Silva V. Papikyan
The Armenian language has been greatly influenced by Russian especially after the unification of Eastern Armenia with Russia in 1828. The connection between a nation and its history is unarguable and the history of any nation leaves its mark on the language. In this sense political, economic, cultural relations with neighboring nations are important, as a result of which languages borrow many words from each other. Among the borrowed words there are a certain number of exoticisms that indicate objects, phenomena and customs specific to a particular nation or country. Usually, they are used when it comes to culture-specific concepts characteristic of a given nation. The article considers some exoticisms transferred from and through Russian into Armenian, which are classified into the following semantic groups: accommodation-residence-area, art-literature, mode of address-address, political directions, clothes, common words.
Based on the examination, it turns out that some exoticisms passed from and through Russian into Armenian are native Russian and direct borrowings in bolshevik, decembrist, menshevik, muzhik, etc., some of them completely went out of use and joined the ranks of archaicisms – batrak, burlak, kholop, etc., many of them acquired new meanings in the course of historical development resulting in polysemy of the word. The origin of some exoticisms from Russian is unknown.
A large number of borrowings passed from different languages into
Armenian through the mediation of the Russian, such as taiga <Rus. тайга <Turk. tundra <Rus. тундра < Fin., etc.
The words borrowed from the European languages are mostly international words.