Russian ( ,
transliteration: , , meaning
'Russian tongue [language]') is the most geographically widespread
language of
Eurasia, the most widely spoken
of the
Slavic languages, and the
largest
native language in
Europe. Russian belongs to the family of
Indo-European languages and is one
of three living members of the
East Slavic languages, the others
being
Belarusian and
Ukrainian (and possibly
Rusyn, in Ukraine considered a dialect of
Ukrainian and recognized in some countries).
Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th
century onwards.
Today, Russian is widely used outside
Russia
. Over a quarter of the world's scientific
literature is published in Russian. Russian is also a necessary
accessory of world communications systems (broadcasts, air- and
space communication, etc).
Because of the status of the Soviet Union
as a superpower, Russian
had great political importance in the 20th century and was widely
taught in primary and higher education as a foreign language in
many countries all over the world . Hence, the language is
one of the six
official
languages of the
United
Nations.
Russian distinguishes between
consonant
phonemes with
palatal secondary articulation and those
without, the so-called
soft and
hard sounds. This
distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is
one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another
important aspect is the
reduction of
unstressed vowels, which is somewhat similar to
that of English.
Stress,
which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthograph though, according to the Russian Language Institute of the
Russian Academy
of Sciences
, an optional acute
accent ( ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress
(such as to distinguish between otherwise identical words or to
indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or
names).
Classification
Russian is a
Slavic language in the
Indo-European family. From
the point of view of the
spoken
language, its closest relatives are
Ukrainian and
Belarusian, the other two national
languages in the
East Slavic
group.
In
many places in eastern Ukraine
and Belarus
, these
languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas
traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixture, e.g.
Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An
East Slavic
Old Novgorod
dialect, although vanished during the fifteenth or sixteenth
century, is sometimes considered to have played a significant role
in the formation of the modern Russian language.
The
vocabulary (mainly abstract and
literary words), principles of word formations, and, to some
extent, inflections and literary style of Russian have been also
influenced by
Church
Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the
South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the
Russian Orthodox Church.
However, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively
in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In
some cases, both the
East
Slavic and the
Church Slavonic
forms are in use, with many different meanings.
For details,
see Russian phonology and History of the Russian
language.
Russian phonology and syntax (especially in northern dialects) have
also been influenced to some extent by the numerous Finnic
languages of the
Finno-Ugric
subfamily:
Merya,
Moksha,
Muromian, the language of the
Meshchera,
Veps, et
cetera. These languages, some of them now extinct, used to be
spoken in the center and in the north of what is now the European
part of Russia. They came in contact with Eastern
Slavic as far back as the early Middle Ages
and eventually served as substratum for the modern Russian
language.
The Russian dialects spoken north, north-east
and north-west of Moscow
have a
considerable number of words of Finno-Ugric origin. Over the
course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian
have also been influenced by Western/Central European languages
such as
Polish,
Latin,
Dutch,
German,
French, and
English.
According
to the Defense Language
Institute in Monterey, California
, Russian is classified as a level III language in
terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately
780 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate
fluency. It is also regarded by the
United States Intelligence
Community as a "hard target" language, due to both its
difficulty to master for English speakers as well as due to its
critical role in American world policy.
Geographic distribution
The
Russian language is primarily spoken in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan
and Belarus, and, to a
lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent
republics of the USSR.
During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the
various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of
the constituent republics had its own official language, the
unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian.
Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991, several of the newly
independent states have encouraged their native languages, which
has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its
role as the language of post-Soviet national discourse throughout
the region has continued.
In
Latvia
its official recognition and legality in the
classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country
where more than one-third of the population is Russian-speaking
(see Russians in Latvia).
Similarly, in Estonia
, Russophones constitute 25.6% of the country's
current population and 58.6% of the native Estonian population is
also able to speak Russian. In all, 67.8% of Estonia's
population can speak Russian. Command of Russian language however
is rapidly decreasing among younger Estonians (primarily being
replaced by the command of English). For example, if 53% of Ethnic
Estonians between 15-19 claim to speak some Russian, then among the
10-14 year old group, command of Russian has fallen to 19% (which
nearly three times smaller than percentage of those who claim to
have command of English).
In
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
, Russian remains a co-official language with
Kazakh and Kyrgyz respectively. Large
Russian-speaking communities still exist in northern Kazakhstan,
and ethnic Russians comprise 25.6% of Kazakhstan's
population.
