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Chukovsky is alive as life basic thoughts. Alive as life

The book "Alive as life" by K.I. Chukovsky is presented as a journalistic study of the Russian language.

In the first chapter, Chukovsky introduces the elderly lawyer and academician Anatoly Koni to the reader. He was very scrupulous about the Russian word and was always indignant when he heard the use of the word in an unsuitable context for him. For example, Koni perceived “necessarily” in the meaning of “respectfully, kindly”, when everyone around was using it in the semantics familiar to us now “certainly”. A person brought up on the old norms of the language could not come to terms with its changes.

Outdated interpretations of words are rarely revived. So the familiar word "family" once meant the servants and slaves of the feudal lord, then it became a replacement for the concept of "wife". The tongue is constantly moving, and it is foolish to fight it. But one cannot, blaming its eternal change, neglect the norms of speech.

The borrowing of foreign words in the 1960s caused anxiety among educated people, but Chukovsky did not consider them dangerous. There are many words that have firmly taken root in speech and are so euphonious that they should not look for a Russian analogue: ammonia, sonata, dome, station, sport, naive, etc. Undesirable "foreigners" such as an airplane and a solution have been replaced in everyday life by the usual "airplane" and "solution".

The style and proportionality of the Russian language must be matched, making up the abbreviations that became fashionable in Soviet times. The vulgar youth slang damages Russian speech, derogating not so much the word itself as the concept hidden behind it.

Chukovsky considered the dominance of the bureaucracy in the language to be a disease. Dry business and scientific speech expelled liveliness and culture from everyday communication. He fiercely argued with the teachers who introduce clericalism to schoolchildren, but this war, as can be judged now, was lost.

Picture or drawing Live as life

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First of all, Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky is known as the author of children's poems about Moidodyr and flying chairs. But the writer was also a literary critic and advocated the preservation of a living, vibrant Russian language. The book Alive as Life (first published in 1962), dedicated to this issue, has become a classic. We will talk about its content today.

Chapter One: "Old and New"

The story of the famous lawyer and academician Anatoly Koni opens the first chapter "Alive as life" (Chukovsky), a summary of which we will now analyze. Anatoly Fedorovich was known as a man of very great kindness. But only until the moment I heard the absurd Russian speech. Here his anger knew no bounds, although often the interlocutor really was not to blame.

The fact is that at that time the honorary academician was already old. He was born and raised at a time when the word "necessarily" meant "kindly, respectfully." But it took on a different meaning over time, and now meant "certainly." Anyone who used the word "necessarily" in the sense of "certainly" immediately fell under a barrage of criticism.

Kornei Ivanovich Chukovsky tells about these changes in the language, and whether it is always bad, about the "diseases" of Russian speech and other things.

Chapter Two: "Imaginary Diseases and - Real"

Did you know that in Pushkin's poems the word "scrupulous" has a completely unusual meaning for us - "haberdashery"? The word "family", so familiar, at first meant slaves and servants, and then - a wife. Interesting "pedigree" and the word "mess". At first, this was the name of a very exquisite dish of the 17th century, beloved by the boyars. Then they began to call the sharp pain in the abdomen caused by a nasty chatterbox as a mess. The soldiers' cooks threw unpeeled fish in the sand, onions, crackers, sauerkraut and whatever was at hand into the cauldron. And only then the "mess" acquired the familiar meaning of "confusion, disorder".

These transformations are natural, the language grows and develops, and it is impossible and even stupid to resist this, the author believes.

Chapter Three: "Foreign Words"

This chapter is a logical continuation of the previous one. The book "Alive as Life" (Chukovsky), the summary of which we are discussing, would be incomplete without foreign words. Korney Chukovsky was written a lot of letters by ordinary people who care about the safety of the Russian language. Many believed that foreign words should be banished as quickly as possible.

The author gives examples of foreign words that have long since become Russian: algebra, alcohol, stocking, artel, rally, steering wheel, rails, naive, serious ... "Is it really possible to throw them out of living Russian speech?" Chukovsky asks. At the same time, he is glad that many foreign words did not take root in everyday life and did not supplant the primordially Russian ones. For example, the once popular "frishtikat" will never come to the tongue of an ordinary person. Instead, we have breakfast.

Chapter Four: "Umslopogasy"

Fashionable verbal abbreviations are also unable to spoil the Russian language. But in the work "Alive as Life" (Chukovsky), the analysis of which we are conducting, a whole chapter is devoted to them. And for good reason. It is the abbreviations that show how important moderation is in everything. For example, such abbreviations as the Moscow Art Theater, the savings bank, the workday did not spoil the Russian speech in the least.

But the fashion for shortcuts has spawned many "monsters". Tverbul Pampush is indeed Tverskoy Boulevard, a monument to Pushkin. Names were abbreviated en masse - Pyotr Pavlovich became Pe Pa for both students and fellow teachers. But the worst of all were the reduction-pallindromes Rosglavstankoinstrumentsnabsbyt, Lengorshveitrikotazhpromsoyuz, Lengormetallorempromsoyuz and others of this type.

From this it is necessary to draw a conclusion, one of the main ones: everything depends on a sense of style and proportionality.

Chapter Five: "Vulgarisms"

Readers of the 1960s often considered such words as “greedy”, “pants”, “stink”, “rubbish”, “blow your nose” and many others like them, which are absolutely natural for a modern person, as “obscene”. The author recalls an angry letter addressed to him for using the word "chomps" in the article.

It is quite another matter - the vulgar slang of modern youth, writes Chukovsky in "Living as Life". The summary of the chapter boils down to the fact that such jargonisms as "Bullshit", "vshendyapilsya" (instead of "fell in love"), "chick", "kadrishka" (instead of "girl"), "lobuda", "shikara" and so on do not defile only the Russian language, but also the concepts that young people denote by them.

The author correctly notes that the dude who got into the kadrishka is not experiencing the sublime feelings of love that are described in the poems of Alexander Blok. Decomposition of language by means of vulgarity leads to moral decay, therefore jargon should be zealously eradicated.

Chapter Six: "Office"

It was Korney Chukovsky's book "Alive as Life" that gave the name to the only real "disease" of Russian speech - the office. This term is used by linguists, including the translator Nora Gal in the book "The Word Living and the Dead".

Chancellery is the language of bureaucracy, business papers and bureaucrats. All these "the above", "this certificate was issued", "the specified period", "on the basis of this", "and therefore", "for lack of", "due to absence", "with regard to" have firmly taken their place in the business documentation ( while sometimes reaching the point of absurdity).

The problem is that the bureaucracy has penetrated the common spoken language. Now, instead of "green forest" they began to say "green massif", an ordinary "quarrel" became a "conflict", and so on. These turns of speech, borrowed from product papers, became It was believed that every cultured, well-educated person should have such words in his vocabulary.

To say on the radio "Heavy rains have passed" was considered rustic and uncivilized. Instead, "Heavy rainfall fell." Unfortunately, the problem of bureaucracy has not disappeared. Today this disease has strengthened its position even more. Not a single scientist can defend a thesis written in a simple, understandable language. In everyday life, we constantly insert clerical phrases, without noticing it ourselves. So the lively, strong, sparkling Russian turns into gray and dry. And this is the only one with which you need to fight.

Chapter Seven: "Defying the Elements"

Many people perceive the Russian language as an element with which it is impossible to cope. This is what Chukovsky writes in "Living as Life". The summary of the last, seventh chapter boils down to the fact that at a time when knowledge is available to everyone, ordinary and evening schools are open, no one has the right to be illiterate, not to respect their language.

All wrong words and phrases must be eradicated, and the culture of the masses must grow, not fall. And it is just spoken language that is an indicator of the growth or decline of culture.

