Since what century has the modern Russian language existed. Great and mighty: the history of the development of the Russian language

Russian is the largest language in the world. In terms of the number of people speaking it, it ranks 5th after Chinese, English, Hindi and Spanish.

Origin

Slavic languages, to which Russian belongs, belong to the Indo-European language branch.

At the end of III - beginning of II millennium BC. the Proto-Slavic language separated from the Indo-European family, which is the basis for the Slavic languages. In the X - XI centuries. the Proto-Slavic language was divided into 3 groups of languages: West Slavic (from which Czech, Slovak arose), South Slavic (developed into Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian) and East Slavic.

During the period of feudal fragmentation, which contributed to the formation of regional dialects, and the Tatar-Mongolian yoke, three independent languages emerged from East Slavic: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. Thus, the Russian language belongs to the East Slavic (Old Russian) subgroup of the Slavic group of the Indo-European language branch.

History of development

In the era of Muscovite Russia, the Middle Great Russian dialect arose, the main role in the formation of which belonged to Moscow, which introduced the characteristic "acane", and the reduction of unstressed vowels, and a number of other metamorphoses. The Moscow dialect becomes the basis of the Russian national language. However, a unified literary language had not yet developed at that time.

In the XVIII-XIX centuries. Special scientific, military, maritime vocabulary was rapidly developed, which was the reason for the appearance of borrowed words, which often clogged and weighed down the native language. There was a need to develop a single Russian language, which took place in the struggle of literary and political trends. The great genius of M.V. Lomonosov in his theory of "three" established a connection between the subject of presentation and the genre. Thus, odes should be written in the "high" style, plays, prose works in the "medium" style, and comedies in the "low" style. A.S. Pushkin in his reform expanded the possibilities of using the “middle” style, which now became suitable for ode, tragedy, and elegy. It is from the language reform of the great poet that the modern Russian literary language traces its history.

The appearance of sovietisms and various abbreviations (prodrazverstka, people's commissar) is connected with the structure of socialism.

The modern Russian language is characterized by an increase in the number of special vocabulary, which was the result of scientific and technological progress. At the end of the XX - beginning of the XXI centuries. the lion's share of foreign words comes into our language from English.

The complex relationships between different layers of the Russian language, as well as the influence of borrowings and new words on it, led to the development of synonymy, which makes our language truly rich.

The national language is the means of oral and written communication of the nation. Along with the commonality of the territory, historical, economic and political life, as well as the mental warehouse, language is the leading indicator of the historical community of people, which is usually called the term nation(lat.natio - tribe, people).

Russian national language by family ties, belongs to to the Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages. Indo-European languages are one of the largest language families, including Anatolian, Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Italic, Romance, Germanic, Celtic, Baltic, Slavic groups, as well as Armenian, Phrygian, Venetian and some other languages.

Slavic languages come from single Proto-Slavic a language that evolved from the Indo-European base language long before our era. During the existence of the Proto-Slavic language, the main features inherent in all Slavic languages developed. Around the 6th-7th centuries AD, the Proto-Slavic unity broke up. The Eastern Slavs began to use a relatively uniform East Slavic language. (Old Russian, or the language of Kievan Rus). At about the same time, they formed West Slavic(Czech, Slovak, Polish, Kashubian, Serbal Lusatian and "dead" Polabian) and South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Slovene, Rusyn and "dead" Old Church Slavonic).

In the 9th-11th centuries, on the basis of translations of liturgical books made by Cyril and Methodius, the first written language of the Slavs was formed - Old Church Slavonic Its literary continuation will be the language used to this day in worship. – Church Slavonic .

With the strengthening of feudal fragmentation and the overthrow of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, the Great Russian, Little Russian and Belarusian nationalities are formed. Thus, the East Slavic group of languages is divided into three related languages: Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian. By the 14th-15th centuries, the language of the Great Russian people was formed with the Rostov-Suzdal and Vladimir dialects at the core.

Russian national language begins to take shape in the 17th century in connection with the development capitalist relations and the development of the Russian nationality into nation. The phonetic system, grammatical structure and the main vocabulary of the Russian national language are inherited from the language Great Russian people formed in the process interaction between the northern Great Russian and the southern Great Russian dialects. Moscow, located on the border of the south and north of the European part of Russia, has become the center of this interaction. Exactly Moscow business vernacular had a significant impact on the development of the national language.

