Russian is the national language of the Russian people, the state language Russian Federation, one of the 6 official languages ​​of the United Nations.

It is used by over 250 million people, including about 140 million people in Russia, according to the 1989 all-Union census. The Russian language is among the top ten most spoken languages ​​on the planet (Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese and German). +

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE. I. General information... R.Ya. belongs (along with the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages) to the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages ​​(see Slavic languages). R. Ya. - Russian language. nations and means of interethnic communication of many peoples living in the CIS and other states that were part of the USSR. R. i. is one of the official and working languages ​​of the United Nations, UNESCO and other international organizations; is one of the "world languages".
In accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation (1993) R. i. is a state. the language of the Russian Federation throughout its territory. At the same time R. i. is the state or official language of a number of republics that are part of the Russian Federation, along with the language of the indigenous population of these republics.
As a state. language of the Russian Federation R. i. actively functions in all spheres of public life of national importance. On R. i. work central state. institutions of the Russian Federation, official communication is carried out between the constituent entities of the Federation, as well as in the army, central rises are published. newspapers and magazines.
R. i. taught in all schools and higher educational institutions Russia (in the republics that make up it - along with the native language), as well as in many educational institutions of the CIS countries and other countries. Teaching in R. i. is conducted in most schools and universities in Russia and in many educational institutions of the CIS countries (see Russian language in international communication, Russian language in international communication).

International development

The language of interethnic communication is a language through which the language barrier between representatives of different ethnic groups within one multinational state is overcome. The process of any language going beyond its ethnicity and acquiring the status of an interethnic one is complex and multifaceted and includes the interaction of a whole complex of linguistic and social factors.
In the process of the formation of the language of interethnic communication, priority usually belongs to social factors, since the functions of the language directly depend on the characteristics of the development of society. At the same time, social factors alone, no matter how favorable they may be, cannot make this or that language international if it lacks the necessary proper linguistic qualities.
The Russian language possesses the qualities necessary to meet the linguistic needs of not only Russians, but also people of other ethnicity living both in Russia and abroad. It is one of the most developed languages ​​in the world. Its rich vocabulary and terminology in all branches of science and technology, brevity, expressiveness and clarity of lexical and grammatical means, developed system of functional styles provide the ability to reflect the entire diversity of the surrounding world. The Russian language can be used in all spheres of social life, through it the most diverse information is transmitted, the subtlest shades of thought are expressed. World-renowned fiction, scientific and technical literature has been written in Russian, as well as translations of the most valuable works of world culture and scientific works... (In the 80s of the XX century, about a third of fiction and scientific and technical literature of the total amount of printed materials in the world was published in Russian.) This fact, as well as the maximum completeness of social functions and the relative monolithic nature of the Russian language (the obligatory observance of literary norms for all its carriers) provided high degree communicative and informational value of the Russian language.
Ethno-linguistic factors also played a certain role in the transformation of the Russian language into a means of interethnic communication. From the beginning of the formation of Russian statehood, Russians were the most numerous nation, and its language spread to one degree or another throughout the entire country. According to the data of the first All-Russian population census of 1897, of 128.9 million inhabitants Russian Empire Russian was spoken by two thirds, or about 86 million people. According to the 1989 All-Union Population Census, in the USSR, out of 285.7 million people, about 145 million are Russians, while 232.4 million people spoke Russian.

In the mid-90s of the XX century, the Russian language retained its position as a means of interethnic communication in the CIS countries due to a number of objective circumstances, as well as due to the historically established traditions of its use by the population of these countries. The materials of the 1989 census show that 63.8 million people of the non-Russian population of the former Soviet republics of the USSR (except for the RSFSR) speak Russian as their mother tongue or as a second language.
The linguistic aspects of the Russian language as a means of interethnic communication have a certain specificity. The increase in the number of people using Russian as a non-native language and the functioning of the Russian language in a foreign language environment leads to the emergence of phonetic, grammatical, lexical and semantic features that are different in different regions of the distribution of the Russian language. The combination of these features contributes to the formation of national (in another terminology - regional) variants of the Russian language. Other scholars believe that meeting the needs of interethnic communication is one of the functions of the Russian literary language, while there is a selection and consolidation of morphological forms and syntactic constructions, lexical units, evaluated primarily as communicatively significant and sufficient, the violation of its norms by foreign language users is due to interference.
Stages of development.

