Did you know that in Russian a
"stick"
means a loaf of bread?
And that a mixed salad is called
"vinaigrette"
?
Russians and French have stolen a constellation of terms.
Let's
take 'vodka'
,
'bistro'
and
'hooray'
.
They are directly borrowed from Pushkin's language.
How could our two languages, separated by the Urals, intersect in this way?
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“In the 18th century, French became the favorite language of the Russian aristocracy. Peter the Great, Tsar from 1682 to 1725, had resolved to bring his country into the history of Europe”,
we read in J’en perds mon latin, by Françoise Nore (L’Opportun, 2022). It was thus that the Russian aristocracy was summoned to westernize itself, and French became
a “language of culture and prestige”.
The exile of the French nobility to Russia during the Revolution would soon have nourished our language with Russian words.
Here is an anthology of the words we have borrowed from each other.
Gazette
In Russia, it is the name of the daily newspaper, of the morning paper.
With us, this delicately obsolete word has the air of an attic and a dusty trunk... The
"gazette"
was once a periodical publication, often weekly, which related the facts of political, literary, artistic or other life.
It seems to be derived from Classical Latin gāza,
"treasure, riches"
.
Hooray!
We stole it from the Russians.
This cry of acclamation appeared written in French in all the dictionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries, according to the CNRTL.
It is borrowed from the Russian ura which would be related to the Turkish wurmak,
"to strike, to beat"
.
Caution, however.
It is likely to be a borrowing from the English huzza, hurra, a sailor's cry of encouragement.
This origin could have made it possible to make a connection with the verb
to heeze
,
“to hoist”
.
Heat wave
Don't be surprised if a Russian child is looking forward
to the Christmas
"heat waves" .
Our word is used there as a synonym for
“school holidays”
.
Whatever the time of the year, snow or scorching heat, the holidays are always
“heat waves”
.
Who knows...
fuel oil
It looks like a snowy steppe.
" mazout
"
appears in French in the 20th century as
mazou
.
It is directly borrowed from the Russian
mazut
, of the same meaning, informs the French Academy.
It would go back, probably through a Turkotatar language, to the Arabic mahFzūlāt, which means
“leftovers, waste”
, indicates the Treasury of the French language.
The English word has an identical origin, and is said to be
masut
.
Pigeon
In the language of Pushkin, the names of birds are not only used to designate an animal.
Thus of the pigeon, which literally designates... a
"moron"
.
An advantage for any Frenchman exiled in Russia, since it has the same meaning here.