VI Dal About the living Great Russian language. The collapse of the Old Russian language and the emergence of the language of the Great Russian people

All the vocabulary of the modern Russian language has developed as a result of centuries-old linguistic development throughout the history of the Russian people. Actually Great Russian history begins with the allocation of Great Russians as a special Eastern European ethnic group. The stimulus for the ethnic isolation and consolidation of the Great Russians, the development of their national self-consciousness was the development and arrangement of that place of development, which began to be called Holy Russia. This movement began as early as the ancient Kievan Rus, when the descendants of the primary East Slavic tribes, mainly Vyatichi, Krivichi and Novgorod Slovenes, moved to the interfluve of the Oka and Volga, beyond the Volga, absorbing in their migration the local Chud (Finnish) and partly Turkic population. Even in the pre-Mongolian period, at the beginning of the decline of Kievan Rus, the specific principalities of the Volga-Oka interfluve intensified and began to unite. From the 13th century the actual capital of the emerging nation is Vladimir-on-Klyazma, which since the XIV century. began to replace Moscow. From the Moscow period, the Great Russian history proper begins, different from the Belarusian, Ukrainian, Western and South Slavic ones (compare the nicknames of the Great Russians among other peoples: Muscovites, Muscovites).

The single literary language for all of Russia in the Kievan period of its history was Old Russian version of the Church Slavonic language, which allowed in some cases, styles and genres the use of specific East Slavic (Old Russian) forms. Until the XIV century. Church Slavonic words and forms were not opposed to native Russian ones as forms and words of another language. They were perceived as higher, bookish norms of the same language, although already from the 12th century. living Slavic speech was not unified, there were no common Slavic language processes.

After church schism 1054 - the final departure of Catholicism from Orthodoxy - the strengthening of strife in Russia, after the death of Yaroslav the Wise in the same unfortunate year, the pan-Slavic ethnic self-consciousness dried up. In that fateful year, a Turkic (Kypchak) sexual horde appeared in the Azov steppes, apparently named after the suit of horses. In the XII century. The Polovtsy established dominance in the steppe Black Sea region and the "Road from the Varangians to the Greeks", which ensured the unity of Kievan Rus, began to lose its significance. Then the movement to the northeast began to spread, leading to the separation and strengthening of the Great, i.e. "far", "new" Russia, which differed from the ancient, primordial, near "Little Russia". Similar differences can be seen in the opposition of southern Little and northern Greater Poland, in ancient times in the name of distant ancient Greek colonies in Italy: Great Greece, and even earlier in the name of the near and original Lesser Phrygia near the Sea of ​​​​Marmara - Propontis, and the new and distant Great Phrygia in the depths of Asia Minor - Anatolia. After the ruin of Kyiv by Andrei Bogolyubsky (1169), the Grand Duke (of All Russia) throne was transferred to Suzdal and installed in a new city on the Klyazma - Vladimir.

Phonetic and morphological system of the Great Russian language.

By the beginning of the separation of the Great Russian ethnos, Old Russian dialects had a vowel system that was different from the vocalism of modern Russian and from the vocalism of the Old Slavonic language.
and/s
ie b/b ô
e o
a
The vowel ie (denoted by the letter "yat"), as shown by the data of some modern Great Russian and Ukrainian dialects, was pronounced in Russia as an expanding diphthongic sound. smooth sliding from and to a closed, narrow e within one syllable. A similar sliding from y to closed o was observed in a special vowel, in some later monuments (in manuscripts of the 16th century from northern monasteries) sometimes orthographically differing from the usual o by the superscript diacritical mark “camora”.

Initially, there were still, as in all other Old Slavic dialects, nasal (nasalized) vowels, denoted in the Old Slavonic letter by the letters yus big and yus small: o and e nasal. Traces of such vowels, pronounced with the palatine curtain down and the nasal resonator open, are reflected in ancient Russian borrowings in Finno-Ugric languages: Est. sund court; fin. suntio- church minister, judge ; kuontalo - tow, Rus. tow; est. und - fishing rod '; fin. kantele - rus. harp; Lithuanian kaňklès - zither, harp, apparently borrowed from Estonian-Finnish, where the voiceless k-, as usual, replaced the voiced Slavic g; Mordovian pondo, pond, also Lithuanian. pundas from pud. - Russian pud: originally from lat. pondus (weight), borrowed by the Slavs. From the Eastern Slavs, this word came to the Lithuanians and the Volga Finns.

But even before the appearance of Old Russian writing, by the beginning of the 11th century, in East Slavic dialects, there was a transition of nasal o and e to u and a with the previous softening of the consonant. Since a vowel a was formed in place of the e nasal with the previous softening, then, for example, the words myati, row, which differed from mati, rad vowels, changed into miati, riad, which began to differ from mati, rad consonants (phonemic oppositions appeared m: m`, p: p`), after the contraction of nasal vowels in the Old Russian (East Slavic) dialects of the common Slavic parent language, an additional phonemic opposition of hard (velarized) and soft (palatalized) rows of labial and dental consonants was formed: p, b, c, m, t, d, s, s, n, l, p: p`, b`, c`, m`, t`, d`, s`, s`, n`, l`, p`. The new n`, l`, r` phonetically did not differ from the old soft (mediopalatal) inherited from the common Slavic parent language.

In the dialects of the Eastern Slavic tribes of Kievan Rus, the denasalization of the nasals and the fall of the reduced ones caused a restructuring of the entire phonemic system. Initially, couples garden (dat. p. unit h.) / sit down, rad / row, dn (gen. p. pl. from bottom - modern Russian bottom) / Don (Denmark) differed only in vowels. But after the nasal front (soft) vowel e changed into a and ъ, b fell out, the previously positionally conditioned softening (palatalization) of the preceding consonants (d`, t` and others) became a relevant (significant) differential feature: in in different local rows (labial, dental, whistling), consonants additionally began to be opposed by hardness / softness, additional local rows of palatalized (soft) consonants appeared (in the Old Slavonic language, only individual consonants were opposed by hardness / softness: z / z ', s / s ' , l/l', n/n', r/r'). This led to a restructuring of the vocal phonemic system: ь (еръ) / ъ (ерь), also u/s, were in a state of additional distribution, they became allophones (combinatorially conditioned variations) of the single phonemes u /s and ь / ъ.

This, in turn, led to changes in the morphological stage. With phonemic opposition and / s, b / b, the forms of rabi, stoli, susiedi (im. p. pl.): slaves, tables, susiedi (vin. p. pl.) differed in vowel inflections - and -s; after the combination of the phoneme and / s, they began to differ in a phonologically unconditioned, morphological alternation of the root consonant phonemes b / b ', l / l`, d / d 'with formal homonymy of the inflections themselves.

In modern Russian, in the example neighbor / neighbors, grammatical alternation: a solid foundation singular contrasted with the soft stem of the plural. Non-phonetic alternations could be eliminated by changes by analogy. In the plural, the difference (opposition) between the nominative and accusative cases was only for masculine words (cf. homonymy im. and wine. p. pl. wives, bones), but already in early ancient Russian monuments there was a tendency to replace the nominative plural stoli tables in the accusative plural tables. This analogy is internal, since the change in one form of the nominative case occurs as a result of association with another form - the accusative case of the same word, formal because the formal indicators change - inflections, and not the stem.

