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Some examples:

Dutch Russian English
appelsien апельсин orange
broek брюки pants
dam дамба dam
jacht яхта yacht
kajuit каюта cabin
matroos матрос sailor
meubel мебель furniture
paprika паприка pepper
rugzak рюкзак backpack
stoel стул chair
storm шторм storm
straf штраф fine
stuurman штурман helmsman
vlaggenstok флагшток flagstaff
jogloran
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    Just a note: “Paprika” is a specific thing in English (although pronounced differently. Does the Dutch “paprika” definitely translate to “pepper”? I thought the translation was “peper” to “pepper”? – Tim Apr 03 '21 at 00:14
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    @Tim in Russian pepper is перец, and I am unsure what паприка is. – Anixx Apr 03 '21 at 02:02
  • @Tim I believe it's ultimately from Hungarian in all languages. XIX century texts use this word only when describing Balkan and Turkish cuisine, and most of them feel compelled to provide an explanation. – Quassnoi Apr 03 '21 at 03:24
  • Some of these word are of German origin. See for example https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%88%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84#%D0%AD%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%8F_3 , https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%80%D1%8E%D0%BA%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BA#%D0%AD%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%8F_4. Also note that "стул" has the English counterpart "stool". – Paul Frost Apr 03 '21 at 08:20
  • yea, paprika is just paprika in english – somebody Apr 03 '21 at 11:33
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    Also, rucksack is a synonym for backpack in English — a bit less common than backpack today, but still well known, and I think more common in the past. – PLL Apr 03 '21 at 11:34
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    @Anixx: The “pepper”/“paprika” discussion has gotten a bit confused, since they have multiple meanings and regional variation even within English. So being a bit precise: we’re discussing three main things (a) “black pepper”, the spice/seasoning made from berries of the genus Piper; (b) “sweet peppers”, “chilli peppers”, etc, the fruits of the genus Capsicum; and (c) various spices made from dried + powdered peppers in sense (b). In English, pepper can mean all three; as a mass noun, it means (a) by default and, and as a count noun, it means (b) by default (for most speakers). [cont’d] – PLL Apr 03 '21 at 15:52
  • [cont’d] For most English speakers paprika refers only to a specific variety of the Capsicum spice (c), traditionally Hungarian as @Quassnoi mentions (though the etymology seems to be Serbo-Croatian); but in some regions paprika is also used for Capsicum vegetables (called “bell peppers”, “sweet peppers”, “capsicums” elsewhere). My impression is that in Russian, similarly, перец can refer to all three, but most often (a) and (b), while паприка means usually (c) — while in Dutch, paprika is primarily (b). (But my Russian is elementary and my Dutch based just on Wikipedia.) – PLL Apr 03 '21 at 16:02
  • @PLL you are exactly correct. – Anixx Apr 03 '21 at 16:05
  • An English word for sailor beginning with "mat" is matelot. – Andrew Morton Apr 04 '21 at 09:42
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    @PLL looks like Backpack is more common than Rucksack by about 10x in AmE, and about 2x more common in BrE (possibly regional). There’s also Knapsack, an older word (from the army) that’s similar in usage to Rucksack in AmE (and a similar amount in BrE). It’s about as common as it always has been, especially compared to the recent popularity of Rucksack / Backpack. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Knapsack%2C+rucksack%2C+backpack&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&case_insensitive=on&corpus=26 – Tim Apr 04 '21 at 18:16
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    Loads of terminology for crafting, mining and military ranks came from German into Russian at the same time. Again, due to Peter the Great and later Catherine the Great. Examples: багерзумпф (Baggersumpf), шлагбаум (Schlagbaum), бутерброд (Butterbrot) ... – 0xC0000022L Apr 04 '21 at 19:30

4 Answers4

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The first Russian Emperor Peter I actually studied in what is modern-day Netherlands and was very inspired among other things, by the navy. Coming back to Russia he initiated the creation of the Russian naval fleet ("флот" is also a Dutch word by the way) - for the lack of local naval specialists, some foreign specialists had been hired. Also, a noticeable amount of Russian students went to study in the Netherlands.

Just as nowadays, originally-English terminology prevails in Russian IT slang, Dutch words found their way into nautical terminology. For example: боцман bootsman; буй boei; ванты vant; вахта wacht; верфь werf; вымпел wimpel; гавань haven (Dutch, not English); дрейф drijven; зюйд zuiden; камбуз kombuis; киль kiel; кильватер kielwater; кок kok; лоцман loodsman; мачта mast (Dutch, not English); норд noord; ост oost; рейд (anchorage) reede; рупор roeper; трюм truim; швартов zwaartouw; шкив schijf; шлюп(ка) sloep; штурвал stuurwiel; фарватер vaarwater; флагшток vlagstok; and various other more obscure or specialized words.

