A linguistic analysis of Ravkan and Ravkan names in SaB*
(*Written by a non-native who studied Russian, with respect, and grateful for any feedback)
Hi it’s me. Your friendly neighborhood bookworm (who studies linguistics).
When I first read the SaB trilogy, I had been taking a year of Russian. The fantasy-lover in me instantly latched onto this grand magical world, and looking back, I remember getting so excited about the little hints of Russian throughout the book because, “Oh! I recognize that!! It means/references [X]!” That said, the linguistic student in me would stop in confusion at all the discrepancies, because...well...the language in SaB is not Russian. It’s fake/fantasy Russian.
Russian is the obvious carbon footprint of Ravkan, just looking at its inspired Slavic myths, the straight-up Tsarist government, the architecture of the palaces. There’s other stuff too that adds to what is supposed to be “Ravkan culture” by being written with Russian words: kefta, sankt, kvas.
Even so, Ravkan is very distinctly assimilating Russian into something more English-native friendly. The names are wrong. The Anglicizied terms look off. The way characters refer to each other—in name, status, and formality—is completely Americanized. LB herself said that Ravkan is “inspired by Russian and Mongolian,” which. Doesn’t mean anything if actual Russian speakers can’t understand it.
Which is why I’m writing this, for my own linguistic interests and your curiosity (or peace of mind, I don’t know which one you came here reading for). I’m giving you my linguistic analysis of Ravkan, not as a badly-butchered Russian offshoot, but as a child of one of two possible linguistic phenomenon: relexification or creolization.
Relexification is the sudden rapid change of the lexicon in a language. Basically, one language adopts almost all of the lexicon of another language into itself:
Imagine, in this exercise, that the first speakers of Ravkan were originally nomads in what is now known as Ravka. Their tribe might have come into contact with the first settlers of the region (who, for the sake of our fictional linguistic analysis, must have been actual Russian speakers). As a minority, they could have adopted the majority-spoken Russian lexicon, but following the rules of their original language. Then powers changed. Ravkans became the majority. Russian went into obscurity while leaving a lasting linguistic imprint.
This, in theory, explains the discrepancies that exist in the use of Ravkan languages.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of relexification being the reason for Ravkan’s creation, since it doesn’t explain everything. A whole lexicon overhaul doesn’t explain the change in naming conventions.
So, let’s talk about creolization!
Creolization is my favorite headcanon for Ravkan’s origins. It is a nuanced process that cannot be quantified just through lexicon, but is possibly just as dramatic in a short amount of time. I could write a whole paper on creolization and how most, if not all, languages in the world exist in a Creole spectrum-continuum based on language contact with other languages. However, this is a tumblr post for a dumb fictional world. Sigh, another day.
Let me elaborate with canon compliant reasons as to why creolization is a Thing That Definitely Happened in Ravka:
The creation of the Fold. With the creation of the Fold circa 400 years before the present time, language has had more than enough time to change in the aftermath of a drastic geographical alteration.
The show even gives us more context by bringing up ‘Old Ravkan,’ which to our (read: Alina’s) ears, sounds pretty Russian. West Ravka also calls itself the ‘Old Country’, leaning into the idea that Old Ravkan (actual Russian) originates in the western side of the shadow border, and Ravkan can no longer be identified with it, as hundreds of years have passed in language isolation. So, Ravka developed separately from Old Ravkan? That’s not creolization.
Well, what about the displacement of hundreds, even thousands of people, stranded east of the Fold? Those people and the languages they speak don’t just go away—they get integrated into the regional dialect. Fjerdans, Kerch, Shu Han, Suli, Ravkan tribes that each spoke their own variety of languages and used to live in different regions across Ravka. All of them pushed to share the same stretch of land, removed from sea paths.
West Ravka probably underwent its own creolization because of the same reasons, but to a lesser extent.
Patronymics and diminutives have “vanished” from common usage. In both Ravkan and Old Ravkan, there once was an indicator of diminutives, as presented by the existence of Grisha coming from Sankt Grigori. Some characters also have diminutives as names. However, no patronymics seem to be in use, spoken nor in documentation.
