Why Russians say ‘PariZH’ instead of ‘Paris’
The French themselves pronounce the name of their main city as “Pari”, muting the ‘s’ at the end. In English, it’s pronounced with the ‘s’ – “Paris”. So, how did the Russians come to call it ‘Parizh’?
French was spoken by the entire upper class in the Russian Empire. Did they not know how to pronounce and spell the capital of France?
Well, as Gramota.ru explains, the name ‘Paris' came into the Russian language not directly from French, but… from Polish! And it happened even before the spread of the French language in Russia. It turns out that Russians heard about ‘Paris’ for the first time from the Poles. And they spell the city ‘Paryż’, with the ending being pronounced as ‘zh’!