# All Slavic languages: Fewest international words



## Gavril

Which Slavic language would you say has the fewest international words? Examples of international words would be the Russian words for "cinema" and "gas", which, if I'm not mistaken, are _kino _and _gaz_. Which Slavic language has the fewest such words?

Thanks


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## TriglavNationalPark

Standard Slovenian tends to avoid recent borrowings in favor of neologisms.

For example, a CD is known as *zgoščenka*, the Web is known as *splet*, software is *programska oprema*, a server is *strežnik*, a PDA is *dlančnik*, an interface is *vmesnik*, the Internet is (sometimes) *medmrežje*, and so on.


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## texpert

The Czech has shown the same tendency in the past rather strongly (names of months, chemistry), now it makes half-hearted attempts (not quite succesful). Web is *síť *but software is software, CD is *hudební nosič* but "cédéčko" is more commonly used.


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## TriglavNationalPark

I'll wait for our Serbian _foreros_ to provide specific examples, but Serbian is probably at the other extreme. It uses all kinds of international words. (By the way, Croatian often prefers neologisms instead.)


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## phosphore

Perhaps it is; though I don't know Russian well, but it seems to me it is same as or even worse than Serbian.

Serbian: cinema is bioskop, gas is gas, CD is CD or kompakt disk, web is veb or mreža, software is softver, server is server, PDA is PDA (uređaj), interface is interfejs, okruženje or (rarely) sučelje, Internet is internet or mreža.


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## trance0

I think Standard Literary Slovene is quite pure, but Colloquial Slovene is not and the same is true for many of the dialects - they are swarmed with "germanisms" and "anglicisms".


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## TriglavNationalPark

trance0 said:


> I think Standard Literary Slovene is quite pure, but Colloquial Slovene is not and the same is true for many of the dialects - they are swarmed with "germanisms" and "anglicisms".


 
Right. Germanisms are very common in virtually all Slovenian dialects, while Italian loanwords are common in the west.

The speech of young urban Slovenians has some BCS borrowings, but it's primarily influenced by English: *šur* = sure; *sori* or *sorči* = sorry, *frend* = friend; *Kaj je tvoj point?* = What's your point?; *pliz* = please; *tenks* = thanks; *skenslan* = cancelled; *luzer* = loser; *ful kul* = very cool; *keš* = cash, and so on. Perhaps the most infamous (albeit somewhat extreme) example from several years ago was *vokam doga* = I'm walking the dog (instead of *sprehajam psa*).


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## sokol

According to my experience Slovene standard language might be the one with the fewest international loans (of course, different in colloquial speech as already stated ).

Croatian is not nearly as puristic as Slovene while Serbian and especially Russian have plenty of loans. Czech is probably less puristic than Slovak (that's a vague guess as I don't know either language particularily well) but both might be approximately comparable to Croatian.
Of Polish, Macedonian and Bulgarian I know not much, and even less I know about Belarussian and Ukrainian, and Sorbian.


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## texpert

TriglavNationalPark said:


> The speech of young urban Slovenians has some BCS borrowings, but it's primarily influenced by English


 
Out of the above-mentioned examples, Czech is using *sorry *(colloq) or *soráč *(slang), *lúzr*, *keš*, *kůl *and *pls *(colloq) in text messages. 
The more curious feature is a deliberate misuse of words as *go*
_*vo co go *_(_o co jde - what's the matter_) - when majority of speakers are 1. familiar with the meaning of _go _2. aware of its misplacement in similar sentences - but use it _in spite _of that, with some mischievous pleasure. 

The similar case might be a slang word *frikulína* - a girl that is _*free*_, _*cool *_and _*in*_. 



sokol said:


> Czech is probably less puristic than Slovak (that's a vague guess as I don't know either language particularily well) but both might be approximately comparable to Croatian.


 
Intuitively, I'd say it's contrarywise. For instance, names of months in SK are _január, február_ etc. while in CZ it's _leden, únor_ etc. In the past, Slovakian had been borrowing its words *either *from Czech *or* from Hungarian, German and Latin. I'm not watching the current trends closely but there are virtually no Slovakian words in use that I don't understand, which could mean only that it shares our vocabulary or it borrows from English.


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## TriglavNationalPark

texpert said:


> Intuitively, I'd say it's contrarywise. For instance, names of months in SK are _január, február_ etc. while in CZ it's _leden, únor_ etc. In the past, Slovakian had been borrowing its words *either *from Czech *or* from Hungarian, German and Latin. I'm not watching the current trends closely but there are virtually no Slovakian words in use that I don't understand, which could mean only that it shares our vocabulary or it borrows from English.