Outcomes

K. Chukovsky, with his research, laid the foundation for a great discussion around the Russian language. He did not adhere to any one side and proceeded from carefully checked data and a sense of proportion. Like K. Paustovsky, Kornei Ivanovich was very fond of the Russian language, therefore "Alive as Life" is still a book that must be read by everyone - both linguists and those who want to fall in love with the living, simple Russian speech.


Korney Chukovsky

LIVE AS LIFE

Stories about the Russian language

Chapter one

OLD AND NEW

In him(In russian language) all tones and shades, all transitions of sounds from the hardest to the most delicate and soft; he is boundless and can, living like life, enrich himself every minute.

Anatoly Fedorovich Koni, an honorary academician, a famous lawyer, was, as you know, a man of great kindness. He willingly forgave those around him any mistakes and weaknesses. But grief was to the one who, talking with him, distorted or mutilated the Russian language. Horses pounced on him with passionate hatred. His passion fascinated me. And yet, in his struggle for the purity of the language, he often went overboard.

For example, he demanded that the word necessarily meant only kindly, helpful.

But this meaning of the word has already died. Now both in living speech and in literature the word necessarily came to mean certainly. It was this that outraged Academician Koni.

Imagine, - he said, clutching at his heart, - today I walk along Spasskaya and hear: “He necessarily will hit you in the face! " How do you like it? The person informs the other that someone kindly will beat him!

But the word necessarily doesn't mean kindly - I tried to object, but Anatoly Fyodorovich stood his ground.

Meanwhile, today in the entire Soviet Union you will no longer find a person for whom necessarily would mean kindly.

Today, not everyone will understand what Aksakov meant when he spoke of one provincial doctor:

“In relation to us, he acted necessarily" [S.T. Aksakov, Memoirs (1855). Collected cit., vol. II. M., 1955, p. 52.]

On the other hand, no one finds it strange, for example, Isakovsky's couplet:

And where do you wantNecessarily you will get there.

Much is explained by the fact that Koni was old at that time. He acted like most old people: he defended the norms of Russian speech that existed during his childhood and youth. Old people almost always imagined (and are imagining now) that their children and grandchildren (especially grandchildren) disfigure the correct Russian speech.

I can easily imagine that gray-haired old man who, in 1803 or 1805, angrily pounded his fist on the table when his grandchildren began to talk among themselves about the development of mind and character.

Where did you get this obnoxious development of the mind? Must speak vegetation "[Proceedings of Ya.K. Grotto, vol. II. Philological research (1852-1892). SPB. 1899, pp. 69, 82.].

As soon as, for example, a young man said in a conversation that now he had to go, well, at least to a shoemaker, and the old men angrily shouted to him:

Not necessary, a it is necessary! Why are you distorting the Russian language? [In the Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, 1806-1822) there is only necessary.]

A new era has come. The former youths became fathers and grandfathers. And it was their turn to be indignant with the words that the youth introduced into everyday life: gifted, distinct, voting, humane, public, whip[Neither in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy nor in the Dictionary of Pushkin's Language (M., 1956-1959) the words gifted no. It appears only in the Dictionary of Church Slavonic and Russian languages, compiled by the second branch of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, 1847). The words distinct not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The words vote not in any dictionary before Dahl, 1882. Word whip created by Ivan Panaev (along with the word hanger) in the middle of the 19th century. See also Proceedings of Ya.K. Grotto, vol. II, pp. 14, 69, 83.].

Now it seems to us that these words have existed in Russia from time immemorial and that we could never do without them, but meanwhile, in the 30s-40s of the last century, these were novice words, with which the then zealots of the purity of the language could not reconcile for a long time ...

Now it is even difficult to believe what words at that time seemed, for example, to Prince Vyazemsky low-quality, street. These words: mediocrity and talented.“Mediocrity, talented, - the prince Vyazemsky was indignant, - new areal expressions in our literary language. Dmitriev was telling the truth that “our new writers are learning the language from the meadows” [ P. Vyazemsky, Old notebook. L., 1929, p. 264.]

If the youth of that time happened to use in conversation such words unknown to past generations as: fact, result, nonsense, solidarity[Not a word fact, not a word result, not a word solidarity not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy.] representatives of these former generations declared that Russian speech suffers considerable damage from such an influx of vulgar words.

“Where did this fact? - indignant, for example, Thaddeus Bulgarin in 1847. - What is this word? Warped ”[“ Northern Bee ”, 1847, No. 93 dated April 26. Magazine sundries.].

Jacob Groth already at the end of the 60s declared the newly appeared word ugly inspire[Proceedings of Ya.K. Grotto, vol. II, p. 14.]

Even a word like scientific, and that had to overcome the great resistance of the Old Testament purists before it entered our speech as a legitimate word. Let us remember how this word struck Gogol in 1851. Until that time, he had not even heard of him ["Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries." M. p. 511.].

The old people demanded that instead of scientific only spoke scientist: scientist book, scientist treatise. Word scientific seemed to them unacceptable vulgarity. However, there was a time when even a word vulgar they were ready to consider it illegal. Pushkin, not foreseeing that it would be Russified, retained its foreign form in Onegin. Let's remember the famous poems about Tatiana:

Nobody could have her beautifulName; but from head to toeNo one could find in herThat which is an autocratic fashionIn the high London circleCalled vulgar. I can not...I love this word very much,But I can't translate;It is still new with us,And it is unlikely to be in his honor.It would be suitable in an epigram ...

(VIII chapter)

It was not necessary to translate this word into Russian, because it itself became Russian.

And for a long time the old people could not come to terms with such a phrase as literary creativity, whom neither Derzhavin, nor Zhukovsky, nor Pushkin knew [Words creation not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, nor in the Dictionary of Church Slavonic and Russian languages ​​(St. Petersburg, 1847).]

Of course, the old people were wrong. Now a word necessary, and the word nonsense, and the word fact, and the word vote, and the word scientific, and the word creation, and the word necessarily(in the sense of certainly) are felt by everyone, both young and old, as the most legitimate, fundamental words of Russian speech, and who can do without these words!

Now it seems strange to everyone that Nekrasov, having written in one of his stories nonsense, had to explain in a note: “A lackey word, which is equivalent to a word - rubbish" [Cm. “Petersburg Corners” in the Nekrasov anthology “Physiology of Petersburg”, part 1. St. Petersburg, 1845, p. 290, and in the Complete Works of N.А. Nekrasov, vol. VI. M, 1950, p. 120.], and “Literaturnaya gazeta” of those years, talking about someone virtuoso soul, considered herself compelled to add immediately that masterly-“Newfangled word” [Literaturnaya Gazeta, 1841, p. 94: “The soul is visible in the game and in the techniques virtuoso to flaunt a newfangled word. ”].

As a child, I still found old people (albeit rather decrepit) who said at the ball, Alexandrynsky theatre, genvar, blush, whitewash, furniture(plural) etc.

But then the years passed, and I, in turn, became an old man. Now, according to my age, I am supposed to hate the words that were introduced into our speech by young people, and scream about the corruption of the language.

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Introduction

Where did the expression "Alive as life" come from? This is the name of the book by Korney Chukovsky. He dedicated it to the history of the development of the Russian language, the culture of speech, "imaginary and genuine" diseases of words. This book was first published in 1961 and became a classic, a foundational work. In preparation for the presentation, I re-read several books on the same topic and found out that they are largely based on the experience of K. Chukovsky. Therefore, this book was taken by me as a basis.

The urgency of the problem

Language is as alive, an organism as a person. The development of a language is, for example, the enrichment of the vocabulary, the transition from one part of speech to another, the obsolescence of words, the expansion of the meaning of a word, and much more. It's sad when the language stops developing. After all, some ancient languages ​​are now dying along with their speakers. Therefore, each nation should take care of the development of its language, know and respect it.

Objectives of the work:

    Show that the Russian language is alive and can develop.

    Find out what diseases may be present in the Russian language?