The vowel ь / ъ was relaxed (sluggish, reduced) and short, in all Slavic dialects it tended to disappear in the initial pre-stressed syllable and at the end of the word, as well as in the middle syllables before the syllable containing any other, not reduced vowel. For the first time, this loss of the reduced ones is reflected in the earliest (end of the 10th century) South Slavic (Old Bulgarian) written monuments, but in Russia this common Slavic process was finally completed only by the middle of the 13th century. After that, the own history of the Great Russian language begins, like all other Slavic languages..

After the final reduced vowels ъ and ь fell away, the voiced consonants that ended up at the end of the word began to become deafened, and not only before the pause, but also before the enclitics: whether it was cold, whether it was cold, they began to be opposed by deafness to whole words, they were frozen, chilled, which was not in the Ukrainian language that was beginning to take shape. The final consonants began to be directly contrasted in terms of hardness / softness, and this opposition also covered the labial consonants: stupid / deep, blood / blood(such opposition of final labials is absent in other Slavic languages).

The spread of Orthodoxy and the unification of Russian principalities

In the XIV century. in Byzantium, the religious and ideological movement hesychasm (from the Greek - hesychia - "peace, silence, silence") was born, aimed at preserving and protecting native Orthodox traditions from the influence of Uniatism - a movement in the Balkans and southwestern Russia, striving to establish hegemony over Orthodox churches of the Roman Catholic Church. Outwardly, hesychasm was expressed in a vow of silence. The center of the hesychasts-silencers was the holy Mount Athos on the Halkidiki peninsula in northern Greece.

Athos monasteries provided big influence on monastic communities and in Slavic countries, South Slavic monasteries and schools in Tarnovo (Bulgaria) and Resava (southeastern Serbia) maintained a close relationship with Athos, former centers Church Slavonic literature and which, in turn, had a beneficial effect on the development of literacy in Russia. The hesychast movement found a direct response in the monasteries of northeastern Russia, where the great religious figure of the XIV century. was the holy ascetic Sergius of Radonezh, the founder of the Trinity Lavra in the northeast of Moscow (died in 1392). At this time, the idea of ​​"Holy Russia" was taking shape, the monasteries being built organized hospitals, schools and libraries, an independent Great Russian culture was being created.

Remaining a simple abbot, Sergius had a huge influence on the highest church hierarchs (metropolitan and bishops) and specific princes. The actual political head of the rallying Central Great Russian principalities and the spiritual head of all Russia was Metropolitan Alexy (d. 1378), godson of Ivan Kalita and educator of his grandson Dmitry Ivanovich (Donskoy). The rising Great Russia became a huge theocratic union of five large feudal principalities with small specific principalities grouped around them: Tver in the west, Novgorod in the northwest and north, Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod in the east and northeast, Ryazan in the southeast and south, Moscow in the center . Ideologically, they were united by the foundations and traditions of fundamental canonical Orthodoxy, which opposed in the southeast Islam, which had won in the Golden Horde (the coup of Khan Uzbek in 1312), in the southwest, Uniatism, supported by the Neo-Byzantine dynasty of the Palaiologos, whose spread to southwestern Russia was facilitated by the conquerors its great Lithuanian princes - the pagan Gedemin and his son Olgerd, who only formally converted to Orthodoxy, in the west - to Catholicism, the promotion of which from Poland to semi-pagan Lithuania and the displacement of still weak Orthodoxy from there was facilitated by all of Western Europe, led by Rome. Spiritual support for the Russian Renaissance was provided by the elders of Athos, the learned scribes Resov and Tyrnov, with whom the Russian Metropolis of Vladimir and Moscow had constant contacts.

The Monk Abbot Sergius and Saint Alexy called on all bishops and secular princes to unite in the defense of traditional Orthodoxy in Russia, settled internecine disputes, directed their activities towards ideocratic unity and joint political opposition to two formidable rivals: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was rapidly expanding its borders up the Western Dvina, the Neman and the western Bug, down the Dnieper, the southern Bug and the Dniester - to the Black Sea and the unpredictable Golden Horde, excited by its own strife and internal "jamming".

At the same time, Russia was steadily advancing to the northeast. The rural population of the Rostov-Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod lands, mainly consisting of the Chud tribe Meri, who had long adopted Orthodoxy, peacefully merged with the newcomer Great Russian population, which continued to migrate to the Trans-Volga forests to the basin of the Northern Dvina, to the Sukhona and to Vyatka. By this time, the selfless missionary and educational activities of the Bishop of the Perm land Stefan Khrapa (died in 1396) - one of the most educated people the Christian world. His spiritual feats - the establishment of Orthodoxy among the Perm (Zyryansk) Chud, the creation of the Permian (Komi-Zyryansk) writing, should be put on a par with the great achievements of the first European humanists. Unlike Western Europe, the spread of Christianity among the small peoples of Russia was not accompanied by their linguistic and ethnic assimilation, in the traditions of Orthodoxy there was the creation of written and literary languages ​​for new Christian ethnic groups.

Battle of Kulikovo and the political rise of Moscow. The formation of Moscow vernacular.

The Golden Horde "great zamyatnya" led to a split in the mighty khanate. On the Don, in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and in the Crimean steppes, power was usurped by Temnik Mamai, who entered into an alliance with the Genoese colony Kafa (on the site of modern Feodosia in the Crimea) and the Grand Duke of Lithuania (supremus dux Lituanus) Jagello, the son of the half-pagan half-uniate Olgerd, who began to lean towards Catholicism . Mamai demanded the transfer of the tribute collected in Moscow, the "exit", traditionally paid by Russia to the Genghisides - the direct descendants of Batu. Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich refused to recognize Khan Mamai as the legitimate "king" of the Golden Horde and, with the blessing of Sergius of Radonezh, came out with a united army against the Tatars. In the decisive great battle on the Kulikovo field on September 8, 1380, the Russians defeated the hordes of the usurper, at the same time the regiments of the Ryazan prince Oleg prevented the Lithuanian army of Jagello from coming to the aid of Mamai.

After 1380, the rapid political rise of Moscow began as the capital of independent Great Russia, which was transformed from a theocracy headed by a metropolitan, who stood above the secular princes, into a single autocratic monarchy. Direct succession to the Grand Duke's throne was legalized by a direct descendant in the male line of Dmitry Donskoy, who died in 1389. In Western Europe, the title of Great Moscow Sovereign was equated with magnus dux - Archduke, Elector.

Two fatal events took place at this time in neighboring Eastern European lands. In 1386, an agreement was concluded in the Kreva Castle on the union of Poland and Lithuania, according to which Prince Jagiello, who married the Polish Queen Jadwiga, began to be called King Vladislav II and, having converted to Catholicism, planted it in all Lithuanian and his Western Russian possessions, Orthodoxy was expelled from the Baltic regions. In 1389, the united army of Orthodox Serbian princes was defeated by the Turks in the Kosovo field, a powerful Islamic power, the Ottoman Sultanate, settled in the southeast of Europe. Byzantium lost its political weight, and Muscovite Rus remained the sole support of Orthodoxy. Orthodox Tatars, who refused to accept Mohammedanism, which had become obligatory for the entire Horde, passed to the service of the Moscow sovereign.

From the end of the XIV-beginning of the XV century. the flourishing of the original early Great Russian culture begins: the architectural masterpieces of Novgorod and Pskov are erected, Moscow architecture is born - monuments in Moscow itself, in Kolomna, Zvenigorod, etc. - and applied art. These decades include the work of the great painters Theophan the Greek (c. 1340 - after 1405) and Andrei Rublev (c. 1360-1430). From Mount Athos and from the Balkan-Slavic monasteries came numerous theological and church-poetic literature, secular works in Greek and well-edited Church Slavonic, the norms of which began to be more clearly opposed to colloquial Great Russian words and forms. Living common folk formations were not allowed into written speech, the former Slavic-Russian diglossia was rebuilt into functional bilingualism. Church Slavonicisms (new book words borrowed or created according to Church Slavonic canons) were no longer perceived as simple phonetic variants of commonly used East Slavic words. Wed not only a stylistic, but also a semantic difference that has been firmly established in the Russian language between Church Slavonicisms and native Great Russian words, which is preserved in modern Russian: country - side, city - city, ignorant - ignorant, sky - sky, power - volost, case - case.