 
Yes, I also remember reading (I don't know where) that Czech is more puristic than Slovak. In any case, Slovak is apparently considered one of the less puristic Slavic languages. As David Short puts in in Comrie and Corbett's _The Slavonic Languages_, "Slovak is always receptive to incomers, from Slavonic and non-Slavonic sources."


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## Azori

In Slovak cinema is kino, gas is plyn, CD is CD/kompaktný disk/cédéčko, web is web/net, software is softvér, server is server, PDA is PDA, interface is rozhranie, the Internet is internet... Strangely enough, a notebook is notebook, spelt this way, which is something I quite don't understand, since in Slovak everything is being written more or less phonetically with diacritics, so this is an exception. As for Czech being more puristic, I don't think nowadays the Czech language invents some new words like Slovene, I'd say it borrows foreign words in the same way as Slovak does.


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## Ptak

texpert said:


> The Czech has shown the same tendency. ... Web is *síť *but software is software


Funny... In Russian (which I think has no this tendency) "software" is *программное обеспечение* (or *софт*; but this one is rather slang).


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> Croatian is not nearly as puristic as Slovene



Are you sure? Formal written Croatian is extremely purist. Even loanwords from Latin and Greek often have native neologisms as synonyms (although in case of those, both variants are usually acceptable). However, loanwords from non-classical languages are accepted in the standard language only exceptionally. Here I'm not talking about extreme linguistic purism that is commonly associated with Croatian nationalism, but about regular standard Croatian that was used even in ex-Yugoslavia. 

 Of course, the issue of what constitutes a "loanword" is moot. Many words that were loaned centuries ago can't even be recognized as foreign by non-experts. I'm treating those as native for the purposes of this discussion. However, even if we count only words with roots reaching back to Common Slavic as truly native, standard Croatian would be near, if not on the very top of the list. (Also, many Slavic words in Croatian and Slovenian are not directly inherited from Common Slavic, but rather borrowed or calqued from Russian and Czech, which makes the issue even more complicated.)

In any case, when I read an article from a Slovenian newspaper, I see roughly as many "international words" (i.e. loanwords common to numerous European languages) as in Croatian newspapers. Typically, the same words would be used in Croatian too.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Athaulf said:


> In any case, when I read an article from a Slovenian newspaper, I see roughly as many "international words" (i.e. loanwords common to numerous European languages) as in Croatian newspapers. Typically, the same words would be used in Croatian too.


 
Croatian is unquestionably puristic, but is it really *as* puristic as Slovenian, which is fairly extreme in this respect?

I did a little experiment; I checked a few of the top news stories on *index.hr *and *jutarnji.hr*, two of the main Croatian news portals. I found the following loanwords, for which Slovenian media outlets would, in most circumstances, use Slovenian equivalents: *formirati, avion, stacionirati, opcija, klijentela, skijati, apsolutno, špijunirati, inicirati, momenat, grupa, specijalno, maltretiranje, rejting, web stranica*, and so on. Most of these loanwords would immediately be understood by Slovenian speakers, and a few are even permissible in standard Slovenian, but media outlets would tend to avoid them because of the (inherently puristic) concept of "lepa slovenščina", which we discussed HERE.


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> Are you sure? Formal written Croatian is extremely purist.


Oh, I am not entirely sure - by no means. It is just my impression - you have to take into account that I know Slovenian much better than Croatian.

There are some things like months names were Croatian seems to be more purist - the Slavic names of months are frequently used while in Slovene international names are preferred -, but my impression always was that Croatian had more international loans. (Triglav's examples also point in this direction.)

Of course that may have changed in the last decade (and I think there was a move towards more purism in Croatia since independence); I always thought that Croatian was significantly less purist at least before 1991 - but it may be different now; so I can't be sure here, of course, as I just don't know Croatian well enough.


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## Athaulf

TriglavNationalPark said:


> Croatian is unquestionably puristic, but is it really *as* puristic as Slovenian, which is fairly extreme in this respect?


 
For good literary Croatian, I'd say yes. (Again, note that here I'm talking about the language that was used in Croatian press and publishing back in Yugoslavia, not the silly extremist purism that is commonly associated with Croatian nationalism.) 

Sadly, the standards for language quality in formal writing have been steadily declining ever since Croatian independence. Nowadays, even in serious newspapers, you'll see articles by younger journalists written in colloquial Zagreb language sprinkled with unnecessary English loanwords that wouldn't have passed even for a high school essay 20 years ago. 