Those who
speak Russian as a mother or secondary language in Lithuania
have represented approximately 60% of the
population of Lithuania. Also, more than half of the
population of the
Baltic states speak
Russian either as foreign language or as mother tongue.
As the
Grand Duchy of Finland was
part of the Russian
Empire
from 1809 to 1918, and a number of Russian speakers
have remained in Finland, there are 33,400 Russian speakers in
Finland, amounting to 0.6% of the population. 5000 (0.1%) of
them are late 19th century and 20th century immigrants or their
descendants, and the rest are recent immigrants, who have arrived
in the 1990s and later.
In the twentieth century, Russian was widely taught in the schools
of the members of the old
Warsaw Pact
and in other
countries that used to
be allies of the USSR.
In particular, these countries include
Poland
, Bulgaria
, the Czech Republic
, Slovakia
, Hungary
, Albania
and Cuba
.
However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because
Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. According to
the Eurobarometer 2005 survey,
[4201] though, fluency in Russian remains fairly high
(20-40%) in some countries, in particular those where the people
speak a
Slavic language and thereby have an
edge in learning Russian (namely, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia,
and Bulgaria).
It is currently the most widely-taught
foreign language in Mongolia
and has been compulsory in Year 7 onward as a
second foreign language since 2006.
Russian
is also spoken in Israel
by at least
750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former
Soviet
Union (1999 census). The Israeli
press and
websites
regularly publish material in Russian. Russian is also spoken as a
second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan (Awde
and Sarwan, 2003). According to a BBC report from October, 2009,
Afghan refugee children are learning Russian in school. If they
return to Afghanistan, this may create a small population of
second-language Russian speakers there as well.
Sizable
Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban
centers of the U.S.
and Canada
such as
New York
City
, Philadelphia
, Boston
, Los Angeles
, Nashville
, San
Francisco
, Seattle
, Toronto
, Baltimore
, Miami
, Chicago
, Denver
and the
Cleveland
suburb of Richmond Heights
. In a number of locations they issue their
own newspapers, and live in
ethnic
enclaves (especially the generation of immigrants who started
arriving in the early sixties). Only about a quarter of them are
ethnic Russians, however. Before the
dissolution of the Soviet
Union, the overwhelming majority of
Russophones in North America were
Russian-speaking
Jews.
Afterwards, the
influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat. According
to the
United States 2000
Census, Russian is the primary language spoken in the homes of
over 700,000 individuals living in the United States.
Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in
Western Europe. These have been fed by
several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the twentieth
century, each with its own flavor of language.
Germany
, the United Kingdom
, Spain
, Portugal
, France
, Italy
, Belgium
, Greece
, Brazil
, Norway
, Austria
and Turkey
have
significant Russian-speaking communities totaling 3 million
people. Australian cities Melbourne
and Sydney
also have
Russian speaking populations, with the most Russians living in
south-east Melbourne, particularly the suburbs of Carnegie and
Caulfield. Two thirds of them are actually
Russian-speaking descendants of Germans, Greeks,
Jews, Azerbaijanis, Armenians or Ukrainians,
who either repatriated after the USSR
collapsed
or are just looking for temporary employment.
Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of
Russian
| Source |
Native speakers |
Native rank |
Total speakers |
Total rank |
G. Weber, "Top Languages",
Language Monthly,
3: 12–18, 1997, ISSN 1369-9733 |
160,000,000 |
8 |
285,000,000 |
5 |
| World Almanac (1999) |
145,000,000 |
8 (2005) |
275,000,000 |
5 |
| SIL (2000 WCD) |
145,000,000 |
8 |
255,000,000 |
5–6 (tied with Arabic) |
| CIA World Factbook (2005) |
160,000,000 |
8 |
|
Official status
Russian is the official language of Russia.
It is also an
official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, an unofficial but widely spoken language in
Ukraine and the de
facto official language of the unrecognized country of
Transnistria
and partially recognized
countries of South
Ossetia
and Abkhazia
. Russian is one of the
six official languages of the
United Nations. Education in Russian
is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language
(RSL) and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former
Soviet republics/ Despite its decline in official status since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian is still seen as an important
language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet
republics.