Since the first half of the XIII century. there is a division of the ancient Russian people into the inhabitants of Vladimir-Suzdal Rus, later Muscovite Rus, and Western Rus (later - Ukraine and Belarus).
As a result of the development of dialects in the second half of the XII century. - the first half of the XIII century. on the future Great Russian territory, the Novgorod, Pskov, Rostov-Suzdal dialects and the dialect of the upper and middle Oka and the interfluve of the Oka and the Seim were formed.
In the XIV-XVI centuries. the Great Russian state and the Great Russian nationality are formed, this time becomes a new stage in the history of the Russian language.
In the XVII century. the Russian nation is formed and the Russian national language begins to form.
During the formation of the Russian nation, the foundations of the national literary language are formed, which is associated with the weakening of the influence of the Church Slavonic language and the development of a language of the national type, based on traditions business language Moscow. The development of new dialectal features gradually stops, the old dialectal features become very stable.

The first stage in the formation of the future Russian language is associated with Kievan Rus, a feudal state of the East Slavic tribes, whose dialects formed the basis of the Old Russian language. After the adoption of Christianity (988-989), church books began to be distributed in Russia, which were sent from Bulgaria and were written in the Old Slavonic language, which arose as a result of Cyril and Methodius' translations of liturgical books from Greek into the South Slavic Salun dialect (863). This language was the first written language of the Slavs in the 9th - 11th centuries.

The adoption of Christianity in Russia contributed to the advancement of the Old Church Slavonic language to the east, where it was influenced by living dialects of the primordial East Slavic language, which led to the emergence of its local varieties. The continuation of the Old Church Slavonic language is the Church Slavonic language, which was used in the church, scientific literature and influenced the development of the Russian literary language.

The formation of the language of the Great Russian people (and later the national language) is associated with the rise of Moscow, which in the XIV century became the center of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and from the second half of the XV century - the capital of a single Of the Russian state... At this time, the norms of oral and written Moscow speech began to form and consolidate. The Moscow dialect is the basis of the Russian language, the formation of which is closely connected with the development of the Russian nationality into a nation and belongs to the second half of the 17th century. This language is processed and normalized, enriched with the creativity of writers and becomes the highest form Russian national language.

The term "modern Russian" is used in a broad and narrow sense: as a language from Pushkin to the present day and as the language of recent decades.

Russian is the national language of the Russian people, the state language of the Russian Federation, one of the 6 official languages ​​of the UN.

It is used by over 250 million people, including about 140 million people in Russia, according to the 1989 all-Union census. The Russian language is among the top ten most spoken languages ​​on the planet.

All in all, more than half a billion people in the world speak Russian to one degree or another, and according to this indicator, Russian ranks third in the world after Chinese and English.

Together with the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, Russian belongs to the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages. You can find the similarity of the words of Russian and others Indo-European languages:

Russian - night

Belarusian - night,

Ukrainian - nich,

Bulgarian - night

Polish - nos

Czech - nos

Slovak - nos

Lithuanian - naktis

Latvian- nox

Italian - notte

French - nuite

English - night

German - nacht.

In his historical development the Russian language has gone through several stages. The first stage in the formation of the future Russian language is associated with Kievan Rus, a feudal state of East Slavic tribes, whose dialects formed the basis of the Old Russian language. After the adoption of Christianity (988-989), church books began to be distributed in Russia, which were sent from Bulgaria and were written in the Old Slavonic language, which arose as a result of Cyril and Methodius' translations of liturgical books from Greek into the South Slavic Salun dialect (863). This language was the first written language of the Slavs in the 9th - 11th centuries.

The adoption of Christianity in Russia contributed to the advancement of the Old Church Slavonic language to the east, where it was influenced by living dialects of the primordial East Slavic language, which led to the emergence of its local varieties. The continuation of the Old Church Slavonic language is the Church Slavonic language, which was used in the church, scientific literature and influenced the development of the Russian literary language.

