We thank Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak and the Moomintroll school
for providing the transcript of the lecture.
I decided that today I should briefly tell you about what, in my opinion, is missing in school curricula - about the history of the Russian language.
The full course on the history of the Russian language is taught at universities, sometimes for a year, sometimes for two years, so you yourself understand what it is in full. Trying, however, to tell you something significant about all this in one lesson is a somewhat daring task. But I still think that this is not pointless, although, of course, it will be necessary to mention different aspects of the matter from such a vast subject very superficially. I hope that in some way this will expand your understanding of how the language that we all speak was formed. I will have to repeat some of what I already told in this audience on a slightly different occasion, since these are related things, but you’ll have to bear with it. In the same way, among other things, I will have to tell some generally known things. A significant part of those present should already know them, but again, be restrained, since sometimes we will need them for integrity. So, the conversation will focus on the main topics that arise when studying the history of the Russian language.
The first small preliminary digression is to once again (because I have already talked to you about this) responsibly declare the numerous inventions about the endless antiquity of the Russian language to be nonsense. You can find similar statements in various works that the Russian language existed three thousand years ago, five thousand years ago, seven thousand years ago, seventy thousand years ago. It was wonderfully said about those who are fond of this kind of fiction that these are theories of how man descended from the Russian.
In fact, the history of any language with a certain name: French, Russian, Latin, Chinese is the history of the period of time when this name exists. Moreover, we cannot draw any clear boundary that separates the language from the previous stage of its existence. The change of generations with small changes from one generation to another occurs continuously throughout the history of mankind in every language, and, of course, our parents and our grandfathers speak from our point of view the same language that we do. We get distracted from the little things and generally believe that two hundred years ago or four hundred years ago they spoke the same language. And then some doubts begin.
Can you say that our ancestors who lived a thousand years ago spoke the same language as us? Or is it not the same anymore? Let us note that, no matter how you solve this question, these people also had their own ancestors who lived a thousand, two, three thousand years earlier. And each time, from generation to generation, the change in language was insignificant. From what point can we say that this is already the Russian language, and not its distant ancestor, which - and this is very significant - is the ancestor of not only our Russian language, but also a number of related languages?
We all know that the Russian language is closely related to Ukrainian and Belarusian. The common ancestor of these three languages did not exist - by historical standards - very long ago: only about a thousand years ago. If you take not a thousand, but three thousand years, five thousand years, and so on into ancient times, it turns out that the people to whom we go back purely biologically are the ancestors of not only today’s Russians, but also of a number of other peoples. Thus, it is clear that the history of the Russian language itself cannot be extended indefinitely into the depths of time. Somewhere we must establish some point of conditional beginning.
In reality, such a point is almost always the moment when the current name of the language is fixed for the first time. That is, temporary s The boundaries here turn out to be connected not with the essence of the language itself as a means of communication, but with the fact that the people who speak it call themselves by some term. And in this sense, different languages have very different depths of history. For example, the Armenian language is called by the same name hi, as now, for several thousand years. Some other languages have a relatively recent history in this sense. For the Russian language, this is a period of approximately several thousand years, since the first mentions of the word Rus date back to the end of the first millennium AD.
I won’t go into the complicated history of where the word itself came from. There are several theories about this. The most common and most probable of them is the Scandinavian theory, which consists in the fact that the word itself Rus its origin is not Slavic, but Old Scandinavian. There are, I repeat, competing hypotheses, but in this case we are not talking about that; the important thing is that this name itself begins to be mentioned in the 9th–10th centuries. and initially it clearly applies not to our ethnic ancestors, but to the Scandinavians. In any case, in the Greek tradition the word grew up denotes the Normans, and it begins to denote our Slavic ancestors only from about the 10th–11th centuries, switching to them from the name of those Varangian squads that came to Rus' and from which the princes came Ancient Rus'.
Starting around the 11th century. this name applies to the Slavic-speaking population of the territory around Kyiv, Chernigov and Pereslavl South. During a certain period in the history of the Eastern Slavs, the term Rus denoted a relatively small space, roughly corresponding to present-day northeastern Ukraine. Yes, Novgorodians for a long time didn’t consider themselves Russians at all, didn’t think that the word Rus belongs to their territory. In Novgorod birch bark letters, as well as in chronicles for some time, there are stories that such and such a bishop in such and such a year went to Rus' from Novgorod, that is, he went south, to Kyiv or Chernigov.
This is easy to follow from the chronicles. This usage is normal for the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. and only in the XIV century. For the first time we see that the Novgorodians, fighting some of their external enemies, call themselves Russians in the chronicle. Then this name expands, and from about the 14th century. it already corresponds to the entire East Slavic territory. And although at this time the beginnings of three different future languages already exist in this territory, they are all called Russian the same way.
In a remarkable way, later the narrowing of this term occurs again: now we call Russian only part of the East Slavic population, namely that which can otherwise be called Great Russian. And two other languages in this territory: Belarusian and Ukrainian - have already formed as independent languages, and the word Russian is no longer generally applied to them in a broad sense. (True, about two hundred years ago it was normal to use the word that all of this is the Russian population, which has a Great Russian part, a Little Russian [now Ukrainian] part and a Belarusian part.) This is how the term “Russian” first expanded and then narrowed "
Most of you have an idea about the family tree of the Russian language to one degree or another, but still I will briefly repeat this information. Now it's family tree in a simplified form must be derived from a certain reconstructed ancient language, called Nostratic, to which the languages of a very significant part of the inhabitants of the globe go back. It has existed for a very long time; estimates vary, but apparently about twenty-five thousand years ago.
One of its branches is the Indo-European branch, which includes most of the languages of Europe and India, hence the name itself Indo-European languages. In Europe they are the absolute majority, in India - a significant part, but also, in general, the majority. In the east these are the Indian and Iranian groups; in Europe - Latin with the Romance languages that arose from it: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian; and the Greek branch, which in ancient times was represented by the ancient Greek language, and now by modern Greek. Next is the Germanic branch: these are German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, English; and the Balto-Slavic branch, combining the Baltic languages and Slavic. Baltic is Latvian, Lithuanian and the now extinct Old Prussian. Slavic, well known to you, is traditionally divided into three groups: South Slavic, West Slavic and East Slavic languages.
Now there are some adjustments to this traditional division of Slavic languages, but this is exactly the traditional scheme. South Slavic languages are Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovenian, Macedonian; Western - Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian. And the East Slavic languages, originally united according to the traditional scheme, are Russian (otherwise Great Russian), Ukrainian and Belarusian.
After this general introduction, we will now touch on some of the more technical aspects of the history of the language. First of all, it should be understood that language is an extraordinarily complex mechanism that includes a number of aspects, in each of which there may be some specificity and some dynamics and instability. This is primarily a variety of styles of the same language. Within any language there is what can be called high style or good literary language, and there is the opposite pole - vernacular, vulgar speech. Between them there are various kinds of intermediate layers, such as colloquial, everyday language. All this is fully observed in the Russian language, including at the present moment, as at any point in history.
This is one side of the matter. The other side of the matter is that any language is heterogeneous in the dialect sense; in any language there is a wide variety of local dialects, and sometimes even dialects that differ quite strongly from each other. From this point of view, languages can be different, that is, more or less monolithic. There are languages in which the differences are so great that mutual understanding is not at all easy. An example is modern Italy, where the dialect of the extreme south and the dialect of the north, say Venice, differ so significantly that understanding between them, although possible, may well be difficult. What they have in common is the literary form of the language. The situation is the same in many other languages of the world. It is especially strong in the Chinese language, where the northern and southern dialects in their oral embodiment do not actually provide the possibility of direct mutual understanding.
In some other languages the situation is more favorable. Thus, in the Russian language, the differences between dialects are small; a native speaker of a literary language does not have any particular problems in understanding even when communicating with the most distant dialects. Of course, we will not understand some words, in some cases there may be individual misunderstandings, but in general this distance is still relatively small.
But, I repeat, differences in dialects and dialects exist in any language. Thus, somewhat different linguistic mechanisms coexist, interacting with each other and generating various complex effects in how the central literary form of the language takes shape. Literary language, as a rule, to some extent absorbs elements of different dialects. It rarely happens that the literary language coincides exactly with the dialect of, say, the capital of a state, as it sometimes seems at first glance. In the same way, for the Russian language the situation is such that although our literary language is very close to the dialects of the Moscow region, it still does not completely coincide with them. It absorbed a number of elements more distant to the north, south, east and west.
Further. The complexity of the functioning mechanisms of any language is determined by the fact that no language exists in complete isolation from its neighbors. Even in such extreme cases as, say, Iceland - an island country where, it would seem, there are no contacts with neighbors - some connections still exist. Someone travels from Iceland to the outside world, someone comes to Iceland and brings with them some elements of foreign speech. So even the Icelandic language, although it is more protected from foreign influences than any other, still accepted these influences to some extent.
As for languages that closely communicate with each other in neighboring territories, then mutual influence and mutual penetration are very active. It is especially active where there is a two-part, three-part or multi-part population in the same territory. But even if state and ethnic boundaries are relatively clearly defined, contacts are still quite intense. This is expressed, first of all, in the penetration of a certain number of foreign words into any language. A deeper influence lies in the penetration of certain elements of the grammatical structure of neighboring languages.
In particular, the Russian language, not separated from its immediate neighbors by any seas, has always been in intensive contact with them both in the direction of the west and in the direction of the east, partly in the direction of the south and even to some extent in the direction of the north, although the population there is no longer so dense . So in the modern Russian language there are traces of influences from almost all four corners of the world.
