4 ms·

Funny thing I just realized: russkies is a Russian-to-English borrowing with exactly the same kind of double plural as e.g. чипсы čipsy “potato crisps/chips”, a

Funny thing I just realized: russkies is a Russian-to-English borrowing with exactly the same kind of double plural as e.g. чипсы čipsy “potato crisps/chips”, an English-to-Russian one (a number of other Slavic languages do this as well, or so I’ve heard). That is, russkie is already a (nominative) plural in the source language (the nominative singular is russkij m, russkaâ f, russkoe n; it’s a nominalized adjective, thus the gendered forms). Presumably it doesn’t sound plural to the speaker of the target language, so(?) one more plural ending it gets. The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg). Any others?

throwup238 2y ago
> The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg). Any others? Pelmeni (пельмени) sometimes becomes pelmenis, but like with pierogi I usually see the plural form without the `s` in English (in America at least). I think "blintzes" too, from Yiddish `blintse` by way of Slavic.
- mananaysiempre 2y ago
  Funnily enough, בלינצעס blintses seems to be the native Yiddish plural, but if I’m to believe Wiktionary the English singular is blintz so might be a back-formation from it, because the Yiddish singular is בלינצע blintse.
rdtsc 2y ago
Because it is easy to say and typical for English. In English "y" at the ends up as "ies" for plural. Whatever the rules, eventually whatever is easier for locals to say will be what people go with. > The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg). Not speaking Polish whenever I heard "pierogis" in English, I assumed all Americans meant was Russian "pirogi". So was expecting fluffy yeast leavened baked goodies, instead I got boiled vareniky/pelimini/dumplings.
kemitchell 2y ago
I'm a native English speaker going on twenty years of acquired Russian, since college. "Russkie" in English doesn't correspond to the plural form in Russian to my intuition. It's the singular, then pluralized in the usual English way. Transliterations make it easy to confuse the difference between the grammatical endings of русский (singular, masculine adjective used as singular noun) and русские (plural adjective used as plural noun). The end of English "Russkie" is pronounced more like the end of "русский", while the plural "русские" would be something like RUSS-key-yay in English, ROOS-key-yay in Russian. The general rule for making singulars plural in English is adding -s. The general rule for Russian nominative-case adjectives is adding -ые or -ие. Granted, native Russian speakers often speed through and slur unstressed grammatical endings, so the difference isn't always discernible in speech.
greesil 2y ago
It's also a derogatory term from the cold war. I am happy to help bring it back.

throwup238 2y ago

> The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg). Any others? Pelmeni (пельмени) sometimes becomes pelmenis, but like with pierogi I usually see the plural form without the `s` in English (in America at least). I think "blintzes" too, from Yiddish `blintse` by way of Slavic.

mananaysiempre 2y ago
Funnily enough, בלינצעס blintses seems to be the native Yiddish plural, but if I’m to believe Wiktionary the English singular is blintz so might be a back-formation from it, because the Yiddish singular is בלינצע blintse.

rdtsc 2y ago

Because it is easy to say and typical for English. In English "y" at the ends up as "ies" for plural. Whatever the rules, eventually whatever is easier for locals to say will be what people go with. > The only other Slavic-to-English example of this sort I know is pierogis, from Polish (the nominative singular form is pieróg). Not speaking Polish whenever I heard "pierogis" in English, I assumed all Americans meant was Russian "pirogi". So was expecting fluffy yeast leavened baked goodies, instead I got boiled vareniky/pelimini/dumplings.

kemitchell 2y ago

I'm a native English speaker going on twenty years of acquired Russian, since college. "Russkie" in English doesn't correspond to the plural form in Russian to my intuition. It's the singular, then pluralized in the usual English way. Transliterations make it easy to confuse the difference between the grammatical endings of русский (singular, masculine adjective used as singular noun) and русские (plural adjective used as plural noun). The end of English "Russkie" is pronounced more like the end of "русский", while the plural "русские" would be something like RUSS-key-yay in English, ROOS-key-yay in Russian. The general rule for making singulars plural in English is adding -s. The general rule for Russian nominative-case adjectives is adding -ые or -ие. Granted, native Russian speakers often speed through and slur unstressed grammatical endings, so the difference isn't always discernible in speech.

greesil 2y ago

It's also a derogatory term from the cold war. I am happy to help bring it back.