The formation of the language of the Great Russian people (and later the national language) is associated with the rise of Moscow, which in the 14th century became the center of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, and from the second half of the 15th century - the capital of the unified Russian state. At this time, the norms of oral and written Moscow speech began to form and consolidate. The Moscow dialect is the basis of the Russian language, the formation of which is closely connected with the development of the Russian nationality into a nation and belongs to the second half of the 17th century. This language is being processed and normalized, enriched with the creativity of writers and becomes the highest form of the Russian national language.

A controversial issue today remains whether the influence of the Russian language in the world has been declining in recent decades or not.

On the one hand, the linguistic situation in the post-Soviet space, where before the collapse of the USSR, the Russian language served as the generally recognized language of interethnic communication, is very contradictory, and here one can identify a variety of trends. On the other hand, the Russian-speaking diaspora in the far abroad has grown many times over over the past twenty years.

Of course, even in the seventies, Vysotsky wrote songs about “the spread of our people across the planet,” but in the nineties and two thousandths this spread became much more noticeable (see Appendix 1).

But to start considering the situation with the Russian language as of the end of the 2000s, of course, one should start with the post-Soviet states.

In the post-Soviet space, apart from Russia, there are at least three countries where the fate of the Russian language does not cause any concern. These are Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

In Belarus, the majority of the population speaks Russian in everyday life and in general in everyday communication, and in cities, young people and many middle-aged people practically lack even the Belarusian accent characteristic of the past in Russian.

At the same time, Belarus is the only post-Soviet state where the state status of the Russian language was confirmed in a referendum by an overwhelming majority of votes.

Obviously, the services of translators from Russian into Belarusian will not be in demand for a long time, and perhaps never - after all, almost all official and business correspondence in Belarus is conducted in Russian.

The language situation in Kazakhstan is more complicated. In the nineties, the share of Russians in the population of Kazakhstan significantly decreased, and Kazakhs, for the first time since the thirties of the last century, became the national majority. According to the Constitution, the only state language in Kazakhstan is Kazakh. However, since the mid-nineties, there has been a law that equates the Russian language in all official spheres to the state language. And in practice, most government agencies at the city and regional level, as well as in the capital's government institutions, Russian is used more often than Kazakh.

The reason is simple and quite pragmatic. These institutions employ representatives of different nationalities- Kazakhs, Russians, Germans, Koreans. At the same time, absolutely all educated Kazakhs are fluent in Russian, while representatives of other nationalities know Kazakh much worse.

A similar situation is observed in Kyrgyzstan, where there is also a law that gives the Russian language an official status, and in everyday communication Russian speech in cities can be heard more often than Kyrgyz.

Azerbaijan adjoins these three countries, where the status of the Russian language is not officially regulated in any way, but in the cities the majority of the inhabitants of the indigenous nationality speak Russian very well, and many prefer to use it in communication. This, again, is facilitated by the multinational nature of the population of Azerbaijan. For national minorities since the times Soviet Union the language of interethnic communication is Russian.

Ukraine stands apart in this row. Here the linguistic situation is peculiar, and the linguistic policy sometimes takes on extremely strange forms.

The entire population of the east and south of Ukraine speaks Russian. Moreover, attempts at violent Ukrainization in a number of regions (Crimea, Odessa, Donbass) lead to the opposite result. Previously, a neutral attitude towards the Ukrainian language changes to a negative one.

As a result, even the traditional mixed speech disappears in these territories - surzhik in the east and Odessa dialect in Odessa and the surrounding area. The new generation learns the language not on the example of parental speech, but on the example of the speech of Russian television announcers, and begins to speak the correct Russian literary language (with the slang features of the 21st century).

An illustrative example: in the Russian speech of Ukrainian youth, the guttural Ukrainian “soft” Г (h) is replaced by the “hard” Ґ (g) of the Moscow-Petersburg type.

And in western Ukraine, too, not everything is simple. After all, the population of the Carpathian and Transcarpathian Ukraine speaks dialects, which in neighboring countries (Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia) are considered a separate Rusyn language.