    Prove that the Russian language can be cured.

Work tasks:

    To study the book of K. Chukovsky "Alive as life" and the works of other authors on this topic.

    Show by examples that the Russian language is alive and developing.

    Pick up aphorisms, poems, a song about the Russian language.

    Find out what diseases the Russian language suffers from.

    Determine which diseases are imaginary and which are genuine.

    Show the main directions of the fight against diseases of the Russian language.

    To prove that the diseases of the Russian language can be cured on their own.

Methods used in preparing my work:

    Own reasoning

    Browse books on my topic

    Conversations with the teachers of the Russian language of our school

    Internet using

    A survey of schoolchildren in my class on the topic: "Is it possible to say that the Russian language is alive?" and "What, in your opinion, requires removal from Russian speech?"

    Conversations with casual passers-by on the topic "Are you worried about the problem of clogging the Russian language?"

Main part

You marvel at the jewels of our language: whatever the sound,

then a gift; everything is grainy, as large as the pearl itself,

and right, another name is even more precious than the thing itself

Russian language is alive

“When you read the biographies of words, you finally become convinced that the Russian language, like any healthy and strong organism, is all in motion, in the dynamics of continuous growth” K. Chukovsky

Outlandish biography of the word "a family"... The word "family" at first meant "a collective of relatives", then slaves and servants, and then - a wife. Moreover, simultaneously with this meaning (family-wife), the basic meaning (family-relatives) was preserved. Subsequently, the first of these meanings was discarded and forgotten. They say that it is living out its days here and there on the Don and in the Volga region.

Interesting "pedigree" and the word "mess". At first, this was the name of a very exquisite dish of the 17th century, beloved by the boyars. Then they began to call the sharp pain in the abdomen caused by a nasty chatterbox as a mess (the soldier's cooks threw unpeeled fish in the sand, onions, crackers, sauerkraut and everything at hand into the cauldron). And only then the "mess" acquired the familiar meaning of "confusion, disorder".

“These transformations are natural, the language grows and develops, and it is impossible and even stupid to resist” K. Chukovsky. The previous semantic meanings of words disappear without a trace, the language moves forward without looking back - depending on changes in the social system, on the conquests of science and technology and on other various reasons.

If you look in a modern dictionary, you will read that scrupulous- this is "strictly principled in a relationship with someone." Meanwhile, in the time of Pushkin it meant "haberdashery, selling haberdashery goods: ties, gloves, ribbons, combs, buttons."

And if you take the floor poster. Who does not know these street, dazzlingly bright, multi-colored pictures, painted for agitation or advertising and commercial purposes? We are so accustomed to posters, to poster painting, to poster artists that it is very difficult for us to imagine that recent time when posters were called ... passports for peasants and townspeople.

But at the same time, in the life of a language, another tendency of a directly opposite nature is extremely powerful, just as important, just as useful. It consists in stubborn and decisive resistance to innovation, in the creation of all kinds of dams and barriers that strongly prevent speech from being renewed too quickly and erratically.

No matter how much the storm worries

Tops of age-old trees,

She will not put anything down,

Nor can it even rock

A protected forest to the root.

(Nekrasov, II, 461)

Even in those epochs when the greatest number of new turns and terms penetrates into the language, and the old ones disappear in dozens, in its main essence it remains the same, keeping intact the golden fund and its vocabulary and its grammatical norms developed in the past centuries.

"Foreign words" is the first ailment of the Russian language

This is the name of the gravitation of the Russian language to foreign words.

Many believed that foreign words should be banished as quickly as possible. But there are examples of foreign words that have long since become Russian: algebra, alcohol, stocking, artel, rally, steering wheel, rails, naive, serious ... "Is it really possible to throw them out of living Russian speech?" Chukovsky asks. At the same time, he is glad that many foreign words did not take root in everyday life and did not supplant the primordially Russian ones. For example, the once popular "frishtikat" will never come to the tongue of an ordinary person. Instead, we have breakfast. "

And, of course, it is excellent that such Russification of words is taking place in our days, that the airplane has been replaced by an airplane, a helicopter by a helicopter, a goalkeeper by a goalkeeper, and a chauffeur by a driver.

Many are afraid of such a dominance of "foreignism", but Pushkin says it very rightly: "True taste consists not in an unaccountable rejection of such and such a word, such and such a phrase, but in a sense of proportionality and conformity." See Appendix 1

"Umslopogasy" - the second "imaginary disease" of the Russian language

These are the names of trendy word abbreviations. "Imaginary disease" - because it is not able to spoil the Russian language. It is the abbreviations that show how important moderation is in everything. For example, such abbreviations as the Moscow Art Theater, the registry office, the building manager, the savings bank, the workday did not spoil the Russian speech at all. But the fashion for shortcuts has spawned many "monsters". Tverbul Pampush is indeed Tverskoy Boulevard, a monument to Pushkin. Names were abbreviated en masse - Pyotr Pavlovich was transformed into Pe Pa. But the worst of all were contractions-pallindromes Obluprpromprodtovary, Rosglavstankoinstrumentsnabsbyt, Lengorshveitrikotazhpromsoyuz, Lengormetallorempromsoyuz and others of this type. From this it is also necessary to draw a conclusion: everything rests on a sense of style and proportion.

In words, hitherto unfamiliar,

The great year is captured -

In short Tsiks, Council of People's Commissars

And in a heavy word the People's Commissariat for Food.

I marvel at the verbal bloom,

And I would listen to everything! And I would have looked!

Words fall into eternal shadows

From changing affairs

[NS. German, Poems about Moscow. 1922, pp. 23, 24.].

Along with umslopogas, other verbal forms also penetrated into modern Russian speech, also caused by the desire to save it. Such truncated words or "stumps" as cinema, kilo, auto, etc., have firmly entered our literary language, and there is no reason to expel them from there. And who will demand that instead of the wonderful "stump" of the metro, we say the metro? See Appendix 2

"Vulgarisms" - the third disease is as imaginary as the first two

So called clogging of speech obscene rudeness.

Such jargonisms as "bullshit", "vshendyapilsya" (instead of "fell in love"), "chick", "kadrishka" (instead of "girl"), "lobuda", "shikara" and so on desecrate not only the Russian language, but also concepts, which they designate as young people. “The dude who got into a kadrishka” is not experiencing the sublime feelings of love that are described in the poems of Alexander Blok.

Here is an example of a literary conversation that three schoolchildren had in the library, choosing an interesting book:

- Take this: valuable thing. There is one that gives soot!

- Don't take this! Labuda! Millet.

- This eerily powerful book

An interesting example is also given by M. Krongauz in his book "Russian language on the verge of a nervous breakdown" "During the session, two students came to me who had not received a credit and said:" We were really preparing. " “Then I won’t put it on,” I replied, succumbing to emotion. I love my students, but some of their words annoy me. Here is a short list: damn, in shock, wow, in life, well, it's real, of course. Dear students, be careful, do not use them in the session. " This incident tells us that all incorrect words and speech patterns must be eradicated. And it is just spoken language that is an indicator of the growth or decline of cultures.

"The cynicism of expressions always expresses a cynical soul" Herzen

Thus, in order to achieve the purity of the language, one must fight for the purity of human feelings and thoughts. See Appendix 3

“I hope that anyone who has carefully read the previous chapters could not but agree with me that these diseases are in most cases really imaginary. The Russian language was not seriously damaged by the foreign terms that penetrated it, nor the so-called “umslopogasy”, nor student or school jargon "K. Chukovsky

"Office" is a real disease of Russian speech.