94% of
the school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan,
20% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova
, 7% in Azerbaijan
, 5% in Georgia
and 2% in Armenia
and Tajikistan
receive their education only or mostly in
Russian. The percentage of ethnic Russians is 80% in Russia,
10% in Belarus, 26% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in
Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia and
less than 1% in both Armenia and Tajikistan.
Russian-language schooling is also available in Latvia, Estonia and
Lithuania, but due to recent education reforms (whereby the
government pays a substantial sum to a school to teach in the
national language), the number of subjects taught in Russian has
been reduced at the high school level.
The language has a
co-official status alongside Romanian in the autonomies of Gagauzia
and Transnistria in Moldova. In the Autonomous Republic of Crimea
in Ukraine, Russian is an officially recognized
language alongside with Crimean
Tatar, though in practice Russian is the most widely spoken
language in Ukraine by a small margin. However despite its
widespread usage, pro-Russian Crimean activist complain about the
(mandatory) use of
Ukrainian in
schools, movie theaters, courts, on drug prescriptions and its use
in the media and for government paperwork.
Dialects
[[File:Dialects of Russian language.png|thumb|300px|
Northern dialects
Central dialects
Southern dialects
Other
]]Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary,
a number of dialects exist in Russia.
Some linguists divide
the dialects of the Russian language into two primary regional
groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the
zone of transition between the two. Others divide the
language into three groupings, Northern, Central and Southern, with
Moscow lying in the Central region.
Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of
smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and
non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary
and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now
completely discarded by the standard language.
The
northern Russian
dialects and those spoken along the
Volga River typically pronounce unstressed
clearly (the phenomenon called
okanye/оканье). East
of Moscow, particularly in
Ryazan
Region, unstressed and following
palatalized consonants and preceding a
stressed syllable are not reduced to (like in the Moscow dialect),
being instead pronounced in such positions (e.g.
несл
и is pronounced , not ) - this is called
yakanye/ яканье; many southern dialects have
a palatalized final in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is
unpalatalized in the standard dialect) and a fricative where the
standard dialect has .
However, in certain areas south of Moscow,
e.g. in and around Tula
, is
pronounced as in the Moscow and northern dialects unless it
precedes a voiceless plosive or a pause. In this position is
lenited and devoiced to the fricative , e.g. друг (in Moscow's
dialect, only Бог , лёгкий , мягкий and some derivatives follow
this rule). Some of these features (e.g. a
debuccalized or
lenited and palatalized final in 3rd person forms
of verbs) are also present in modern
Ukrainian, indicating either a linguistic
continuum and/or strong influence one way or the other.
The city
of Veliky
Novgorod
has
historically displayed a feature called chokanye/tsokanye
(чоканье/цоканье), where and were confused. So,
цапля ("heron") has been recorded as 'чапля'.
Also, the second palatalization of
velar did not occur there, so the so-called
ě² (from the Proto-Slavonic diphthong *ai) did not
cause to shift to ; therefore where Standard Russian has
цепь ("chain"), the form
кепь is
attested in earlier texts.
Among the first to study Russian dialects was
Lomonosov in the eighteenth century. In
the nineteenth,
Vladimir Dal compiled
the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed
mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the twentieth
century. In modern times, the monumental
Dialectological Atlas
of the Russian Language (
Диалектологический атлас русского
языка ), was published in three folio volumes 1986–1989, after
four decades of preparatory work.
Most Russians can easily understand any of dialects of the native
language unlike Chinese or Indians. The
standard language
is based on (but not identical to) the Moscow dialect.
Derived languages
- Balachka a dialect, spoken primarily by
Cossacks, in the regions of Don, Kuban and Terek.
- Fenya, a criminal argot of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but
with distinct vocabulary.
- Surzhyk is a language with Russian and
Ukrainian features, spoken in some areas of Ukraine
- Trasianka is a
language with Russian and Belarusian features used by a large
portion of the rural population in Belarus.
- Quelia, a pseudo pidgin of German and
Russian.
- Runglish, Russian-English pidgin. This
word is also used by English speakers to describe the way in which
Russians attempt to speak English using Russian morphology and/or
syntax.
- Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with mostly Russian vocabulary and
mostly Norwegian grammar, used
for communication between Russians and
Norwegian traders in the Pomor trade in Finnmark
and the Kola Peninsula
.
