Russian Loanwords in Teleut in Synchrony and Diachrony
DOI: 10.23951/2307-6119-2026-3-58-69
The purpose of this article is to identify and characterize various types of contact-related borrowings from Russian in the vocabulary of modern Teleut, beginning with the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Teleuts and the Russian Empire in the 17th century and their intensification in the mid-17th to 18th centuries after the resettlement of some Teleuts from the Upper Ob region to the Bachat River and the Kuznetsk Fortress. Of the 3,800 lexical units in the “Teleut-Russian Dictionary” (1995), approximately 40 are borrowed from Russian, including units with non-Slavic etymons that entered the Teleut language via Russian. In addition, at least 50 units are referred to as “Russ.” and “aus dem Russ” that are recorded in the “Experience of a Dictionary of Turkic Dialects” (1893–1911), the "Dictionary of the Altai and Aladag Dialects of the Turkic Language" (1884), and the dictionary of “Grammar of the Altai Language” (1869). The layer of Russianisms in the Teleut language is heterogeneous in chronological, semantic, and etymological terms. Diachronically, we can distinguish prerevolutionary (first period: early 17th century – 1917), Soviet (second period: 1917–1991), and modern (third period: 1991 – present) borrowings, with the distinction between the second and third periods being arbitrary. From a functional-semantic perspective, Russianisms in the Teleut language are classified as names of realia that retain their meanings in the recipient language, sometimes with the inclusion of new sememes and an expansion or narrowing of meaning and renominations, which are Russian words that have displaced native Teleut designations of local denotations, including when Russian ones replace the denotation types themselves. Etymologically, Russianisms, in addition to native Russian (Slavic) vocabulary or vocabulary borrowed through Russian, can represent lateral loanwords from Turkic languages, as well as words with problematic etymology.
Keywords: Teleut language; borrowing; historical lexicology and lexicography; Russian-Turkic language contacts; Turkic languages of Southern Siberi
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Issue: 3, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 3
Rubric: LINGUISTICS
Pages: 58 — 69
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