At the beginning of the 18th century, the Netherlands was one of the most noticeable foreign influences in the Russian court, hence other terminology (not necessarily maritime) was adopted as well.

Also, as a side-note, some of the words you've mentioned were actually adopted from German as far as I know, but the mix-up is totally understandable ;)

Community
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shabunc
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27

The words you give fall essentially into three groups:

  1. Words that have been borrowed into both Russian and Dutch from some third source: meubel/мебель, from French, and paprika/паприка, from Serbo-Croatian (probably). Both of these are somewhat “international” words that are borrowed into many other languages too, like taxi, ananas, bank, etc.

  2. Words borrowed into Russian from another Germanic language (usually German, if recent, or Early Swedish/Old Norse, if older), hence similar to a Dutch cognate: стул (from Old Norse stol), штраф (from German Strafe), рюкзак (from German Rucksack). As @Gytis mentions, you can spot some of the German borrowings in particular by st- corresponding to шт-, following German pronunciation.

  3. Terms borrowed directly from Dutch — including in particular many naval/nautical terms as described in @shabunc’s answer, and a few more besides, e.g. брюки from broek and апельсин from appelsien.

A fourth group, which didn’t show up in your list but might have, is words that are similar because they happen to have stayed close to their proto-Indo-European ancestry, e.g. brauw/бровь/brow.

It’s worth mentioning also that your list exaggerates the difference from English a bit. In many cases, the listed English translation isn’t close to the Russian/Dutch, but there’s a synonym, near-synonym, or archaic synonym which is very close: breeches, paprika, rucksack, stool, steersman.

(Some parts of this have already been mentioned in other answers, as noted, but there wasn’t yet an answer summarising the whole situation.)

PLL
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    Great answer! I think summarizes well the whole ordeal.

    As for oranges, in modern German in such cases you have "pf", cf. Apfel (apple). I don't think that saying "Apfelsine" (s->z here in modern German) would present any difficulties to a Russian, so I'd go with Dutch.

    BTW I think it's a cool word, since it means "apple from China" https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Apfelsine

     – Gytis Apr 03 '21 at 14:09
  • @Gytis: Thanks for the catch on Apfelsine; yes, it looks like I’d misremembered about that, since checking several sources now (including Vasmer) all agree on it as coming proximately from Dutch. Will edit to remove that! – PLL Apr 03 '21 at 15:30
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Actually at least some of them seem to be coming from German.

While e.g. Möbel (furniture) or Rucksack (this one pronounced almost the same in Russian except for the "soft" ryu) could be from either, anything "st" -> "sht" in Russian is probably German because in standard German "st" followed by a vowel is pronounced as "sht" and I think in Dutch "st" is pronounced like in English (the Russian "ш" is "sh"). So I'd put Strafe (fine), Flaggenstock (flagstaff) and maybe Sturm (storm) as coming from German.

Gytis
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    While you are right in your assumption that some of this words are German, I'd rather advise you from assuming that modern pronunciation norms were the same 300 hundreds years ago. Also, strictly speaking Dutch and Low German dialects can be considered very close (especially, again, 300 years ago). – shabunc Apr 03 '21 at 00:15
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    I certainly agree, I'd even say it could have gone either way and e.g. Bavarian was/(is?) much further from standard German than Dutch at that time and might have formed its own language with or without Austrians.

    Still the question remains why sometimes it's one-to-one and sometimes there's a sneaky "sh" popping up. Russian letter ш most certainly stayed the same, but when it comes to German only area around Hamburg pronounces "st" as "st" everybody else says "sht", as far as I know. Moreover, there was a shared border with Prussia