By the end of the XIV-beginning of the XV century. include works of medieval Great Russian literature: "Zadonshchina. A word about the Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich and his brother Prince Vladimir Andreevich, how they defeated the adversary of their Tsar Mamai", "The Tale of Mamaev massacre"The translated "Alexandria" is a variant of stories popular throughout Europe about the exploits of Alexander the Great and others. At the same time, the norms of command and business (clerical) written speech begin to take shape, in which some forms from Rostov-Suzdal, later Moscow vernacular are allowed. In literature and in business texts, characteristic Great Russian forms appeared, drva, tear, naturally developing into firewood, tear, young, ley from -y, -y, neoplasms of the leg, hand, help (vm. noze, rutse, help, plural of the type of coast, imperative mood on –ite: carry instead of carry); lexical features: peasant, i.e. “Christian farmer”, village (related in origin to the lit. dirva - “field”, “arable land” (but not with “tree”), arable land, shop (trading), money (Tatar borrowing).

Unification of northern Russian principalities around Moscow. End of the Tatar yoke.

By the first half - the middle of the XV century. all Vladimir-Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod lands on the Oka, Klyazma and Volga were included in the direct Moscow possessions, Kostroma lands beyond the Volga to Vetluga and Sukhona, Veliky Ustyug departed from Novgorod to Moscow at the confluence of the Sukhona and the South into the Northern Dvina, and the path to the Stone Belt - the Urals - was opened. Pskov, Novgorod, Tver and Ryazan recognized the Grand Duke of Moscow as sovereign of all Russia, but defended their autonomy and special privileges. In 1438 - 1439, at the Ferrara-Florence Cathedral, the union was finally formalized, the Greek Catholic Church was created, which retained the traditional forms of Orthodox ritual, Greek and Church Slavonic in worship, but accepted all the basic tenets of Catholicism and recognized the Pope as the highest earthly authority. Uniatism was completely rejected by the Moscow Metropolis, it was not accepted by the majority of Greek and South Slavic bishops and metropolitanates. In 1441, the local council of Great Russia for the first time independently named the Bishop of Ryazan Jonah as metropolitan without the blessing of the Tsaregrad (Constantinople) Patriarch, thereby demonstrating the complete autocephaly of the Russian Orthodox Church. They did not want to recognize this either in Constantinople, which finally fell in 1453, or in southwestern Russia subject to Lithuania and Poland, and in 1469 the Patriarch of Constantinople appointed a special metropolitan in Kyiv, separated from Moscow. Golden Horde broke up, the Crimean and Kazan khanates separated from it, and the small khanate of Tsarevich Kasim, which stood out on the Oka, came under the patronage of the sovereign of all Russia, Ivan III, who no longer recognized any overlords over himself and refused to pay the Tatars even a symbolic “exit” (1480).

Written monuments of culture of the XIV-XV centuries. in Russia.

The traditional Orthodox chronology was conducted from the “creation of the world”, the 7th millennium was coming to an end, its incipient completion (extreme, last summer) should have coincided with 1492 AD. (traditionally it is believed that the Son of Man appeared to the world in 5508 from Creation). Eschatological ideas and concepts (from the Greek "extreme, last") spread throughout the Christian world. The Elder of the Pskov Elizarovsky Monastery Philotheus delivered a teaching on the third, last and final, Rome. The first, great Rome, burdened with pagan heritage and sins, lost its royalty and ceded universal power to the second - Constantinople; Tsargrad was sacked by the "Latins" (crusaders in 1204) and fell from the Agarians (Muslims - named after the biblical ancestor of the Arabs Hagar, beloved of Abraham) in 1453. The ecumenical royal city-Orthodox third Rome rises, which must meet the doomsday and answer before God for all Christians. This last Rome, "and there will be no fourth" should be the Grand Duchy of Moscow, representing all of Holy Russia. The concept of the monk Philotheus, reflecting in a mystical form the formation of the Great Russian national identity, was not rejected by the official Moscow church. Later, sovereign patriotic interpretations began to be given to the ideas of the "third Rome".

By the end of the XV-beginning of the XVI centuries. basically, the formation of annalistic vaults, dating back to the Kyiv tradition, is being completed. When editing and supplementing them, the unity of Russian history and the dynastic succession of the Kievan Rurikids and the Moscow Grand Duke's house were emphasized. In the same decades, the rise of Moscow architecture began, grandiose temples and the Kremlin's chambers, a fortification ensemble were erected, in the creation of which Italian masters were involved. Western cultural influence was largely associated with the marriage of Ivan III to the Constantinopolitan princess Zoya Paleolog, who was brought up in the Uniatism, but adopted a more usual tradition in Russia. orthodox name Sophia. This dynastic marriage was perceived as the embodiment of the idea of ​​Moscow inheriting the Byzantine sovereignty. The Byzantine double-headed eagle, dating back to the symbols of the ancient Pergamon kingdom and the ancient Hittites, became the emblem of the new great state.

In the era of Ivan III (1462-1505) and Vasily III (1505-1533), the great Moscow icon painter Dionysius and his son Theodosius worked. Remarkable literary monuments were contemporary to them: "The Journey of Abbot Daniel", the famous "Journey Beyond Three Seas" by the Tver merchant Athanasius Nikitin, who passed in 1466-1472. the way to India through the Volga, the Caspian Sea, Persia, Persian Gulf, southern Arabia and the Sea of ​​Oman, Lives of the Saints. By the first half - the middle of the XVI century. the original theological Russian literature refers to: “Conversations of the Valaam Elders Sergius and German”, etc. This period in the history of the Russian literary language is usually called the second South Slavic influence: strict norms of the Church Slavonic language took shape, South Slavic in its primary origins, opposed to Great Russian, as forms of another, functionally lower language. Both languages ​​interacted in different ways in different genres, creating a complex system of several layers of bilingualism with the predominance of pure Church Slavonicisms in high genres and the admission of broad Great Russian inserts and inclusions in lower genres.

In 1478, Ivan III subjugated Novgorod along with its vast possessions on the Northern Dvina, Pechora and on both sides of the Stone-Ural, in 1478 Tver. His son Vasily III in 1502 annexed Ryazan, in 1503 - Chernigov and the ancient Seversk cities of Putivl, Novgorod-Seversky in the modern Slobozhanshchina, and in 1510 Pskov. Great Muscovite Rus has become a single state: its entire territory represents the original Great Russian residence. The lands on which the allocation and registration took place should be considered primordial. initial development ethnos and national language; domicile is the geographical area in which ethnic history- a chain of interrelated events that affect the formation and changes in the ethnic characteristics of the nation.

The Golden Horde, which had previously lost the Crimea and Kazan, collapsed completely in 1502, in its place a small Astrakhan Khanate and an independent Nogai Horde formed, wandering from the Yaik (Urals) to the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and Perekop. Their descendants Kara-Nogai and Ak-Nogai live in the steppes of northern Dagestan and Stavropol and speak a dialect close to the Kazakh and Karakalpak languages. The Kazan Khanate entered into contractual relations with the Moscow sovereign, who interfered in its internal affairs; Crimea became dependent on the Turkish Sultan.