In general, the degree of foreign influence at different moments in the life of a linguistic community or a given state can be very different. It is clear that these influences become especially intense during times, for example, of foreign occupation or during the massive introduction of a new population into some part of the old territory, etc. And in quiet periods of weak communication they will be less intense. In addition, it often happens that more or less foreign influence can be strongly promoted or, on the contrary, opposed by purely internal events in the history of a given community. It is quite obvious that in the last twenty years or so the Russian language has been in a state of unusually active absorption of foreign elements, primarily English, with an intensity many times greater than what it was just half a century ago. This is happening in connection with major social changes, the opening of international contacts on a scale that was unthinkable just two or three decades ago. There is an introduction of new technology, new elements of foreign civilization, etc. We all feel this ourselves.
Such periods have happened in the past. There was, say, in the history of the Russian language a period of intense penetration of elements French, in an earlier era - intensive penetration of German elements, and even earlier - intensive penetration of Polish elements.
I will give some illustrations of how variously the modern Russian language was fed with words from other neighboring languages. Of course, influences concern not only words, but it is more difficult to talk about this, and words are just a very visual thing.
This story can begin from any point - from the Russian language itself or, delving further into the past, from the Proto-Slavic language. One can, generally speaking, even consider borrowings from Proto-Indo-European time, but this would be too far for us. If we start with Proto-Slavic, then it is important to point out that it contains a significant layer of Germanic borrowings, which were later preserved not only in the Russian language, but also in all Slavic languages. They took root and became part of the Slavic vocabulary itself.
Now about some of them it is even difficult for us to believe that these are not original Russian words; but historical linguistics inexorably shows that many words have precisely this origin. For example, the word prince, surprisingly, is exactly the same word as the German König or English king. His ancient form kuningaz, which was borrowed, eventually gave the Russian word prince. Or let's say the word bread- this is the same word as English loaf"bun". This borrowing, most likely, should be attributed to the period of widespread expansion of the Goths, when these active Germanic tribes owned vast territories of almost all of modern Ukraine, a significant part of the Balkans, Italy, Spain, parts of France, etc. So there is nothing The surprising thing is that in all the languages of the listed countries some traces of ancient Gothic rule remained.
Crimea is worth special mention, since in Crimea the Goths lived until the 16th century. Dutch diplomat of the 16th century. Busbeck was surprised to discover that he understood some words in the speech of a Crimean resident speaking an unknown language. It turned out to be the Crimean Gothic language, the latest remnant of the Gothic language, extinct in all other places.
Germanic borrowings in Slavic are also, for example, the word regiment or verb buy; in modern German the corresponding Old Germanic words are given Volk"people' and kaufen"buy'.
Here you need to point out that if a word is borrowed from German, then the German word itself O m Germanic was not necessarily original. Often it was itself borrowed from somewhere else. So, the Germanic word that gave the German kaufen, is a borrowing from Latin. Whether the corresponding word is original in Latin is still a debatable question. After all, it often turns out that Latin words are borrowed from Greek, and Greek words from Egyptian.
Let me take a word from another row: emerald. Its original origins are not entirely reliably established. Most likely, the original source was some kind of Semitic language, from where the word was borrowed into Sanskrit. From Sanskrit, during the campaigns of Alexander the Great, it was borrowed into Greek, from Greek - into Arabic, from Arabic - into Persian, from Persian - into Turkish, and from its Turkish form comes the Russian word emerald. So here linguistics can establish six or seven stages of the “journey” of this word, which resulted in our Russian word emerald.
Some of the foreign borrowing does not come as any surprise to us. For example, we call a certain fruit kiwi. It is clear that the word is not Russian. Until relatively recently, no one suspected that such a thing existed. Some 20–30 years ago this word did not exist, because the subject did not exist. That is, when the object itself comes from some distant land, it is quite obvious that it comes along with its name. And then it’s completely natural that we call it what we called it there. There are a huge number of such examples in the Russian language, many hundreds. Perhaps even thousands.
But, of course, examples like bread, or regiment, or prince, where it seems that everything is our own. Let's say words letter is also an ancient Germanic borrowing. This is the same word as the name of the tree beech. Initially there were wooden beech tablets on which something was carved, and, accordingly, the sign itself carved on them bore the same name. And in the Russian language there are both words: and beech, And letter- both are borrowed from Germanic.
Another example: the word donkey; but we can also say about it that this animal is still not found at every step in Russian regions, that is, it can be classified as an exotic animal. But in some other cases this will not work. So, Germanic borrowings are also the words glass, boiler, artist, hut and many others.
I will not list borrowings from Greek; they existed throughout the entire existence of the Russian language. The most ancient of them concern quite simple words, for example ship or sail. Sail- this is the same word as the Greek faros, - in the Slavic version. There are a large number of Greek borrowings among words of high style. Some of them are borrowed directly (say, Eucharist from the church lexicon), partly by tracing, that is, transmitting the original word by Slavic means ( blessing, piety etc. - all these are calques, exact equivalents of Greek compound words with their component parts).
Over the course of a long history, starting from the Proto-Slavic time and then almost to the present day, there has been a strong influence of eastern languages on Russian. In this sense, the Eurasian position of the Russian language, which has, on the one hand, contacts in the direction of the West, on the other hand, in the direction of the East, is reflected in the language very clearly. Sometimes eastern borrowings are crudely called Tatar, but this is very arbitrary. In a broad sense, they are Turkic, since there are many Turkic languages that came into contact with Russian. This is Turkish, and Tatar, and Chuvash, and Bashkir, and Chagatai - the ancient literary language of Central Asia, and the Kipchak language of the Polovtsians, with whom our ancestors had contact since ancient times, and the language of the Pechenegs. So it is often not possible to establish from which specific Turkic language a particular word was borrowed, since these languages are closely related to each other. The important thing is that this fund of such words in the Russian language is very large.
It is clear that many of these words denote typical Eastern concepts. But there are also many words of a more general meaning; so, of Turkic origin, for example, words such as shoe, boar, cap,brick, product, lumber room, Cossack, cauldron, mound.
Often a word is borrowed with a different meaning than it has in the source language. For example, the word a mess, which now means disorder, is not actually what it means in Turkish: there it is a designation for a certain type of fried meat.
Very often, Turkish or Tatar turn out to be, like Germanic, transmitters for other eastern languages, in particular, for such a huge source of vocabulary for the entire east as Arabic; Another such primary source is Persian, less often Chinese.
This is, for example, the word watermelon, which came to us from Persian through Turkic media.
Note that a linguist can recognize such words as not actually Slavic, even without knowing their origin. Yes, word watermelon has a structure that is abnormal for Slavic languages: the root of the word consists of two syllables, with an unusual set of vowels.
Using this word as an example, one can even show how linguists can generally establish that a word came, say, from Turkish into Russian, and not from Russian into Turkish.
This is a typical situation that is useful to understand. The principle here is always the same: if a word is original, then it breaks up into meaningful parts within a given language and has related words in it. For example, in modern French there is a word snacks This is, of course, not a very active word in the French language, but, nevertheless, it exists. And one could say here: “Perhaps our word snacks borrowed from French? Why not, if in French and Russian they say the same: snacks?»
The answer is very simple: snacks- a Russian word, not a French one, because in Russian it is perfectly divided into significant parts: prefix behind, root bite, suffix To, ending And. Each of them is meaningful and appropriate. For the root bite you can find other words for the prefix behind there are many other examples, there are a huge number of words with the suffix To. And in French this word falls outside all the norms of the French language. French words are not constructed this way, there is nothing similar.
Here is the main criterion: within one language a word is natural, but in other languages it shows its foreignness with a number of signs and there are no words related to it.
It's the same with the word watermelon. In Persian it is watermelon, Where har it's a 'donkey', ah booza- “cucumber”. Together we get “donkey cucumber”, and, by the way, it means not a watermelon, but a melon.
Among the words of eastern origin there are also many that may surprise us. It will not surprise us that the word emerald foreign: emerald is really not very common in Russian everyday life. Here's the word fog At first glance he gives the impression of being Russian. However, it was born in the Persian language, and there its sound composition has its basis. From Persian it passed into Turkish, and from Turkish into Russian. For example, they have a similar origin bazaar, barn, attic.
Sometimes words are deceptive. Linguistically, the word is not without interest in this sense flaw. It denotes a certain defect, shortcoming and sounds very Russian: something was removed from some object or from a certain norm and thereby it turned out to be an object with a flaw. It turns out, however, that this is not a Russian word at all, but a borrowing from Persian - either direct or through Turkish.
In Persian this is a word with a slightly different order of phonemes: gape; it means “flaw, vice” and is completely deducible from the Iranian vocabulary. And flaw- this is the form that gape accepted in the Russian language, that is, the word has undergone some change, giving it meaning. Indeed, gape says nothing to the Russian ear, but flaw this is almost clear, especially since the meaning is already ready - this is a “flaw.” This is what is called folk etymology: people slightly correct a foreign word towards greater clarity.
It's great that the word gape in a somewhat less explicit form is present in the Russian language in another very well-known word - monkey. Monkey- it's Arabic-Persian Abuzian. Word gape has a second meaning - “sin, vicious action.” A abu is the “father.” So the monkey is the “father of sin,” for obvious reasons.
Western languages also make their contributions to the Russian vocabulary.