And it turns out that the Ukrainian literary language and dialects close to the literary one in the Ukrainian state speaks a minority of the population. However, in recent years, the Ukrainian authorities have been planting the Ukrainian language using completely ridiculous methods - like the useless, but obligatory translation of all films shown in cinemas into Ukrainian.

However, the Baltic states - especially Latvia and Estonia - remain unsurpassed in their strive to ensure that translation from Russian requires the services of a translation agency.

True, it should be noted that the language policy of the state and the attitude of the population are still two big differences (as they still say in Odessa). Rumors that a Russian tourist needs a translation from English to communicate with the local population are greatly exaggerated.

The demands of life are stronger than the efforts of the state, and in this case this is manifested as clearly as possible. Even young people, who were born in Latvia and Estonia already in the period of independence, speak Russian enough to understand each other. And cases when a Latvian or Estonian refuses to speak Russian out of principle are rare. So much so that each of these cases turns out to be the subject of heated discussion in the press.

According to the testimony of the majority of Russians who have visited Latvia and Estonia in recent years, they have not come across signs of linguistic discrimination. Latvians and Estonians are very hospitable, and Russian continues to be the language of interethnic communication in these countries. In Lithuania, the language policy was initially softer.

In Georgia and Armenia, the Russian language has the status of a language of a national minority. In Armenia, the share of Russians in the total population is very small, but a significant share of Armenians can speak Russian well. In Georgia, the situation is about the same, with the Russian language being more common in communication in those places where there is a large proportion of the foreign-speaking population. However, among young people, the knowledge of the Russian language in Georgia is very weak.

In Moldova, the Russian language does not have an official status (with the exception of Transnistria and Gagauzia), but de facto can be used in the official sphere.

In Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, Russian is less common than in neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In Tajikistan, the Russian language, according to the Constitution, is the language of interethnic communication, in Uzbekistan it has the status of the language of a national minority, in Turkmenistan the situation remains unclear.

One way or another, in all three states the majority of the urban population speaks Russian. On the other hand, the indigenous people speak to each other in native language, and they switch to Russian only in conversation with Russians or with representatives of national minorities. The linguistic and socio-cultural situation in Uzbekistan is very clearly illustrated by modern Uzbek films. It is very interesting to observe from them in what situations Uzbek citizens switch to Russian in conversation with each other.

For example, in some new Uzbek films, reminiscent of Indian melodramas in their plot, the heroes switch to Russian to express feelings or clarify relationships that do not fit into patriarchal local customs. And a kind of language barrier is emerging. In a fairly Europeanized Uzbek society, you can discuss any topic - but not all of them can be discussed in the Uzbek language. For some, Russian is better.

One way or another, Russian is still the language of interethnic communication throughout the post-Soviet space. Moreover the main role it is not the position of the state that plays here, but the attitude of the population.

But in the far abroad the situation with the Russian language is the opposite. Alas, Russian belongs to the languages ​​that have been lost in two generations.

Russian emigrants of the first generation prefer to speak Russian, and many of them do not fully master the language of the new country and speak with a strong accent. But already their children speak the local language with little or no accent. They speak Russian only with their parents, and in Lately also on the internet. And by the way, the Internet plays an extremely important role in preserving the Russian language in the diaspora.

But on the other hand, in the third or fourth generation, interest in the roots of the descendants of emigrants revives, and they begin to specially learn the language of their ancestors. Including Russian.

In the seventies and eighties, with the almost complete breakdown of ties with the USSR, the Russian language gave way to English or Hebrew much faster than now, when any emigrant can keep in touch with family friends and acquaintances on the Internet. In the seventies and eighties in Israel, emigrants from Russia learned Hebrew at an accelerated pace. And in the nineties, Israeli officials began to learn Russian at an accelerated pace, so as not to overload the translation agency with unnecessary work.

Today at Last year belonging to the "zero", the Russian language not only remains the main language of interethnic communication throughout the post-Soviet space. The older generation speaks it well and the younger generation speaks well in many countries of the former socialist camp.

For example, in the former GDR schoolchildren were taught Russian, frankly, much better than Soviet schoolchildren - German.

Russian is the only state language in Russia and one of the two in Belarus (along with Belarusian).

