Almost all words starting with the letter ‘Ф’ in Russian are borrowed
However, there are exceptions – these are interjections!
There are many words in Russian that begin with the letter ‘Ф’: ‘фрукты’ (‘fruits’), ‘фокус’ (‘focus’), etc. – but almost all of them are borrowed from other languages. The letter ‘Ф’ penetrated into the Russian alphabet from Greek in the 13th-14th centuries, but many words came from European languages during the era of Peter I. Rare exceptions are the interjection ‘фу’ (‘fu’, an abbreviation of ‘тфу’ – ‘tjfu’ – which expresses the motion and sound of spitting) and the noun ‘филин’ (‘filin’, which means ‘owl’).
