Most languages of the former Soviet Union and of some neighbouring countries (for example, Mongolian) are significantly influenced by Russian, especially in vocabulary. The Romanian, Albanian, and Hungarian languages show the influence of the neighboring Slavic nations, especially in vocabulary pertaining to urban life, agriculture, and crafts and trade—the major cultural innovations at times of limited long-range cultural contact. In each one of these languages, Slavic lexical borrowings represent at least 15% of the total vocabulary. However, Albanian has much lower influence from Slavic than Romanian or Hungarian.[citation needed] This is potentially because Slavic tribes crossed and partially settled the territories inhabited by ancient Illyrians and Vlachs on their way to the Balkans.
Germanic languages
Max Vasmer, a specialist in Slavic etymology, has claimed that there were no Slavic loans into Proto-Germanic. However, there are isolated Slavic loans (mostly recent) into other Germanic languages. For example, the word for "border" (in modern GermanGrenze, Dutchgrens, Swedishgräns) was borrowed from the Common Slavic granica. There are, however, many German placenames of West Slavic origin in Eastern Germany, notably Pommern, Schwerin, Rostock, Lübeck, Berlin (some linguists don't agree that Berlin is a Slavic loanword), Leipzig and Dresden. English derives quark (a kind of cheese and subatomic particle) from the German Quark, which in turn is derived from the Slavic tvarog, which means "curd". Some German surnames, particularly in Eastern Germany and Eastern Austria, are Slavic in origin.
The Scandinavian languages include words such as torv/torg (market place) from Old Russian tъrgъ (trŭgŭ) or Polish targ,[1]humle (hops),[2]reje/reke/räka (shrimp, prawn),[3]
and, via Middle Low German, tolk (interpreter) from Old Slavic tlŭkŭ,[4] and pram/pråm (barge) from West Slavonic pramŭ.[5] The Scandinavian languages also has the word läkare/lege/læge/læknir/lækni (doctor) from Serbo-Croatian lekar/лекар, or Polish lekarz. There is also a word: lök/løk/løg/laukur/løkur from Russian лук (luk) or Serbo-Croatian luk/лук.
Uralic Languages
There are a number of borrowed Slavic words in the Finnic languages, possibly as early as Proto-Finnic.[6] Many loanwords have acquired a Finnicized form, making it difficult to say whether such a word is natively Finnic or Slavic.[7]
The Czech word robot is now found in most languages worldwide, and the word pistol, probably also from Czech,[8] is found in many European languages.
A well-known Slavic word in almost all European languages is vodka, a borrowing from Russian водка (vodka) – which itself was borrowed from Polish wódka (lit. "little water"), from common Slavic voda ("water", cognate to the English word) with the diminutive ending "-ka".[9][10] Owing to the medieval fur trade with Northern Russia, Pan-European loans from Russian include such familiar words as sable.[11] The English word "vampire" was borrowed (perhaps via Frenchvampire) from GermanVampir, in turn derived from Serbo-Croatian vampir, continuing Proto-Slavic*ǫpyrь,[12][13] although Polish scholar K. Stachowski has argued that the origin of the word is early Slavic *vąpěrь, going back to Turkic oobyr.[14] Several European languages, including English, have borrowed the word polje (meaning "large, flat plain") directly from the former Yugoslav languages (i.e. Slovene, Croatian, and Serbian). During the heyday of the USSR in the 20th century, many more Russian words became known worldwide: da, Soviet, sputnik, perestroika, glasnost, kolkhoz, etc. Another borrowing from Russian is samovar (lit. "self-boiling").
Inside the Slavic area
Borrowings from one Slavic language to another are also noted within Slavic languages, for example, medieval polonisms and russicisms in the literary Ukrainian and Belarusian languages.
Czech "wakers" (Czech: buditelé, "evocative") and Slovenian linguists of the late 19th century also turned to the Russian language in order to reslavicize their resurgent languages and clear them of foreign language borrowings. This was mainly due to the imposition of the German language on Slavic-speaking areas, and gave significant results (for example, the word vozduh ("air"), translated into Czech and Slovenian).[citation needed]
^cf.: Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm. 16 Bde. [in 32 Teilbänden. Leipzig: S. Hirzel 1854–1960.], s.v. Vampir; Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé; Dauzat, Albert, 1938. Dictionnaire étymologique. Librairie Larousse; Wolfgang Pfeifer, Етymologisches Woerterbuch, 2006, p. 1494; Petar Skok, Etimologijski rjecnk hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika, 1971–1974, s.v. Vampir; Tokarev, S.A. et al. 1982. Mify narodov mira. ("Myths of the peoples of the world". A Russian encyclopedia of mythology); Russian Etymological Dictionary by Max Vasmer.
Ulyanov I. S. (2004). Slavicisms in the Russian language (verbs with non-consonantal prefixes) (in Russian). Moscow: Управление технологиями. ISBN5-902785-01-4.