Alphabet
Russian is written using a modified version of the
Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet
consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their upper case
forms, along with values for each letter's typical sound:
Older letters of the Russian alphabet include >, which merged to
<е> ( ) or ); <і> and >, which both merged to
<и> ( ); >, which merged to <ф> ( ); >, which
merged to <у> ( ); >, which merged to <ю> ( or );
and >/ >, which later were graphically reshaped into
<я> and merged phonetically to or
.</я></ю></у></ф></и></і></е>
<е><і><и><ф><у><ю><я>While
these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another,
they may be used in this and related
articles.</я></ю></у></ф></и></і></е>
<е><і><и><ф><у><ю><я>The
yers <ъ> and <ь> originally
indicated the pronunciation of
ultra-short or
reduced ,
.</ь></ъ></я></ю></у></ф></и></і></е>
The Russian alphabet has many systems of
character encoding.
KOI8-R was designed by the government and was
intended to serve as the standard encoding. This encoding is still
used in UNIX-like operating systems. Nevertheless, the spread of
MS-DOS and
Microsoft Windows created chaos and ended
by establishing different encodings as de-facto standards. For
communication purposes, a number of conversion applications were
developed. \ "
iconv" is an example that is
supported by most versions of
Linux,
Macintosh and some other
operating systems.Most implementations
(especially old ones) of the character encoding for the Russian
language are aimed at simultaneous use of English and Russian
characters only and do not include support for any other language.
Certain hopes for a unificationof the character encoding for the
Russian alphabet are related to the
Unicode
standard, specifically designed for peaceful coexistenceof
various languages, including even
dead
languages. Unicode also supports the letters of the
Early Cyrillic alphabet, which have
many similarities with the
Greek
alphabet.
Transliteration
Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also
because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian
is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, the
standard transliteration of the word "мороз" ( ) is "moroz" and for
the word "мышь" ( ) it is "mysh'". Transliteration is commonly used
by those who live outside Russia, although it is now being used
less and less often by Russians because of the extension of Unicode
character encoding, which now incorporates different alphabets
ranging from Latin to Hindi.
Orthography
Russian spelling is reasonably phonemic in practice. It is in fact
a balance among phonemics, morphology, etymology, and grammar; and,
like that of most living languages, has its share of
inconsistencies and controversial points. A number of rigid
spelling rules introduced between the
1880s and 1910s have been responsible for the former whilst trying
to eliminate the latter.
The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the
final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990s
has met a hostile reception, and has not been formally adopted. The
punctuation, originally based on
Byzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and German
models.
According to the Institute of Russian Language of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, an optional
acute
accent ( ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress.
For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical
words, especially when context doesn't make it obvious:
замо́к/за́мок (lock/castle), сто́ящий/стоя́щий
(worthwhile/standing), чудно́/чу́дно (this is odd/this is
marvelous), молоде́ц/мо́лодец (attaboy/fine young man),
узна́ю/узнаю́ (I shall learn it/I am recognizing it),
отреза́ть/отре́зать (to cut/to have cut); to indicate the proper
pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family
names (афе́ра, гу́ру, Гарси́а, Оле́ша, Фе́рми), and to express the
stressed word in the sentence (Ты́ съел печенье?/Ты съе́л
печенье?/Ты съел пече́нье? - Was it you who ate the cookie?/Did you
eat the cookie?/Was the cookie your meal?). Acute accents are
mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books intended to be used
either by children or foreign readers.
Sounds
The phonological system of Russian is inherited from
Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable
modification in the early historical period, before being largely
settled around the year 1400.
The language possesses five vowels, which are written with
different letters depending on whether or not the preceding
consonant is
palatalized. The
consonants typically come in plain vs. palatalized pairs, which are
traditionally called
hard and
soft. (The
hard consonants are often
velarized, especially before back vowels,
although in some dialects the velarization is limited to hard ).
The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy
stress and moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are
somewhat lengthened, while unstressed vowels tend to be reduced to
near-close vowels or an unclear
schwa. (See
also:
vowel reduction in
Russian.)
The Russian
syllable structure can be quite
complex with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to 4
consecutive sounds. Using a formula with V standing for the nucleus
(vowel) and C for each consonant the structure can be described as
follows:
(C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)
Clusters of four consonants are not very common, however,
especially within a morpheme.