An important stage in the development of the Russian national language was the 18th century. During these times, our compatriots spoke and wrote using a large number of Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic elements. The democratization of the language was required, the introduction of elements of lively, colloquial speech of the merchants, service people, clergy and literate peasants into its system. Leading role in theoretical substantiation of the Russian language played M.V. Lomonosov. The scientist creates a "Russian grammar", which has theoretical and practical significance: ordering of the literary language and development rules for the use of its elements. “All sciences,” he explains, “have a need for grammar. Stupid oratorio, tongue-tied poetry, unfounded philosophy, incomprehensible history, dubious jurisprudence without grammar. Lomonosov pointed out two features of the Russian language that made it one of the most important world languages:

- "the vastness of the places where he reigns"

- "your own space and contentment."

In the Petrine era due to the appearance in Russia of many new objects and phenomena the vocabulary of the Russian language is updated and enriched. The flow of new words was so huge that even a decree of Peter I was needed to regulate the use of borrowings.

The Karamzin period in the development of the Russian national language is characterized by the struggle for the establishment of a single language norm in it. At the same time, N.M. Karamzin and his supporters believe that, when defining norms, it is necessary to focus on Western, European languages (French), to free the Russian language from the influence of Church Slavonic speech, to create new words, to expand the semantics of those already used to designate emerging in the life of society, mostly secular, new objects, phenomena, processes. Karamzin's opponent was the Slavophil A.S. Shishkov, who believed that the Old Slavonic language should become the basis of the Russian national language. The dispute over language between Slavophiles and Westernizers was brilliantly resolved in the work of the great Russian writers of the early nineteenth century. A.S. Griboyedov and I.A. Krylov showed the inexhaustible possibilities of live colloquial speech, the originality and richness of Russian folklore.

Creator same national Russian language became A.S. Pushkin. In poetry and prose, the main thing, in his opinion, is “a sense of proportion and conformity”: any element is appropriate if it accurately conveys thought and feeling.

In the first decades of the 19th century, the formation of the Russian national language was completed. However, the process of processing the national language in order to create unified orthoepic, lexical, orthographic and grammatical norms continues, numerous dictionaries are published, the largest of which was the four-volume Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language by V.I. Dahl.

After the October Revolution of 1917, important changes took place in the Russian language. Firstly, a huge layer of secular and religious vocabulary, which was very relevant before the revolution, “dies out”. The new power destroys objects, phenomena, processes, and at the same time the words denoting them disappear: monarch, heir to the throne, gendarme, police officer, privatdozent, footman and so on. Millions of believing Russians cannot openly use Christian terminology: seminary, sexton, Eucharist, Ascension, Mother of God, Spas, Assumption, etc. These words live in the people's environment secretly, implicitly, waiting for the hour of their revival. On the other side. a huge number of new words appear, reflecting changes in politics, economics, culture : Soviets, Kolchak, Red Army soldier, Chekist. There are a large number of compound words: party dues, collective farm, Revolutionary Military Council, Council of People's Commissars, Commander, Prodrazverstka, food tax, cultural enlightenment, educational program. One of the brightest distinguishing features of the Russian language of the Soviet period - interference of the opposite, The essence of this phenomenon lies in the formation of two opposing lexical systems that positively and negatively characterize the same phenomena that exist on opposite sides of the barricades, in the world of capitalism and in the world of socialism. : scouts and spies, warriors-liberators and invaders, partisans and bandits.

Today, the Russian national language continues to develop in the post-Soviet space. Among the modern characteristic features of the language, the most important are:

1) replenishment of the vocabulary with new elements; first of all, it is a borrowed vocabulary denoting objects and phenomena of the political, economic and cultural life of the country: electorate, extreme sports, business center, conversion, clone, chip, iridology, HIV infection, audio cassette, cheeseburger, jacuzzi;

2) the return to use of words that seemed to have lost such an opportunity forever; first of all, it religious vocabulary: lord, communion. Annunciation, Liturgy, Vespers, Epiphany, Metropolitan;

3) the disappearance, along with objects and phenomena, of words characterizing Soviet reality: Komsomol, party organizer, state farm, DOSAAF, pioneer;

4) the destruction of the system formed as a result of the action interference of the opposite.

The Russian language is one of the largest languages in the world, the state language of a multinational and, as a result, the language of interethnic communication of the peoples of the country. It is the main language of international communication of the countries of the former USSR and the current language of the UN.