Official status
Russian is the official language in:
Kazakhstan (In state organizations and local self-government bodies, along with Kazakh, the Russian language is officially used - the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan),
Kyrgyzstan (In the Kyrgyz Republic, Russian is used as the official language - the Constitution of the Kyrgyz Republic),
Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
parts of Moldova (Transnistria and Gagauzia).
parts of Romania (districts of Tulcea and Constanta)
parts of the United States (New York State).

World status
Until 1991, it was the language of interethnic communication in the USSR, de facto performing the functions of the state language. It continues to be used in countries that were previously part of the USSR, as a native language for a part of the population and as a language of interethnic communication. In places of compact residence of emigrants from countries the former USSR(Israel, Germany, Canada, USA, etc.) - Russian-language periodicals are published, radio stations and television channels operate. In the countries of Eastern Europe, until the end of the 1980s, Russian was the main foreign language in schools.

Distribution in the world
According to data published in the magazine "Language Monthly" (No. 3 for 1997), about 300 million people worldwide speak Russian (which puts it in 5th place in terms of prevalence), of which 160 million consider it their native language (7- e place in the world). Russian is the working language of the CIS, one of the six official languages ​​of the UN, one of the working languages ​​of the OSCE.

Russian language in the modern world.
In terms of the total number of speakers, the Russian language occupies a place in the top ten world languages, but it is rather difficult to pinpoint this place.

The number of people who consider Russian their native language exceeds 200 million, 130 million of whom live in Russia. The number of people who speak Russian perfectly and use it as a first or second language in everyday communication is estimated at 300-350 million.

All in all, more than half a billion people in the world speak Russian to one degree or another, and according to this indicator, Russian ranks third in the world after Chinese and English.

Language as a sign system.

The words of the human language are signs of objects and concepts. Words are the most numerous and main signs in the language. Other units of the language are also signs.

A sign is a substitute for an object for communication purposes, a sign allows the speaker to evoke an image of an object or concept in the mind of the interlocutor.

The sign has the following properties:

· The sign must be material, perceptible;

· The sign is directed towards the meaning;

· The content of a sign does not coincide with its material characteristics, while the content of a thing is exhausted by its material properties;

· The content and form of the mark are determined by distinctive features;

· A sign is always a member of the system, and its content largely depends on the place of the given sign in the system.

The above properties of the sign determine a number of requirements of the culture of speech.

· First, the speaker (writer) should take care that the signs of his speech (sounding words or signs of writing) are easy to perceive: they are clearly audible, visible.

· Secondly, it is necessary that speech signs express some content, convey meaning, and in such a way that the form of speech helps to understand the content of speech more easily.

Thirdly, it must be borne in mind that the interlocutor may be less aware of the subject of the conversation, which means that it is necessary to provide him with the missing information, which only in the opinion of the speaker is already contained in the spoken words.

· Fourth, it is important to ensure that the sounds of spoken speech and letters of the letter are sufficiently distinct from each other.

· Fifth, it is important to remember the systemic connections of a word with other words, to take into account polysemy, to use synonymy, to keep in mind the associative connections of words.

Thus, knowledge from the field of semiotics (the science of signs) contributes to an increase in speech culture.

· The language mark can be a code mark and a text mark.

o Signs of a code exist in the form of a system of opposed units in a language, connected by a relation of significance, which determines the content of signs specific to each language.

o Symbols of the text exist in the form of a formally and in the sense of a related sequence of units. The culture of speech involves the speaker's attentive attitude to the coherence of the spoken or written text.

Meaning is the content of a linguistic sign, which is formed as a result of the display of extra-linguistic reality in the minds of people. The meaning of a linguistic unit in the language system is virtual, i.e. is determined by what a given unit can mean. In a specific utterance, the meaning of a linguistic unit becomes relevant, since the unit is correlated with a specific object, with what it really means in the utterance. From the point of view of the culture of speech, it is important for the speaker to clearly direct the attention of the interlocutor to the actualization of the meaning of the utterance, to help him in correlating the utterance with the situation, and for the listener it is important to show maximum attention to the communicative intentions of the speaker.

· Distinguish between subject and conceptual meaning.

o Substantive meaning consists in the correlation of a word with an object, in the designation of an object.

o Conceptual meaning is used to express a concept that reflects an object, to set a class of objects designated by a sign.