First in order is the language of the Western world closest to us - Polish. This is a related language, but it has absorbed words from Western languages much more actively than Russian, firstly, due to its proximity to the Germanic and Romance world, and secondly, due to Catholicism. So the Polish vocabulary is saturated with Western elements incomparably more than the Russian one. But many of them switched to Russian. This happened in the 16th–17th centuries, during the era of active Polish influence. A mass of new words then entered the Russian language; in some cases the Polish form is directly visible, in others it is established only by linguistic analysis. In most cases, however, this is not actually Polish words, and words that in turn came from German, and into German - usually from Latin. Or they came to Polish from French, but ended up in the Russian language already in the Polish form.
This series includes, for example, the words knight, mail, school, sword- they all have a Polish form in Russian. Let's say in a word school there would be no initial shk, would chipped, if it were borrowed directly from Western languages. This is the effect of passing through German, which gives w in Polish, and from Polish it is w switches to Russian.
There are a number of Swedish loanwords, for example herring, herring. One of the remarkable Swedish borrowings is the word Finns. Because, as you may know, Finns not only do not call themselves Finns, but, strictly speaking, a normal, not very trained Finn cannot even pronounce this word, because there is no phoneme in the Finnish language f. Finns call themselves suomi; A Finns- this is the name that the Swedes called them. In Swedish the phoneme f there is, and it occurs often. In Swedish this is a meaningful word, with the meaning “hunters”, “seekers” - from the Swedish verb finna"to find' (= English) find). This word has entered not only the Russian language, but all languages of the world, except Finnish. So the country is called by the Swedish name - this is such a particularly sophisticated case of foreign borrowing.
The next cultural and lexical onslaught on the Russian language was made by the German language, mainly in the 18th, partly in the 19th century. True, in Peter’s time - along with the Dutch. In particular, most maritime terms were borrowed from the Dutch language - in accordance with the hobbies of Peter I and with his direct connections with Holland, where, as is known, he even worked as a carpenter. Words cruiser, skipper, flag- Dutch. There are several dozen such words.
There are even more German words, since German influence was wider and longer lasting. And again, some of them are easily identified as German, for example hairdresser. But there are also words of German origin that you would never recognize without special analysis. About the word plane it absolutely does not occur to me that this is not a Russian word: it seems that it is so named because it has something cut down or chop down. In fact, they do something else with it, however, we perceive it as a completely good name. It's actually a German word. Rauhbank- “cleaning board”.
An even trickier word baking tray, on which they fry. A completely Russian-looking word. But it's German Bratpfanne- “frying pan.” Simplifying and Russifying, Bratpfanne gave not just Russian, but Russian folk word baking tray. There is also an option baking sheet- also not accidental and even older.
Painter, dance, patch, soldier, pharmacy and many others - all these words came directly from German language, but now they have taken root very well.
Next, XIX century. gave a vast reservoir French borrowings. Many of them have taken root quite well, say bottle, magazine, nightmare, courier, scam.
Continuing this list, one could also cite Portuguese, Spanish, old English loanwords. And there’s nothing to say about the new English ones - you yourself, perhaps, can name them more than linguists.
Thus, you see how strongly the vocabulary of a language is influenced by neighboring language arrays. In particular, for the Russian language this story includes communication with at least two dozen languages. And if we count isolated cases, then there are dozens more with long-distance connections.
Let's now move on to the next topic: let's talk about stylistic differences within the Russian language at different moments in its history. It turns out that in this regard, too, the Russian language has been in a difficult situation since ancient times.
For all languages with a certain cultural tradition, it is normal that there is a language of high style, perceived as more elevated, more refined, literary. And this situation does not always turn out the same. Thus, there are languages where, as a high style, one of the variants, dialects, dialects that exist within the same language is used, which for some reason has received greater prestige. In Italy, for a long time, the dialect of Florence was considered the most prestigious and, accordingly, the Tuscan dialect, since the time of Dante, has been accepted as the most refined, highly literary form of speech on the Apennine Peninsula.
And in some languages, a situation arises when not one’s own language, but some foreign language is used as a high-style language. Sometimes it may not even be related to your own, then this is pure bilingualism. But more often there are examples of this kind using another language, closely related to the one spoken by the people. In the Romance world, throughout the Middle Ages, Latin was used as a high language, despite the fact that the own languages of these Romance peoples come from Latin and Latin is to some extent close to them. Not enough to understand, but, in any case, they have a lot of words in common.
Sanskrit played a similar role in India. It was used along with those languages that had already moved very far from the Sanskrit state and were used in everyday communication. In essence, something similar exists in the current Arab world, where there is the classical Arabic language of the Koran, which is already very different from the living languages of Morocco, Egypt, and Iraq. The high language, which is considered the only one suitable for a certain type of texts - religious, highly solemn - remains classical Arabic for the Arab world. And for everyday communication there is the language of the street.
A similar situation occurred in the history of the Russian language. I gave foreign examples to show that this is not a unique case, although, of course, the situation is not the same in all languages. In the history of the Russian language from the time when we deal with the word Russian, there are and are used two Slavic languages: Russian proper and Church Slavonic.
Church Slavonic is, in essence, an ancient Bulgarian language, closely related, but still not identical to Russian. It was the language of the church and of any text from which stylistic sublimity is required. This left an imprint on the further development of the Russian language throughout its history and continues to influence to some extent to this day. The Russian language turned out to be, as it were, linguistically bifurcated into that which was natural, which arose in everyday, colloquial language, and that which corresponded to Russian forms and syntactic phrases in the Church Slavonic language.
You, of course, know the most striking difference: this is the so-called full agreement and partial agreement. Full consent is side, watchman, shore, head With -oro-, -ere-, -olo-, and disagreement - a country, guardian, breg, chapter. The Russian form has two vowels here, and the Church Slavonic one.
Now you and I don’t perceive the word at all a country like something alien to us. This is a normal part of our natural vocabulary. And it’s completely natural for us to say chapter of the book, and it doesn’t occur to you that this is something imposed. We don't want to talk book head, just like we won't try to name the country side.
Over the course of its history, the Russian language has absorbed a huge number of Church Slavonic words, which occasionally mean the same thing as in Russian, but almost never one hundred percent. Sometimes it's just not the same at all; So, head And chapter- this is absolutely different meanings, they could well be called words that have nothing in common with each other. In other cases, it is just a stylistic nuance, but it is clearly felt. Let's say enemy And enemy- this, of course, is more or less the same in meaning, but in the word enemy there is a connotation of nationality, folklore, poetry, which in the word enemy absent.
Modern Russian language used these Church Slavonic units as separate words or separate variants of a word and thereby already mastered them.
The same thing happened in the history of the Russian language and with syntactic constructions. And here it must be said that, since throughout most of the history of the Russian language it was Church Slavonic that was literary and high, our literary syntax is much more Church Slavonic than Russian.
This is where I really express my disappointment. Because now that authentic folk Russian syntax, which is best seen on birch bark letters, has been largely lost. In many respects, they admire precisely the fact that they have absolutely no Church Slavonic expressions - this is pure colloquial Russian. Unlike our literary language. At every step, the Russian literary language uses syntactic devices that are not found in the living language, but come from Church Slavonic.
These are, first of all, almost all participles: doing, did, having seen, seen etc. The only exception is the short forms of passive past participles. Made- this is a Russian form, drunk- this is a Russian form. And here is the full form: made- already Church Slavonic. And all the participles are on -uschy, -ying Church Slavonic, which is already evident from the fact that there are suffixes -ush-, -yush-. I didn’t say about this, but you probably yourself know about the relationship between Church Slavonic sch and Russian h. Night, power- Church Slavonic, night, be able- Russian. For -uschy, -current, -ying Russian correspondences would therefore be - teach, -yuchy, -yachy. They are in the Russian language, but in Russian they are no longer participles, but simply adjectives: ebullient, dense, standing, sedentary, recumbent. Their meaning is close to participles, but still not the same as them. And real participles, which can be used in syntax exactly like verb form(and which we actually learned to use as a convenient syntactic device, because they help us, for example, to save ourselves from unnecessary words which), represent Church Slavonicism.
Another phenomenon of this kind is less known. In everyday conversation, we often deviate from how we should write if we were submitting our literary essay to an editor. And you wouldn't get any approval if you started a sentence like this in your school essay: Do you know what I saw yesterday. Meanwhile, the initial A - This is a completely normal form of colloquial Russian speech: But I'll tell you what. And after that this and that happened. In live speech with A almost most sentences begin. And this is exactly what we see in the birch bark letters. Word A at the beginning of a phrase means something like this: “That’s what I’ll tell you now.” But this word was absent from the norms of the Church Slavonic language. The Church Slavonic norm not only did not use it, but also forbade its use. That is, it was prohibited, of course, not in the sense of a state edict, but in the sense of editorial pressure, which is still in effect. Editor, this is for you A will cross it out now.
Excuse me, this is now outdated, there are almost no editors now. But in the recent past, editors were a vital part of any publishing business. Nowadays a lot of books come out with monstrous typos and flaws of all kinds, because they were not edited at all; A new era has begun with inattention to the quality of the text. But even a relatively recent era actually required compliance with the Church Slavonic norm, although the editor, of course, did not know this. Russian literature also observes this norm, despite the fact that the same authors in everyday speech, addressing their own children or wife, spoke, of course, in normal Russian, almost every sentence starting from A.
Such details show that the two-part nature of the Russian language, which has two sources: Russian and Church Slavonic, is expressed not only in the choice of words and in their forms, but also in syntax. And Russian literary syntax is thus noticeably different from Russian colloquial syntax.