It was Korney Chukovsky's book "Alive as Life" that gave the name to the only real "disease" of Russian speech - the office. This is the use in everyday speech of words and expressions used for writing business papers. This term is used by linguists, including the translator Nora Gal in the book "The Word Living and the Dead". Chancellery is the language of bureaucracy, business papers and bureaucrats. All of these "the above", "this certificate was issued", "the specified period", "on the basis of this", "and therefore", "in the absence", "due to absence", "with regard to" have firmly taken their place in the business documentation. But the problem is that the bureaucracy has penetrated into ordinary spoken language. Now, instead of "green forest" they began to say "green massif", an ordinary "quarrel" became a "conflict", and so on. Many people believe that every cultured, well-mannered person should have such words in his vocabulary. To say on the radio "Heavy rains have passed" is considered rustic and uncivilized. Instead, "Heavy rainfall has fallen."

Unfortunately, even today the problem of bureaucracy has not disappeared. Today this disease has strengthened its position even more. Not a single scientist can defend a thesis written in a simple, understandable language. In everyday life, we constantly insert clerical phrases, without noticing it ourselves. So lively, strong, sparkling Russian colloquial speech turns into gray and dry. And this is the only language disease that needs to be fought.

This is how K. Chukovsky speaks about this disease: “The name of the disease is clerical (similar to colitis, diphtheria, meningitis) ... Remember that the forms of speech recommended here should be used exclusively in official papers. And in all other cases - in letters to relatives and friends, in conversations with comrades, in oral answers at the blackboard - it is forbidden to speak in this language. It is not for this that our people, together with the geniuses of the Russian word - from Pushkin to Chekhov and Gorky - created for us and for our descendants a rich, free and strong language, striking with its sophisticated, flexible, infinitely diverse forms, it is not for this that we were given this as a gift the greatest treasure of our national culture, so that we, abandoning it with contempt, reduce our speech to a few dozen stamped phrases "

An example of K. Chukovsky: a letter that one eight-year-old schoolgirl wrote to her own father:

Dear Dad! I congratulate you on your birthday, I wish you new achievements in work, success in work and personal life. Your daughter Olya ”.

The father was upset and annoyed:

- As if I received a telegram from the local committee, honestly.

Of course, it is impossible to consider the patterns of human speech always, in all cases of life, as evidence of its emptiness. Stencils such as “hello”, “goodbye”, “welcome”, “you are welcome,” “sleeps like a dead man,” etc., we always speak out of inertia, without thinking about their true meaning. But there are such everyday cases when verbal cliches are unthinkable.

A young man, passing by the garden, saw at the gate a five-year-old girl who was standing and crying. He bent over her affectionately and said:

What question are you crying about?

His feelings were the most tender, but there were no human words to express tenderness. The person seems to be speaking from the heart, and cold verbal dust crumbles around him. See Appendix 4

The main problem is that clerical speech, by its poisonous nature, tends to poison and destroy the most living words. No matter how elegant, poetic and expressive a word is, as soon as it enters the composition of this speech, it completely loses its original human meaning and turns into a boring template.

Very, very rarely the official is appropriate:

It is almost always possible and necessary to say simply:

early

in advance, on time, ahead of time

was heading

happened, incident

happened, case

discovered

saw, noticed, found, opened

expressed no surprise

not surprised at all

a hundred miles away

a hundred miles away

as you move away

does not matter

it annoyed me

I was angry, angry, annoyed

School literature

The point is that the essays of schoolchildren are more like a stencil and are a repetition of the same words and concepts. For example, "M. Sholokhov showed us perfectly ... He showed us how ... The writer showed us perfectly the class struggle ... He showed us a face-to-face clash ... M. Sholokhov, in particular, showed us well the Cossacks who ... The author with the help of of this image indicates that ... The book showed us how, overcoming all obstacles ... "and so on." He showed it and opened it, and showed it again, and again, and again. It was as if the entire Russian language with its magnificent richness of various words had disappeared, forgotten, and only two or three dozen standard words and phrases survived, which are combined by schoolchildren. See Appendix 5

Thus, true literacy is not only about the correct spelling and pronunciation of words. “When we manage to completely destroy the bureaucratic relations of people, the office will disappear by itself. Ennoble the morals of young people, and you will not have to eradicate coarse and shameless jargon from their everyday life. So it will be so, I am sure "K. Chukovsky

Deformities of speech

“Otssedov can make a conclusion”, “- Lie down!”, “- Now I will shake off and go out!”, “- Don't undress your coat!”

“In our country,” Pavel Nilin justly said, “where the doors of schools, both daytime and evening, are wide open, no one can find an excuse for their illiteracy” [Novy Mir, 1958, No. 4]. Therefore, the Russian people should not be allowed to continue to retain in their everyday life such ugly verbal forms as "bulgakhter, ndravitsya, I dare, I want it, worse, signified, I want it, kalidor." See Appendix 7

Linguistic nonsense: nonsense or quirks of Russian speech?

Well-known expressions: "dull music", "flashy colors", "terribly fun", "terribly beautiful" sound a little strange due to the incongruity of words, sometimes denoting opposite things. But is the living Russian language determined solely by logic?

For example, the familiar words "great-grandson, great-granddaughter." After all, "pra" means deep antiquity, and the great-grandson, on the contrary, is the youngest descendant. Or "ink", that is, black (blackening) liquid. Why do we say: blue or red ink. All this testifies to the fact that language is not mathematics and in every living language there are many "absurdities" that have long been legitimized by time.

It is impossible to eradicate in our speech and other formulas "shame and disgrace", "wholly and completely", "not dawn", "life-bye", "around and around." Although it is clear to everyone that “shame” is the same as “shame”, and “completely” means “completely”. The formation of speech is determined not only by the laws of logic, but also by the requirements of musicality, beauty and artistry.

Living languages ​​can "forget" the original meaning of some words. But in order for this word to harmoniously merge into the modern Russian language, one thing is necessary: ​​for oblivion to be massive, nationwide. Such is, for example, the word goofy. “She got mad,” said a village woman who had taken off her traditional headscarf. But now this meaning has completely forgotten, and no one notices that there is hair in this word. Therefore, now even a bald man can say about himself: "I went nuts!" After all, now "goofy" means to give a blunder, to be a fool, to blunder.

But there are fresh, so to speak, young nonsense in our speech, such that cannot be justified by the old age. We have no right to put up with them. It is one thing to forget the original meaning of expressions and words as a normal historical process, and another to disregard this meaning, inspired by cynicism and slovenliness. For example, a price list is an absurd form, because price is what means price in German. The expressions memorial monument, timekeeping, memorable souvenirs, industrial industry, folklore are also inadmissible, because memorial means memory; chronos means time, souvenir means a memorable gift, industry means industry; folk means people, and folklore means folk art. See Appendix 6

But as the famous linguist Maxim Krongauz said in his book "The Russian language on the verge of a nervous breakdown", where the author examines the state of the modern Russian language, oversaturated with new words that depend on the Internet, youth, fashion: "The most noticeable of the changes taking place in the language, - this is the emergence of new words and - a little less vivid - the emergence of new meanings ... For example, the names of animals - mouse, dog - acquired new, "computer" meanings, and in completely different ways. " Well, everything is clear with the mouse, this meaning is well known to all "a special device that allows you to control the cursor and enter all sorts of commands." At the beginning, the computer mouse was really similar to the usual one both in shape, and in the tail-wire, and in the way it ran on the rug.

But the dog as a name for @, an e-mail icon, was invented by the Russian language itself (more precisely, an unknown author, or, as they say in such cases, the people). Again he picked up something similar, invented a new metaphor, although, I must say, the resemblance to a dog is very doubtful. Foreigners are at first perplexed, but then doomedly accept the strange Russian metaphor

Thus, 1) there is an excellent confirmation of the creative nature of the Russian language as a whole, and 2) it is clear that the Russian language has very powerful protective resources, which do not consist in the rejection of borrowings, but in their early development.

Research results and their discussion

Video poll of teachers of our school on the topic: "Are you worried about the problem of clogging the Russian language?"

