The Russian language in the Chinese Three Rivers region: linguistic features

The authors analyse the Russian speech of immigrants' descendants from Russia to the Chinese Three Rivers region in the Inner Mongolia in the 20th century. The relevance of the study is due to the need to study various forms of existence of the modern Russian national language, including those in foreign countries. The research is based on both oral and written sources collected by the authors in 2017-2018 during their expeditions to Enhe Russian Ethnic Township (China). The research has shown deviations in the speech of immigrants' descendants from the norms of the Russian literary language due to the use of Russian in its dialect form, as well as interference from Chinese. The authors have proved that the Russian dialects of the Three Rivers region are genetically related to the Russian dialects of Eastern Transbaikalia, which, in turn, are related to the North Russian dialects. The dialectal features of the Russian dialects of the Chinese Three Rivers quialify them as the translitional dialects on the North Russian basis. Since there were no external factors of influence on the dialectal Russian language from its other idioms, the stated dialectal form of the Russian language remained unchaged until the early 21st century. The article considers both the dialectal originality of Russian speech in the Three Rivers region at different language levels (phonetics, morphology, syntax, vocabulary), and the cases of interlingual interference resulting from the influence of the Chinese language on the Russian dialect system. The authors describe the following factors that determine the intensity of interference: generation, education, profession, and language environment. Having described the active zones of interaction between typoLogicaLLy different Chinese and Russian and determined the areas of interference in the Russian speech of bilinguals, the authors detected “weak points” of the Russian language system in the situation of Russian-Chinese bilingualism. Thus, the authors have studied the variant of the Russian language specific for the Chinese Three Rivers region and concluded that it preserves the Russian dialect base influenced by the interference from Chinese, which is an understudied fact of the Russian language environment in emigration.