CHOI Moonjeong. (2010). The Russian Loanwords in Ewen and Ewenki. Altai Hakpo 20: 1-40. The Altaic Society of Korea.

This paper investigates Russian loanwords in Ewen and Ewenki. We analyzed the sound materials collected from field work studies in Khabarovsk and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Various dictionaries were also used. Some phonetic and morphological features were revealed as a result of analysis of 417 Russian loanwords in these languages. The Russian loanwords in Ewen and Ewenki show such phonetic phenomena as prosthesis, epenthesis, paragoge, apheresis and consonant substitution. These phenomena are due to the need to simplify the pronunciation or to avoid word-initial and word-final consonant clusters that are impossible in the phonological system of the recipient languages. For example, ostol (< стол ‘table’), osko:la (< школа ‘school’) (Ewenki); kilep(< хлеб ‘bread’) (Ewen/Ewenki); bɔlɔka (< блоха ‘flea’) (Ewen), astolba (< столб ‘pole’) (Ewenki), mosta (< мост ‘floor’) (Ewen/Ewenki). The consonant phonemes /ʃ, ʒ, z, f, ʦ/ lacking in the phonological system of Ewen and Ewenki were replaced with the similar consonants, e.g. [s] < [ʃ]; [p] < [f]; [s], [ʨ] < [ʦ] etc. From the morphological point of view, we found such words as nosminʨal ‘scissors’ (Ewen), ispiskəl ‘matches’ (Ewenki), in which the plural suffix -l of Ewen and Ewenki is added to the Russian roots.

Keywords: Ewen, Ewenki, Russian, language contact, loanword, loan translation, Altaic languages