It is not for nothing that about 25 years ago a new direction in the study of the Russian language arose - the study of Russian colloquial speech. They began to write their own grammars for it, they began to describe it as if it were a separate independent language, with respect for every element of what is actually heard. The very possibility and the very need to approach this in this way is largely a consequence of this ancient situation that arose in the 10th century, more than a thousand years ago, when a related, but different language - Church Slavonic - came to Rus' as a literary and high language.
Let me move on to the next aspect.
This is that aspect of the history of the Russian language that relates to dialects and dialects, to dialect division and interaction. The traditional scheme itself general view I outlined it to you above. It is that around the 10th century. there was a single Old Russian language, also known as East Slavic, from which over time, through branching and the development of some differences, three modern East Slavic languages emerged: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. And in each of these three languages, according to the traditional scheme, there are even more subtle branches. In the Russian language there are, say, Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Novgorod, Kursk dialects, Siberian dialects, etc. In Ukraine, a whole series of dialects can also be distinguished; the same is true in Belarus. And within, for example, the block of Vologda dialects, small groups of some districts or even sometimes individual villages stand out. Here is a tree that branches from a powerful trunk to the smallest branches at the end.
This is a simple traditional scheme. But, as I have already warned you, some adjustments will have to be made to it. To a large extent, these adjustments arose after the discovery of birch bark letters.
Birch bark letters, which in their vast majority come from Novgorod, showed that in Novgorod and in the surrounding lands there was a dialect that was more different from the rest than was imagined before the discovery of birch bark letters. Even some grammatical forms in it were not the same as in the classical Old Russian language known to us from traditional literature. And, of course, there were some of my own words.
At the same time, an amazing, unexpected and unpredictable event from the point of view of the ideas that existed before the discovery of birch bark letters was the following: it turned out that these features of the Novgorod dialect, which distinguished it from other dialects of Ancient Rus', were most clearly expressed not at a later time, when it would seem they could have already gradually developed, and in the most ancient period. In the XI–XII centuries. these specific features are presented very consistently and clearly; and in the XIII, XIV, XV centuries. they weaken somewhat and partially give way to features more common for ancient Russian monuments.
More precisely, the statistics simply change. Thus, in the Old Novgorod dialect the nominative case of the masculine singular had the ending -e: livestock- this is a Novgorod form, in contrast to the traditional form, which was considered all-Russian, where the same word had a different ending: in ancient times -ъ, and now zero. The difference between common Old Russian cattle and Novgorod livestock has been discovered since ancient times. And the situation looks like this: in the charters of the 11th–12th centuries. the nominative singular masculine form has the ending in about 97% of cases -e. And the remaining 3% can easily be explained by some extraneous reasons, for example, the fact that the phrase is church. From this we can conclude that in the ancient period the end -e was practically the only grammatical arrangement for the nominative singular. And in the documents of the 15th century. the picture is already significantly different: approximately 50% livestock and 50% cattle.
We see, therefore, that the features of the Old Novgorod dialect partially lose their brightness with the passage of time. What does this mean and why was it such news and surprise to linguists?
This means that, along with the traditional scheme, which looks like a branching tree, we also have to recognize the opposite phenomenon in the history of languages. The phenomenon that something initially united is divided into several parts is called divergence, that is, splitting, divergence. If the opposite phenomenon occurs, that is, something initially different becomes more similar, then this convergence- convergence.
Little was known about convergence, and its very existence in the history of dialects of the Old Russian language was practically not discussed and did not attract attention. That is why the evidence of birch bark letters was so unexpected. If in ancient Novgorod birch bark documents of the 11th–12th centuries. type endings livestock make up 100%, and in the 15th century - only 50%, and in the remaining 50% there is a central (we can conditionally designate it as Moscow) ending cattle- this means that there is a convergence of dialects. Partial convergence, the Novgorod dialect has not yet completely lost its features, but expresses them inconsistently, unlike in antiquity, when it was consistent. We see a typical example of convergence, that is, the bringing together of what was originally different.
And this forces us to thoroughly reconsider the traditional scheme of how dialect relations in Ancient Rus' were structured. We have to admit that in the 10th–11th centuries, that is, in the first centuries of written history, on the territory of the Eastern Slavs the division was not at all the same as can be imagined on the basis of today’s division of languages: Great Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. It ran completely differently, separating the northwest from everything else.
The north-west was the territory of Novgorod and Pskov, and the rest, which can be called central, or central-eastern, or central-eastern-southern, simultaneously included the territory of the future Ukraine, a significant part of the territory of the future Great Russia and the territory of Belarus. Nothing to do with the modern division of this territory into three languages. And it was a really profound difference. There was the Old Novgorod dialect in the northwestern part and some more familiar classical form of the Old Russian language, which equally united Kyiv, Suzdal, Rostov, the future Moscow and the territory of Belarus. Relatively speaking, the zone livestock to the northwest and zone cattle in the rest of the territory.
Scott And cattle- this is one of the very significant differences. There was another very important difference, which I will not talk about now, because it would take a lot of time. But it is just as thorough, and the territorial division here was exactly the same.
It may seem that the northwestern part was small, while the central and southern parts were very large. But if we consider that at that time the Novgorodians had already colonized a huge zone of the north, then in fact the Novgorod territory turns out to be even larger than the central and southern ones. It includes the current Arkhangelsk region, Vyatka region, the northern Urals, and the entire Kola Peninsula.
What will happen if we look beyond the Eastern Slavs, look at the Western Slavic territory (Poles, Czechs) and the South Slavic territory (Serbs, Bulgarians)? And we will try to somehow continue the revealed dividing line in these zones. Then it will turn out that the northwestern territory is opposed not only to Kyiv and Moscow, but also to the rest of the Slavs. Throughout the rest of the Slavs the model is presented cattle, and only in Novgorod - livestock.
This reveals that the northwestern group Eastern Slavs represents a branch that should be considered separate already at the level of Proto-Slavism. That is, the Eastern Slavs arose from two initially different branches of the ancient Slavs: a branch similar to their western and southern relatives, and a branch different from their relatives, the ancient Novgorod one.
Similar to the South and West Slavic zones, these are primarily the Kiev and Rostov-Suzdal lands; and what is essential is that between them themselves for ancient period we do not see any significant differences. And the ancient Novgorod-Pskov zone turns out to be opposed to all other zones.
Thus, present-day Ukraine and Belarus are the heirs of the central-eastern-southern zone of the Eastern Slavs, which is more linguistically similar to the Western and Southern Slavs. And the Great Russian territory turned out to consist of two parts, approximately equal in importance: northwestern (Novgorod-Pskov) and central-eastern (Rostov, Suzdal, Vladimir, Moscow, Ryazan).
As we now know, these were, in dialect terms, the two main components of the future Russian language. At the same time, it is not easy to say which of these two parts took a greater part in the creation of a single literary language. If you count by signs, the score turns out to be approximately 50/50.
As already mentioned, the central and southern dialects of the Old Russian language differed from Novgorod in a number of important features, but did not differ significantly from each other. The new borders between the future Great Russia and the future Ukraine, together with Belarus, largely coincide with the political borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th–15th centuries, when the expansion of Lithuania led to the fact that the future Ukraine and Belarus came under Lithuanian rule. If you map the boundaries of the possessions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 15th century, it will be approximately the same border that now separates Russian Federation from Ukraine and Belarus. But XV century. - this is a late time in relation to our ancient division.
Let us consider more specifically a number of dialect phenomena and their correspondence in modern literary Russian.
Words with root structure like whole, with initial tse-(from previous tsѣ-), typical for the central-eastern region. In the northwest these roots had an initial ke-. There is a very important phonetic phenomenon behind this, which can be discussed at length; but here I am forced to limit myself to a simple statement of this fact. Another relevant fact is that in the northwest they spoke On the hand, while in the east it was on the street. Now we're talking whole, But On the hand. This is nothing more than a combination of whole, which comes from the east, with that On the hand, which comes from the northwest.
The nominative singular masculine form in the northwest was city(as well as livestock). And in the east she was city. The modern literary Russian form, as we see, comes from the east.
Genitive singular feminine: in the northwest - at my sister's, in the east - at my sister's
Prepositional case: in the northwest in the ground, on horseback, in the east - into the land, on horseback. Literary forms are northwestern.
Feminine plural (let's take the example of a pronoun): in the northwest - my cow, in the east - my cows. The literary form is Eastern.
Former dual number two villages- This is the northwestern form. Eastern form - two villages
help, eastern help. The literary form is northwestern.
Third person present tense of verb: in North-west lucky, in the east - lucky. The literary form is Eastern.
Imperative mood: northwestern take it, eastern - you're lucky. The literary form is northwestern.
Northwestern participle lucky, eastern - Veza. The literary form is northwestern.
You see that the ratio is really about 50 to 50. This is what our modern Russian language is morphologically. This is a clear result of the convergence of the two main dialects - like a deck of cards, where the two halves of the deck are inserted into each other.
Linguistics in some cases can give, if not a definitive, then a tentative answer, why the northwestern member of the pair won at some points, and the eastern one at others. Sometimes it can, sometimes it cannot. But this is not the most important thing.
What is significant, first of all, is the fact that the modern literary language obviously combines the features of the ancient northwestern (Novgorod-Pskov) dialect and the ancient central-eastern-southern (Rostov-Suzdal-Vladimir-Moscow-Ryazan). As I already said, before the discovery of birch bark letters, this fact was unknown. A much simpler scheme of a tree branching by pure divergence was imagined.