> I did a little experiment; I checked a few of the top news stories on *index.hr *and *jutarnji.hr*, two of the main Croatian news portals. I found the following loanwords, for which Slovenian media outlets would, in most circumstances, use Slovenian equivalents: *formirati, avion, stacionirati, opcija, klijentela, skijati, apsolutno, špijunirati, inicirati, momenat, grupa, specijalno, maltretiranje, rejting, web stranica*, and so on. Most of these loanwords would immediately be understood by Slovenian speakers, and a few are even permissible in standard Slovenian, but media outlets would tend to avoid them because of the (inherently puristic) concept of "lepa slovenščina", which we discussed HERE.


Note however that_ index.hr_ is not a place to look if you want to read good Croatian writing. It's a sensationalist news portal that employs many writers who have such poor writing skills that you might as well be reading posts from teenagers' forums. _Jutarnji List_ is a serious newspaper, although in my opinion, the highest language standards in Croatian press are nowadays upheld by _Vjesnik _and the church newspaper _Glas Koncila_. 

As for the words you list, almost all of them do have Croatian equivalents. In some cases, I would prefer the Slavic word in formal writing (e.g. _formirati_ - _oblikovati_, _inicirati_ - _započeti_, _moment_ - _trenutak_, etc.), and I'm definitely not a great purist.  


As a practical experiment, here is the beginning of the news story from the top of the front page of today's _Delo_ and my translation into Croatian, both with foreign words highlighted, except for proper names:_http://www.delo.si/clanek/75566
Če v teh predprazničnih dneh *kulture *ne moremo pisati o Prešernovih nagrajencih, ker so po volji novega upravnega odbora Prešernovega sklada do 7. *februarja* zvečer skrivnost, se lahko poigramo z drugo *informacijo* javnega značaja. In to so predlogi za nagrade, ki jih vsako leto prejmejo strokovne *komisije*. Letos jih ni bilo malo (68), med bolj oblegane spada *literarno *področje (29 predlogov), najmanj predlogov je prispelo na *komisijo *za glasbo in likovno umetnost (8 oziroma 8 imen), predlogov za ustvarjalce s področja uprizoritvenih umetnosti pa je bilo 22. 
_​In Croatian:_Ako u ove predblagdanske dane *kulture *ne možemo pisati o dobitnicima Prešernovih nagrada, koji su po odluci novog upravnog odbora Prešernove zaklade tajna sve do večeri 7. veljače, možemo se pozabaviti drugim *informacijama *koje su javno poznate. To su prijedlozi za nagrade, koje svake godine primaju stručni odbori. Ove godine ih nije bilo malo (68). Među bolje pokrivena područja spada književnost (29 prijedloga), a najmanje prijedloga je dospjelo odboru za glazbu i likovnu umjetnost (8, odnosno 8 imena (?)). Prijedloga *autora *s područja *dramskih *umjetnosti je bilo 22. _​Thus, the ratio of international loanwords seems roughly the same (please feel free to correct me if I missed some). Note that I'm writing in normal standard Croatian -- if I wanted to make the text extremely purist, I could have used e.g. _obavijest _instead of _informacija, __stvaratelj_ instead of _autor, _or even _izvedbene_ instead of _dramske_. 

In any case, neither language looks strikingly more purist to me. I assume _Delo _can be taken as representative of good written Slovenian.


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## phosphore

Athaulf said:


> In Croatian:
> _Ako u ove predblagdanske dane *kulture *ne možemo pisati o dobitnicima Prešernovih nagrada, koji su po odluci novog upravnog odbora Prešernove zaklade tajna sve do večeri 7. veljače, možemo se pozabaviti drugim *informacijama *koje su javno poznate. To su prijedlozi za nagrade, koje svake godine primaju stručni odbori. Ove godine ih nije bilo malo (68). Među bolje pokrivena područja spada književnost (29 prijedloga), a najmanje prijedloga je dospjelo odboru za glazbu i likovnu umjetnost (8, odnosno 8 imena (?)). Prijedloga *autora *s područja *dramskih *umjetnosti je bilo 22. _​Thus, the ratio of international loanwords seems roughly the same (please feel free to correct me if I missed some). Note that I'm writing in normal standard Croatian -- if I wanted to make the text extremely purist, I could have used e.g. _obavijest _instead of _informacija, __stvaratelj_ instead of _autor, _or even _izvedbene_ instead of _dramske_.