The modern Russian language, as we know it now, and as it is studied abroad, has a long history of origin. Its predecessor was the Old Russian language (from the 7th to the 14th centuries), the language of the Eastern Slavs, located on the territory of the Kievan state. Since all Slavic languages had a common ancestor - the Proto-Slavic language, the emerging Old Russian was similar to the languages of the South Slavic and West Slavic peoples, but, from the point of view of phonetics and vocabulary, had some differences. Then there was feudal fragmentation, which led to the formation of a number of dialects. The Mongol-Tatar and Polish-Lithuanian conquests left their mark, which caused the collapse (the collapse of the Kyiv state) in the 13-14 centuries. and consequently the collapse of the common Old Russian language. Three independent but closely related East Slavic languages were formed: Russian (Great Russian), Belarusian and Ukrainian.

As for writing, the Slavic states (modern Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, Bulgaria) and later Rus and the development of the church as a state institution required special rites and readings of liturgical books, at first it was carried out in Greek, but then the Old Slavonic language appeared. This language was created by Cyril and Methodius to adapt the Greek writings, it was not just invented, it was based on the language of the South Slavic peoples. The Greek scientist Cyril and his brother Methodius used it to adapt Slavic speech to the expressions and ideas that the Christian doctrine wanted to convey, since, for example, the pagan religion and the Christian religion had different lexical content and the concept of God. So the Old Church Slavonic language acquired the name Church Slavonic. Initially, it was the Glagolitic alphabet, but since some sounds were missing for full adaptation, the Cyrillic alphabet appeared (the Greek set of letters was supplemented in accordance with the Glagolitic alphabet). The Church Slavonic language was exclusively written.

At this time, changes were taking place in colloquial Russian, from the 14th to the 17th centuries dialects continued to develop. Two dialect zones were formed: the North Great Russian dialect and the South Great Russian dialect with an intermediate Middle Great Russian dialect. The dialect was the leader (later it became the basis for the literary language).

In the 17th century, during the reign, many transformational ones were carried out, and the language was not without reforms. European enlightenment became popular, science and technology developed, and a translation of foreign books that was accessible and understandable to the general public was needed. All this required new means of expression, which the Church Slavonic language could not provide. His vocabulary and semantics carried more the church-religious idea than resembled a free "live speech". What was needed was a literary language accessible to wide circles of society. The Church Slavonic language was relegated to the background and in the 18th and early 19th centuries. became a kind of church jargon, intended only for worship. The popularity of foreign languages grew, secular society tried to introduce them as much as possible into their native Russian. There was a threat of clogging the language and then there was a need to create unified national language norms.

The 20th century brought new, major events in, and with them changes in the Russian language. Economy, culture, technology continued to develop. It began to be enriched with new words, terminology, stylistic means, and so on. Socialism came to power through the revolution. The level of literacy has increased, the literary language has become the main language of communication of the people. Russian literature has gained worldwide fame, along with this, foreign interest in the study of the language itself has increased.

Russian, with the fifth largest number of speakers (after Chinese, English, Hindi and Spanish), is one of the world's largest languages and the most widely spoken language in Europe, both geographically and in terms of the number of native speakers. Russian has the status of an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Gagauzia and the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Moldova), Crimea (Ukraine), and is also partially recognized in the Republic of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The Russian language is one of the official languages of world (WHO, IAEA, UN, UNESCO) and regional international (BRIC, EurAsEC, CSTO, CIS, SCO) organizations. Russian is spoken in the CIS countries, in Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Israel, Mongolia, Finland, Svalbard, in Eastern Europe, in Germany, France, in the cities of the USA, Canada, China, Australia. Until 1991, the Russian language was the language of interethnic communication in the USSR, de facto performing the functions of the state language. It continues to be used in all countries formerly part of the USSR.

Now Russian is native to 130 million citizens of the Russian Federation, 26.4 million residents of the CIS and Baltic republics, and almost 7.4 million residents of non-CIS countries (primarily Germany and other European countries, as well as the USA and Israel). The closest relatives of the Russian language are Belarusian and Ukrainian, together they form a subgroup of Oriental languages that are part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European language family.

At different periods, the Russian language borrowed words from Indo-European: English, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, French, as well as from Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Scandinavian languages. Among the non-Indo-European languages: from Arabic, Georgian, Hebrew, Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, as well as from Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Mongolian, Paleo-Asiatic, Turkic, Uralic, languages of America and even from the languages of Africa.

