COLUMN ONE : New Words Tongue-Tie Russians : From teens to <i> biznessmyen</i> , the country is listening to <i> rok </i> in the <i> kar </i> and going <i> shawpping </i> for <i> shooz</i> ,<i> ti-shirti </i> and <i> shorti.</i> Purists are horrified.

Prof. Yevgeny Sheryaev never wants to see another article about a konsensis reached at a sammit between two sooper-star politicians.

As deputy director of the Russian Language Institute, Sheryaev has tracked, with mounting incredulity, the scores of American words that have infiltrated everyday Russian speech since then-Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev introduced perestroika and glasnost to the English lexicon seven years ago.

At first, Sheryaev welcomed the invasion--after all, he reasoned, Russians lacked words for capitalist practices and for Western technology, so they might as well import terms like konsulting , leesing , verd protsesser and faks. In the cultural sphere, as well, he decided, American idioms could only enrich his mother tongue, which had no way to express concepts like gala-konsert and punk.

But his tolerance has run low recently, as journalists and politicians have increasingly turned to Americanisms as stand-ins for perfectly good Russian words.

When Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin meets with President Bush, “as a sign of honor and respect to Bush, it’s OK to call that a sammit ,” Sheryaev argues. “But when you talk of a sammit between Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, that’s just ridiculous. We have our own word for a meeting of top officials, but our journalists now use the American term without thinking.”

Linguistic borrowing has been a thorny issue in Russia since the 18th Century, when Peter the Great tried to open his isolated, backward country to Western influences. Many of Peter’s courtiers spoke German or French as well as Russian, and foreign phrases became de rigueur among the intelligentsia.

But the pretentious Eurospeak sparked strident opposition from Slavophiles who declared that Russia should forge its own identity rather than mindlessly parrot the West. Or, as poet Mikhail Lomonosov wrote in the mid-18th Century, “We must not borrow foreign words, or we will become barbarians.”

Today’s purists, indignant at the nite shaups and disko kloobs that have sprouted all over Moscow, are carrying on Lomonosov’s fight, arguing that Amerikanizatsia --Americanization--is corrupting the once-mighty Russian language.

“Pure Russian speech and pronunciation is being preserved by only a handful of people here and abroad,” said linguist Mark Makovsky, an editor of the journal Problems of the Russian Language.

Shuddering as he twisted his tongue around the manifestly un-Russian phrase haivaying --taken from the English “highway” and used in a recent newspaper article to describe roadside muggings--Makovsky observed sadly (and in English), “Our language is not developing in a good direction.”

Despite his dismay, Makovsky recognizes that a handful of Russian scholars cannot stop the crush of Americanisms. After all, even the mighty 350-year-old Academie Francaise has been unable to protect French from vulgarities such as un basket (for a basketball sneaker) and un training (for a sweat suit).

The Academie’s watchdogs have averted total corruption of their beloved language by endorsing French-sounding substitutes to replace foreign words that threaten to become popular. But although many French now dutifully call a Walkman a baladeur (from the verb “to go for a stroll”) and computer software a logiciel , they also persist in tossing American phrases into daily conversation.

America has also exported thousands of words to Japan, where “personal computer” becomes pasocon , “department store” is depaato and “truck” is torakku.

But it is in the land of Tchaikovsky, closed to Western pop culture for so long, that Americanization seems especially startling. All the more so because with its myriad prefixes and verb forms, Russian can precisely--and concisely--express delicate nuances of human behavior and emotion.

A single verb, for example, conveys the English phrase “to wear an article of clothing so much that it becomes tattered” and a single (and frequently used) adjective means “able to navigate the system and get things done.” In his novel “Anna Karenina,” scholars say Tolstoy used 15 different verbs to describe expressions in his doomed heroine’s eyes.

Yet for all its descriptive force, Russian sounds a bit stodgy to many native speakers, especially teen-agers and young biznessmyen. Those who live in big cities with access to American movies and contact with Western tourists quickly appropriate foreign words.

Modernizing their speech with a klassno (classy) melange of foreign phrases, Russians who came of age in the Glasnost Generation often greet each other with a casual Nu , khow? --a mix of the Russian nu , meaning “well, now,” and the American “how,” as in “How are you?”

If they’re sportsmyeni , they try to scrape together enough bakks to go shawpping for shooz , ti-shirti and shorti. And if they like rap or rok , they travel by kar to a parti where they can drinchat vine --an odd new predicate that comes from the English “to drink wine.”

“These American phrases just sneak into your conversation,” Mikhail Smirnov, 27, said as he fiddled with the radio dial in his car, trying to find a suitably hip di-dzhai (deejay).

“It sounds better to include some foreign words when you talk to friends,” university student Kostya Tsikolenko, 22, explained. “It’s a good way to show off.”

From pluralizm to impeechment , partnyori to sponsori , deesk draives to modemi , the most common Americanisms are political, economic and computer-related. Most are simply plopped into the Russian language, albeit with slightly altered pronunciations. Marketing , for example, is accented here on the second syllable.

Because Russian lacks its own words for these concepts, it voraciously absorbs foreign ones--about 50 “new” words in Russian were coined each day in 1985-90, according to the Itar-Tass news service--and, judging from overheard conversations, most additions come from English.

While technical terms are imported wholesale, more casual idioms often gain uniquely Russian twists when integrated into everyday speech. Verbs conjugate according to Russian patterns, and nouns decline (as in Latin) into all six of the language’s cases.

As a result, a word as straightforward as bakks (bucks, as in dollars) can become almost unrecognizable to native English speakers, if used in the genitive plural, for example (bakksov). And then there are trendy phrases that come from recognizable English words but sound slightly odd to the American ear--like shaping , a mix of low-impact aerobics, calisthenics and body sculpting that is now the rage among fitness-conscious Russians.

Similarly, now that bakks has become widely used as a catchall term for money, the most with-it teens have switched to grin (green), as in “I need some grin to buy babble gam ,” or--more likely with the current cash crunch--”My dad hasn’t been paid any grin in six months.”

But sprinkling casual speech with imported slang doesn’t bestow automatic hipness. Russians who try too hard may end up incorporating passe Americanisms like girla (girl), bebi (baby) or slaksi (slacks)--all of which sound just as out of it as flower-child talk like “groovy.”

Russian purists--who a few years ago campaigned unsuccessfully to junk the word kompyutors in favor of the more Russian-sounding schyotchiki --are horrified by all this America aping. But this country’s greatest 19th-Century poet might understand.

In his epic poem “Eugene Onegin,” Alexander Pushkin defended the use of foreign terms, saying that, although he had scoured the Russian language, he could find no home-grown word to supplant the French pantalon , or “trousers.”

O, Mi Gowsh!

Some common Americanisms used in everyday Russian speech: IN RUSSIAN O , mi gowsh Lench Biznessmyen Kceroks Brokyer Khard rok Khevy metal Ah-Kay Khai Breefing Gamberger

IN ENGLISH Oh, my gosh Lunch Businessmen Xerox Broker Hard rock (music) Heavy metal (music) OK Hi Briefing (for the press) Hamburger