 
I am sorry but this is not a very good example; Serbian would seem to be puristic, too, since it would have only two or three more international words (_februar_ instead of_ veljača, muzika_ for_ glazba_ + maybe _zaklade,_ since I do not what it means). Probably we need some quite longer texts but in fact I think that newspapers are not the right example to show whether Croatian is puristic or not; in order to show it, I took the first text I have seen on Vjesnik's web pages.
Sanader: zatražiću od Pahora da skine *blokadu*

»Nema razloga da se slovenska *blokada* hrvatskih pristupnih pregovora zadrži i da se *bilateralne* pitanja stavljaju kao prepreka za nastavak pregovora«, rekao je *premijer* Ivo Sanader na početku sjednice Vlade u četvrtak. Najavio je da će od slovenskog *premijera* Boruta Pahora zatražiti da skine *blokadu.* Izvijestio je da je zadovoljan *percepcijom* i odjekom nakon susreta s čelnicima stranaka u Europskom *parlamentu.*
Kazao je da su svi *klubovi* u Europskom *parlamentu* i to *socijaldemokrati,* zeleni, *liberali* i narodnjaci podržali takve stavove podržali su hrvatske stavove.
»Podržali su hrvatske *teze *da se *bilateralna* pitanja ne trebaju rješavati u *procesu* pregovaranja, da to isto pitanje nije smetalo Sloveniji da 2004. postane članica *Unije,* te da je takav spor najbolje je rješavati pred Međunarodnim sudom pravde u Den Haagu koji je *institucija* _UN_-_a_ i koji u svojoj praksi ima riješenih pedesetak slučajeva«, kazao je *premijer.*
Hrvatska je spremna, ponovio je, dati sva _jamstva_ da će prihvatiti _pravorijek_ Međunarodnog suda, kakav god on bude.​*bold* (17) - international words, _italic_ (just 3) - Slavic words of which in Serbian the international counterparts would rather be used instead

My point is that Croatian certainly is way more puristic than Serbian, but it seems it can't be seen from newspapers. I think the same stands for Croatian and Slovene being compared.


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## Athaulf

phosphore said:


> My point is that Croatian certainly is way more puristic than Serbian, but it seems it can't be seen from newspapers. I think the same stands for Croatian and Slovene being compared.



You're right. Maybe my impressions are skewed by the fact that newspapers are pretty much the only thing I ever read in Slovenian. Still, I'd be curious to see a Slovenian text that contains significantly fewer non-Slavic words than its Croatian translation. 

Furthermore, it's not like standard Croatian and Serbian are too terribly different. There are topics in which Croatian would sound drastically more purist, for example when writing about tools and household devices, but there are also many areas where Serbian is almost as purist as Croatian (and in fact sounds exactly the same for the most part). The level of purism in any language drastically depends on the context.


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## trance0

I can replace all the words(except kultura for which I am unable to remember any equivalent Slovene word) in *bold *with Slovene counterparts that wouldn`t seem out of place and could easily have been written instead of the words of foreign origin(the exception being *svečan *where *februar *would in fact be much more usual):
_
http://www.delo.si/clanek/75566
Če v teh predprazničnih dneh *kulture *ne moremo pisati o Prešernovih nagrajencih, ker so po volji novega upravnega odbora Prešernovega sklada do 7. *svečana* zvečer skrivnost, se lahko poigramo z drugo *novico/podatkom* javnega značaja. In to so predlogi za nagrade, ki jih vsako leto prejmejo strokovni *odbori*. Letos jih ni bilo malo (68), med bolj oblegane spada *književno *področje (29 predlogov), najmanj predlogov je prispelo na *odbor *za glasbo in likovno umetnost (8 oziroma 8 imen), predlogov za ustvarjalce s področja uprizoritvenih umetnosti pa je bilo 22. 
_​But the same of course could be done in Croatian and so this proves nothing. Both languages *can be* equally purist, but how purist they actually are depends on the context, as already mentioned by Athaulf.


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## Mišo

texpert said:


> For instance, names of months in SK are _január, február_ etc. while in CZ it's _leden, únor_ etc. (for curiosity see http://kalendar.vsieti.sk/node/4 ) In the past, Slovakian had been borrowing its words *either *from Czech *or* from Hungarian (Hungarian adopted disproportionately more words from Slovak), German and Latin.


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## Maja

phosphore said:


> gas is gas


Also *plin* (плин).



texpert said:


> *cédéčko*
> *frikulína* - a girl that is _*free*_, _*cool *_and _*in*_.


Loved it!!!


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## Heroj_MKD

Macedonian language is very friendly for imported words. So no real efforts are yet made to create Macedonian words. So Macedonian language has a lot of inlfuence by German (mostly for engeneering), French (mostly for fashion or furniture or administration) , English (mostly for IT), Turkish (old remained words but most of them have already Macedonian transcriptions, so that the younger generations do not speak them only very old people) and Latin (for administration and science).


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