Gathering under its wing not only the Slavs, but also all who need protection and help, who want to serve faithfully, Russia thereby revealed, perhaps, its main calling - to unite peoples in love and brotherhood. True, the predestined path was interrupted many times by tragic national upheavals. And yet, with all the troubles and catastrophes, not expressed in full force by the forces of the people, Russia constantly radiated some kind of spiritual magnetism, which, like the gravity of the planet, attracted into its orbit everything that was ready to interact with it.

In fairness, it must be admitted that the Italian Rastrelli, the Frenchman Falcone, the German Bryullov served Russia with dignity, Barclay de Tolly and Lermontov multiplied the Russian glory, who had Scottish ancestors, Karamzin - Tatar ...

Could be called whole line names of devotees of national science, culture, art, generals, whom we are proud of even today, despite their non-Russian origin.

One of them is Vladimir Ivanovich Dal. “The spirit, the soul of a person - this is where you need to look for his belonging to one or another people. How can spirit be identified? Of course, a manifestation of the spirit - a thought ... Whoever thinks in what language belongs to that people. I think in Russian,” said V.I. Dal.

Dahl's judgments are not indisputable, but the choice of the criterion of belonging to one or another people - spirit, soul, language - attracts attention. Thinking in Russian, Dahl, a Dane by origin, understood and could convey in artistic form many of the spiritual subtleties of a Russian person, which allowed him to pass for not only an expert on the Russian national character, but also to become quite famous writer of his time.

Dahl's father, Johann Christian, when he was barely 20 years old, was invited by Empress Catherine II to Russia as a court librarian. Young, but highly educated, he knew Russian "like his own." Mother spoke five languages, was musical and had the voice of a "European singer".

V.I. lived For seventy-one years and fifty-three of them - he collected and wrote down words, proverbs and sayings, songs, fairy tales - everything that the Russian people were orally rich in.

“All my life I have been looking for an opportunity to travel around Russia, get acquainted with the life of the people, revering the people as the core and root,” - this is how Vladimir Ivanovich defined the goal and meaning of his efforts. A respectful attitude towards the people, towards the “core and root”, is perhaps one of the strongest feelings that have owned Dahl all his life. Wherever fate threw him, he collected everywhere, accumulated and comprehended every trait of the character of the local people, their language and customs. His stories and stories based on local material are accurate not only in details, they are, as it were, permeated with the color and smell of the life he saw.

In the winter of 1860, at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, Dahl read the report "On the Russian Dictionary". He announced that he called his work “The Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language”, and explained that he collected the living speech of “the current Great Russian generation” into it.

Dahl insisted that in the Russian language, if desired, you can always find an equivalent replacement for any foreign word. If someone else has many meanings, then this testifies, first of all, to its serious shortcoming, the compulsion to use one form to convey different content. “I’ll tell you a secret: think, think in Russian when you write, and you won’t get into the French dictionary: you will get your own; and as long as you think, while writing, in the language of the book that you last read, until then you will lack no Russian words, and not a single one will express what you want to say. Digest what you read, turn this food into your own individuality, then only you will begin to write in Russian. Staining speech with foreign words (I'm not talking about stock, turns of speech, although this is no less important) has become a common custom with us, and many even flaunt it, honoring Russian word, until the time, some inevitable evil, some trampled rug, matting, which must be strewn with flowers of a different soil in order to decent person you could walk on it."

Dahl resisted all these trends as best he could, his speech was emphatically Russian, he was indignant at every foreign word, and expressed his rejection of any borrowing. “The reading population of Russia will soon have to leave their native language to learn, instead, five other languages: when reading home-grown, one must mentally shift all the words into Western letters in order to only get to the point: after all, this is a digital letter! But even this is not enough; finally, we are so clean that we want to banish every Russian sound from these words and preserve them entirely in the form in which they are pronounced by a non-Russian larynx. Such swagger is unbearable; Not a single language, not a single people will allow such violence over itself, except - except for a people that is under the mental or moral yoke of its own few fellow countrymen, reborn anew on foreign soil.

As soon as we begin to catch ourselves unawares that we think not in our own, but in a foreign language, then we have already paid dearly for languages: if we do not write, but only translate, we, of course, are unable to produce any original and begin send spiritually. Lagging behind from one coast and not sticking to another, we remain mezheumok. You can’t joke with language: a person’s verbal speech is a visible, tactile connection, a link between soul and body, spirit and flesh,” said V.I. Dal.

Dahl's reflections on the origins, nature and viability of the language lead him to an unambiguous conclusion: "Alive, vernacular, the spirit that has preserved in the freshness of life, which gives the language stability, strength, clarity, integrity and beauty, should serve as a source and treasury for the development of educated Russian speech ... Is it possible to renounce one's homeland and soil, from the basic principles and elements, intensifying its natural root into someone else’s, in order to distort its nature and turn it into a parasitic plant that lives on other people’s juices?

This was said more than one hundred and thirty-five years ago, but is it not applicable to our time? Isn't our language distorted beyond recognition, unnecessarily littered with "diverse seed"?

Having entered the era of the next democratic transformations, we are marching to the orchestra of new political terminology - president, parliament, consensus, presentation, alternative, referendum, briefing ... And as natives, we are happy to introduce into our everyday life, try on, like glass beads on ourselves, cheap goods "brisk colonialists" - new words, shyly avoiding their own, well-known, familiar ones.

But at the same time, we must remember: the word is a link in the dialogue of generations. It may happen that parents and children will speak different dialects, and the gaping abyss will forever separate the past and the future of our people.

The Dictionary of V.I. Dahl. According to it, as by a tuning fork, one can judge the degree of destruction of the modern Russian language, its depressing scarcity against the backdrop of the untold riches offered by the Dictionary; it gives us an idea of ​​the disappearance of many national features of the people, which inevitably brings us closer to that dangerous threshold beyond which the degeneration of the nation begins, the shallowing of spiritual life and moral degradation.

As the author of the Dictionary, Dal survived his time, survived, like Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy ... Time has no power over him. He continues to live in the memory of the descendants of grateful Russia, about which he spoke his hard-won WORD.

From the essay by Pyotr Tataurov "... And the word was Russia"

The linguistic problem has undergone the strongest mythologization in modern Ukraine. Speculating on almost a century of perversion of our philological ideas, many of the modern activists of the "pro-Rukh" and separat-nomenklatura political spectrums of Southern Russia are now spewing fiery philippics at one of the literary forms that are local in their origin.

At the suggestion of these forces, the snobbish majority of the former Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine fixed the 10th article of the Constitution of our state in a linguistically incorrect textual form.

In the world scientific philological environment, fairly stable criteria for determining dialect varieties within the same language, as well as purely interlingual differences, have been worked out. The first of these philological phenomena are those whose comparative linguistic "pedigree" is less than a thousand years old. That is, when the single language-base (on the eve of its branching into dialects) of the dialects under study is no more than ten centuries old. If the beginning of such linguistic differentiation is from 1000 to 2000 years old, then much in the characterization of this philological phenomenon depends on certain ethnological, state, and purely local linguistic traditions.

