Belarusians are arguing how to correctly spell 'kryndzh' or 'krynzh'. Is there a correct answer?

The discussion began with a categorical post from one user who stated that the correct spelling is «kryndzh» («крынДЖ»), «because of dzh/dz.» Some agreed, while others pointed out that other words also changed their pronunciation when transitioning into the Belarusian language.

The «Euroradio» account mocked this statement, speaking against the «dzh» variant: «It's a phonetic borrowing, so [correctly] krynzh. Kryndzh is what's cringe.»

In response, language activist Katsiaryna Varazhun countered that «the English word is precisely rendered as 'kryndzh' in Belarusian,» referencing phonetic transcription in dictionaries.

View on Threads

The media reacted with the phrase: «Armchair philologists can write however they want:)». This remark offended Katsiaryna, who published a screenshot of the correspondence, escalating the dispute to a new level and attracting even more people to the discussion.

Commentators delved into the Cambridge Dictionary and confirmed that the transcription indeed includes the sound [dʒ], which is similar to the Belarusian «dzh.»

What do Belarusian dictionaries say?

Павялічыць

Cover of the Dictionary of New Loanwords in the Belarusian Language

Despite the word being very new (in the scale of language existence) and examples of its use in Belarusian being difficult to find before 2020, it has already been recorded by scholars. The word has already made it into the «Dictionary of New Loanwords in the Belarusian Language.» This comprehensive publication, compiled by linguists Viktoryia Ulasevich and Natallia Dauhulevich, was released in 2023. It records vocabulary that appeared in our language in the first quarter of the 21st century: from «account» and «donat» to «fake» and «mining.»

Павялічыць

«Krynzh» and «krynzhovy» in the Dictionary of New Loanwords in the Belarusian Language

The authors of the dictionary unambiguously define the spelling of the controversial word:

KRYNZH, -u, m. (Eng. cringe), slang. A feeling of shame, awkwardness for someone's actions; something that evokes such feelings.

KRYNZHOVY, adj. Causing feelings of shame and awkwardness for someone's actions.

However, for not all participants in the discussion is this dictionary an authority. For example, the popular account «Bielaruskaja ad A da Ja» (Belarusian from A to Z), which advocates for the purity of the language from Russian influences and Anglicisms, offered categorical criticism of the publication. In its opinion, the dictionary of new words is simply «a collection of garbage for narrow specialists» that records everything, even «complete nonsense.»

View on Threads

He insists that when a word is borrowed from English, Russian mediation should be avoided.

«They write 'krynzh' because there is no 'dzh' sound in Russian, but we have it, so it should be borrowed as 'kryndzh' because our phonetic means allow it,» his argument states.

These assertions about the «specificity» of the dictionary are refuted by the annotation of the publication itself, which states that it is addressed to a wide range of readers: teachers, students, journalists, and everyone interested in the language. This means that we are not dealing with a specific scientific document, but a practical tool for a broad user base.

Dictionaries of new words (neologisms) are a type of broader and more comprehensive explanatory dictionaries. They serve the function of promptly reacting to changes in language. While large multi-volume explanatory dictionaries are reissued once every few decades, such publications allow for recording what is happening in live speech here and now.

For some, such a dictionary is a legitimization of slang («phew, so it can be written officially»), for others, it's a spelling guide, and for yet others, a source of knowledge about the origin of words. Ignoring its existence, relying solely on one's own linguistic intuition, means denying objective reality.

So, only «krynzh»?

One must understand the nature of dictionaries and how they are created. The claim that scholars «pull everything in» sounds strange, because the fixation of usage (usus) — the actual use of words by native speakers — is the very foundation of linguistics.

A teacher in school corrects mistakes so that students learn approved rules, while a linguist observes how the language lives and changes, how old norms die out and new ones are born, adapting rules and dictionaries to these changes.

A linguist records the dialectisms of grandmothers in a village and the slang of teenagers on TikTok with equal interest. However, a dictionary of new loanwords, unlike a dialectal one, also performs a normative function.

Literary language is a system. The task of a normative dictionary compiler is not just to record what is heard, but to select what does not destroy this system, or to bring it to a form that does not contradict this system.

A good example is a gym. The word «kachalka» is an obvious Russicism, «silounia» is a Polonism, and «gym» is an Anglicism. At the same time, the word «matsounia» looks like a natural Belarusian formation that does not stand out from the array of familiar words. Therefore, it has the greatest chance of entering future dictionaries, leaving its competitors outside the literary norm.

The same applies to spelling. No matter how users on social networks write «krynzh» (with a soft sign) or «krindzh» (with 'i'), these variants will never make it into normative dictionaries, as they grossly violate the basic rules of Belarusian orthography.

In the case of «krynzh» and «kryndzh,» the situation is more complex: both variants formally do not violate the rules of our language, and no universal «rules for proper borrowing» simply exist.

The widespread notion that we consciously «take» words from another language, choosing the best option, is an illusion. Words rather «come» on their own, like a virus.

Their paths of penetration can be very diverse: a scientist couldn't find an exact translation of a term, a teenager played an untranslated game and learned some words, a bilingual person used a word from another language with the necessary meaning in their speech.

It is often impossible to find the «patient zero» who first used a new word. There can be several attempts at linguistic penetration, scattered over time, but not all of them may be successful.

