“There is no duty to appear archaic”
Party spokesman Alexander Dupin told socialbites.ca that the bill does not propose to severely limit anglicisms, but is created so that citizens understand the meaning of information messages.
“The purpose of this bill is not to force everyone to speak Old Russian. The thing is that under terms that most citizens do not understand, some processes that are negative for them are often hidden. Where 70% of the news consisted of foreign terms describing ongoing economic processes and previously used only in some scientific literature, they are now used everywhere. “Most people don’t understand what’s underneath this kind of news,” he said.
The bill proposes replacing “inflation” with “rising prices” and “stagflation” with “stagnation”. Dupin added that replacing foreign words should only affect street signs, advertisements and government media.
“We do not have a duty to look like archaeologists who want to translate everyone into an ancient language. In the Russian language, as in any other, there is a large number of well-established, familiar borrowings – we do not recommend dealing with all of them. We are talking about foreign terms in state media, economic news, that should not be more than 5%. If people do not hear constant borrowing, they themselves will begin to speak more traditional Russian. We do not have a duty to limit the use of foreign words among citizens,” the spokesperson said.
In the last 25 years, the bill has been presented to the State Duma seven times, but never passed due to the consideration procedure.
“It always happened according to the same pattern: as with other bills, only when it is shelved and lay there. A bill, which, as a rule, the majority of the State Duma has no great desire to pass, thus gradually blurs,” he added.
The LDPR representative noted that the final edits to the document were made personally shortly before the death of party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
“In the last edition, it was about making technical changes – for example, “consumers” – “consumers”, this term was not used very often before. Examples are given of some words that complicate the language,” said Dupin.
“imitation and posture”
Meanwhile, the Crimean authorities have already begun to fight against Anglicism. To do this, they created a dictionary to replace foreign words borrowed from English with Russian variants.
“True Russian culture has always fought for its originality, it had to come under enormous pressure and the domination of imported consumer culture, but it survived, now it’s time to push it. It’s time, it’s time to dig up westernism forever [его] forget it,” the head of the Crimean State Council Vladimir Konstantinov told reporters.
The dictionary “Speak Russian” contains the following words: diving, talk show, commercials, coffee breaks, glamor, luxury and others. According to Konstantinov, there will be about 300 words in total.
“The use of English terms in our daily life can be called nothing more than pretending or posing. For example, “moderator”. This is the leader – everything is clear, he conducts a dialogue. But we can’t do without a “moderator”. We remain silent about the “okanye” established at the genetic level. I don’t mean your accent, but the official said, “Okay.”
It is planned to distribute the dictionary to the participants of the international festival of Slavic culture “The Great Russian Word”, the opening of which took place on June 6.
“The Crimean authorities are far from innovative in their desire to publish such a dictionary. We have published such a dictionary several times, in which there are analogues of foreign terms. To simply tell people what they mean, ”the LDPR representative Dyupin told socialbites.ca.
“Any improvisation can lead to misunderstandings”
Mikhail Delyagin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Doctor of Economics, in an interview with socialbites.ca, described the attempt to “import substitution” of Anglicisms as interesting, but unrealizable. According to him, many terms cannot be changed.
“The idea is good, but you need to figure out how to do it. We have a lot of foreign words from other languages that we perceive as our own. It is clear why the bill was rejected so many times – it is impossible to formalize it. For example, the word “budget” in economic terminology – what replaces it? Also , inflation is really not an increase in prices, but a depreciation. It can happen both through rising prices and the emergence of shortages of goods, “he stressed in a conversation with socialbites.ca.
If we replace the term “inflation” with “the depreciation of the ruble”, the citizens will misinterpret, according to the deputy. People will immediately think that it is not about goods, but about other currencies.
Nikita Maslennikov, economist and head of the Finance and Economics department of the Institute for Contemporary Development, agrees with him. The expert explained that interpretation of some terms by non-experts may lead to misunderstandings.
“Economic terms have been translated for a long time – there are special dictionaries for this. The feasibility of such an initiative is completely incomprehensible. The Russian economy in the world receives a little less than 3%. The rest of the world uses English terminology and financial language. If you do not speak this language, then you are simply not an expert. “Some terms have a clear interpretation and any improvisation can lead to misunderstandings,” he said.
According to Maslennikov, he should not find an alternative to complex terms, but educate the population. “Then it is necessary to translate both physical and chemical terms. But instead of terminology, we sometimes lose its meaning and distort the original meaning,” he added.
The word “bread” is also a borrowing”
Igor Isaev, a candidate of philological sciences, director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State Humanitarian University, says that the vocabulary of the Russian language reflects socio-political processes. In this regard, there are many borrowings in modern Russian.
“There is no greater foolishness than to try to remove or replace Anglicisms. Language is a system of interactive factors; What matters is not human logic or sympathy for this or that word, but a communication system. Therefore, as a result of the influence of socio-political life on language, something can be added or removed from language only evolutionarily, ”explained the linguist.
Isaev noted that the percentage or number of words borrowed in the Russian language has not yet been determined by science. At the same time, he reminded that there is a dictionary of foreign words, in which there are only 15-20 thousand words. Russian words come to the fore in the 14th-15th centuries, when the national language stood out as an independent language along with Belarusian and Ukrainian. Words that have existed for centuries.
“The struggle against Anglicisms is linked to the fear that there may be few native words. At the same time, there are words from which nothing can be done, for example, “computer”. It can be replaced by an electronic computer, but here, too, almost all words are not of Russian origin. The word “bread” is also a borrowing,” he explained.
Also, he will not find the economic terms that parliamentarians talk about. According to the linguist, it is impossible to change them so that the meaning of the word fully reflects its meaning.
Translating the words “stagflation” and “inflation” into Russian is to ensure that all experts in the economy are illiterate,” Isaev said.