What are linguistic borrowings? This topic undoubtedly excites each of us. It is discussed at school, in textbooks, in scientific literature and on Internet forums. At the same time, popular excursions into the field of borrowings, published in Russia, are mostly limited to the topic of foreign words in the Russian language. But what is borrowing in general, by what signs do we distinguish it, why does it arise in a language, why is it resisted - there has not been a book about this yet.

This is the gap that English philologist Maria Eliferova tried to fill. Showing how languages ​​interact with each other and how the fate of borrowings develops (we are talking not only about words), the author, along with examples from Russian culture, history and literature, turns to French, German, Spanish and more exotic languages ​​from various corners of the globe.

This information-rich and serious book happily combines the depth of scientific analysis with accessible, lively presentation, humor and loyalty to rebels and violators of norms and canons.

From the point of view of linguistics, a fairly reliable sign of borrowing is A at the beginning of a word. Indeed, if you open a dictionary for the letter A, we will see a whole series of clearly foreign words: lampshade, abbot, abbreviation, etc. At the same time, an ordinary native speaker is unlikely to consider the sound and letter A "non-Russian"... Upon closer examination, the only native Russian words beginning with A are the conjunction a and the interjections akh and ay!

For everyone interested in linguistics, in particular borrowing, for those who like to learn new things, and in general for a wide range of readers.