In mid-February, State Duma deputies adopted amendments to the law “On the state language of the Russian Federation” in the second and third readings. The explanatory note to the bill states: “The federal draft law assumes that it is unacceptable to use foreign words, except for those that do not have widely used analogues in Russian, the list of which is included in normative dictionaries.” The lawmakers elected in 2021 have served almost half of their five-year term and have addressed the nuanced and complex issues of philology, linguistics and the use of foreign words in official documents.
The complexity of the science of philology became clear to me when my daughter, who was then in the 5th grade, began to introduce Russian binaries, the meaning of which I could not understand. My naive opinion boiled down to the fact that if there were no grammatical errors and the punctuation was placed correctly, then there was nothing more to beg for. He asked the teacher for an explanation. The dialogue was:
– Your daughter does not know the difficulties of the Russian language and does not know how to emphasize them correctly!
– And what difficulties do we have in language and how many of them?
– We have 36 types of challenges and each has its own unique bottom line. Students should hold a pen in their right hand and write, while holding a pencil in their left hand, they should immediately highlight the difficulties and not confuse the naming.
– No difficulties in our simple and beautiful language! It does not have 25 cases like Hungarian and much fewer words than Arabic. There aren’t 6,000 characters you need to learn in high school in China. Why do we need to invent complexity?
So we stayed with our opinions. My daughter passed the Russian language from the outside, thankfully there was such an opportunity then, and they forgot about the “difficulties”.
The deputies addressed the issue, which worried even Pushkin. I remember in “Eugene Onegin” he complained: “But trousers, coat, vest / All these words are not in Russian; / But I see, I’m sorry, / That’s all for my poor style / I could have dazzled more / With foreign words, / Although I looked at it in the old days / In the Academic Dictionary.
But it was easier for Pushkin than our legislators and officials – he had the Academic Dictionary in his hands. This is not the case with us: “The norms of the modern Russian literary language are understood as rules for the use of language tools fixed in normative dictionaries, reference books and grammars. The procedure for the creation and approval of a list of such dictionaries, reference books and grammars, the requirements for the compilation and frequency of publication of normative dictionaries stipulated in this section are approved by the Government of the Russian Federation on the basis of proposals. From the Russian Language Government Commission.
It’s a great job for linguists and legislators have something to do.
In ancient times, my supervisor advised me: “As soon as the speaker tells me that there are 150 definitions for “knowledge” and 90 for “consciousness,” relax: he will not say anything logical. If people decide to use dictionaries or terminology, understand – they are unemployed. I followed this advice and never made a mistake. I didn’t.
Of course, the deputies are right: not only is it a matter of language and foreign words, but in the cultural crisis of our civilization – the Russian world. The invasion of “sailors” (sellers), “managers” (clerks) and other junk is just one manifestation of this.
Indeed, in the 1960s our language was the third most spoken language in the world. Now the picture is different.
Let’s take a look at the 10 most spoken languages in the world in 2019 by the number of people who consider it a first language, noting the number of people speaking them. Let’s go from bottom to top: 10. Punjabi (lahnda) (119 million); 9. Japanese (128 million); 8. Russian (154 million); 7. Portuguese (221 million); 6. Bengali (228 million); 5. Arabic (319 million); 4. Hindi (341 million); 3. English (379 million); 2. Spanish (460 million); 1. Chinese (1300 million).
More about the Russian language – at the height of the power of the USSR, the number of Russian speakers was about 350 million, and in 2004 it fell to 278 million, the gap of 70 million speaks for itself. According to the Ministry of Education and Science, the number of foreigners learning Russian has halved since the collapse of the USSR. What’s the problem?
There is no prophet in his own country. Therefore, we can refer to the works of the French linguist Claude Azhezh. The view that “there are just more people in these countries” is naive. According to Azhezha, there are three main factors.
What is the future of people who speak this language? Is it worth guiding your children?
What efforts are being made to spread the culture of this language?
What technologies are created and developed by people who speak this language?
Based on this approach, let’s look at our facts. Communism was built in the USSR, with which many people associate the future of humanity. Hence the attitude towards language: “Yes, if I were a Negro of advanced age, and then without despair and laziness I would have learned Russian only because Lenin spoke to them,” wrote VV Mayakovsky. What is Russia building now? How does he see his future? Unanswered. Of course, there are smart people who think about the future. But this is not enough. We need a synthesis of a long-term scientific prediction and the desired future – exactly what was previously called ideology. It is he who must be understood and accepted by the public and the ruling elite, and then “represented to the city and to the world.”
With the spread of our culture, things seem to be getting clearer. The words “We lost the information war” became the refrain of many of our officials. From where? Why does our television repeat the backs of Western television companies? Endless conversations (possibly “chatter” in Russian) replaced conversations in the kitchen. Huge towers collapsed before my eyes, where for decades local radio stations had been telling the world about our view of reality. A new era has come – unlike other countries, we do not have computer games about our heroes. And for schoolchildren, the question of who our heroes are (other than, of course, class teachers) often causes great difficulties. Matryoshkas, buckets and trousers have become the curse of our Rossotrudnichestvo. The Chinese and representatives of other countries work in a completely different way.
The launch of Yuri Gagarin into space, our nuclear power plants and icebreakers left no doubt about the superiority of domestic technologies. Now things are a little different. Where are our computers, our cell phones, our many modern medicines, our robots, our satellite constellation, our electronics industry, finally?
It seems that this is incomprehensible not only to us, but also to the millions of people abroad who want and can support us. The level of education is such that the “Urmatseva tax” is appropriate – 10% of the broadcast at the best time on television is given to educational and popular science programs. As they say in Russia – for work and reward.
But in general, the deputies are wonderful: they voted for the fact that “the use of words and expressions that do not comply with the norms of the modern Russian literary language (including obscene language) is not allowed.” Hearing swearing from the stage or reading about it in books is disgusting. Well, if you can do without it. Yes, and our 1st grade teacher told us that swearing is not okay. But the teacher is one thing, the deputies and senators are different. other level.
Philological sciences are confusing. After all, after Pushkin, there were no good Russian analogues for “pants”, “tail” and “vest” for almost 200 years. Maybe lawmakers should do something simpler – technology, education, science, culture, economy?
Probably and with the language things will get better.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.