A corpus-based analysis of contemporary Russian netspeak: can corpora help us predict the future of a language?

The globalised use of the Internet has led to the birth of Netspeak, the language used on the Internet and Social Media, which has unique characteristics, typical of both spoken and written language. This study analyses the features of contemporary Russian Netspeak through linguistic corpora. Both paper and online dictionaries, traditional and Web corpora were used for this survey; this has made it possible to carry out a comparative analysis between these tools, to evaluate which is more suitable for analysing the target language. Furthermore, the use of Web corpora allowed us to investigate the diachronic evolution of Russian Netspeak, from approximately 2011 to 2021. The analysis focused on the different transliteration processes involving more than 300 loanwords, as well as the investigation of different derivational and inflectional morphemes attached to English transliterated loanwords and roots. This research aimed to establish whether a diachronic corpus-based analysis of Russian Netspeak can help us to forecast which standard form will be established over time, making predictions on future developments of the language. An incredibly articulated and multifaceted picture emerges, which shows all the complexity of a new and constantly evolving language, in which foreign loanwords struggle to adapt and integrate into the target language, giving rise to numerous variants of the same word.