Runglish in Action

In this video, a woman uses Runglish in an interview about her store

In this example, the speaker uses single-item codeswitching of Russian and English, despite the interviewer using only Russian. She switches seamlessly from “standard” English to native-sounding Russian. The store owner uses a wide range of English words like “job interview”, “cancer research”, and many more all of which contribute to the concept that English is commonly used for topics that the USSR didn’t have much contact with. Jobs functioned differently in the USSR and cancer research was not a common concern for many. She also goes on to use English words for modern American fashion trends, none of which would have been around in USSR.

She also says things that certainly could be easily expressed in Russian, but she chooses not to. She says “Он makes a wonderful designer. Он очень affordable.” (“он” is the Russian pronoun for “he” and “очень” is the word for “very”) In this case there are plenty of Russian words for wonderful and affordable that she could have used, or she could have used entirely English and replaced the few Russian words with their English equivalent. And it is quite likely that she knows the Russian words as she uses similar ones later in the interview. Thus, Runglish is not always a result of using one language to describe what the other can not, but the train of thought of someone who is fluent in both languages and for whom both are equally helpful to describing.