Indirect loanwords in Russian: shortened borrowings

Abstract

The article discusses indirect loanwords that differ from direct loans in the fact that they exist not in two languages, which is characteristic of usual language contacts, but they go through at least three languages. It is not infrequent that a complex language filter that indirect loanwords pass through changes their forms, as the words have to adapt to a new language system, and their meanings, that most frequently become narrower. Very often indirect loanwords reveal the participation of English as a global language in the process of borrowing. The article analyzes indirect loanwords of East Asian origin which are borrowed into Russian via English. Attention is focused on comparatively new words, coined recently through shortening (abbreviation, blending, cutting). They are often used as names for technological phenomena and are frequently found to name subcultural phenomena in the young people’s discourse. Unlike the indirect loans, initial abbreviations used in formal texts for quite a long time are direct loanwords translated as structural calques.

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