Consonants
Russian is notable for its distinction based on
palatalization of most of the consonants.
While do have palatalized
allophones ,
only might be considered a phoneme, though it is marginal and
generally not considered distinctive (the only native
minimal pair which argues for to be a separate
phoneme is "это ткёт"/"этот кот"). Palatalization means that the
center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of
the consonant. In the case of , the tongue is raised enough to
produce slight frication (affricate sounds). These sounds: are
dental, that is pronounced with the
tip of the tongue against the teeth rather than against the
alveolar ridge.
Grammar
Russian has preserved an
Indo-European synthetic-
inflectional structure, although considerable
leveling has taken place.
Russian grammar encompasses
- a highly synthetic
morphology
- a syntax that, for the literary language, is
the conscious fusion of three elements:
The spoken language has been influenced by the literary one, but
continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show
various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are
archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the
literary language.
Vocabulary
See
History of the
Russian language for an account of the successive foreign
influences on the Russian language.
The total number of words in Russian is difficult to ascertain
because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold
compounds, diminutives, etc. (see
Word Formation under
Russian grammar). The number of listed words
or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the
last two centuries, and the total vocabulary of
Alexander Pushkin (who is credited with
greatly augmenting and codifying literary Russian), are as
follows:
| Work |
Year |
Words |
Notes |
| Academic dictionary, I Ed. |
1789–1794 |
43,257 |
Russian and Church Slavonic with some Old Russian
vocabulary |
| Academic dictionary, II Ed |
1806–1822 |
51,388 |
Russian and Church Slavonic with some Old Russian
vocabulary |
| Pushkin opus |
1810–1837 |
21,197 |
- |
| Academic dictionary, III Ed. |
1847 |
114,749 |
Russian and Church Slavonic with Old Russian vocabulary |
| Dahl's dictionary |
1880–1882 |
195,844 |
44,000 entries lexically grouped; attempt to catalogue the full
vernacular language, includes some properly Ukrainian and
Belarusian words |
| Ushakov's dictionary |
1934–1940 |
85,289 |
Current language with some archaisms |
| Academic
dictionary |
1950–1965 |
120,480 |
full dictionary of the "Modern language" |
| Ozhegov's dictionary |
1950s–1960s |
61,458 |
More or less then-current language |
| Lopatin's dictionary |
2000 |
163,293 |
Orthographic, current language |
As a historical aside,
Dahl
was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, still insisting
that the proper spelling of the adjective русский, which was at
that time applied uniformly to all the Orthodox Eastern Slavic
subjects of the Empire, as well as to its one official language, be
spelled <руский> with one <с>, in accordance with
ancient tradition and what he termed the "spirit of the
language".</с></руский> <руский><с>He was
contradicted by the philologist
Grot, who distinctly heard the
<с> lengthened or
doubled.</с></с></руский>
Proverbs and sayings
The Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs
(пословица ) and sayings (поговоркa ). These were already tabulated
by the seventeenth century, and collected and studied in the
nineteenth and twentieth, with the folk-tales being an especially
fertile source.
History and examples
The history of Russian language may be divided into the following
periods.
Judging
by the historical records, by approximately 1000 AD the predominant
ethnic group over much of modern European Russia, Ukraine and Belarus was the
Eastern branch of the Slavs, speaking
a closely related group of dialects. The political
unification of this region into
Kievan
Rus' in about 880, from which modern Russia, Ukraine and
Belarus trace their origins, established
Old East Slavic as a literary and commercial
language. It was soon followed by the adoption of
Christianity in 988 and the introduction of the
South Slavic
Old Church Slavonic
as the liturgical and official language. Borrowings and
calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the
Old East Slavic and spoken dialects
at this time, which in their turn modified the Old Church Slavonic
as well.
Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan
Rus' in approximately 1100. On the territories of modern Belarus
and Ukraine emerged
Ruthenian and
in modern Russia
medieval Russian. They
definitely became distinct since the 13th century, i.e following
the division of that land between the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Poland
and Hungary in the west and independent Novgorod and Pskov feudal
republics plus numerous small duchies (which came to be vassals of
the Tatars) in the east.