In the time of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Herodotus (middle of the 5th century BC), all ancient Greek dialects were called dialects 1. This concept then characterized the different level of relationship between the Hellenic dialects. Dialects were called, for example, close to each other Ionian "Homeric"-Asia Minor and Attic dialects. Modern linguists understand this! The linguistic commonality of Ionian dialects among themselves is approximately a little older than the era of the Trojan War and falls somewhere in the middle. II millennium BC e. Thus, the affinity of the literary language forms of Herodotus ("Homeric" branch) and Sophocles (Attic) is less than 1000 years old. If, of course, chronologically focus on the 5th century BC. e. The more distant linguistic proximity of the Ionian dialects as a whole (including both classical literary forms of this group - Attic and "Homeric") with other Eastern Greek "bundles" of dialects: Aeolian and Achaean-Cypriot-Pamphylian - was also determined by the ancient Hellenic by the public as a "dialect".

The common proto-language of all these three linguistic branches (according to " family tree"philology") began to disintegrate somewhere in the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. This happened, most likely, immediately after the appearance of the so-called "Eastern" Hellenes on the territory of present-day Greece. From the point of view of modern philological (and public) representations - these are already (in most cases of the New Time) interlingual (for they are 1500 years old) differences. ) dialect. A simple Athenian peasant almost did not understand it (as well as other Western Greek dialects). "1.5-thousand-year-old related" Aeolian and Achaean "dialects" an ordinary resident of Attica (if he was not yet a more or less regular regular in the capital's Theater) He also took it very hard.Only other Ionian dialects close to a simple Athenian (including their "Homeric-Herodotus" literary form) did not require an interpreter for him.

The relationship (according to the data of the same "family tree" of comparative linguistics) of modern groups of Belarusian, Ukrainian and Great Russian dialects, we note, is a little closer (about 600 - 800 years) to each other 2 than "almost identical" (according to intellectuals, etc.) n of the "classical era" of Hellas) Attic-"dramatic" and "literary-prose" Ionian dialects of the Greek language among themselves.

Part of the entire linguistic "mosaic" of the south of the Balkan Peninsula (in the 5th century BC) that we previously considered also had normative literary forms. Among them is the above-mentioned Ionian-"Homeric-Herodotian" one. In addition, another written Ionian norm, the Attic "Aeschylus-Aristophanes" dialect, also acquired significant distribution. Also popular were the Aeolian-lesbian ("Sapphic"), Dorian-"laconic", some. other documented varieties of the then Hellenic speech.

Slightly different criteria in the so-called. Gallo-Romance philology 3. Norman, Parisian-Picardian, Burgundian and other northern French dialects (the branching of which is slightly more than 1000 years old) are treated as dialects. More distant from the latter, the Provencal-Gasconian dialects are grouped by specialists into a separate language ("Languedoc") 4. Remoteness (on the "genealogical tree" of comparative linguistics) of the latter with northern French 5 is about 15 centuries.

On the other hand, "dialects" of a very old affinity, previously familiar among philologists, have been renamed into languages ​​by modern linguists. These, among others, are now called (albeit "non-written") a number of Kartvelian groups of dialects (Svan, Chan, Megrelian and some East Georgian), the branching of which with the literary norm of Shota Rustaveli and Queen Tamara is somewhere in the range of 1.5 - 5 thousand years 6.

In Western Europe, there are no cases of the existence of official languages ​​that would be close (on the linguistic-comparative "family tree") to each other for less than 10 centuries. With the exception of one "collision" - the Flemish and Dutch dialects of the 7th western "wing" of the Middle German dialect group!

Due to various kinds of geopolitical and interfaith-religious vicissitudes, the Dutch ended up in different states - Holland and Belgium. For some time, the closely related West-Middle German literary forms of both countries were considered separate languages. They were called - Dutch and Flemish, respectively. In the latest times common sense took his. The Dutch and Flemish forms of the single Dutch language are now officially recognized.

Characteristic in this regard is the inter-dialectal situation among our neighbors, the Poles. etc. just like our Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian "languages" among themselves. In Poland, the main dialect branching of its main ethnographic groups in time is similar to the timing of the differentiation of the "Russians" - somewhere within 600 - 800 years. The linguistic differences of the Pomeranian Kashubians from the totality of other Lechitic dialects reach about 11 - 13 centuries. Exactly the same linguistic paradox is observed in our country 9. Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian literary and business forms, as well as their various dialects (and Koine!) According to comparative linguistics, are closer to each other than they are all together - to the autochthonous dialects of "Rusnak" "Transcarpathia.

If not as a separate philological phenomenon, then maybe as a regional norm - the "Moscow" dialect is alien to Ukraine? Let's analyze this problem in retrospect.

The branching of the Old Russian language began in the end. 12th century barely noticeable phonetic discrepancies 10. Academician B. A. Rybakov showed this circumstance well in contrasting various parts of the Kievan Chronicle, some of which were written in Belgorod-on-Irpen (modern Belgorod) at the court of the Grand Duke-co-ruler Rurik Rostislavich, others in the capital itself, where another "duumvir" Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich "sat on the table". The best pages of this chronicle came from the pen of the most likely author of another masterpiece ("The Tale of Igor's Campaign") - the boyar Pyotr Borislavich. The latter also had (in both of his works) the features of the then Kievan all-Russian "Koine" (transitional between 2 or more linguistically close dialects of the colloquial form). This "synthesized" dialect already then acquired its historical significance. It became a rather monolithic retinue-princely administrative language norm 11. This linguistic form spread even before 1200 to all the then appanage centers.

"Belgorodkovsky" pages of the "Kyiv Chronicle" con. 12th century somewhat different. phonetic "Ukrainisms", which reflects the features of the common Russian language of the capital principality, as opposed to the dialect of the then East Slavic metropolis itself. The dialect of the latter in that era had already spread in Chernigov, and in Polotsk, and in Vladimir-on-Klyazma, and in Rostov the Great and other dynastic destinies of the Rurikovichs 12. the "foundation" of the later main linguistic (according to the comparative linguistic "family tree") branching of the Russians.

The further fate of the capital "Koine" had its continuation already on the Suzdal 13, Novgorod, Smolensk, Kursk-Bryansk and Ryazan "grounds". Formed during the 13th - 16th centuries. so-called. "Kiev-Moscow business language" 14, which finally assimilates the remnants of the northern East Slavic (Vyatichi, Krivichi, Slovenian-Ilmen) dialects, gradually transforming them into their own dialects. Thus, the modern so-called. "Great Russian language" is the direct successor of the Kyiv Old Russian dialect. The latter developed, in the final analysis, precisely from the Middle Dnieper, the more ancient Polyano-Russian East Slavic "linguistic bunch", and not the colloquial speech of the Krivichi, Radimichi, Vyatichi and Slovenes of Novgorod. As, however, and in addition to the dialectal features of the Dregovichi, Volhynians, White Croats, Tivertsy, streets and northerners.

This is evidenced by the "Lay of Igor's Campaign"!

The fact that this masterpiece was written in Kyiv is not in doubt among any serious specialist. Of all the modern East Slavic dialects, the so-called. "Russian language" - is most similar to the word-forming manner of the author of "Words..." 15.

Complete ignorance (or a gross hoax) is today's clumsy attempts by some in Ukraine to "deduce" modern Great Russian dialects from the Church Slavonic language. The last one was in the 19th century. according to grammatical features, they were distributed into the South Slavic linguistic subgroup of the classics of German linguistics 16. Lexical Church Slavonic borrowings are found in approximately the same number in both Ukrainian and Russian dialects.

In Kyiv itself, in 1240, the functioning of the all-Russian "Koine" ceased as a result of the almost complete extermination of the population of the capital by Batu. The newly settled inhabitants of the former East Slavic metropolis already spoke with "Belgorodkovskaya" features. Later (14th - 18th centuries) this dialect turned into a kind of southern Russian language zone. One of the representatives of the latter was the Poltava dialect, on the foundation of which I.P. Kotlyarevsky built the modern Ukrainian literary form Russian norm. This great Poltava resident brilliantly used the "Great Russian" literary dialect to process Ukrainian folklore and epos ("Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", "Mirgorod").