Results of the survey of teachers of our school

What is your concern in modern Russian?

Deformities of speech (wrong stress, distortion of words))

Profanity

Mixing styles (using business words in everyday speech, etc.)

Poor vocabulary (use of SMS messages, Internet communication)

Schoolchildren survey

A questionnaire survey was carried out among schoolchildren of the 7th "B" and 8th "A" classes of our school.

51 students took part in the survey.

Questionnaire for schoolchildren, see Appendix 8

Are you worried about the problem of clogging the Russian language? See diagram appendix 9

Would you like to communicate with each other competently? See diagram appendix 10

What words do you use most often? See diagram appendix 11

"In short" - immediately makes the interlocutor think about whether the further information will be interesting, otherwise why cut it down?

See diagram appendix 13

Video a survey of random passers-by on the topic: "Are you worried about the problem of clogging the Russian language?"

Comparison of the answers of adults and schoolchildren to the question "Are you worried about the problem of clogging the Russian language?" See diagram appendix 14

See diagram appendix 15

Why don't people correct those around them? Most common answers:

They won't understand anyway

What if they say rudely

Uncomfortable

I consider it tactless

A cultured person will not correct ...

I can only correct people close to me

But, if not us, then who? See Appendix 16

"Total dictation"

Purpose: to generate interest in literacy.

Large-scale event. In 2017, 866 cities of Russia and the world took part in the action. Annual educational action. It has been in existence for 14 years.

The action "Total dictation" in Svetlogorsk was held on April 16, 2016. My family took part in this action. See Appendix 17

Conclusion

1) We saw that K.I. Chukovsky, in his book Alive as Life, analyzes the state of the Russian language and cites seven main problems of the Russian language: foreign language, vulgarisms, contamination with dialects and vice versa, expelling them from their speech, sanctimonious tastes, but the main thing is that it is clerical and compound words.

2) Analyzing the state of the Russian language and our speech, together we come to disappointing conclusions: we ourselves distort and disfigure our great and mighty language.

The Russian language is beautiful, rich, polysemantic and capable of modifications. This statement is accepted without objection. But can we consider that its potential is inexhaustible? Love the Russian language and protect it from distortion, remember that this mighty language was given to a great people.

“Speak Russian, for God's sake! Style this novelty. " (A.M. Zhemchuzhnikov.)

    Print lists of wrong and correct words on the covers of school exercise books

    Put words that cripple our language on postcards, on envelopes.

    While watching films, show the newsreel "Why do we say this?" or "Learn to speak correctly."

    How not to talk about should be printed on matchbox stickers, on boxes for sweets and cookies.

    The mass media can make a significant contribution if they set up a permanent section on How Not to Speak and Write.

    Perhaps the creation of a special public organization advocating for the purity of the language. For example, to establish the All-Russian Society of Russian Language Lovers. The society must have branches and primary organizations at all institutions, enterprises, educational institutions without exception, and must also be a mass organization, and access to members of the society is unlimited.

    An organizing committee or initiative group is needed to fight for speech culture in every region of Russia. Hundreds of thousands of active fighters for high speech culture will join such an organization.

    Make an annual holiday (May 24 in Russia celebrates the Day of Slavic Writing and Culture) a day off and coincide with it with mandatory events that contribute to the purification of the Russian language.

    To organize a network of literacy corners, which should become centers for the implantation of the culture of the native language in institutions, enterprises, educational institutions, including kindergartens.

    To disseminate the experience of “fighting illiteracy” to everyone at their place of work or study. For example, compile and distribute in your school a list of words that are most often misspelled in spelling and pronunciation.

See Appendix 18

But even if all these measures are implemented, they will still not be enough. “After all, the culture of speech is inseparable from the general culture. To improve the quality of your language, you need to improve the quality of your intelligence. Someone writes and speaks without mistakes, but what a poor vocabulary he has, what muddy phrases! " - K. Chukovsky tells us. Other, longer, broader methods are needed here. You need to raise the general culture, and thereby raise the culture of your language. And everyone should take part in this hot struggle for our verbal culture!

Vocabulary

Can't speak

Gotta talk

Catalog

Catalog

Quarter

Quarter

Funds

Funds

Petition

Application

Are you getting off at this stop?

Do you get off at this stop?

To put on a coat

Put on a coat

Conclusions:

    I confirmed the fact that the Russian language is as alive as life.

    I found out that the Russian language has diseases: imaginary and genuine.

    I have proved that the Russian language can be treated. One has only to want!

    4) I am glad that most people are worried about the problem of clogging up the Russian language.

    4) I believe that it is still necessary to correct others if they make mistakes in speech.

“I love my native language:

It is understandable for everyone

He is melodious

He, like the Russian people, has many faces,

How powerful is our power! " (A. Yashin).

Song about Russian "We speak Russian". See Appendix 19

Music: Grigory Vasilievich Gladkov, Lyrics: Olga Anatolyevna Alexandrova

Russian words deep flow

Gives strength to the song line.

Oh, what a delight it is -

Speak Russian!

List of used literature

    K.I. Chukovsky "Alive as life", M., 1982

    N. Gal "The word alive and dead", M., 2001

    M. Krongauz "Russian language on the verge of failure", M., 2009

    Internet sites

"Electronic Library" http://modernlib.ru/books/chukovskiy_korney_ivanovich/zhivoy_kak_zhizn

Nora Gal's official page: http://www.vavilon.ru/noragal

Annex 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Appendix 6

Appendix 7

Appendix 8

Questionnaire for schoolchildren

    1) Are you worried about the problem of clogging the Russian language?

    2) Would you like to communicate with each other competently?

    a) yes, b) rather yes, c) rather no, d) no, e) I don’t know

    3) Do I need to apply the rules of the Russian language for communication on the Internet?

    a) yes, b) rather yes, c) rather no, d) no, e) I don’t know

    4) What words do you use most often? (emphasize)

    like, kind of, in short, cool, damn it, well, this, and so

    5) Do you correct others if they make mistakes in speech?

    a) yes, b) rather yes, c) rather no, d) no, e) I don’t know

Appendix 9

Are you worried about the problem of clogging the Russian language?

Conclusion: the majority of schoolchildren are worried about the problem of contamination of the Russian language.

Appendix 10

Would you like to communicate with each other competently?

Conclusion: most schoolchildren would like to communicate with each other competently.

Appendix 11

What words do you use most often?

Appendix 12

Appendix 13

Do you correct others when they make mistakes in speech?

Conclusion: more than half of schoolchildren notice, but do not correct others when they make mistakes in speech

Appendix 14

Comparison of the answers of adults and schoolchildren to the question "Are you worried about the problem of clogging the Russian language?"

Conclusion: as expected, for adults, the problem of Russian language clogging is more relevant.

Appendix 15

Do you correct others when they make mistakes in speech?

Conclusion: but adults only sometimes correct others when they make mistakes in speech.

Appendix 16

Appendix 17

Appendix 18

Current page: 1 (the book has a total of 9 pages)

Korney Chukovsky
LIVE AS LIFE
Stories about the Russian language

Chapter one
OLD AND NEW

In him(In russian language) all tones and shades, all transitions of sounds from the hardest to the most delicate and soft; he is boundless and can, living like life, enrich himself every minute.

I

Anatoly Fedorovich Koni, an honorary academician, a famous lawyer, was, as you know, a man of great kindness. He willingly forgave those around him any mistakes and weaknesses. But grief was to the one who, talking with him, distorted or mutilated the Russian language. Horses pounced on him with passionate hatred. His passion fascinated me. And yet, in his struggle for the purity of the language, he often went overboard.

For example, he demanded that the word necessarily meant only kindly, helpful.

But this meaning of the word has already died. Now both in living speech and in literature the word necessarily came to mean certainly. It was this that outraged Academician Koni.

