Russian
The word Russian is a neologism that tries to translate the Russian term российский (rossijskij) - the adjective to the noun Россия (Rossija) - into German . In the same way, the term россиянин ( rossijanin , citizen of Russia) is sometimes rendered with the word Russian .
The translation of rossijski in Russian is imprecise because rossijski does not refer to the Russian ethnicity or the Russian language (there is the adjective русский [russkij]), but to Russia and its citizens. The latter are not necessarily (ethnic) Russians, which is why the distinction in Russia has always been of great importance.
The distinction also takes into account the sensitivities and national feeling of the ethnic minorities in Russia. A city predominantly inhabited by Tatars would be called a Russian city in Russian, but not a Russian city. Analogous to the distinction between Russian and Russian , Russian also differentiates between Russian (russki) or Russian (russkaja) and Russian (rossijanin) or Russian (rossijanka). A Tatar who is a citizen of Russia is therefore not a Russian , but a Russian .
In those cases in which a clear distinction between state and ethnic group or language is desired, the word Russian is occasionally used in scientific publications . Colloquially and in official language usage, however, only the terms Russian and Russian are used. The words Russian and Russians have not yet found their way into the dictionaries.
Russian has a similar distinction in other countries, too, for example German , which is translated either as немецкий [nemezkij] 'related to the German ethnicity, culture or language' or as германский [germanskij] 'related to the German state' (e.g. немецкий язык [nemezki jasyk] 'German language', but Германская Демократическая Республика [Germanskaja Demokratitscheskaja Respublika] 'German Democratic Republic'). Likewise, rossijanin as a citizen of Russia or российский город [rossijskij gorod] as a city in Russia can be translated without the need for the adjective Russian .
Individual evidence
- ↑ www.ruhr-uni-bochum ( memento of July 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (Jewgeni Gorny (2000): Chronicle of the Russian Internet: 1990–1999. Version 1.0. Translated by Henrike Schmidt) - footnote 1
- ↑ Isabelle de Keghel: Imperial Heritage - Today's Russia and its national coat of arms. Note 2.
- ↑ The Constitution of the Russian Federation. Translation by Martin Fincke.
- ↑ Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany , Embassy of the Russian Federation ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ See the search query for Russian and Russians in the digital dictionary of the German language .