From this follows, by the way, a very significant consequence for some current not linguistic, but social or even political ideas. This is that the slogan, popular in today’s Ukraine, of the original ancient difference between the Ukrainian branch of the language and the Russian one is incorrect. These branches are of course different. Now these are, of course, independent languages, but the ancient division was not between Russian and Ukrainian. As already mentioned, the Rostov-Suzdal-Ryazan language zone did not differ significantly from the Kiev-Chernigov language zone in ancient times. The differences arose later; they date back to a relatively recent time, by linguistic standards, starting from the 14th–15th centuries. And, conversely, the ancient differences between the north-west and the rest of the territories have created a special situation in the modern Russian language, where elements of two originally different dialect systems are combined.
Questions please.
E. Shchegolkova ( Grade 10): You talked about the place of foreign languages. What is it like in English in India?
A. A. Zaliznyak: Yes, the current English language in India does occupy a certain special position, since it is not just a foreign language along with the local one. In India, as you know, there are a huge number of languages, it is believed that up to two hundred. Thus, in some cases, the only way for Indians to communicate is for both to know English. In this situation, the English language finds itself in a functionally very special role of not just an imposed foreign language, but also a means of communication. So this is somewhat similar to the situations that I described, but due to the multilingual nature of the country, the case is perhaps special.
– You said that until the 14th century. Novgorodians did not call their language Russian. Is there a word that the Novgorodians used to call their language and themselves?
A. A. Zaliznyak: They called themselves Novgorodians. It is well known that the question “Who are you?” the normal answer of a simple person - a peasant, a fisherman - who lives somewhere permanently will be: “We are Volgarians, we are from Vologda, we are from Pskov.” He will not say that he is Russian, Tatar or French, but will name a relatively narrow area. This is not a nation or a special language, it is essentially a territorial indication. For example, it was difficult to get Belarusians to call themselves Belarusians, because they are used to talking about themselves: Mogilev, Gomel etc. Only special propaganda brought to their consciousness that they should call themselves Belarusians. This concept was actually formed very late.
G. G. Ananyin ( a history teacher): Did I understand correctly that you associate the formation of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages exclusively with the political moment of Polish-Lithuanian influence?
A. A. Zaliznyak: Not exclusively. Exclusively - it would be too much. But this defined the boundaries of division. As always happens in different parts territory, there, of course, various phonetic and other changes naturally occurred. And they were not related to political reasons. But some separation from each other of the two communities, which began to develop separately, was largely political. And linguistic development itself was, of course, independent.
– Why did two languages emerge: Ukrainian and Belarusian?
But this is a very difficult question. It is being very hotly and sharply discussed now in Ukraine and Belarus. The differences between these languages are significant. At the same time, the Belarusian language as a whole is much more similar to Russian than to Ukrainian. The closeness between the Belarusian language and southern Great Russian dialects is especially great.
The situation is also complicated by the fact that Ukraine big country, and Belarus is not very big. And someone may be tempted to look at it as such a small appendage of the great Ukraine. But historically it was exactly the opposite. Historically, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania used a language that can correctly be called Old Belarusian. Although the Lithuanian princes were Lithuanians by origin and spoke Lithuanian in everyday life with their servants, in all other cases of life they spoke Old Belarusian. And all state activities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were carried out in the Old Belarusian language; sometimes it is also called Western Russian. So, culturally, the separation of Belarus precedes the separation of Ukraine. This creates extremely difficult problems, which I would not even like to formulate here, since whatever I say, it should cause a protest from the opposite side.
– When can we talk about separating the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages from Russian? At least a century.
A. A. Zaliznyak: Not from Russian. This is a division of what is called Western Russian or, otherwise, Old Belarusian, which had a Ukrainian dialect in the south. Purely linguistic selection occurred simply as a function of time. The conscious identification by some writers, consciously calling themselves Belarusians or Ukrainians, occurs quite late, around the 18th century.
– The modern Russian language emerged as a result of convergence. Are there any other examples of the same convergence?
A. A. Zaliznyak: Yes, I have. Now I’m not very sure that I will immediately give you this so that there is a balance of components. Because balance is a unique case. And if we do not limit ourselves only to those examples where there really is equilibrium participation, then, of course, this is literary English. The Old English zones varied quite widely in language, and the monstrosity of modern English orthography is largely a product of this. Let's say why what is written bury, read take it? But simply because these are different dialect forms. The dialect had its own pronunciation, but at the same time the old spelling remained, in which there should have been a different reading. There are quite a lot of such examples in English. Although, of course, in English it is not so bright.
- You can still give some explanation, small example, why did the northwestern or eastern form win?
A. A. Zaliznyak: You can give an example, but you can’t give a small one. Because I will have to step back so far that it will be another half lecture. You are giving me too difficult a task. I can only try to describe the outline of what would have to be explained here. I would then have to consider not just illustrative examples, but the entire system of declension in one dialect and the entire system of declension in another. In each there are approximately fifty phenomena. And I would show that if such and such a change occurred at a certain point, then this would create a more consistent system overall. But you yourself understand that if I now begin to analyze fifty of those phenomena and fifty others, then the audience will not approve of you a little.
A. B. Kokoreva ( geography teacher): I have a question about verbs seize And gape. Does linguistics allow such a thing that monosounding words can arise in different, completely unrelated languages?
A. A. Zaliznyak: It could be by accident, of course. Moreover, it is incredible that this does not happen anywhere. It's unlikely, but every unlikely event happens someday.
A. B. Kokoreva: The question then arises, what is the evidence that the word seize is Persian in origin?
A. A. Zaliznyak: The fact is that this word is recorded in monuments in the form flaw more recently, and in the 16th century. it is written gape.
– Is it possible to talk about a separate Pskov dialect? Are there any borrowings from there?
A. A. Zaliznyak: I constantly told you about either the Novgorod or the Novgorod-Pskov dialect. In fact, there is some linguistic difference between Novgorod and Pskov. And this remarkable difference is such - perhaps this is unexpected against the background of what I told you - that the real purity of the Novgorod dialect is observed in Pskov. The true one hundred percent northwestern dialect is represented precisely in Pskov, and in Novgorod it is already slightly weakened. Apparently, this can be explained by the fact that Novgorod is already on the way from Pskov to the east, to Moscow.
For example, if the Novgorod-Pskov dialect is somewhat roughly described as a set of 40 characteristic phenomena, then it turns out that all 40 are represented in Pskov, and 36 from this list are represented in Novgorod. Pskov in this sense is the core of the dialect.
Dialectologists know that Novgorod region is an interesting area for research, but still greatly spoiled by the many relocations that began with Ivan III and took place especially intensively under Ivan IV. Unlike the Pskov zone, which in the villages remarkably preserves antiquity - better than anywhere else.
So you very correctly named the Pskov dialect; it is truly one of the most linguistically valuable. It is not without reason that this is a wonderful dialect dictionary, one of the two best is the regional dictionary of the Pskov dialect. The dialect was chosen particularly for this reason, and the dictionary is very intelligently made. It is not finished yet, but has many dozens of issues.
Thus, it is a dialect that has its own personality and value. Some words may be borrowed from there. But it is difficult to say with certainty that some word did not exist in Novgorod. You can say that a word existed when you once found it in some village. But to say that in some area there was no word - do you understand how much it takes to assert this?
- But this is Persian gape- same root as ours gape?
A. A. Zaliznyak: No, there's not gape, there is already a ready-made word gape. It is not the same root as Russian, it is of a different origin. This is a noun and gape as a verb it is actually a Russian word.
- And the word burden associated with monkey?
A. A. Zaliznyak: No, burden this is a Russian word. Normal about- And -uza, how in prisoner. There is consonance, but the words are from completely different sources.
E. I. Lebedeva: Thank you very much, Andrey Anatolyevich!
Photo of 10th grade student at the M-T school Anastasia Morozova.
See also other lectures by A. A. Zaliznyak at the Moomintroll school:
1) Some problems of word order in the history of the Russian language, 11/18/2005.
2) On historical linguistics, 12/12/2008.
3) On historical linguistics (continued), 02/05/2010.
4) About the language of ancient India, 02/11/2011.
5)
A Brief History of the Russian Language
Russian is one of the largest languages in the world: in terms of the number of speakers it ranks fifth after Chinese, English, Hindi and Spanish. Russian is one of the official and working languages of the UN. The number of Russian speakers is about 180 million people. Belongs to the eastern group of Slavic languages. Among the Slavic languages, Russian is the most widespread. All Slavic languages show great similarities among themselves, but the ones closest to the Russian language are Belarusian and Ukrainian. The three of these languages form the East Slavic subgroup, which is part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family.
History of the origin and formation of the Russian language
The history of the origin of the Russian language goes back to ancient times. Around the 2nd-1st millennium BC. e. From the group of related dialects of the Indo-European family of languages, the Proto-Slavic language stands out (at a later stage - around the 1st-7th centuries - called Proto-Slavic).
Already in Kievan Rus (9th - early 12th centuries), the Old Russian language became a means of communication for some Baltic, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, and partly Iranian tribes and nationalities. In the 14th-16th centuries. the southwestern variety of the literary language of the Eastern Slavs was the language of statehood and the Orthodox Church in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Principality of Moldova.
Feudal fragmentation, which contributed to dialect fragmentation, the Mongol-Tatar yoke (13-15 centuries), Polish-Lithuanian conquests led to the 13-14 centuries. to the collapse of the ancient Russian people. The unity of the Old Russian language gradually disintegrated. Three centers of new ethno-linguistic associations were formed that fought for their Slavic identity: northeastern (Great Russians), southern (Ukrainians) and western (Belarusians). In the 14th-15th centuries. On the basis of these associations, closely related but independent East Slavic languages are formed: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.