And whether throughout the territory of modern. Powers Ukraine Southern Russian dialects (in comparison with other Eastern Slavic) autochthonous?

Not! In Kyiv itself, the first decades (in the 12th and 13th centuries) of the "separate" existence of the Russian dialect passed. T. n. "Russification" of the Mother of Russian Cities in the 1860s - 90s. - testifies only to the return here of a descendant of the Kyiv dialect. In the Kharkiv region, Luhansk region and in the northern Donetsk region, the speakers of the Russian dialect appeared at the end of the 15th century, and the southern Russian later - in the 1630s - 1710s. It is here that the "Muscovites" are great natives. In addition, the colonization of the conquered (because these lands were related to the early stages of our common ethnogenesis) Taurian steppes by the Eastern Slavs was carried out mainly by 2 ethnographic streams. The Black Sea military-diplomatic "reconquista" of A. V. Suvorov, P. A. Rumyantsev, Gr. A. Potemkin, Catherine II and A. A. Bezborodko led to mass rural (and urban) migration from Ukraine and Central Russia, at the same time.

Some modern "unfortunate paleoethnologists from Rukh" are trying to prove some kind of Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar "idyll" in the then steppes of the North. Black Sea region. But this is speculation "from the ceiling"! Pripontida was inhabited (with the exception of the territory of some Zaporizhzhya palankas and Donchak yurts) from the beginning. 17th century and before the last thurs. On the 18th - 20 Nogais, relatively formally dependent on Bakhchisaray!

Thus, the Russian "Rusichs" are great autochthons (than Ukrainians) of Slobozhanshchina and sowing. Donbass. The same degree of "nativeness" is characteristic of both main East Slavic branches in relation to modern Odessa, Kherson, Crimean Autonomy, Mykolaiv, parts of the Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions. The same "dualism" of the heritage of Ukrainians and Russians is also characteristic of Kyiv. The modern capital of Ukraine is geographically significant more space placement of the ancient Mother of Russian Cities. Today's Kyiv includes not only the "posad" of the metropolis of Yaroslav the Wise and Peter Borislavich, but also a number of "Belgorod"-lingual suburbs of that era. And in general, our "East Slavic Rome" is the "parental home" of any kind of Russian speech, any "Rusich".

On the other hand, the Ukrainian dialect is relatively more autochthonous for the Kuban. Many areas of the east and south of the current "Erephia" are also (like Taurida) in terms of the ratio of speakers of the main Russian language branches - "co-aboriginal". One of these Russian-Ukrainian "synthesis" (the land of the Sunzha Cossacks) has already ceased (we hope that temporarily) its existence 21. During 1991 - 1994. (again in 1996 - 1997) destroyed the so-called. "Ichkerians".

From everything previously analyzed, the language policy of the modern Ministry of Education of Ukraine, which proclaimed the Kiev-Moscow literary form - an "optional" foreign one, seems criminal. The younger generations are weaned off (the "Russian language" is not studied in 90% of Kyiv schools) from the "lion's" share of national culture. Children are deprived of the opportunity to know one of our own literary forms and precisely the one that is one of the official ones in the UN. Schools do not study the work of (domestic) northern and eastern Russian writers and other cultural figures. The "Russian-speaking" achievements of Ukrainian authors are distorted (by clumsy and tendentious translations "from one dialect to another") - Gr. S. Skovoroda, N. V. Gogol (this great Poltava resident was generally against the "cultivation" of the literary form of the dialect of his own locality), V. G. Korolenko, T. G. Shevchenko's prose, and the works of many other South Russian creators. The pro-"Rukhovsky" "Smerdyakovshchina" believes that with its short-sighted cultural and linguistic policy, it strengthens some local ethnographic positions. In fact, the "independents" are destroying them, clearing the linguistic colonization space for foreign influences. First of all - English-speaking and cosmopolitanized. In order to preserve self-identity, it is necessary, first of all, to cultivate both the most widespread literary forms of the native language in the land of Rus-Ukraine in secondary and higher schools. Both "Lomonosov-Karamzinovskaya", and "Kotlyarevskaya".

A similar situation takes place in modern India 22. The late medieval Delhi dialect ("Khari Boli") of the Western Hindustani group of dialects has 2 current literary forms: Urdu and Hindi. Both of them are official in the "Republic of Bharat" and "relatives" in the education system of this state.

The "mono-lingualism" of the 2 most common modern Russian literary norms is indirectly recognized by the West. In 1992 in Kyiv, Kharkov, Lvov and our other large cities near some. universities, dozens of foreign students appeared - "C grade" Russianists. They decided to learn (and "pass") the Ukrainian literary form as a 2nd Slavic language (according to their learning processes). However, all the philological departments (where these unfortunate Slavists hoped to "push" their academic obligations) did not count this subject for them. This entire group of "triple" Russianists was forced to relearn (from Ukrainian) either into Polish, or Bulgarian, or Czech (or some other Slavic) language. Since 1993, this "philological pilgrimage" to Ukraine has ceased. Western linguists do not recognize the Poltava literary norm as a separate (from Russian) Slavic language. The scientific conscientiousness of the luminaries of the philology of "Abendland" is still higher than the current politicking.

Academy of Sciences of the Russian Empire at the beginning. 20th century repeatedly discussed the problem of correlation between Ukrainian and Russian literary forms. However, the very formulation of the linguistic question under consideration at these meetings was somewhat incorrectly done - language or dialect!

At the household (and journalistic) level, some are acceptable. simplification. For the usual social propaganda "niche" - the wording "language" in relation to Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian literary East Slavic norms is acceptable. The text of the Constitution should have been dominated (in an accessible form) by scientifically verified vocabulary. Article 10 of our Basic Law should be replaced. From the point of view of modern linguistics, it would have been better like this: "Holding mob in Ukrainian є Ruska Mova (in the" Ukrainian Litherane Formi) power of the power of the il functions. Ukraine... ". Further according to the text edited in 1996 by the Verkhovna Rada.

However, this wording (as we see from all of the above) does not reflect today's Ukrainian realities in this textually scientifically verified form. It is not historically justified either. The Verkhovna Rada of the new convocation will have to amend, among some points of our Constitution, this (tenth) article of it.

1. Radtsig S. I. History of ancient Greek literature. - M., 1982, p. 18 - 26, 74 - 76, 160 - 176, 201 - 202, 242 - 244, 271 - 272, 305 - 307; Shkurov V. A. The history of the formation of the Hellenistic koine // Moznavstvo. -- K., 1996, N 1, p. 58 -- 63.

2. Zhovtobryuh M. A., Rusanivsky V. M., Sklyarenko V. G. History of Ukrainian language. Phonetics. - K., 1979, p.23, 40.

3. Gak V. G. French language// Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE). 3rd ed. T.28. - M., 1978, p. 214 - 215; Sluka A.E. The French // TSB. 3rd ed. T.28..., p.215 - 217.

4. Katagoshchina N. A. Provencal language// TSB. 3rd ed. T.21. - M., 1975, p.9.

5. Gurycheva M. S., Katagoshchina N. A. Comparative grammar of Romance languages. Gallo-Romance subgroup. - M., 1964, p. 3 - 29.