“Imagine,” he said, clutching at his heart, “today I’m walking along Spasskaya and I hear:“ He necessarily will hit you in the face! " How do you like it? The person informs the other that someone kindly will beat him!

- But the word necessarily doesn't mean kindly - I tried to object, but Anatoly Fyodorovich stood his ground.

Meanwhile, today in the entire Soviet Union you will no longer find a person for whom necessarily would mean kindly.

Today, not everyone will understand what Aksakov meant when he spoke of one provincial doctor:

“In relation to us, he acted necessarily" [S.T. Aksakov, Memoirs (1855). Collected cit., vol. II. M., 1955, p. 52.]

On the other hand, no one finds it strange, for example, Isakovsky's couplet:


And where do you want
Necessarily you will get there.

Much is explained by the fact that Koni was old at that time. He acted like most old people: he defended the norms of Russian speech that existed during his childhood and youth. Old people almost always imagined (and are imagining now) that their children and grandchildren (especially grandchildren) disfigure the correct Russian speech.

I can easily imagine that gray-haired old man who, in 1803 or 1805, angrily pounded his fist on the table when his grandchildren began to talk among themselves about the development of mind and character.

- Where did you get this obnoxious development of the mind? Must speak vegetation "[Proceedings of Ya.K. Grotto, vol. II. Philological research (1852-1892). SPB. 1899, pp. 69, 82.].

As soon as, for example, a young man said in a conversation that now he had to go, well, at least to a shoemaker, and the old men angrily shouted to him:

- Not necessary, a it is necessary! Why are you distorting the Russian language? [In the Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, 1806-1822) there is only necessary.]

A new era has come. The former youths became fathers and grandfathers. And it was their turn to be indignant with the words that the youth introduced into everyday life: gifted, distinct, voting, humane, public, whip[Neither in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy nor in the Dictionary of Pushkin's Language (M., 1956-1959) the words gifted no. It appears only in the Dictionary of Church Slavonic and Russian languages, compiled by the second branch of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, 1847). The words distinct not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The words vote not in any dictionary before Dahl, 1882. Word whip created by Ivan Panaev (along with the word hanger) in the middle of the 19th century. See also Proceedings of Ya.K. Grotto, vol. II, pp. 14, 69, 83.].

Now it seems to us that these words have existed in Russia from time immemorial and that we could never do without them, but meanwhile, in the 30s-40s of the last century, these were novice words, with which the then zealots of the purity of the language could not reconcile for a long time ...

Now it is even difficult to believe what words at that time seemed, for example, to Prince Vyazemsky low-quality, street. These words: mediocrity and talented.“Mediocrity, talented, - the prince Vyazemsky was indignant, - new areal expressions in our literary language. Dmitriev was telling the truth that “our new writers are learning the language from the meadows” [ P. Vyazemsky, Old notebook. L., 1929, p. 264.]

If the youth of that time happened to use in conversation such words unknown to past generations as: fact, result, nonsense, solidarity[Not a word fact, not a word result, not a word solidarity not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy.] representatives of these former generations declared that Russian speech suffers considerable damage from such an influx of vulgar words.

“Where did this fact? - indignant, for example, Thaddeus Bulgarin in 1847. - What is this word? Warped ”[“ Northern Bee ”, 1847, No. 93 dated April 26. Magazine sundries.].

Jacob Groth already at the end of the 60s declared the newly appeared word ugly inspire[Proceedings of Ya.K. Grotto, vol. II, p. 14.]

Even a word like scientific, and that had to overcome the great resistance of the Old Testament purists before it entered our speech as a legitimate word. Let us remember how this word struck Gogol in 1851. Until that time, he had not even heard of him ["Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries." M. p. 511.].

The old people demanded that instead of scientific only spoke scientist: scientist book, scientist treatise. Word scientific seemed to them unacceptable vulgarity. However, there was a time when even a word vulgar they were ready to consider it illegal. Pushkin, not foreseeing that it would be Russified, retained its foreign form in Onegin. Let's remember the famous poems about Tatiana:


Nobody could have her beautiful
Name; but from head to toe
No one could find in her
That which is an autocratic fashion
In the high London circle
Called vulgar. I can not...
I love this word very much,
But I can't translate;
It is still new with us,
And it is unlikely to be in his honor.
It would be suitable in an epigram ...

(VIII chapter)

It was not necessary to translate this word into Russian, because it itself became Russian.

And for a long time the old people could not come to terms with such a phrase as literary creativity, whom neither Derzhavin, nor Zhukovsky, nor Pushkin knew [Words creation not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, nor in the Dictionary of Church Slavonic and Russian languages ​​(St. Petersburg, 1847).]

Of course, the old people were wrong. Now a word necessary, and the word nonsense, and the word fact, and the word vote, and the word scientific, and the word creation, and the word necessarily(in the sense of certainly) are felt by everyone, both young and old, as the most legitimate, fundamental words of Russian speech, and who can do without these words!

Now it seems strange to everyone that Nekrasov, having written in one of his stories nonsense, had to explain in a note: “A lackey word, which is equivalent to a word - rubbish" [Cm. “Petersburg Corners” in the Nekrasov anthology “Physiology of Petersburg”, part 1. St. Petersburg, 1845, p. 290, and in the Complete Works of N.А. Nekrasov, vol. VI. M, 1950, p. 120.], and “Literaturnaya gazeta” of those years, talking about someone virtuoso soul, considered herself compelled to add immediately that masterly-“Newfangled word” [Literaturnaya Gazeta, 1841, p. 94: “The soul is visible in the game and in the techniques virtuoso to flaunt a newfangled word. ”].

As a child, I still found old people (albeit rather decrepit) who said at the ball, Alexandrynsky theatre, genvar, blush, whitewash, furniture(plural) etc.

II

But then the years passed, and I, in turn, became an old man. Now, according to my age, I am supposed to hate the words that were introduced into our speech by young people, and scream about the corruption of the language.

Moreover, in two or three years more new concepts and words flooded over me, like every contemporary of mine, than over my grandfathers and great-grandfathers over the past two and a half centuries. Among them there were many wonderful, and there were also those that seemed to me at first to be illegal, harmful, spoiling the Russian speech, subject to extermination and oblivion.

I remember how terribly I was outraged when young people, as if in agreement with each other, instead of Goodbye speak for some reason while.

Or this form: "I went" instead of "I am leaving." The man is still sitting at the table, he is just about to leave, but he is depicting his future act as already perfect.

For a long time I could not come to terms with this.

At the same time, young people began to feel in a new way the verb to experience. We said: "I am experiencing grief" or "I am experiencing joy", and now they say: "I am experiencing this way" (without the addition), and this word now means: "I am worried", and even more often: "I am suffering", " I am suffering. "

Neither Tolstoy, nor Turgenev, nor Chekhov knew such a form. For them, worrying has always been a transitive verb. And now I heard with my own ears the following retelling of a fashionable film about some old era:

- I'm so worried! Said the countess.

- Stop worrying! - said the marquis.

The verb was comprehended in a new way imagine... Before, he meant to fantasize. Now it most often means: swagger, take airs.

- He's so imagines, - they are now talking about a man who is arrogant.

True, even before it was: to imagine yourself (“you imagine a lot of yourself”, etc.). But now no additional words are required.

The arrogant expression jarred me very much I'm eating. In my time, that was the courteous form with which a person addressed himself not to himself, but to others.

- Welcome to eat!

If he spoke about himself: I'm eating- it felt like a funny airing.

Then, in common parlance, the word was established back - with insane meaning again.

I remember when I first heard from the lips of a young housekeeper that last night the dog Barmaley “barked back at Marina and Tatu”, I thought that Marina and Tata were the first to bark at this dog.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, not only in oral, colloquial, but also in written, book speech, a new phrase invaded to the address and for several months supplanted the previous form by the address. Unaccustomed to me, it was strange to hear: “she said some taunt to my address ”,“There was applause to his address ”.