History of the development of the Russian language - the era of Moscow Rus'
The Russian language of the era of Muscovite Rus' (14th-17th centuries) had a complex history. Dialect features continued to develop. Two main dialect zones took shape - Northern Great Russian approximately in the north from the line Pskov - Tver - Moscow, south of N. Novgorod, and Southern Great Russian in the south from the indicated line to the Belarusian and Ukrainian regions - dialects that overlapped with other dialect divisions. Intermediate Central Russian dialects arose, among which the Moscow dialect began to play a leading role. Initially it was mixed, then it developed into a coherent system. The following became characteristic of him: akanye; pronounced reduction of vowels of unstressed syllables; plosive consonant "g"; ending “-ovo”, “-evo” in the genitive case of the singular masculine and neuter in the pronominal declension; hard ending “-t” in 3rd person verbs of the present and future tense; forms of the pronouns “me”, “you”, “myself” and a number of other phenomena. The Moscow dialect is gradually becoming exemplary and forms the basis of the Russian national literary language. At this time, in living speech, a final restructuring of the categories of time occurs (the ancient past tenses - aorist, imperfect, perfect and plusquaperfect are completely replaced unified form to “-l”), loss of the dual number, the former declension of nouns according to six stems is replaced by modern types of declension, etc. The written language remains colorful.
In the 17th century National ties emerge and the foundations of the Russian nation are laid. In 1708, the division of the civil and Church Slavonic alphabet took place. In the 18th and early 19th centuries. Secular writing became widespread, church literature gradually moved into the background and, finally, became the lot of religious rituals, and its language turned into a kind of church jargon. Scientific, technical, military, nautical, administrative and other terminology developed rapidly, which caused a large influx of words and expressions from Western European languages into the Russian language. There was a particularly great impact from the 2nd half of the 18th century. The French language began to influence Russian vocabulary and phraseology.
The collision of heterogeneous linguistic elements and the need for a common literary language raised the problem of creating unified national language norms. The formation of these norms took place in a sharp struggle between different trends. Democratic-minded sections of society sought to bring the literary language closer to the people's speech, while the reactionary clergy tried to preserve the purity of the archaic “Slovenian” language, incomprehensible to the general population. At the same time, an excessive passion for foreign words began among the upper strata of society, which threatened to clog the Russian language.
In the modern Russian language there is an active (intensive) growth of special terminology, which is caused, first of all, by the needs of the scientific and technological revolution. If at the beginning of the 18th century. terminology was borrowed by the Russian language from the German language in the 19th century. - from the French language, then in the mid-20th century. it is borrowed mainly from the English language (in its American version). Special vocabulary has become the most important source of replenishing the vocabulary of the Russian general literary language, but the penetration of foreign words should be reasonably limited.
About the development of the Russian language
Since the middle of the 20th century. The study of the Russian language is increasingly expanding throughout the world. Information for the mid-70s: Russian language is taught in 87 countries: in 1648 universities; the number of students exceeds 18 million people. In 1967, the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature (MAPRYAL) was created; in 1974 - Institute of Russian Language named after. A. S. Pushkin.
Introduction
Slavic languages in the Indo-European family of languages
2.The ancestor of the Slavic languages is the Proto-Slavic language
In what territory did our common ancestors live?
The emergence of individual Slavic languages
Formation of the Russian language
Modern Russian language
Conclusion
Sources
Introduction
It is impossible to overestimate the role of language in the formation of a person’s national self-awareness. Language is perhaps the main factor of national identification. It forces us to speak, think and even feel in a certain way, which forms a unique feature of the perception and assessment of the world around us by native speakers of this language. And the richer the language, the greater the potential for intellectual development of its speaker, because the richness and versatility of linguistic forms and elements determine the depth of human thinking. And we inherited this truly priceless gift from our ancestors.
Russian is one of the largest languages in the world: in terms of the number of speakers it ranks fifth after Chinese, English, Hindi and Spanish.
So how did our language form? Is it possible that one of the youngest ethnic groups - the Slavs - was able to form one of the richest languages in the world in such a short period (1.5-2 thousand years)? I'm trying to answer this question, I set myself
Target:trace the stages of formation of the Russian language.
This goal defines the following tasks:
1.Study literature on the chosen topic.
2.Analyze different points of view on this issue.
.Present your observations in the form of an abstract.
1 . Slavic languages in the Indo-European family of languages
All Slavic languages show great similarities among themselves, but the ones closest to the Russian language are Belarusian and Ukrainian. The three of these languages form East Slavic subgroup,which is part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family.
Slavic branches grow from a powerful trunk - the Indo-European language family. This family also includes Indian, Iranian, Greek, Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic languages, Armenian, Albanian and other languages. Of all the Indo-European languages, the Baltic languages are closest to Slavic: Lithuanian, Latvian and the dead Prussian language, which finally disappeared by the first decades of the 18th century. Presumably, in the II-I millennium BC. e. In the Indo-European language family, a Proto-Slavic dialect emerged; in the 1st millennium AD. e. transformed into the Proto-Slavic language.
2. The ancestor of the Slavic languages is the Proto-Slavic language
Proto-Slavic is the language that is the ancestor of all Slavic languages. It had no written language and was not recorded in writing. However, it can be restored by comparing Slavic languages with each other, as well as by comparing them with other related Indo-European languages.
A common source - the Proto-Slavic language - unites all Slavic languages, endowing them with many similar features, meanings, sounds... The consciousness of Slavic linguistic and ethnic unity was already reflected in the ancient self-name of all Slavs - Slavs.According to academician O.N. Trubachev, etymologically this is something like “clearly speaking, understandable to each other.” This state continued during the era of the formation of ancient Slavic states and peoples. The Tale of Bygone Years, an ancient Russian chronicle from the early 12th century, says: “And the Slovenian language and the Russian language are one and the same...”. Word languageused here not only in ancient meaning“people”, but also in the meaning of “speech”.
3. In what territory did our common ancestors live?
The ancestral home of the Slavs, that is, the territory where they developed as a special people with their own language and where they lived until their division and resettlement to new lands, has not yet been precisely determined due to the lack of reliable data. And yet, with relative confidence, we can say that it was located in the east of Central Europe, north of the foothills of the Carpathians. Many scientists believe that the northern border of the ancestral home of the Slavs ran along the Pripyat River (the right tributary of the Dnieper), the western border along the middle course of the Vistula River, and in the east the Slavs inhabited Ukrainian Polesie up to the Dnieper.
The Slavs constantly expanded the lands they occupied. They also participated in the great migration of peoples in the IV-VII centuries. The Gothic historian Jordan wrote in his essay “On the Origin and Acts of the Getae” (chronologically brought up to the year 551) that “a populous tribe of Venets” (the Germans called all the Slavs) spread out “over the vast expanses” from the Middle Danube to the lower Dnieper Wenden, Winden; in Finnish Venä jä means "Russia"). During the VI and VII centuries. waves of Slavic settlement poured into most of the Balkan Peninsula, including modern Greece, and including its southern part - the Peloponnese.
By the end of the Proto-Slavic period, the Slavs occupied vast lands in Central and Eastern Europe. Extending from the Baltic Sea coast in the north to the Mediterranean in the south, from the Elbe River in the west to the upper reaches of the Dnieper, Volga and Oka in the east.
Over its long history, the Proto-Slavic language has experienced many changes. In the early period of its existence, it developed relatively slowly and was highly uniform, although even then there were dialect differences ( dialect, otherwise talk- the smallest territorial variety of the language).
In the late period (approximately from the 4th to the 6th centuries AD), diverse and intense changes occurred in the Proto-Slavic language, which led to its collapse around the 6th century. AD and the emergence of individual Slavic languages. language Slavic Russian speech
4. The emergence of individual Slavic languages
In the VI-VII centuries. AD the Proto-Slavic language fell into three groups: eastern, western and southern.
East Slavic group: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian.
West Slavic group: Polish with the Kashubian dialect, which retained a certain genetic independence, Serbian languages (Upper and Lower Sorbian languages), Czech, Slovak and the dead Polabian language, which completely disappeared by the end of the 18th century.
South Slavic group: Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian.
The ancestor of modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian languages was Old Russian(or East Slavic) language. In its history, two main eras can be distinguished: pre-written (from the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language to the 10th century) and written. What this language was like before the advent of writing can only be found out through a comparative historical study of Slavic and Indo-European languages, because no ancient Russian writing existed at that time.
The oldest literary monuments in the history of the Russian language are the Novgorod Code (1st quarter of the 11th century), the Ostromir Gospel (1056/1057) in Church Slavonic and birch bark letters (from the 11th century) in the Old Novgorod dialect.
5. Formation of the Russian language
The collapse of the Old Russian language led to the emergence Russian(or Great Russian) language, different from Ukrainian and Belarusian. This happened in the 14th century, although already in the 12th-13th centuries. In the Old Russian language, phenomena emerged that distinguished the dialects of the ancestors of the Great Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians from each other.
From the beginning of the 15th century to the end of the 17th century, the Russian language was formed quite quickly. The modern Russian language is based on the northern and northeastern dialects of Ancient Rus'. The center of development is Moscow, where the modern dialect originated.
There were many dialects outside the city, but the Moscow dialect became the main one. Clear endings of words appear, cases are formed, spelling develops, words change according to gender, cases and numbers.
