Linguistics news

[Alexey86]

The Spelling Dictionary of the Vinogradov Russian Language Institute (the most authoritative one in Russia) has added 675 new words many of which are borrowed from English. Some examples in English:

carsharing
cashback
coworking
drone (only as an aircraft)
fake (noun)
like/dislike (nouns)
podcast
post (a message on a website)
retweet (noun; we add a suffix when we use it as a verb)
selfie
vegan
webinar

Here's how they sound in Russian: View attachment engrus1.mp3
Are they understandable to native English speakers?

 

[Tdol]

I didn't understand co-working.

 

[jutfrank]

I couldn't understand retweet/vegan/webinar at all. Several of the others, only barely.

 

[Alexey86]

I didn't understand co-working.

I couldn't understand retweet/vegan/webinar at all. Several of the others, only barely.

That's quite unfortunate for those who are so used to the Russian pronunciation of these words that they continue using it even when learning English.

 

[Tdol]

That is often the case with loan words.

 

[probus]

Podcast sounded like buttcast. Probably there's a good deal of buttcasting on vk.com;-)