The same bewilderment was caused in me by the newly appeared form: choice a (instead of elections), contract a (instead of contracts), lecturer a (instead of lecturers).

In her I heard something dashing, reckless, dumbstruck, ugly.

It was in vain that I consoled myself that this form had long been legalized by the Russian literary language. “After all,” I said to myself, “eighty years have passed, and perhaps more, since the Russian people stopped talking and writing: “D O we, d O ctor, uch and teli, prof e quarrels, sl e sari, NS nkery, p e kari, n and saree, fl and gels, and willingly replaced them with forms: House a, teacher I am , Professor a, locksmith I am, wing I am, junker a, baker I am etc." [In Gogol's "The Marriage" (1836-1842) there is also at home(1, XIII) and houses(1, XIV).].

Little of. The next generation gave the same dashing form to dozens of new words, such as: buhg a lters, t O we, to a tera, t O poly, l a gehry, d and zeli. They began to speak and write: accountant a, volume a, boat a, poplar I am, lager I am, diesel I am etc.

Even Chekhov did not recognize these forms. For him, only engineers, and poplars(see, for example, IX, 118; XIV, 132), and if he had heard: volume a , he would have thought it was about the French composer Ambroise Thom.

It would seem enough. But no. A new generation came, and I heard from him: chauffeur a, author a, librarian I am, sector a... And a few more years later: output a, soup a, plan a, mater I am, daughter I am, secretary I am, planes I am, speed I am, statement I am, age a, area I am[According to Turgenev, the form area I am for a long time it existed in the dialect of the peasants of the Oryol province: this is what they called "large continuous masses of bushes" ( I.S. Turgenev, Collected. cit., t. 1.M., 1961, p. 9). But there is reason to think that the current word area I am arose independently of this Oryol term. Leo Tolstoy (in 1874) argued that “living speech uses the form carts, but not carts”(Vol. XVII, p. 82).]

Each time I came to the conviction that it was useless to protest against these words. I could be indignant as much as I wanted, lose my temper, but it was impossible not to see that here for a century some kind of non-stop spontaneous process of replacing an unstressed ending was taking place s (and) heavily accented ending and I).

And who can guarantee that our great-grandchildren will not speak and write: tap a, actor a, bear I am, stomach I am. Observing the lush flowering of this ugly form, I have often consoled myself with the fact that this form takes possession mainly of the words that are most often mentioned in this professional (sometimes very narrow) circle: form plan a exists only among draftsmen; cake a in pastry shops; soup a - in restaurant kitchens; square - in house administrations; speed - from tractor drivers.

Firefighters say: torch a.

We will not now deal with the question of whether this process is desirable or not, this is a conversation ahead, but as long as it is important for us to note one significant fact: all the efforts of countless adherents of the purity of the language to stop this turbulent process, or at least to weaken it, are still fruitless. If I even thought to write now: “Crimean poplars", or: " then we Shakespeare ", I can be sure in advance that my book will print:" Crimean poplars», « volumes Shakespeare ".

Since and poplars and then we so outdated that a modern reader would sense stylization, cutesy, and demeanor in them too.

And the new meaning of the word: read it out. Before read out it meant: he cheated on the book, took it to read it and did not give it back. And now - read aloud, read it out.

“Then there was read out draft resolution ”.

Before, when addressing kids, we always said: children... Now this word has been supplanted everywhere by the word guys... It sounds both in schools and in kindergartens, which is extremely shocking to old people who dream of children being called children again. Previously, only peasant children were called guys (along with soldiers and guys).

Only at home guys.

(Nekrasov, III, 12)

It would be instructive to trace the process by which the village form prevailed in the present speech.

Instead of reflect appeared display. Instead of broad masses of readers an unprecedented wide reader.

A new form appeared in children's vernacular weak O ("you weak O jump over this ditch ”), etc.


At first, the new role of the word irritated me very much easily. Before it meant: no ceremony.

- Come to us easily(that is, in a friendly way).

Now this word is understood differently. Almost all young people say:

- Well it easily(that is: it is not difficult at all).

I will not list all the words that have entered our native language literally before my eyes during my long life.

I will only say that among these words there were many that I met with love and joy. We will talk about them later. And now I'm only talking about those that disgusted me. At first I was firmly convinced that these were geek words, renegade words, that they distort and distort the Russian language, but then, contrary to my tastes and skills, I tried to treat them much kinder.

Tolerate - fall in love! Except for the word back(in the sense of again), which never claimed to enter our literary language, yes, a vulgar expression I'm eating, many of the words listed could, it seems, little by little gain the right of citizenship and no longer jar me.

This is an extremely curious process - the normalization of a newly emerged word in the minds of those to whom, when it appeared, it seemed completely unacceptable, grossly violating the norms of established speech.

Academician Yakov Groth very accurately depicts this process of the formation of new linguistic norms. Mentioning that in his memory such words as: activist, representative, initiative, influential, restrained, the scientist rightly notes:

“The course of introducing such words is usually the following: at the beginning, the word is allowed by very few; others are afraid of him, look at him incredulously, as at a stranger; but the more successful it is, the more often it begins to appear. Little by little they get used to it, and its novelty is forgotten: the next generation already catches it in motion and fully assimilates it.

So it was, for example, with the word activist; the present young generation, perhaps, does not even suspect how this word, when it appeared in the 30s, was greeted with hostility by most of the writers. Now it is heard incessantly, it is already included in government acts, and there was a time when many, especially from the elderly, preferred it doer(see, for example, the works of Pletnev).

Sometimes it happens, however, that a completely new word will immediately fall in love with and come into fashion. This means that it has hit the modern taste. So it was most recently with the words: influence(and influence), influential, relate to something one way or another, etc. "[Proceedings of Ya.K. Groth, vol. II. St. Petersburg, 1899, p. 17.].

Why shouldn't this happen with the words I just spoke about?

Of course, I will never introduce these words into my own speech use. It would be unnatural if I, an old man, in a conversation said, for example, contract a, or: volume a, or me so worried or: well i went, or: while, or: I will definitely come to you today. But why shouldn't I be reconciled with people who use such a vocabulary? Indeed, it would be very easy to convince yourself that these words are no worse than others: they are quite correct and even, perhaps, desirable.

- Well, what's wrong, - I say to myself, - at least in a short word while? After all, the exact same form of farewell to friends is also in other languages, and there it does not shock anyone. The great poet Walt Whitman, shortly before his death, said goodbye to his readers with a touching poem “So long!”, Which means “Bye!” In English. The French a bientot has the same meaning. There is no rudeness here. On the contrary, this form is filled with the most amiable courtesy, because this (approximately) meaning was compressed here: be prosperous and happy, while we will not see you again.

I try to argue with myself, I try to suppress my usual subjective tastes in myself and, making an effort over myself, I try to at least partially come to terms with even the word that jars me read out.

- After all, - I say to myself, - now this word has acquired a specific meaning, which was not in any derivative of the verb read; This meaning, it seems to me, is this: to read out one or more official papers at some (mostly crowded) meeting.

And with expression well i went it is not so difficult to reconcile as it seemed to me at first. The great linguist A.A. Potebnia back in 1874 found examples of this form in Lithuanian, Serbian, Ukrainian texts, as well as in our Old Russian spiritual verses:

Pray to the Lord, laboring

For Alexei the man of God,

I went to another land [ A.A. Potebnya, From notes on Russian grammar, vol. I-II. M., 1958, pp. 271-275.].

Seeing this I went in an ancient song that has existed for at least half a thousand years, I could no longer rebel against this - as it turned out now - far from a new "innovation", legalized by our language for a long time and completely justified back in the 70s by one of our most authoritative linguists ...