The structure and functions of the language

The language consists of:

Phoneme-letters and sounds. The phoneme does not have an independent lexical or grammatical meaning, but serves to distinguish and identify significant units of the language

morpheme part of a word. Root, suffix, ending ...

word

collocation

phraseological unit - a stable combination of words

sentence

text.

Language functions

communicative (or communication function) - the main function of language, the use of language as a means of communication.

cognitive (or mental) - language as a means of cognition. shaping the thinking of the individual and society

accumulative - transfer of information and its storage

voluntary (or inviting-motivating function) - the function of influencing the audience

emotive - a means of conveying emotions.

Social forms of the existing language:

Literary language is the highest form of the national language. Language processed by masters.

Dialectal - subdivided into territorial and social.

Territorial-used

IN SHORT ALL THIS IS IN LECTURES UP TO 8 QUESTIONS INCLUSIVE.

9 culture of speech communication

If a person first of all knows how to listen to his interlocutor in the process of communication, at the same time competently expresses his thoughts at a good level of language, without slang, swearing and argot, we can say about such a person that he fully owns the culture of communication.

There are several classifications of speech errors. We will focus on the classification in the aspect of secondary communication activity (perception of errors by the addressee) and consider errors associated with the emergence of difficulties in interpreting the text.

1. The wrong choice of the lexical equivalent often leads to inappropriate comic, to the absurdity of the statement. For example: “Our Russian birches are standing in a wedding shroud” (instead of “in a wedding dress); “In February, the length of the day will increase by two hours” (instead of “… daylight hours will increase by two hours”).

Such mistakes occur when a person chooses words from a certain thematic group without bothering to analyze their exact meaning. This negligence turns into ambiguity of the statement, and sometimes even complete absurdity.

2. Alogism. Consistency is a quality that characterizes the semantic structure of a text (statement). It refers to the correct correlation of the semantic structure of the text with the laws of the development of the thought process.

Conditions of consistency - correctness of constructing syntactic structures, word order in a sentence; structural and logical coherence of paragraphs and the entire text; thoughtfulness of the semantic content of the structures of sentences and phrases.

3. Violation of lexical compatibility. Lexical compatibility is the ability of words to connect with each other, because in speech, words are not used in isolation, but in phrases. At the same time, some words are freely combined with others if they suit them in meaning, while others have limited lexical compatibility.

It so happens that in terms of meaning, words seem to be suitable for expressing one or another meaning, but “do not want” to be combined into phrases. We say bow your head and kneel, not bow your head, bow your knees.

The rules for combining words in speech are also determined by grammatical compatibility, on which the ability to connect some parts of speech with others depends. Grammatical compatibility allows the combination of nouns with adjectives (deep silence), but “prohibits” the combination of adjectives with numerals (one cannot say a large one), possessive pronouns with verbs (mine does not understand yours).

Lexical compatibility often conflicts with grammatical compatibility. So, all transitive verbs are combined with nouns in the accusative case without a preposition (I am reading a book), but the form of this case often depends on whether nouns belong to animate or inanimate: in the former, the accusative case coincides in form with the genitive (met a friend), in the latter, with nominative (met the train). Moreover, in special cases, grammatical compatibility helps to correctly determine the meaning of the word: to see a satellite (about a spaceship) and to see a satellite (about a person).

4. Speech redundancy or verbosity. Economical, accurate expression of thought is the main requirement of stylistics.

There are two types of speech redundancy: tautology and pleonasm. Tautology is the unjustified use of the same root words, for example: "I believe that those speakers who will speak will speak about the case." Numerous examples of tautology can often be found in everyday life: "Can I ask a question?", "This phenomenon is ...", "It is natural that a pattern follows from this," "For example, let us give an example ...", etc.

Pleonasm is a form of verbosity in which unnecessary clarifying words are used in sentences and phrases ("Their leader died, and they chose a new one from among the living").
etc.................

