The paper explores the youth sociolect in Russian, German, and French languages in the lexicographical
sources of 18th – 21st centuries. The numerous dictionaries of student slang, with some of them citing borrowings from the French language, reveal the richest legacy of the German
youth speech. Russian academic slang emerged later since educational institutions had been
established in Germany earlier than in Russia. Russian academic slang, found in memoirs, letters
and fiction, is covered by «Dictionary of Russian Student Slang» by O. A. Anischenko. The comparative
analysis of the two youth sociolects uncovers common trends that are revealed through
the examination of their relevant lexicons. These tendencies prove to be the sources of the loanwords
for the languages under consideration. The first is metaphorisation of general words. Similar
to other types of slang, youth sociolect was evolving in communities defined by special social
features and age groups; it borrowed its lexis from the existing language, changing it and adapting
it to the communication needs of the relevant subculture. Slang users tend to catch denotation
specifics which are in fact explicit meanings that can be grouped. Thus, the process of derivation
which is an essential part of human mental activity takes place. The second trend is the borrowing.
In 18th – 19th centuries, loanwords were borrowed from Latin, Greek, and French languages,
whereas nowadays they are mainly adopted from the English language – a common practice in
standard languages. The sociolects analyzed often borrow the same lexical items from the English
language. The third trend is word building. Young people’s creativity is especially visible in abbreviations
among which the omissions of letters or sounds are most frequent; shortenings such as
apheresis and apocope can also be found in sociolects analyzed. The use of abbreviations in the
youth sociolect is driven by slang users’ intentions: firstly, to make their speech unique and unusual,
secondly, to make their language incomprehensible for outsiders and, thirdly, to speed up
information exchange, thus making virtual and face-to-face communication instant. The similar
trends detected in the development of the youth sociolect in different languages demonstrate that
it is a historical process rather than a modern event. It is not a feature unique only to one language
but an international phenomenon.
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