Borrowings from Chinese in the Modern Russian Literary Language (Lexicographic Aspect)

In this article we consider borrowings from the Chinese language, reflected in Russian explanatory dictionaries, primarily academic ones. There aren’t many of those (ginseng, funchose, etc.), but there are many more Sinicisms that came into the Russian language through other, intermediary languages (ketchup, typhoon), for some words the etymology (the way of borrowing) is not fully clear (tea). Recently the semantics of borrowings have changed significantly. In the past the borrowings from Chinese were mostly political exoticisms (Kuomintang, Taiping), lately they included names of health-improving sports (wushu, kung fu, qigong) and spiritual practices (dao, yin, yang). Some of the Sinicisms have been fully absorbed by the Russian language, became polysemantic and have numerous derivatives (tea), while others have expanded their semantics and have ceased to be exoticisms (Hongweibing, Dazibao). However, some of the borrowings are not included in explanatory dictionaries, although they are widely used in everyday speech (wok, funchoza). Their codification in explanatory dictionaries lags behind their verbal use. Since the writing systems of the Chinese and Russian languages are completely different, the peculiarity of Chinese borrowings is the initial variety of spelling variants (kung fu, kungfu, kung-fu, ku-fu, konfu) of their first recording in spelling dictionaries.