6. Militarev A. Yu. How young we were 12 thousand years ago?! // Knowledge is power. - M., 1989, 3, p.49.

7. Mironov S. A. The Dutch language// TSB. 2nd ed. T.11. - M., 1952, pp. 602 - 603.

9. Dzendzelevsky Y.A. Linguistic atlas of Ukrainian folk dialects in the Transcarpathian region of the Ukrainian SSR. Part 1 - 2. - Uzhgorod, 1958 - 1960; Dzendzelevsky I.A. Transcarpathian dialects // Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia. T.4. - K., 1980, p.72.

11. Mavrodin VV Ancient Russia. - L., 1946, p. 306 - 307.

12. Tolochko P. P. Ancient Russia. - K., 1987, pp. 186 - 187.

13. Abakumov O.V. Three Pereyaslavs - migration and analogy of the establishment of oikonyms / / Moznavstvo. - K., 1996, 2-3, pp. 27 - 32.

14. Filin F. P. Russian language // TSB. 3rd ed. T.22. - M., 1975, p. 410.

15. Kirilets L. M., Nimchuk V. V., Rilsky M. T., Rilenkov M. I., Lutsevich I. D. (Yanka Kupala) A word about Igor's departure. T.1 - 2. - K., 1982.

16. Korolyuk V. D. Slavic studies// TSB. 3rd ed. T.23. - M., 1976, p.547.

17. Yatsenko M. T. Ivan Kotlyarevsky // Library of Ukrainian Literature. I. Kotlyarevsky. - K., 1982, pp. 30 - 31.

18. Krutikova N.Y. Gogol // Shevchenkiv dictionary. T.1 - K., 1976, p.160.

19. Abakumov O.V. The study of the Antian dialect of the literal spilnopraslov`yanskoy movnoy unity behind the synthesis of linguistic and archaeological records // Onomastics of Ukraine I ths. n. e. - K., 1992, pp. 18 - 26.

20. Panashchenko V. V. Reflection of the aggression of the Turkish and Crimean feudal lords / / History of the Ukrainian SSR. T.3. - K., 1983, pp. 96 - 97.

21.Abakumov A.V. North Caucasus//Economic newspaper (Development). - M., 1997, 27, p.7.

22. Barkhudarov A. S. Hindi// TSB. 3rd ed. T.28. - M., 1978, p.286. Barkhudarov A.S. Hindustani // TSB. 3rd ed. T.28. - M., 1978, p.287.

Russian is one of the East Slavic languages, along with Ukrainian and Belarusian. It is the most widely spoken Slavic language and one of the most widely spoken languages ​​in the world in terms of the number of people who speak it and consider it their mother tongue.

In turn, the Slavic languages ​​belong to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo family. European languages. Thus, in order to answer the question: where did the Russian language come from, you need to make an excursion into ancient times.

Origin of the Indo-European languages

About 6 thousand years ago there lived a people who are considered to be the carriers of the Proto-Indo-European language. Where he lived exactly is today the subject of fierce debate among historians and linguists. The steppes are called the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans. of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, and the territory on the border between Europe and Asia, and the Armenian Highlands. In the early 80s of the last century, linguists Gamkrelidze and Ivanov formulated the idea of ​​two ancestral homes: at first there was the Armenian Highlands, and then the Indo-Europeans moved to the Black Sea steppes. Archaeologically, the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language are correlated with representatives of the “pit culture”, who lived in the east of Ukraine and on the territory of modern Russia in the 3rd millennium BC.

Isolation of the Balto-Slavic branch

Subsequently, the Proto-Indo-Europeans settled throughout Asia and Europe, mixed with the local peoples and gave them their own language. In Europe, the languages ​​of the Indo-European family are spoken by almost all peoples, except for the Basques; in Asia, various languages ​​\u200b\u200bof this family are spoken in India and Iran. Tajikistan, Pamir, etc. About 2 thousand years ago, the Proto-Balto-Slavic language emerged from the common Proto-Indo-European language. The Proto-Baltoslavs existed as a single people speaking the same language, according to a number of linguists (including Ler-Splavinsky) for about 500-600 years, and this period in the history of our peoples corresponds to the archaeological culture of Corded Ware. Then the language branch divided again: into the Baltic group, which henceforth healed independent life, and Proto-Slavic, which became the common root from which all modern Slavic languages ​​originated.

Old Russian language

All-Slavic unity persisted until the 6th-7th century AD. When carriers of East Slavic dialects stood out from the common Slavic array, the Old Russian language began to form, which became the ancestor of modern Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian languages. The Old Russian language is known to us thanks to the numerous monuments written in the Church Slavonic language, which can be considered as a written, literary form of the Old Russian language. In addition, written monuments have survived - birch bark letters, graffiti on the walls of temples - written in everyday, colloquial Old Russian.

Old Russian period

The Old Russian (or Great Russian) period covers the time from the 14th to the 17th centuries. At this time, the Russian language finally stands out from the group of East Slavic languages, phonetic and grammatical systems close to modern ones are formed in it, other changes take place, including dialects. The leading among them is the “aking” dialect of the upper and middle Oka, and, first of all, the Moscow dialect.

Modern Russian

The Russian language we speak today began to take shape in the 17th century. It is based on the Moscow dialect. The literary works of Lomonosov, Trediakovsky, Sumarokov played a decisive role in the formation of the modern Russian language. Lomonosov also wrote the first grammar, fixing the norms of the literary Russian language. All the richness of the Russian language, which has developed from the synthesis of Russian colloquial, Church Slavonic elements, borrowings from other languages, is reflected in the works of Pushkin, who is considered the creator of the modern Russian literary language.

Borrowings from other languages

Over the centuries of its existence, the Russian language, like any other living and developing system, has been repeatedly enriched by borrowings from other languages. The earliest borrowings include "Baltisms" - borrowings from the Baltic languages. However, in this case, we are probably not talking about borrowings, but about vocabulary that has been preserved from the time when the Slavic-Baltic community existed. The “Balticisms” include such words as “ladle”, “tow”, “stack”, “amber”, “village”, etc. During the period of Christianization, "Grecisms" - "sugar", "bench" entered our language. "lantern", "notebook", etc. Through contacts with European peoples, “Latinisms” entered the Russian language - “doctor”, “medicine”, “rose” and “Arabisms” - “admiral”, “coffee”, “lacquer”, “mattress”, etc. . large group words entered our language from the Turkic languages. These are words such as “hearth”, “tent”, “hero”, “cart”, etc. And, finally, since the time of Peter I, the Russian language has absorbed words from European languages. At first, this is a large layer of words from German, English and Dutch related to science, technology, maritime and military affairs: “ammunition”, “globe”, “assembly”, “optics”, “pilot”, “sailor”, “deserter ". Later, French, Italian and Spanish words related to household items, the field of art settled in Russian - “stained-glass window”, “veil”, “couch”, “boudoir”, “ballet”, “actor”, “poster”, “pasta”. ”, “Serenade”, etc. And finally, these days we are experiencing a new influx of borrowings, this time from English, in the main language.

Old Russian language after the 14th century. divided into three independent East Slavic languages. Since that time, one can already speak of Russian proper, or Great Russian, a language that differs not only from the languages ​​of the southern and western Slavs, but also from the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages ​​closest to it. Thus, the structure of the modern Russian language has developed from phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical elements dating back to different eras of its history - the Old Russian language, the language of the Great Russian people and the language of the Russian nation.

The difference between the Russian language and the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages ​​lies in the specific features of its system, mainly in phonetics and morphology.