The latest monuments of appanage feudal Rus' reflect the characteristics of regional dialects. Thus, the Novgorod and Pskov monuments record “clattering” (mena “ts” and “ch” or their coincidence in one sound), the Novgorod pronunciation of “?” as “and” (which is deposited in the monuments as mena “?” and "and"); akanye is reflected in Moscow monuments from the 14th century; me "?" and “e” (in the absence of parallel exchange “?” and “i”) is inherent in monuments that arose on the territory of southern and central Russian dialects, etc.
Taking into account the testimony of monuments and checking them with data from a comparative study of Russian dialects, we can restore such major stages in the development of the grammatical structure of the Russian language XIV
· Loss of short forms of the adjective in indirect cases (in modern language such forms are preserved in frozen expressions like on bare feet, in broad daylight, with a hairdryer and etc.).
Loss of the category of dual number
· Wide development and consolidation in written monuments of a later era (from the 16th-17th centuries) of the instrumental case form of nouns and adjectives included in the compound predicate.
· Simplification of the past tense system.
· In the field of managing case forms of nouns during the 12th-17th centuries, an increase and development of constructions with prepositions was noticed.
The development of speech structure is also the development complex sentences. Let us compare, for example, the complex construction of a sentence from the chronicle (XIV century): “Lay Yaroslav a great city, the worthless city has golden gates,” with the modern complex sentence: “Yaroslav founded a great city in which there were golden gates.”
At the end of the 17th century, the history of the development of the Russian language was experiencing a period of complete formation. Writing is developing, new words, rules, and a modern church language appear in which religious literature is written. In the 19th century, the church language was clearly distinguished from the literary language, which was used by all residents of Muscovite Rus'. The language is becoming even more modern, similar to today. A lot of literature written in the new Russian language is published.
With the development of military, technical, scientific and political spheres of activity, modern terminology appears in the Russian language, words that are taken from foreign languages (French, German). The vocabulary changes a little and becomes rich in French words. Since the language began to become “clogged” with foreign words and speech patterns, the issue of assigning the status of a national language to the Russian language has become acute. Until Peter I decided to give the status of a Russian state to Muscovite Rus', there were disputes over the national status of the Russian language. The emperor assigned a new name to the state and issued a decree on the adoption of Russian as the national language.
6. Modern Russian language
Modern Russian language ( standard option, in Russian tradition known as a literary language
At the beginning of the 20th century, when the scientific field of activity was actively developing, English words began to be used, which were tightly intertwined with the Russian language and became inseparable from it. The Church, as well as many politicians in the period of the 18th-20th centuries, fought for the preservation of the purely Russian-Slavic language as a national language. But the study of foreign speech made its mark: a fashion for words of foreign origin developed.
In the mid-twenties, the peak of popularity and mastery of the Russian language by many countries around the world began. In the seventies, almost all major educational institutions in the world were studying the Russian language. The number of countries that mastered the Russian language exceeded 90.
Standardization oral speech contributed to the spread of media
Conclusion
In conclusion, we note that since the Russian language appeared, it has undergone many metamorphoses from the basics to the modern rich and rich language with complex rules and a huge vocabulary. For my centuries-old history The Russian language has never experienced such significant transformations as in the 20th century. History shows that the Russian language was formed gradually, but purposefully. We, Russians, ourselves must “know and feel” the Russian language, because we ourselves do not know it enough, speak it poorly, treat it carelessly, and yet we and only we are responsible for the state native language, its further development, enrichment, for its place in the world.
Sources
1.www.goldrussian.ru
2.http://otvet.mail.ru/question/1102327/
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The Russian language has gone through a long path of historical development. There are three periods of development of the Russian language:
- · Early period (VI-VII - XIV centuries).
- · Middle period (XIV-XV - XVII centuries).
- · Late period (XVII-XVIII - late XX - early XXI centuries).
The first period (early) begins after the separation of the Eastern Slavs from the pan-Slavic unity and the formation of the language of the Eastern Slavs (Old Russian language) - the predecessor of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. This period is characterized by the presence of Old Church Slavonicisms, Church Slavonic vocabulary, and Turkic borrowings in the language. The second period (middle) begins with the collapse of the language of the Eastern Slavs and the separation of the Russian language proper (the language of the Great Russian people). By the second half of the 17th century, the Russian nation was taking shape and the Russian national language was taking shape, based on the traditions of the Moscow dialect.
III period is the period of development of the Russian national language, design and improvement of the Russian literary language.
- Period 1 (October 1917 - April 1985) is characterized by the presence of the following processes in the language:
- · Withdrawal into the passive reserve of a huge layer of secular and church vocabulary (lord, king, monarch, governor, gymnasium; Savior, Mother of God, bishop, Eucharist, etc.);
- · The emergence of new words reflecting changes in politics and economics. Most of them were official abbreviations of words and phrases: NKVD, RSDLP, collective farm, district committee, tax in kind, educational program, etc.;
- · Interference of the opposite. The essence of this phenomenon is that two words are formed that positively and negatively characterize the same phenomena of reality that exist in different political systems. After the October events of 1917, two lexical systems gradually emerged in the Russian language: one for naming the phenomena of capitalism, the other for socialism. So, if we were talking about enemy countries, then their intelligence officers were called spies, soldiers - occupiers, partisans - terrorists, etc.;
- · Renaming the denotation. Denotation is an object of extra-linguistic reality to which a linguistic sign as part of an utterance refers. Thus, not only the names of cities and streets are renamed (Tsaritsyn - into Stalingrad, Nizhny Novgorod - into Gorky; Bolshaya Dvoryanskaya - into Revolution Avenue), but also social concepts (competition - into socialist competition, harvesting - into a battle for the harvest, peasants - into collective farmers, etc.). As a result of the renaming, the authorities, firstly, managed to sever ties with the pre-revolutionary past, and secondly, to create the illusion of universal renewal. Thus, through the word, the party and government oligarchy influenced public consciousness.
During the 2nd period (April 1985 - present), serious political, economic, ideological changes took place, leading to significant changes in the Russian literary language:
- · Significant expansion of vocabulary due to:
- a) foreign vocabulary (barter, business, legitimate);
- b) the formation of a mass of new words in the Russian language itself (post-Soviet, denationalization, de-Sovietization);
- · Return to the active vocabulary of words that left the language during the Soviet period (Duma, governor, corporation; communion, liturgy, all-night vigil);
- · Relegation to a passive stock of Soviet words (collective farm, Komsomolets, district committee);
- · Changes in the meanings of many words that occur for ideological and political reasons. For example, in the dictionary Soviet period the following is written about the word God: “God - according to religious and mystical ideas: a mythical supreme being who allegedly rules the world” (Ozhegov S.I. Dictionary of the Russian Language. - M., 1953). The definition includes indicators of unreliability (particle supposedly and adjective mythical). The purpose of this interpretation is to impose an atheistic worldview on the user of the dictionary, corresponding to totalitarian ideology. In the modern dictionary - “God - in religion: the supreme omnipotent being...” (Ozhegov S.I. Dictionary Russian language: 80,000 words and phraseological expressions. - M., 2006);
- Vulgarization - use in speech, it would seem, educated people slang, colloquial and other extra-literary elements (bucks, rollback, disassembly, chaos);
- · “Foreignization” of the Russian language - that is, the unjustified use of borrowings in speech (reception - reception, reception point; gang - criminal association, gang; show - spectacle, etc.).
The Russian national language has a complex and long history, its roots go back to ancient times.
Russian language belongs to the eastern group of Slavic languages. Among the Slavic languages, Russian is the most widespread. All Slavic languages show great similarities among themselves, but the ones closest to the Russian language are Belarusian and Ukrainian. The three of these languages form the East Slavic subgroup, which is part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family.
The development of the Russian language in different eras took place at different rates. An important factor in the process of its improvement there was a confusion of languages, the formation of new words and the displacement of old ones. Even in prehistoric times, the language of the Eastern Slavs was a complex and variegated group of tribal dialects, which had already experienced various mixtures and crossings with the languages of different nationalities and contained the rich heritage of centuries-old tribal life. Around the 2nd-1st millennium BC. From the group of related dialects of the Indo-European family of languages, the Proto-Slavic language stands out (at a later stage - around the 1st-7th centuries - called Proto-Slavic).
Already in Kievan Rus (9th - early 12th centuries), the Old Russian language became a means of communication for some Baltic, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, and partly Iranian tribes and nationalities. Relations and contacts with the Baltic peoples, with the Germans, with the Finnish tribes, with the Celts, with the Turkish-Turkic tribes (Hunnic hordes, Avars, Bulgarians, Khazars) could not but leave deep traces in the language of the Eastern Slavs, just as Slavic elements are found in Lithuanian, German, Finnish and Turkic languages. Occupying the East European Plain, the Slavs entered the territory of ancient cultures in their centuries-long succession. The cultural and historical ties of the Slavs established here with the Scythians and Sarmatians were also reflected and separated in the language of the Eastern Slavs.
In the ancient Russian state, during the period of fragmentation, territorial dialects and adverbs developed that were understandable for a particular area, so a language that was understandable to everyone was needed. It was needed by trade, diplomacy, and the church. The Old Church Slavonic language became such a language. The history of its emergence and formation in Rus' is connected with the Byzantine policy of the Russian princes and with the mission of the monastic brothers Cyril and Methodius. Interaction between Old Church Slavonic and Russian spoken language made possible the formation of the Old Russian language.
