1862p1923), French writer and politician
activist

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Memo

selfishness - the tendency to talk only about oneself, verbal egoism.

A selfish person, a selfish person - one or the other who speaks only about himself, uses any topics and reasons to turn the conversation towards himself.

This is not a conference, but a vanity fair. Some are gags, others are self-deprecating . Nobody talks about science.
So what does he say about the exhibition? - He talks about how he was passed over and why he is not represented there. You know this guy. But he talks about himself with talent, you can’t take that away from him. ( issue 40)

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network project Mikhail Epstein's "The Gift of Words" has been published since April 2000. Every week, subscribers are sent several new words, with definitions and examples of use. These words are not in any dictionary, and yet they denote significant phenomena and concepts for which there has not yet been a place in the language and public consciousness. "Dar" also conducts discussions about the Russian language, discusses letters and suggestions from readers. “The Gift” can serve as a guide to word creation, an introduction to the world of linguistic fantasies and mental technologies. “The word controls the brain, the brain controls the hands, hands control the kingdoms” (Velimir Khlebnikov).

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