In phonetics, such features are:

• “ro”, “lo” and “re”, “le” in the roots of words between consonants with “ry”, “ly” and “ri”, “li” in Ukrainian and Belarusian languages ​​(Russian “crush”; Ukrainian. “shine”, Belarusian “roof”);
• pronunciation of combinations of soft dental and hissing with j for long soft consonants in Ukrainian. and Belarusian languages ​​(Russian “dress”, Ukrainian “dress”, Belarusian “plazza”);
• explosive or fricative "g" with pharyngeal h in Ukrainian. and white languages ​​(Russian “city”, Ukrainian “horod”, Belarusian “horad”), etc.

In morphology, such features are:

• the absence of a special vocative form in the presence of it in Ukrainian. and Belor: Rus. "brother!", Ukrainian "Brother!", Belarusian. "brother!")
• the absence of alternation "k", "g", "x", with "c", "z", "s" in the case forms of nouns if it is present in Ukrainian. and Belarusian;
• wide distribution of forms Im.p. plural endings -а(-я) under stress in nouns do not cf. in his absence in Ukrainian. and Belarusian (Russian “houses”, Ukrainian “houses”, Belarusian “ladies”), etc.

Significant features in the vocabulary as the most mobile and subject to external influences of the language area.

Dialect

- a kind of language that is characterized by the relative unity of the system (phonetic, grammatical, lexical) and is used as a means of direct communication in a team located in a certain limited area. The dialect is part of a broader language formation, opposed to other parts of this whole, other dialects, and has common features with them.

Dialects and dialects of the Russian language are combined into dialects: Northern Great Russian (the most typical feature of Okane) and South Great Russian (Akanye), between which the Middle Great Russian dialects stretch in a narrow strip from northwest to southeast (Pskov - Kalinin - Moscow - Penza - Saratov), ​​forming transition between two adverbs. Transitional dialects for the most part have a northern basis, on which later (after the 14th century) southern Russian features were layered. To the north and east of the transitional dialects is the Northern Great Russian dialect, which occupies all the northern and eastern regions of the European part of the USSR, as well as the Urals and most Siberia. The South Great Russian dialect covers the southern part of the RSFSR. The border with the Ukrainian language is quite clear, on the border with the Belarusian language we find transitional South Great Russian and Middle Great Russian dialects.

• The Northern Great Russian dialect is characterized by three main features that are common to all its dialects: Okaniye, i.e. the difference between the vowels a and o not only under stress, but also in unstressed syllables, the presence of explosive g and -t (solid) at the end of the 3rd person of the present tense of verbs. In a number of dialects of this dialect, there are also clattering and clattering (not distinguishing q and h), the loss of j between vowels and the subsequent contraction of vowels, the change of solid l into y in a non-syllabic in a closed syllable, the use of an agreed postpositive particle: hour - from passed, to autumn -tu, etc. distinguish Pomor, Olonets, Novgorod, Vologda-Kirov and Vladimir-Volga groups of dialects.
• The South Great Russian dialect is characterized by akanye, the presence of fricative g and -t, (soft) in the 3rd person of verbs. The basis of the subdivisions of the Youth Great Russian dialects is the character of yakanya, i.e. vowel changes in the first pre-stressed syllable after soft consonants. A strong yak is characterized by the fact that in the first pre-stressed syllable in the position after the soft consonant in place e, o, a is always a, no matter what sounds are nearby: [b.ada, n, asu, n, asi, l, at, ate, in, hell, om, d, ar, evn, a]. It characterizes the Ryazan group of dialects. In the literary language, in this case, hiccups are represented. Moderate yakan is characterized by the dependence of the vowel of the first pre-stressed syllable on the quality of the consonant following this vowel, namely on its hardness or softness. In the event that this consonant is hard, in place of e, o, and in the first pre-stressed syllable after the soft consonant is a, if it is a soft consonant - and or e: [b, hell, c, asna, c, hell] , but [in, id, and, n, is, and] (commandative incl.) or [in, units, and, n, es, and]. It characterizes the Tula group. Dissimilative yakan is characterized by the dependence of the vowel of the first pre-stressed syllable on the quality of the vowel of the stressed syllable. At the same time, there is a peculiar dissimilarity, dissimilation of the vowels of the stressed and first pre-stressed syllable from the point of view of the rise. After a soft consonant in the first pre-stressed syllable, a (lower vowel) appears only if the upper vowel is stressed - and, s, y; if the vowels a (lower rise) are under stress, then in the pre-stressed syllable the vowels of the middle or upper rise are - and or e: [in, hell, color, ata, n, asu, n, as, and], but [in, ila ] (or [c, ela]), [n, isla] (or [n, if]), [b, ida, s, iml, a]. It characterizes the Orlov group.
• Middle Great Russian dialects are characterized by akanye, the presence of the explosive g and -t (solid) in the 3rd person of verbs, i.e. combine the features of both dialects. A distinctive feature of the Russian language is, therefore, its relatively weak dialect fragmentation.

The formation of the Great Russian nationality was closely connected with the formation of a centralized Russian state around Moscow, which acted as the unifier of all Russian lands. With the annexation of Novgorod and Pskov to the Moscow State state association northeastern and northern Russian regions was completed. However, by the end of the 15th c. Russia is finally freed from the Mongol-Tatar yoke. In 14-16 centuries. there is an intensive development of Russian culture and writing. A large number of original works are being created, and translations from various languages ​​are widely practiced. In the middle of the 16th century Ivan Fedorov publishes the first dated printed book "The Apostle" (1563) in Moscow.

The language of the Great Russian people, the main elements of which date back to the Old Russian language, had a different dialectal basis. It was formed on the basis of the ancient Moscow dialect. In turn, the Moscow dialect, which originally belonged to the Northern Great Russian dialect, over the following centuries, under the influence of the Southern Great Russian dialect, evolved into a dialect of the Middle Great Russian type with a moderate acane. From the previous era, Moscow adopted the solemn bookish and official business styles of the literary language of Kievan Rus. However, to characterize the language of the Great Russian people greater value they have letters of Moscow princes of the 14th-15th centuries, in which the formation of the command-business (state) language of that time is traced. An analysis of Moscow writing allows us to conclude that from the end of the 14th century. the Moscow dialect becomes aka, the stress differs b and e, there are significant changes in the grammatical system, which largely determined the appearance of the modern Russian language. By the end of the 15th century the dual number is finally out of use, the vocative form is lost, the case forms of nouns are lost with alternating back palatine and whistling consonant stems, the nominative plural form of the stem on -o- masculine is replaced by the form of the accusative plural, in the dative - instrumental - local plural cases the numbers of all genera extend the stem endings to a: -am, -ami, -ah. By this time, the process of forming four productive types of nominal declension and unifying their case forms is being completed; as a result of the interaction of soft and hard varieties of declension, the latter wins; stems into consonants are destroyed and combined with other, productive types of declension. In adjectives, generic forms in the plural disappear, the reflexive particle -sya joins the verb, the ending -t (solid) is approved in the 3rd person singular and plural, the ancient perfect is replaced by the simple past tense, etc. A specifically Russian layer of vocabulary is formed in the vocabulary: peasants, nobles, master, boyar, butler, clerk, petition, Kremlin, ax, village, money, ruble, mill, pond, arable land, robber, rumor, letter, tax, treasury, carpet , altyn, bondage, etc.

In the 16th and 17th centuries the norms of the Moscow business language are becoming widespread. The introduction of book printing was the most significant event that eliminated dialect features and led to the creation of common literary and linguistic norms for the entire Muscovite state. As a result, the same changes took place in the literary language of the Russian people as in the common Russian language.