History of the Russian language

The pre-literate culture of Russia existed in the prehistoric and protohistorical periods. Due to the fact that the Slavs occupied the East European Plain - the crossroads of ancient cultures: ancient Greek (brought here by the Ionians), Scythian and Sarmatian - in the 2nd-1st millennium BC. e. the language was a complex and motley group of dialects of different tribes: Baltic, Germanic, Celtic, Turkish-Turkic (Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, Khazars), Finnish. The pre-Christian Slavic pantheon testifies to the mixed nature of the language of that period - it was made up of gods whose names were taken from different languages: Dazhbog, Mokosh, Perun, Simargla, Stribog, Khors).

At that time, the language had three ethnolinguistic varieties, corresponding to three language groups:

South Russian (Buzhans, Drevlyans, glades, northerners, Tivertsy, streets);
North Russian (Krivichi - Polotsk, Smolensk, Pskov; Slovene - Novgorod);
Eastern or Central Russian (Vyatichi, Dregovichi, Kuryans, Luchians, Radimichi, Semichi); this group clearly differed from the rest in the features of the phonetic and grammatical structure of dialects.

The beginning of the Old Russian literary language is considered to be the period of the formation of the Kyiv state - the XI century. Slavic language material, through high Greek literature and culture, contributed to the emergence of writing.

Although Russia was under the influence of Orthodoxy, Byzantium did not oppose the assimilation of the wealth of Western culture by the Slavs through the Slavic literary language. The simple use of the Greek alphabet could not convey all the features of the Slavic language. The Slavic alphabet was created by the Greek missionary and philologist Cyril.

The Slavic literary language, rapidly developing, was on a par with Greek, Latin and Hebrew. It became the most important factor that united all the Slavs in the 9th-11th centuries. It was written and preached in Velegrad, Kyiv, Novgorod, Ohrid, Preslav, Sazava, in the Czech Republic and in the Balkans.

Such literary monuments as Metropolitan Hilarion's "Sermon on Law and Grace", the Ostromir Gospel, Svyatoslav's Izbornik and, of course, "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" were created.

The era of feudalism, the Tatar-Mongol yoke, the Polish-Lithuanian conquests led in the XIII-XIV centuries to the disunity of political and economic life and the division of the language into Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.

In the 16th century, grammatical normalization of the Moscow written language was carried out in Muscovite Russia. A feature of the syntax of that time was the predominance of the composing connection. Simple sentences are short, subject-verbal, unions yes, a, and are frequent. An example of the language of that era is Domostroy, written using everyday vocabulary, folk sayings.

There was a change in the category of time (the form ending in -l replaced the obsolete aorist, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect), the dual number was lost, the declension of nouns acquired a modern look.

The basis of the Russian literary language was Moscow speech with characteristic features: akanye; reduction of vowels of unstressed syllables; explosive consonant g; endings -ovo, -evo in the genitive singular masculine and neuter in the pronominal declension; hard ending -t in the verbs of the 3rd person of the present and future tense; forms of pronouns me , you , myself .

The beginning of book printing in the 16th century became one of the most significant enterprises that contributed to the formation of the literary language of the Muscovite state. In the 17th-18th centuries, Southwestern Russia turned out to be a kind of intermediary between Muscovite Russia and Western Europe. The Polish language has become a supplier of European scientific, legal, administrative, technical and secular terms.

The political and technical reconstruction of the state of the Petrine era left its mark on speech. During this period, the Russian literary language was liberated from the ideological guardianship of the Church. In 1708, the alphabet was reformed - it became close to the samples of European books.

The second half of the 18th century passed under the sign of gallomania - French became the official language of the court and aristocratic circles and noble salons. The process of Europeanization of Russian society intensified. The new foundations of the norms of the Russian literary language were laid by the great Russian scientist and poet M. V. Lomonosov. He united all varieties of Russian speech: command language, lively oral speech with its regional variations, styles of folk poetry - and recognized the forms of the Russian language as the basis of literature. Lomonosov established a system of three styles of literature: simple, medium, high style.

Further, the creators and reformers of the great Russian language were representatives of literature of various genres and trends: G. R. Derzhavin, I. I. Novikov, A. N. Radishchev, A. P. Sumarokov, D. I. Fonvizin. They discovered in literature new means of expression and new treasures of the living word, expanded the circle of meanings of the old words.

They were replaced by V. V. Kapnist, N. M. Karamzin, N. I. Novikov. Interestingly, the language of N. M. Karamzin is comparable in quality and style to the language in which Cicero, Horace and Tacitus wrote.

The wave of the democratic movement did not disregard the Russian language, which, according to representatives of the progressive intelligentsia, should have become accessible to the masses.