If the «viral load» is insufficient, and the language's internal «immune system» — its rules and the level of purism in society — remains strong, then a new word may not penetrate, or it may undergo an unusual «mutation,» adapting to new conditions.

A new word does not necessarily fill an empty niche; it can also displace the native vocabulary of the language it enters if speakers perceive it as more convenient, beautiful, or modern.

View on Threads

The fact that an Anglicism entered the Belarusian language through Russian mediation is an absolutely typical and not unique situation. Even if Belarusians suddenly stopped having such widespread proficiency in Russian as today, its influence would still remain palpable due to the immense scale of the Russian-language information space, the quantity of content, and the greater number of connections in all spheres with the English-speaking world.

Many words entered the Old Belarusian language through Polish, even though geographically, borders with other countries might have been closer. For example, in the case of Germanisms: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had a direct border with Prussia, and Vilnius was closer to Königsberg than to Warsaw — but this was not enough to do without Polish mediation.

Thinking about the purity of language from borrowings only began in the era of national states, and the idea that borrowings should also be «correct,» from the original language — seems to be an invention of recent decades in the post-Soviet space. These processes have both their positive and negative sides.

It is possible that «krynzh» would never have reached the Belarusian language if it hadn't first entered Russian. And it's strange to pretend that this mediation didn't exist or could have been avoided, when in fact it wasn't.

The demand to avoid intermediaries in borrowings is absurd, as it requires taming the wild element of live human communication and linguistic exchange.

No, our task and that of linguists is not so much to preserve the sound or form of a foreign word, but to adapt it so that it becomes our own, does not contradict the Belarusian language, even if this moves it further away from the original.

For example, the words threads and shorts in English are already in plural form. But we calmly say «tredsy» and «shortsy,» adding yet another plural ending. From a logical point of view, this is «butter buttered» (redundant), but it's convenient for us, it fits well into our grammar, and therefore such forms do not raise questions for us.

Павялічыць

Dictionary entry for cringe from Valentina Pashkevich's «English-Belarusian Dictionary» (2006). Screenshot from Verbum website

If we refer to Valentina Pashkevich's classic «English-Belarusian Dictionary» (2006), the word cringe is given with the transcription [krɪŋdʒ]. Indeed, this is phonetically closer to «kryndzh.»

If one were to simply transliterate the letters, it would result in «kringye» (крінге) — and such a variant can also be found online as a fresh, intentionally mistaken replacement for the overused «krynzh/kryndzh,» which no longer sounds as comical as before.

But strict adherence to the original pronunciation doesn't always work. A classic example is the word computer. In the original, it sounds approximately like [kəmˈpju:tə], without any «r» at the end. However, it came into Belarusian as «kamp'yutar» (камп'ютар), relying on spelling rather than pronunciation. And whether there was Russian mediation here or not is irrelevant.

Borrowing terms is similar to the practical transcription of proper nouns, as it also seeks a compromise between recognizable sound and graphic correspondence. But this cannot be said for the colloquial cringe, which denotes a feeling.

How do Belarusians actually write it?

We will never know for sure which form was first in the Belarusian language, but an analysis of social networks allows for interesting observations.

Павялічыць

Russian-speaking teenagers with anime avatars were the first to use the word «krynzh» in 2017. Tweet screenshot

On Twitter (now X), the most informal of all platforms, the forms «kryndzh» and «krynzh» were first used not by Belarusian-speaking accounts at all. They appeared as early as the late 2010s in tweets by Russian-speaking teenagers with anime avatars.

The intentional misspelling of the word, writing «krynzh» instead of «krinzh» (using 'y' instead of 'i'), is a conscious intellectual game with the word, which medieval monks also enjoyed in Latin.

Павялічыць

The first example of the word «krynzh» used in a Belarusian-language tweet that can be found today dates back to early February 2020. Tweet screenshot

As for the Belarusian-language segment, the first recorded use of the word «krynzh» dates back to February 2020 (in the phrase «cringe got into my eye»). The «kryndzh» variant appeared later — in August of the same year.

Today, there is real competition between these two forms, in which the simpler variant is currently confidently winning. Statistics for early 2026 are indicative: the form «krynzh» was used by users 15 times, while «kryndzh» was used only 7 times. This means that in live speech, the variant without «d» appears twice as often.

Павялічыць

The first example of the word «kryndzh» used in a Belarusian-language tweet that can be found today dates back to early August 2020. Tweet screenshot

This partially explains why the dictionary authors recorded this particular variant: perhaps they focused on its actual frequency of use. On the other hand, ignoring the rather popular variant «kryndzh» also raises questions for the compilers, as it has its own logical and phonetic basis.

The main takeaway from this story is that first comes usage (live usage), and only then linguistics. Rules and dictionaries can influence how we speak, they can correct norms, but they are not capable of changing the direction of the mighty river that any living language represents.

You can use any form that does not contradict the nature of the Belarusian language — both «kryndzh» and «krynzh,» and even the more ironic «kringye.» And there's no need to correct others if they write differently; give time for this linguistic issue to resolve naturally. You can even come up with your own, entirely Belarusian equivalent — if your word appeals to others, it will catch on and, perhaps, even displace the borrowing.

The Belarusian language is flexible and alive; it will not suffer harm from any of these variants. And what you definitely shouldn't think about is the English language. It absolutely doesn't care how you pronounce or re-purpose its borrowed words.

• 5
• 2
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 0
• 0