     – Gytis Apr 03 '21 at 00:30
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    Don't know if it ever was Rücksack, but at least today it is Rucksack where you carry your "Butterbrot" during a hike – Hagen von Eitzen Apr 03 '21 at 09:18
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    @HagenvonEitzen etymologically it stems from the word which in modern German is Rücken - it never was spelled Rücksack to my knowledge as well. – shabunc Apr 03 '21 at 10:55
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    thanks edited! Was mispronouncing myself and Russian confirmed my bias, so learnt something useful – Gytis Apr 03 '21 at 14:01
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    Möbel probably comes from the latin mobilis, from which the French word for furniture (meuble) was derived. So there may be other sources as well. – WoJ Apr 03 '21 at 18:48
  • Sorry don't speak French. Russian wiktionary writes that it came either directly from French or from German and appeared at the time of Peter I. Maybe even through Polish, since Poles started using it at similar time https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/мебель (Russian version has some sources). – Gytis Apr 03 '21 at 21:57
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    To a german speaker, almost ALL of the words in the list look like variations of common German words (with vlaggenstok being a fringe case, we would call it a "Flaggenmast" usually - but we would easily understand what a word containing "Flagge" (flag) and "Stock" (stick) means. Oh, and the eternal "paprika" confusion (it means bell pepper vegetables in some languages, and chile pepper powder in others...). "broek" indeed does not seem a common equivalent. – rackandboneman Apr 04 '21 at 00:29
  • @shabunc I think the point about pronunciation is well made.Specifically because of how words/names have been transliterated into Russian in the past. The г for example is often used in places where the origin language uses an h. This seems unusual at first, but knowing that in many countries radio broadcast caused a certain pronunciation to be considered mainstreaming it's not too far fetched to assume that the Russian г was closer to how Ukrainians (still!) pronounce it. Which is roughly like an h. Similarly Polish ł used to be pronounced like ль in some regions of Poland until radio ... – 0xC0000022L Apr 04 '21 at 19:37
  • @0xC0000022L Russian g (Г), /gamma in Greek/, was always pronounced similarly to 'g' in 'egg' in standard Russian. Russian does not have 'h' sound, closest is 'ch'/'kh' written as х. It's the other way with standard Ukrainian which doesn't have 'g' sound, but have 'h' and write it as Г. But this is the standard transcription e.g. Hamburg is written with two Г's in both Ukrainian and Russian. – Gytis Apr 05 '21 at 15:49
  • @0xC0000022L as for the Polish Ł it's the other way round: Ł used to be hard L like in English or Russian л (similar to Greek lambda λ), and L always was soft L like in modern Polish, German or Russian ль. Currently Ł is pronounced like 'w' in 'water' in standard Polish, though some eastern dialects still follow the old way. I'm not sure when the change happened, I think the interwar standard was still hard L. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81 – Gytis Apr 05 '21 at 15:52
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    @Gytis thanks for the correction. I usually say it's roughly pronounced like w in welcome. I am aware of the Cyrillic letter х. And yet Russians will use a г in many places where in transliteration a х would be more appropriate. And because most of these loan words are in Russian very long it stands to reason г was once pronounced like h, which would also make some sense in regard to the relation of Russian/Ukrainian and the Kievskaya Rus as the cradle of the Russian Empire. – 0xC0000022L Apr 06 '21 at 07:05
  • @0xC0000022L not sure. Wiki also says that old church slavonic pronunciation is unclear and probably depends on the area. Might have been that the standard transliteration was sort of standardized during Kievan Rus' times, so as you correctly say, Г, pronounced as 'h', seems more appropriate, given modern Ukrainian. Russians though might have been always pronouncing it as 'g'. It's a bit like most Irish saying 't' or 'd' for th.

    Also, I don't think Polish has 'h'. Neighbouring Lithuania and Latvia, although Baltic, have 'h' only in loanwords (LT), or just use 'ch' for h (LV).

     – Gytis Apr 07 '21 at 12:07
  • @Gytis to my knowledge Polish does have h ... e.g. in hasło (password). Pronounced pretty much like known from Russian and fairly close to Ukrainian г. I didn't mean to suggest pronunciation back to Old Church Slavonic, btw. – 0xC0000022L Apr 07 '21 at 12:37
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    @0xC0000022L I think it might be regional. I noticed this in my encounters with Poles and specifically checked in wiki. I meant 'h' sound btw, not the letter. So if you check say here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_phonology#Consonants there there's only 'x' sound (German, Scottish 'ch') for the letter 'h'. However, if you listen to the files, I'd say the guy pronounces 'hak' with 'h' sound (voiced), not 'x'. On German wiki https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polnische_Sprache#Konsonanten_und_Halbvokale they put 'ɦ' sound in brackets which means "regional dialects". – Gytis Apr 07 '21 at 20:40
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    @0xC0000022L I'm not a linguist, so let's just leave it there the possible reasons for H transliteration into Г. – Gytis Apr 07 '21 at 20:41
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This is because Dutch is close to German, while English is more distant. Russian had heavily borrowed from German historically.

Anixx
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