We’ve long grown used to foreign words in Russian speech. They’ve filled our vocabulary so completely that we can’t imagine what could replace them.
But fewer people know that some Russian words have settled comfortably in other languages, too.
Russian Words in Foreign Languages
These so-called "Russisms” entered other languages mainly thanks to trade and emigration.
Foreign merchants bought goods from Russia and called them by their Russian names — essentially Russian words spelled in Latin letters. This is how English acquired words like sable (соболь), sterlet (стерлядь), and belouga (белуга).
And of course, there’s the most famous Russian word of all — vodka. Universally understood, it needs no translation. Such words have become firmly associated with Russia and often shaped cultural stereotypes.
Other examples include borsch, kvass, samovar, komsomol, balalaika, and many more. Not all of them kept their original meaning: for instance, babushka in France came to mean a headscarf — or sometimes a matryoshka doll.
Interestingly, some words even made a round trip. The French word chapeau (“hat”) came into Russian, then returned to French as chapka, now meaning exclusively the ushanka — the Russian fur hat with ear flaps.
Challenges for Foreigners
Russian is one of the hardest languages in the world, so pronouncing many Russian words is a struggle for foreigners.
But there’s no way around it — certain things named in Russian simply don’t exist anywhere else, so no direct equivalents can be found.
That’s part of what makes Russian so unique. it contains words with no analogues in other languages. When such words appear in speech, their “national origin” is immediately obvious.
Most Russisms are untranslatable words describing concepts, items, or events unique to Russian life. They can be goods found only in Russia or terms for specific political and cultural phenomena — like Soviet, komsomol, stakhanovite, bolshevik, intelligentsia, kolkhoz, perestroika, and Chernobyl.
These words cannot be translated without losing their essence — and they’ve become lasting linguistic symbols of Russia across the globe.
