Every now and then, somewhere in the world, a serious discussion breaks out about the “purity” of language. Should we protect it from foreign influence? Should we limit the flood of borrowed words? Should we perhaps build a sturdy linguistic fence and let nothing in without a passport?
Personally, I have never felt very tempted by that idea. I tend to agree with the thought that preserving a language does not mean sealing it off from the outside world. Quite the opposite: a healthy language can borrow something new and useful while still keeping its own character and flavor.
So instead of joining the debate, let me introduce you to a few curious travellers that have recently wandered into Russian from English. After settling in, they quickly began behaving in very Russian ways, sometimes producing meanings and associations that their English relatives would hardly recognize. It’s a group of words describing our activity on the Internet and social media.
Chronologically speaking, perhaps the first of these newcomers was гу́глить — “to google.” It quickly became a perfectly viable verb meaning “to search for information on the web.” Like any well-behaved Russian verb, it even developed a perfective partner, погу́глить, and a very practical imperative: Погу́гли! People use it quite happily even when the search technically happens on a different engine. With a bit of good humor, someone might say “Погу́гли в Я́ндексе,” fully aware of the oxymoron it creates.
You could even build an entire grammatical life around it: "Я гу́глил, гу́глю и бу́ду гу́глить — и ты то́же погу́гли". The participle and gerund forms, however, are far less common, probably because they sound somewhat clumsy. Гу́гля? Погу́гленный? This may be where the assimilation of this linguistic newcomer finally begins to meet its limits.
Then came the era of social media, bringing along a whole new set of words: клик and кли́кать /кли́кнуть, лайк and ла́йкать /ла́йкнуть, пост and по́стить /запо́стить, ша́рить /расша́рить, and ба́нить /забáнить. I suspect you can easily recognize these English friends, now disguised in Russian clothes.
Here is my little personal theory: Russian welcomed this new cluster of borrowed words so enthusiastically not because it lacked equivalents, but because many of them happened to sound intriguingly similar to perfectly ordinary Russian words that already existed — though with entirely different meanings.
Take the word кли́кнуть, for example. Long before computer mice appeared, it already existed in Russian and meant to call out or summon someone. In old tales and songs one might кли́кнуть друзе́й or кли́кнуть наро́д — call people together. When the new digital meaning arrived from English — to click a mouse — the old verb suddenly acquired a second life. For advertisers, this coincidence turned out to be a small gift. In the early 2000s, Coca-Cola and the internet portal Russia-On-Line launched a New Year campaign built entirely on this double meaning. The slogan invited people to "Кли́кни Де́да Моро́за" — “Click Ded Moroz.” Participants could enter codes found under bottle caps or on the website Cocacola.ru to win prizes. The phrase worked beautifully: in the modern sense you were supposed to click on the website, but in the older, folkloric sense you were also calling upon Father Frost himself.
Russian adds yet another twist here. Alongside клик and кликнуть, there is also кли́ка — a word meaning a closed, self-serving group of people, a clique. The spelling is almost identical to клик, although the meaning comes from a completely different story. Our AI-generated picture nicely combines these two meanings — and I couldn’t resist the temptation to smuggle in another word that will appear a bit later in our story.
Ша́рить had long existed as slang meaning “to really know your way around a topic.” When the new meaning “to share” arrived from English, the familiar verb forms quickly attached themselves to this new twin. So now someone might casually say: "Сейча́с я расша́рю свой экра́н" — “I’ll share my screen now.” (Which is not difficult for me because я ша́рю в компью́терах).
Пост and по́стить easily lend themselves to jokes about religious fasting versus online publishing. One popular quip goes: "Самый стро́гий пост — э́то когда́ твой аккау́нт заблоки́ровали" (“The strictest fast is when your account gets blocked.”) Opinions still differ about where the stress should fall in the infinitive постить, but the most entertaining form is the first-person singular in the present tense: я пощу́ (“I post”). It follows the same pattern as я пощу́сь — “I am fasting” in the Christian tradition.
Ба́нить (to ban) is another curious arrival. Although it was not originally a Russian verb, its sound easily evokes ба́ня the traditional steam bath, with clouds of steam and ritual thrashing with oak or birch branches.
And finally, ла́йкать, a word that sounds pleasantly familiar to Russian ears, perhaps because it recalls the famous northern dog Laika. I also once heard a joke where a mother is trying to understand what kind of relationship her daughter has with a young man. He is not a fiancé, not a boyfriend, not even quite a friend. The daughter patiently explains: "Он мой ла́йкарь" — someone who likes her posts. The joke works because the borrowed English root is paired with the very traditional Russian suffix -арь, the same one found in words denoting professions or occupations — апте́карь, библиоте́карь, and some others. The result sounds oddly respectable, as if it described a proper line of work.
Looking at these small linguistic adventures, it becomes hard to see borrowed words as a threat. On the contrary, once they arrive, Russian does not simply accept them — it bends them, conjugates them, attaches familiar suffixes, and happily plays with their meanings. In the process, the newcomers stop feeling foreign and become part of the language’s own creative life. And speaking of likes — if this little exploration of clicks, posts, bans and shares made you smile or taught you something new, you are of course welcome to ла́йкнуть this post. A whole clique of Laika dogs from the picture above will appreciate it!