Why do Russians love abbreviating words so much?
Abbreviations in Russian are more common in spoken language. They’re aimed not only at saving “speech effort”, but also to emphasize the informal nature of the conversation.
Deliberate truncation of words only became widespread in the 20th century. Before that, shortenings were found either in peasant folk speech or, on the contrary, among intellectuals, in university jargon, for example.
Russian & borrowed abbreviations
Great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin borrowed such words from peasant folk speech. For example, he used ‘молвь’ instead of ‘молва’ (meaning ‘rumor’, ‘talk’). In his notes to his novel in verse ‘Eugene Onegin’, he remarked that journals criticized his innovations, but he insisted that these words were originally Russian.
Ivan Turgenev, another Russian writer, uses the word ‘реаки’ to shorten ‘реакционеры’ (reactionaries), i.e., supporters of preserving the old order and opponents of reforms. The writer spent a lot of time in France from the mid-1850s and could have encountered the word ‘réacs’ in local newspapers or heard it in everyday speech.
Shortened names
Shortening names has long been common even among the highest nobility. Николай (Nicholas) could be called ‘Ники’ (Niki) within the family in nobility and ‘Коля’ (Kolya) among folks, Катерина (Catherine) would be ‘Кити’ (Kiti) or ‘Катя’ (Katya) and so on. The name of Saint Petersburg Санкт-Петербург (St. Petersburg) began to be shortened to ‘Питер’ (Piter) as early as the 18th century.
Soviet-era trends
At the beginning of the 20th century, urban speech was filled by new trendy words like:
- ‘такси’ (instead of ‘таксомотор’ – for taxi),
- ‘авто’ (instead of ‘автомобиль’ – for car),
- ‘кино’ (instead of ‘кинотеатр’ – for cinema).
But, the real fashion for abrupt, telegraphic speech and numerous abbreviations emerged after the establishment of Soviet power.
It was embraced by poets and writers and researchers often wrote about it. “The language <…> has broken down into unexpected new constituent elements,” noted philologist Grigory Vinokur in 1924.
“These new elements were sound combinations like ‘зам’ (заместитель – deputy), ‘зав’ (заведующий – head/director), ‘проф’ (профессор – professor or профессионал – professional), which are part of a normal word, but, nevertheless, carry the full material meaning of the words from which they are “extracted”. <…> They are used as independent words and are even declined.”
Progress brought abbreviations to all languages
But, the reason was not only that the language fell under the steamroller of the revolution, which was breaking old social and cultural norms. Many languages experienced a surge in truncations in the modern era. Aristocrats and writers of the 19th century complained about the spread of abbreviations in English, such as ‘lunch’ (from luncheon), ‘pub’ (from public house), ‘flu’ (from influenza). The language, in keeping with the spirit of the times, began to strive for simplicity, rationality and ease.
Today, abbreviations make up (according to various estimates) already 10–15% of all new vocabulary. And their sphere of use is expanding: they are penetrating the language of the media, the speech of politicians and officials and are moving from written to spoken language. Words like ‘завуч’ (заведующий учебной частью – head of academic affairs) or ‘физ-ра’ (физическая культура – physical education), have become the norm in the academic environment.
How are words shortened?
Experts identify four types of transformations that produce truncated forms:
- shortening the end of a word – ноут (laptop/notebook, from ноутбук), чел (person, from человек)
- shortening the beginning – клип (video clip)
- omitting the middle while preserving the beginning and end – лит-ра (literature)
Internet abbreviations
An innovation of recent decades, coming from online communication, is the formation of truncated forms from verbs and adverbs.
We write and say нра/нрав (like, from нравится), оч (very, from очень), лю (love, from люблю), прост (just, from просто), ясн (clear, from ясно). Language games with truncations are becoming increasingly common: For example, ‘норм’ has spawned a whole family of relatives: ‘нормас, нормис, нормуль’.
Shortening a new word that has recently entered the language indicates its “domestication” and, more broadly, an increasing familiarity with what it denotes.
Once upon a time, our grandparents carefully enunciated the exotic ‘метрополитен’ (metropolitan – and even hesitated over where to place the stress) and later – ‘электропоезд’ (electric train). Today, only ‘метро’ and ‘электричка’ remain in everyday speech. ‘Безнал’ (cashless payment) has replaced the more cumbersome ‘безналичный расчет’ and ‘крипта’ (crypto) is used in spoken language more often than the full ‘криптовалюта’ (crypto currency).
The full version of this article (in Russian) can be found on the Gramota.ru (Грамота.ру) website.