The official language in Moscow and Novgorod, and later, in the
growing Muscovy, was
Church Slavonic
which evolved from Old Church Slavonic and remained
the literary language for centuries, until the
Petrine age, when its
usage shrank drastically to biblical and liturgical texts. Russian
developed under a strong influence of the Church Slavonic until the
close of the seventeenth century; the influence reversed
afterwards, leading to corruption of liturgical texts.
The political reforms of
Peter the
Great (Пётр Вели́кий,
Pyótr Velíkiy) were accompanied
by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of
secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary
were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. By 1800, a
significant portion of the gentry spoke
French, less often
German, on an everyday basis. Many Russian
novels of the 19th century, e.g.
Lev
Tolstoy's (Лев Толсто́й)
War and
Peace, contain entire paragraphs and even pages in French
with no translation given, with an assumption that educated readers
won't need one.
The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the
time of
Aleksandr Pushkin
(Алекса́ндр Пу́шкин) in the first third of the nineteenth century.
Pushkin revolutionized Russian literature by rejecting archaic
grammar and vocabulary (so called "высо́кий штиль" — "high style")
in favor of grammar and vocabulary found in the spoken language of
the time. Even modern readers of younger age may only experience
slight difficulties understanding some words in Pushkin’s texts,
since only few words used by Pushkin became archaic or changed
meaning. On the other hand, many expressions used by Russian
writers of the early 19th century, in particular Pushkin,
Mikhail Lermontov (Михаи́л Ле́рмонтов),
Nikolai Gogol (Никола́й Го́голь),
Alexandr Griboyedov (Алекса́ндр
Грибое́дов), became proverbs or sayings which can be frequently
found even in the modern Russian colloquial speech.
Зи́мний ве́чер [Zímnij vécher]
Бу́ря мгло́ю не́бо кро́ет, [Búrya mglóyu nébo króyet]
Ви́хри сне́жные крутя́; [Víkhri snézhnyye krutyá]
То, как зверь, она́ заво́ет, [To kak zver' oná zavójet]
То запла́чет, как дитя́, [To zapláchet, kak dityá]
То по кро́вле обветша́лой [To po króvlye obvetsháloy]
Вдруг соло́мой зашуми́т, [Vdrug solómoy zashumít]
То, как пу́тник запозда́лый, [To kak pútnik zapozdályy]
К нам в око́шко застучи́т. [K nam v okóshko zastuchít]
The political upheavals of the early twentieth century and the
wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its
modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Political
circumstances and Soviet accomplishments in military, scientific
and technological matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a
worldwide prestige, especially during the middle third of the
twentieth century.
See also
Language description
Related languages
Other
References
- Moscow State University, Russian
Language Centre - Official website
- Russian Language Enjoying a Boost in Post-Soviet
States Gallup Retrieved on 08-03-2009
- 2006/2007 figures Как соблюдается в Украине языковая Хартия?
- Мнения и взгляды населения Украины в мае 2009
FOM-Ukraine
Retrieved on 08-03-2009
- The language situation in Ukraine Retrieved on
08-03-2009
- After Georgia, Crimea? Some fear Russia's goals,
Kyiv Post (September
29, 2008)
- Ukraine-Russia tensions rise in Crimea,
Los
Angeles Times (September 28, 2008)
The following serve as references for both this article and the
related articles listed below that describe the Russian
language:
In English
In Russian
- Востриков О.В., Финно-угорский субстрат в русском языке:
Учебное пособие по спецкурсу.- Свердловск, 1990. – 99c. – В
надзаг.: Уральский гос. ун-т им. А. М. Горького.
- Жуковская Л.П., отв. ред. Древнерусский литературный язык и его
отношение к старославянскому. М., «Наука», 1987.
- Иванов В.В. Историческая грамматика русского языка. М.,
«Просвещение», 1990.
- Михельсон Т.Н. Рассказы русских летописей XV–XVII веков. М.,
1978.?
- Новиков Л.А. Современный русский язык: для высшей школы.-
Москва: Лань, 2003.
- Филин Ф. П., О словарном составе языка Великорусского народа;
Вопросы языкознания. - М., 1982, № 5. - С. 18–28
- Цыганенко Г.П. Этимологический словарь русского языка, Киев,
1970.
- Шанский Н.М., Иванов В.В., Шанская Т.В. Краткий этимологический
словарь русского языка. М. 1961.
- Шицгал А., Русский гражданский шрифт, М., «Исскуство», 1958,
2-e изд. 1983.
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