French gave the Russian language a lot of new words. Some words were borrowed out of necessity: with the appearance of objects or phenomena that they denoted. Other people took over deliberately for variety in speech or its decoration.
You must have heard the expression "revoir" more than once. This expression is used in speech by people around the world due to its beautiful sound.
What does "revoir" mean?
In French, the expression "Aurevoir" is written like this: au revoir. A literal translation from French "Arevoir" will help you guess about the analogue of this colloquial phrase in Russian.
So, au is a preposition in French that translates into Russian as "before". The word revoir is a verb. Voir means "to see", the prefix re is the equivalent of the prefix "re" meaning "again". Thus, the word revoir is translated as "to see again".
As you may have guessed, "Arevoir" is French for "goodbye". Do you want to know how such phrases penetrated and took root in Russian and other languages?
History of penetration of the Frenchcolloquial phrases in Russian
Gallomania is the name given to the adoration of the French language and French culture in general. Bonjour, comme il faut, orevuar are the results of this phenomenon. In Russia, gallomania became widespread in the 19th century, and the first outbreaks occurred after the French Revolution of 1789.
During the reign of Catherine II, all the French who disagreed with the new regime fled to the Russian Empire. Here French speakers (francophones) worked as teachers and tutors. Being highly intelligent, educated and educated people, the French were admired by the Russian people. They wanted to imitate.
In the 19th century, France became the leading European country. And French culture, including art and literature, architecture, philosophy and fashion, has become an example for all of Europe to follow.
Thus the French language became very popular. It began to spread widely in Russia and Europe. In the modern world, the use of such phrases as madam, monsieur, bonjour, orevuar is a manifestation of the same gallomania that appeared 2 centuries ago.