The first texts written in Cyrillic appeared among the Eastern Slavs in the 10th century. By the 1st half of the 10th century. refers to the inscription on a korchaga (vessel) from Gnezdov (near Smolensk). This is probably an inscription indicating the owner's name. From the 2nd half of the 10th century. A number of inscriptions indicating the ownership of objects have also been preserved.
After the baptism of Rus' in 988, book writing arose. The chronicle reports “many scribes” who worked under Yaroslav the Wise. Mostly liturgical books were copied. The originals for East Slavic handwritten books were mainly South Slavic manuscripts, dating back to the works of students of the creators of the Slavic script, Cyril and Methodius. In the process of correspondence, the original language was adapted to the East Slavic language and the Old Russian book language was formed - the Russian translation (variant) of the Church Slavonic language.
In addition to books intended for worship, other Christian literature was copied: the works of the holy fathers, lives of saints, collections of teachings and interpretations, collections of canon law. The oldest surviving written monuments include the Ostromir Gospel of 1056-1057. and the Archangel Gospel of 1092
The original works of Russian authors were moralizing and hagiographic works. Since the book language was mastered without grammars, dictionaries and rhetorical aids, compliance with language norms depended on the author’s erudition and his ability to reproduce the forms and structures that he knew from model texts.
Chronicles constitute a special class of ancient written monuments. Chronicler, outlining historical events, included them in context Christian history, and this united the chronicles with other monuments of book culture with spiritual content. Therefore, the chronicles were written in book language and were guided by the same body of exemplary texts, however, due to the specifics of the material presented (specific events, local realities), the language of the chronicles was supplemented with non-book elements.
In the XIV-XV centuries. the southwestern variety of the literary language of the Eastern Slavs was the language of statehood and the Orthodox Church in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Principality of Moldova.
Feudal fragmentation, which contributed to dialect fragmentation, the Mongol-Tatar yoke, and the Polish-Lithuanian conquests led to the XIII-XIV centuries. to the collapse of the ancient Russian people. The unity of the Old Russian language gradually disintegrated. Three centers of new ethno-linguistic associations were formed that fought for their Slavic identity: northeastern (Great Russians), southern (Ukrainians) and western (Belarusians). In the XIV-XV centuries. On the basis of these associations, closely related but independent East Slavic languages are formed: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.
In the XIV-XVI centuries. The Great Russian state and the Great Russian people are taking shape, and this time becomes a new stage in the history of the Russian language. The Russian language during the Muscovite Rus' era had a complex history. Dialect features continued to develop. 2 main dialect zones took shape - Northern Great Russian approximately to the north of the line Pskov - Tver - Moscow, south of N. Novgorod and Southern Great Russian to the south from the specified line to the Belarusian and Ukrainian regions - dialects that overlapped with other dialect divisions.
Intermediate Central Russian dialects arose, among which the Moscow dialect began to play a leading role. Initially it was mixed, then it developed into a coherent system. The following became characteristic of him: akanye; pronounced reduction of vowels of unstressed syllables; plosive consonant “g”; ending “-ovo”, “-evo” in the genitive case of the singular masculine and neuter in the pronominal declension; the hard ending “-t” in 3rd person verbs of the present and future tense; forms of the pronouns “me”, “you”, “yourself” and a number of other phenomena. The Moscow dialect is gradually becoming exemplary and forms the basis of the Russian national literary language.
At this time, in living speech, a final restructuring of the categories of time occurs (the ancient past tenses - aorist, imperfect, perfect and plusquaperfect are completely replaced by a unified form with “-l”), the loss of the dual number, the former declension of nouns according to six stems is replaced by modern types of declension and etc. The written language remains colorful.
In the 2nd half of the 16th century. In the Moscow state, book printing began, which was of great importance for the fate of the Russian literary language, culture and education. The first printed books were church books, primers, grammars, and dictionaries.
A new significant stage in the development of the language - the 17th century - is associated with the development of the Russian people into a nation - during the period of the increasing role of the Moscow state and the unification of Russian lands, the Russian national language begins to form. During the formation of the Russian nation, the foundations of a national literary language were formed, which is associated with the weakening of the influence of the Church Slavonic language, the development of dialects ceased, and the role of the Moscow dialect increased. The development of new dialect features gradually stops, old dialect features become very stable. Thus, the 17th century, when the Russian nation finally took shape, is the beginning of the Russian national language.
In 1708, the division of the civil and Church Slavonic alphabet took place. Introduced civil alphabet, on which secular literature is printed.
In the XVIII and early XIX 19th centuries Secular writing became widespread, church literature gradually moved into the background and, finally, became the lot of religious rituals, and its language turned into a kind of church jargon. Scientific, technical, military, nautical, administrative and other terminology developed rapidly, which caused a large influx of words and expressions from Western European languages into the Russian language. The impact was especially great from the 2nd half of the 18th century. The French language began to influence Russian vocabulary and phraseology.
Its further development is already closely connected with the history and culture of the Russian people. The 18th century was reformist. In fiction, science, and official business papers, the Slavic-Russian language is used, which has absorbed the culture of the Old Church Slavonic language. In everyday life it was used, in the words of the poet-reformer V.K. Trediakovsky, “natural language”.
The primary task was to create a single national language. In addition, there is an understanding of the special mission of language in the creation of an enlightened state, in the field of business relations, and its importance for science and literature. The democratization of the language begins: it includes elements of the living oral speech of ordinary people. The language begins to free itself from the influence of the Church Slavonic language, which has become the language of religion and worship. The language is being enriched at the expense of Western European languages, which primarily affected the formation of the language of science, politics, and technology.
There were so many borrowings that Peter I was forced to issue an order to limit foreign words and terms. The first reform of Russian writing was carried out by Peter I in 1708-1710. A number of letters were eliminated from the alphabet - omega, psi, Izhitsa. Letter styles were rounded and Arabic numerals were introduced.
In the 18th century society begins to realize that the Russian national language is capable of becoming the language of science, art, and education. M.V. played a special role in the creation of a literary language during this period. Lomonosov, he was not only a great scientist, but also a brilliant language researcher who created the theory of three styles. Possessing enormous talent, he wanted to change the attitude towards the Russian language not only of foreigners, but also of Russians, he wrote “Russian Grammar”, in which he gave a set of grammatical rules and showed the richest possibilities of the language.
He fought for Russian to become the language of science, so that lectures would be given in Russian by Russian teachers. He considered the Russian language one of the most powerful and rich languages and cared about its purity and expressiveness. It is especially valuable that M.V. Lomonosov considered language a means of communication, constantly emphasizing that it is necessary for people to “consistently move in common affairs, which is controlled by the combination of different thoughts.” According to Lomonosov, without language, society would be like an unassembled machine, all parts of which are scattered and inactive, which is why “their very existence is vain and useless.”
Since the 18th century Russian language becomes a literary language with generally accepted norms, widely used in both book and colloquial speech. The creator of the Russian literary language was A.S. Pushkin. His work enshrined the norms of the Russian literary language that later became national.
The language of Pushkin and writers of the 19th century. is a classic example of literary language up to the present day. In his work, Pushkin was guided by the principle of proportionality and conformity. He did not reject any words because of their Old Slavonic, foreign or common origin. He considered any word acceptable in literature, in poetry, if it accurately, figuratively expresses the concept, conveys the meaning. But he opposed the thoughtless passion for foreign words, as well as the desire to replace mastered foreign words with artificially selected or composed Russian words.
In the 19th century A real struggle unfolded for the establishment of language norms. The collision of heterogeneous linguistic elements and the need for a common literary language raised the problem of creating unified national language norms. The formation of these norms took place in a sharp struggle between different trends. Democratic-minded sections of society sought to bring the literary language closer to the people's speech, while the reactionary clergy tried to preserve the purity of the archaic “Slovenian” language, incomprehensible to the general population.
At the same time, an excessive passion for foreign words began among the upper strata of society, which threatened to clog the Russian language. It was conducted between the followers of the writer N.M. Karamzin and Slavophile A.S. Shishkova. Karamzin fought for the establishment of uniform norms, demanded to be freed from the influence of the three styles and Church Slavonic speech, and to use new words, including borrowed ones. Shishkov believed that the basis of the national language should be the Church Slavonic language.
The flourishing of literature in the 19th century. had a great influence on the development and enrichment of the Russian language. In the first half of the 19th century. the process of creating the Russian national language was completed.
In the modern Russian language there is an active (intensive) growth of special terminology, which is caused, first of all, by the needs of the scientific and technological revolution. If at the beginning of the 18th century. terminology was borrowed by the Russian language from the German language in the 19th century. - from the French language, then in the middle of the twentieth century. it is borrowed mainly from the English language (in its American version). Special vocabulary has become the most important source of replenishing the vocabulary of the Russian general literary language, but the penetration of foreign words should be reasonably limited.
Thus, language embodies and national character, and the national idea, and national ideals. Each Russian word carries experience, a moral position, properties inherent in the Russian mentality, which is perfectly reflected by our proverbs: “Everyone goes crazy in his own way,” “God protects the careful,” “Thunder will not strike, a man will not cross himself,” etc. And also fairy tales where the hero (soldier, Ivanushka the Fool, man), getting into difficult situations, emerges victorious and becomes rich and happy.
The Russian language has inexhaustible possibilities for expressing thoughts, developing various topics, and creating works of any genre.
We can be proud of the works of great people written in Russian. These are works of great Russian literature, the works of scientists well known in other countries. To read the original works of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol and other Russian writers, many study the Russian language.