It turned out to be not so easy to overcome the instinctive aversion to forms: engineer, contract, area, speed.

But here, too, I decided to overcome my personal tastes and ponder all these words impartially.

“For me, there is no doubt,” I said to myself, “that the massive shift in emphasis from the first syllables to the last is happening in our time for a reason. Rural, Nekrasov Russia did not know such a re-emphasis: the language of the patriarchal village gravitated towards drawn-out, unhurried words with dactylic endings (that is, to words that have an emphasis on the third syllable from the end):

Porast a vlena there st O faces toch e ny,

Poraz O pods there sc a terti br a nye.

(II, 153) [For more details see about this: Korney Chukovsky, Nekrasov's Mastery, ed. third. M., 1959, pp. 592-610.]

On two lines, as many as six three-syllable, four-syllable, five-syllable words. Such lengthy words fully corresponded to the aesthetic tastes of the Old Testament village.

This taste was reflected in the poetry of Nekrasov (as well as Koltsov, Nikitin and other "peasant democrats"):

All-out I am r at sski tribes e nor

Mnogostrad a flax mother!

It is not for nothing that long drawn-out words, corresponding to the slow pace of patriarchal life, are so characteristic of folk songs of the past centuries. In connection with the industrialization of the country, these slow rates have been eliminated: along with a drawn-out song, a short ditty appeared, the words became more energetic, shorter, more abrupt. And in long words, to which the aesthetics of Old Russian folk poetry - lullabies and wedding songs, epics, etc., gravitated for so many centuries, the stress migrated from the third syllable (from the end) to the last. A systematic process of displacing long dactylic words with words with a masculine ending began: instead of m a teri became mater I am, instead of sc a terti - tablecloth I am, instead of T O polypoplar I am.

So both these transformations of words and this craving for arrowheads are historically conditioned by a long-standing trend in our speech development.


And the form I worry, maybe not that kind of crime at all. Indeed, in any live conversation, we often omit words that are easily guessed by both the speaker and the listener. We say, "It is soon nine" (and we mean: hours). Or: “He has a temperature” (we mean: high). Or: “She is over forty” (we mean: years). Or: “We are going to Basmannaya” (we mean: the street).

This omission is called an ellipsis. Here is a completely legitimate economy of speech. Let us recall another transitive verb, which has also recently lost its transitivity in some places: violate.

We all heard from the conductors, policemen and janitors:

- Citizens, do not break!

This implies: established rules. And another is the same form:

- Citizens, crossing the street where there is no crossing, you exposed.

Whether it is ellipsis, I do not know. But worry, certainly not an ellipsis: the padding is not implied here, but simply absent.

Anyone who uttered this phrase would even be surprised if asked what exactly he is experiencing: grief or joy. Joy is out of the question; to worry now means: worry, worry.

No matter how much this new meaning of the old word jarred on us, it is so firmly established in the language that the restoration of the former meaning is hardly possible.

Now it’s even strange for me to remember how angry me at first the current phrase: one hundred grams.

- Not one hundred grams, a one hundred grams! - I shouted indignantly.

But little by little I got used to it, I got used to it, and now this new form seems completely normal to me.

And should I say? I even made an attempt to come to terms with the Russian case ending coat.

Of course, this is difficult for me, and I still suffer greatly if in my presence someone says that he does not find anywhere coat or goes to his home for coat.

But still I try not to get angry and console myself with such reasoning

- After all, - I say to myself, - the whole history of the word coat tells us these forms. In stories and novels written about the middle of the last century or somewhat earlier, this word was printed in French letters:

"He put on his trendy paletot."

“His blue paletot was covered in dust.”

In French, paletot is masculine, and even when this word began to be printed in Russian letters, it remained masculine for another eight or ten years in our country. In the books of that time, we could read:

"This beautiful coat"

"He opened his autumn coat."

But after the coat became a very common clothing, its name became national, and when the people felt this word as their own, purely Russian, as, say, egg, wheel, milk, oatmeal, he began to persuade him according to the rules of Russian grammar: coat, coat, coat and even polta.

- What is so bad here? - I said to myself and immediately tried to convince myself with new arguments. - After all, the Russian language is so viable, healthy and powerful that a thousand times over the centuries it has arbitrarily subordinated to its own laws and requirements any foreign language word that will not enter its orbit.

Indeed. As soon as he took from the Tatars such words as sheepskin coat, robe, sash, barn, chest, fog, armyak, watermelon, nothing prevented him from bending these other people's words according to the laws of Russian grammar: chest, chest, chest.

He did exactly the same with words that he obtained from the Germans, with such as apron, badge, hairdresser, resort.

From the French, he took not only coat, but also words like broth, passenger, performance, play, stage, ticket, - Is he so anemic and weak that he cannot dispose of these words in his own way, change them in numbers, cases and genders, create such purely Russian forms as pieska, backstage, stowaway, broth?

Of course not! These words are completely subject to him. Why make an exception for the word coat, which, moreover, has become so Russified that it has also overgrown with primordial Russian national forms: coat, overcoat etc.

Why not incline this word, as it inclines, say, awl, rocker, paddle? After all, it belongs precisely to this series of neuter nouns. Purists, on the other hand, want it to remain in the line of such unflinching words as dominoes, depot, dressing table, cloak, metro, bureau and so on. Meanwhile, it has already broken out of this row, and there is no reason to transfer it back to this row.

However, and underground, and the Bureau, and depot also do not retain their immobility too much. After all, vernacular declines them in all cases.

- V dep e - dancing.

- Tomorrow at bureau e consider!

- I am better meter O m I'll go!

Compare with Mayakovsky:

I, comrades, from the military bureau NS.

("Good!")

In general, the Russian language tends to declension of non-declining words. Is it because, for example, the word was created coffee, what coffee is it not possible to persuade? Is it not because of the established forms here and there gladly(instead of radio) and kakava(instead of cocoa) that these forms can be changed by case?

Every new generation of Russian children invents these forms over and over again. The four-year-old son of Professor Gvozdev called the radio masts - radives and firmly believed in the inflection of the word coat, introducing into his speech such forms as in coat, coats [A.N. Gvozdev, Questions of the study of children's speech. M., 1961, pp. 307 and 316.] He was brought up in a highly cultured family, where no one used these forms.

III

So I convinced myself, and it seemed to me that all my arguments were irresistibly logical.

But, obviously, logic alone is not enough to assess a particular linguistic phenomenon. There are other criteria that are stronger than any logic. We can prove to ourselves and to others as much as we like that this or that word does not evoke any criticism in its meaning, in its expression, and in its grammatical form. And yet, for some special reason, a person who utters this word in a society of educated, cultured people will compromise himself in their eyes. Of course, the forms of word usage vary enormously, and it is difficult to predict their fate, but anyone who says, for example, in 1962 choice, will immediately establish himself as a person of not very high culture.

And no matter how convincing the arguments with which I tried to justify the inflection of the word coat, nevertheless, I barely heard from a very sweet nurse that in the fall she likes to walk without coat, I involuntarily felt antipathy for her.

And then it became clear to me that, despite all my attempts to defend this seemingly perfectly legal form, I still deep down did not accept it. Under no guise, until the end of my days, I could neither write nor say in a conversation: coat, coat or coat.

And it’s not easy for me to feel disposed towards that person - be he a doctor, engineer, writer, teacher, student, who would say in front of me:

- He laughed at my address.

Mater I am came to choice a.

Maybe in the future, in the 70s, these forms will finally take root in the everyday life of cultured people, but now, in 1962, I still feel them as a true sign of lack of culture!

As for such forms as bye, I'm going, it seems like it's raining and others, it is undoubtedly time to amnesty them, because their connection with the environment that gave birth to them has already been forgotten by everyone, and thus, from the category of vernacular and jargon, they have already firmly entered the category of literary, and there is not the slightest the need to drive them out of there.