One reason for this “simplification” (a hot and loaded term to have in creolistics) is that since not every linguistic group stuck east of the Fold used them, patronymics and diminutives were dropped from usage completely, with some being preserved as first or last names.
(Sure, this is linked to how Russian patronymics and diminutives do not have a mirror form in English so Author worked with cultural bias, but the disappearance of them could tie directly with the next point, which is:)
The gender indicator of family names is, in some instances, completely flipped. This one is the strangest linguistic pattern I can point out, because of consistency.
Alina is Alina Starkov, despite standard -ov surname endings being masculine in Russian. Alright, everyone simplified Russian surnames even further so only masculine markers remained. Except, why are Ilya and Aleksander called Morozova, when -ova endings indicate a feminine marker? (Here’s where I say it would have been interesting to see if Aleksander calls himself Morozov, or what does Baghra call herself. They are literally from a different era, but alas). The gendered flip happens in multiple instances. Genya Safin (instead of Safina); Nadia Zhabin (Zhabina)...
The only surname that doesn’t apply to this flipped rule is Lantsov, which could still be logical if we consider that the Lantsov name is inherited down a long royal line that can be traced back 400 years, possibly to Old Ravkan. With male rulers, the gender indicator froze and stuck to -ov.
Town/city names, preserved locations. To understand this point, we can look into places like England or the United States, where a lot of towns and villages have roots in the language of original settlers (see Gaelic in England; the many Native American languages in the US). Ravkan town and city names could have been preserved from Old Ravkan (Russian), though people in East Ravka no longer speak it.
Fossilized words. Every language has these, and they are honestly really cool. They are antiquated/obsolete words that we no longer use in any context except in certain phrasing. The thing about fossilized terms, though, is that native speakers have no context or awareness of the original meaning of the word or phrase they are using—like when English speakers say “just deserts” (which comes from the Middle English desert, “to deserve”) and is often misspelled to be “desserts” (a different loanword from French, desservir, unrelated).
Some Ravkan fossil words we could extrapolate: kefta (it has no translated equivalent in the text, it is exclusively used to mean the clothing Grisha wear, and in Russian, a kefta is a dish); kvas (simply because the actual Russian kva would not get anyone drunk, so it is a misnomer/fossilized term from something stronger), the term Grisha itself (frozen to indicate powered individuals, and nothing at all with the diminutive of Grigori), and otkazat’sya (at this point, Ravkan natives say it originates from ‘abandoned’, but it is used to signify non-Grisha humans in a non-pejorative way...and a majority, socially superior race would not call itself ‘abandoned’).
Pronunciation and spelling. Ravkan is not Russian. Not the way that characters speak or write it.
1. The show invented its own alphabet which, while inspired by the Cyrillic alphabet, separates Ravkan from Russian even more. It’s not Cyrillic anymore, it’s Ravkan.
2. The “mispronunciation” of what we know to be Russian words is apparently the correct pronunciation of Ravkan words. Russian nyet is Ravkan net. Moya should have been pronounced maya because of how the written -o- in Russian has two pronunciations, based on syllable stress. The same applies to koroleva, which phonetically should be /karaleva/ as the stress is in the /e/, and not in either /o/. In the show, this was a decision to pronounce.
Casual native speaker bilingualism. This one is a bit of a cheat, but a big part of a lot of Creole societies. It’s Author’s choice to use a handy Russian dictionary while also making it known that the English narrative does have a word for it. (Quick examples: the use of da/net along with yes/no.)
A bilingual/plurilingual society is more likely to develop Code-switching jargon and Creole lexifiers, which can directly explain the shift in pronunciation, spelling, and even the expression of grammatical gender in Ravkan.
At the end of it all, I want to reiterate that I don’t have the means to question LB or SaB’s showrunners directly on why they made Ravkan the way it is (I wish). Everything I’ve written here is from a studying linguist’s perspective, attempting to make reason out of something that otherwise isn’t reasonable to Russian native speakers. My concluding piece of analysis:
Ravkan is a Russian-lexifier Creole language with restructured rules and relexified jargon.
If this post is of any help, I am glad to have been of service. Otherwise, take it with a grain of salt, or feel free to argument on the points I’ve presented!
