to google

[William Ryan]

Why silly? They are inevitable, natural, even necessary. I have found 
'razguglennaia informatsiia', which would require a much longer phrase 
if expressed in any other way. And naguglivat'sia is a very satisfying 
verb. Gugl'nut' one would expect to be a semelfactive verb and thus less 
used. Personally I find the alternative guglianut', also to be found, 
much more euphonious. Guglirovat' in fact can also be seen. The 
potential paradigm of a new verb using a single-syllable stem like this, 
with a sound that invites analogy with guliat' and its variants, is 
really quite large - Russian is a wonderful language with many 
productive processes. These are not phonetic but morphological 
mechanisms, although the guglit' form does suggest that the alternative 
form, gugl', which can be found, is how most Russians hear the final 
English l even if they spell it more often as gugl.

Verbs in -irovat' were, I seem to remember from my student days, 
18th/19th century loan words from German verbs in -ieren, and analogy 
has done the rest.

As to the h>g transformation, the usual explanation, as far as I recall, 
is to do with Ukrainian/South Russian pronunciation of g in the 17th-18 
c. I do remember hearing a lecture about Evelyn Waugh in Leningrad 
University in 1962 when the lecturer pronounced his subject's name as 
Evlin Wog. He is usually referred to now more phonetically as the 
oriental-looking Uo.  Given that great writer's snobbishness about being 
an English gentleman both forms no doubt have him spluttering in his grave.

Will

david riesenberg wrote:
> Does anybody know anything about the phonetic mechanisms by which
> these silly new verbs or nouns (from the West or elsewhere) land on
> their eventual Russian morphology?
>
> How did "parkirovat'" get its "ir" and "ov" when "guglit'" has avoided
> them completely? Why is the " nut' " so very rare for the new
> additions?
>
>
>
> Also - what goes into the 'H' transformation into "G" or "Kh?" Why do
> we have Gitler and Sherlock Kholmes instead of Khitler and Sherlock
> Golmes?
>
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