Names of food and beverages in Russian-Ukrainian translation dictionaries of the early 20th century
Authors: Tomilenko Liudmyla 
Published: December 2022

Various dictionaries created for peculiar purposes play an important role in obtaining the necessary information as well as the translated general language reference books. Nowadays we observe considerable interest in the lexicographic heritage of the first post-revolutionary years and the times of Ukrainization. Among the popular sources are: «Moscow-Ukrainian Dictionary» (1918) by V. Dubrovskyi, «Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary» (1918) by S. Ivanytskyi and F. Shumanskyi, academic «Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary» (1924–1933) A. Krymskyi and S. Yefremov under ed. Consequently, the above mentioned resources became the subject of our research.

The main purpose of this study is to both select and analyze the food and beverages vocabulary which is recorded in these three dictionaries, compare its spelling and word-formation features within the diverse dictionaries of the same timeframe, as well as to trace the usage and fixation of these words in the modern Ukrainian language.

Lexicographic works of the post-revolutionary era contain a considerable number of units related to food and beverages. All three dictionaries contain as many as 700 of such units. The vast majority of identified names have remained popular till today, with the exception of some interesting, little-known, rare, dialectal and regional units.

According to our estimates, the recorded food vocabulary is quantitatively greater than the amount of units related to beverages. Nevertheless, the analyzed dictionaries highlight a high number of diverse types of beverages, specifically alcoholic ones.

The highest toll of units accounts for diversified flour products (including baked, boiled and fried ones). Especially varied are the names of pastries that are intendedly used for daily consumption, although there are also present the names of the festive bread products. Predominantly, it happens to be Ukrainian traditional and well-known till nowadays (in rare cases – foreign) food vocabulary units.

Additionally, the analyzed dictionaries show a record of quite a large scale of the animal source foods, including meat and fish ones. A large number of dairy products both raw and cooked are found throughout the research. There are many names of dishes from different vegetables and cereals, for instance – soups, porridges etc. Meat is often supposed to be one of the components of such a meal. The most commonly noticed ingredients include potatoes and cabbage out of vegetables and millet, buckwheat, corn, peas, and oats out of cereals.

The names of sweets and desserts which are quite diverse in most of the cases form the long-established and modernly used lexical units. These nouns include both colloquial and non-normative lexemes that have different spelling, grammatical structure and features, etc.

Wide group of listings in the analyzed sources is related to the names of drinks. Especially commonly used are the names of alcoholic beverage groups like liqueurs, bitters, wines, varieties of vodka, etc. The names of those beverages vary humongously and arise on the basis of raw material they are made of. Modern lexicographical sources contain both well-known types of these beverages as well as less familiar names.

Dictionaries include the names of non-alcoholic hot and cold beverages which are grossly understated compared to other groups. All the topic related names are widely spread and are commonly known.

In addition, together with the above mentioned food and beverages vocabulary, the studied sources present us a number of lexemes that are used to have completely different meanings in modern lexicographic sources. The analysis, additionally, demonstrates the words that normally belongs to different lexical and semantic groups, but in the modern Ukrainian vocabulary is also used to define food. This include both ambiguous and homonymous lexemes.