A. S. Pushkin brilliantly played the role of a folk poet and resolved the issue of a national norm for the Russian language, which since the time of A. S. Pushkin has been included as an equal member in the family of Western European languages. Rejecting stylistic restrictions, combining Europeanisms and significant forms of folk speech, the poet created a vivid picture of the Russian soul, the Slavic world, using all the richness and depth of the colors of the Russian language.

The impulse of A. S. Pushkin was supported and continued by M. Yu. Lermontov and N. V. Gogol.

The Russian language of the mid-19th - early 20th century had four general development trends:

limitation of the Slavic-Russian tradition within the circle of the literary norm;
convergence of the literary language with live oral speech;
expansion of the literary use of words and phrases from various professional dialects and jargons;
redistribution of functions and influence of different genres, development of the genre of the realistic novel (I. A. Goncharov, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy, I. S. Turgenev), short story (A. P. Chekhov); the predominance of socio-political, philosophical issues.

The dictionary of the Russian literary language has been enriched with many abstract concepts and expressions in accordance with the growth of public self-awareness.

Under the influence of the socio-political life of Russia, socio-political terms, slogans, aphorisms, and international vocabulary were spread and strengthened.

The new socialist culture has changed the Russian language in the field of word formation, vocabulary and phraseology. There was an active development of special-technical languages.

The standardization of oral speech in the 20th century was facilitated by the spread of the media, the introduction of universal education, and large-scale interregional migration of the population.

The process of globalization at the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century enriched the Russian language with a huge number of borrowings (mainly from English) in professional, technical vocabulary, the language of Internet communication, politics, the media, medicine - in almost all areas of modern society.

Changing, the Russian language remains one of the most widespread and actively developing languages in the world. Interest in Russian culture is inextricably linked with interest in the Russian language, the number of people wishing to study it is growing every year. The Russian language is taught in 87 states - the number of students in 1648 universities exceeds 18 million people.

In 1967, the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature (MAPRYAL) was established. In 1974, the Pushkin Institute of the Russian Language was founded.

Language features

The structure of the modern Russian language has a number of features that distinguish it from other languages of the world. The Russian language is inflectional, that is, there are inflections in it. Inflection is a part of a word (ending) that expresses the grammatical meaning during inflection (declension, conjugation). It is a synthetic language: both lexical and grammatical meanings are combined in the word.

In Russian, the normal forms are: for nouns - the nominative singular, for adjectives - the nominative singular masculine, for verbs, participles and gerunds - the verb in the infinitive.

Standardly, 10 main parts of speech are distinguished: noun, adjective, numeral, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, particle, interjection. As separate parts of speech, words of the category of state (as a group of adverbs), participles and gerunds (as special forms of the verb), onomatopoeia (considered together with interjections), modal words (as introductory elements in a sentence) are distinguished.

Parts of speech are divided into two groups: independent and auxiliary. Independent parts of speech name objects, qualities and properties, quantity, state, action or indicate them (noun, adjective, numeral, pronoun, verb, adverb, word of the state category). Service parts of speech express grammatical relations or participate in the formation of forms of other words (preposition, conjunction, particle).

The main principle of Russian orthography, most often called phonomorphological in linguistics, involves the literal transmission of significant parts of the word - morphemes (roots, prefixes, suffixes), and the morpheme is written the same way, regardless of positional phonetic changes.

The Russian phonetic system consists of 43 phonemes. These are 6 vowels: [a], [e], [i], [s], [o], [y]; 37 consonants: [b], [b "], [c], [c"], [g], [g "], [d], [d "], [g], [s], [s" ], [j], [k], [k "], [l], [l"], [m], [m "], [n], [n"], [n], [n"] , [p], [p "], [s], [s"], [t], [t"], [f], [f "], [x], [x"], [c], [h "], [w], [u], [w ":].

In Russian, as in most languages, phonemes are not presented in speech in their pure form, but in the form of allophones (variants). Being in a strong position, the phoneme has its main variant; for vowels, this is the position under stress; for consonants, it is before a vowel or before a sonorous sound.

According to the rules of the Russian language, deaf phonemes are voiced before voiced ones, voiced ones are deafened before deaf ones. In addition, only voiceless consonants can occur at the end of words, since the end of a word is considered a weak position. The most variable phoneme is o. As such, it occurs only in a strong position (under stress). In all other cases, it is reduced. In the process of speech, there is an alternation of sounds, this is a very common feature of the Russian language for both vowels and consonants.

The article was prepared in the language "Prima Vista"

Portal for the student. Self-training

Origin

History of development

History of the Russian language

Language features

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