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AMONG OTHER LANGUAGES IN THE MODERN WORLD. FEATURES OF THE FUNCTIONING OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN BELARUS

The Russian language belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. The Indo-European family of languages ​​(Indo-European languages) are the descendants of the once existing Indo-European proto-language, which ceased to exist several thousand years ago. One of its branches was the Common Slavic language, or Proto-Slavic. It was a language more or less the same for all Slavic tribes living in the territory from the Vistula and Oder to the Don and Volga and from the Carpathians to the Baltic. By the VI century. n. e. several separate languages ​​emerged from the Proto-Slavic language, in particular, Old East Slavic, or Old Russian, an ancestor modern languages: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. Finally, from about the fourteenth century. The Russian language, in the formation of which the popular dialects, grouped around Moscow, played the main role, has been leading its existence.

So, determining the place of the Russian language among other languages ​​of the world, it should be attributed to the East Slavic group of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest relatives of the Russian language - Ukrainian and Belarusian, more distant relatives - other Slavic languages: Bulgarian, Polish, Czech, even more distant relatives - Indo-European non-Slavic languages: Germanic (German, English), Romance (French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish) , Indian (Hindi, Urdu), Iranian (Persian, Tajik), Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian).

Russian is one of the most widespread languages ​​in the world - the sixth among all languages ​​in the world in terms of the total number of speakers and the eighth in terms of the number of those who speak it as a mother tongue. Russian is also the most spoken Slavic and the most spoken language in Europe.

Russian is the state language of the Russian Federation, one of the official languages ​​of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and some other countries, the main language of international communication in Central Eurasia, Eastern Europe, the countries of the former Soviet Union, one of the six working languages ​​of the UN, UNESCO and other international organizations ...

In Belarus, the Russian language is, along with the Belarusian, the state language. However, in our country, it is undergoing some changes.

At the phonetic level, it differs in: a) "yakan", that is, by pronouncing the sound [a] after a soft consonant in an unstressed position, not as [ie] or [b], but as [ʌ] (language, [p'ʌ] bin); b) "dzekaniem" and "tsekaniem" (izeya instead of idea, gosci instead of guests). There are also frequent cases of permutation of stress (in words such as nettles); there are also peculiarities in intonation.

The area of ​​grammar also has its own peculiarities. In the Russian speech of the inhabitants of Belarus, there are such expressions as dreamed a dream (instead of a dream), on the corridor (instead of in the corridor), there is nothing to wear (instead of nothing to wear).

But the most indicative are the lexical Belarusianisms: dude,give injections(instead make injections), for a meat grinder, our little(in terms of our junior, our little).

For a very long time, these and other similar facts were explained by interference (violation of the norms of one language under the influence of another), that is, in fact, “spoilage” of the Russian language. In fact, perhaps, in the future, the Belarusian national version of the Russian language will be formed (just as the American version of the English language or the Canadian version of French was formed in the owl time).

FORMS OF EXISTENCE OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

The Russian language, like any other language, is heterogeneous from a social point of view.

The following subsystems (or varieties, or forms of existence) of the Russian language can be distinguished:

1. literary language;

2. vernacular;

3. (territorial) dialects;

4. sociolects.

They can be schematically depicted as follows:

vernacular

sociolects and dialects

At the same time, non-literary forms are opposed to the literary language: vernacular, dialects and sociolects, which will be discussed below in more detail.

2.1 Vernacular

What is usually called Russian vernacular, was formed by the middle of the 19th century, simultaneously with the end of the formation of the Russian literary language. By the middle of the twentieth century. vernacular existed as an extra-literary system clearly opposed to the LA - the language of broad strata of urban dwellers who do not follow literary norms in their speech... This vernacular, firstly, had its carriers (older people, more women than men, without higher, secondary specialized, and sometimes without completed secondary education, often people from the countryside, pensioners - in the past, nurses, cleaners, workers at the factory, etc.), secondly, it was genetically related to dialects, and thirdly, it differed from the literary language in phonetic, grammatical and lexical features: gladly(instead radio), kilometer, beet; bake, perish(instead bend), fooling around, otteda(instead from there); respect(= to love: I respect borsch), my in the meaning of ‛husband’, address words: mother, daddy.

About 50 years ago in Russian this vernacular (or, as they say, vernacular I) began to give way to a new vernacular - vernacular II. Vernacular II, firstly, has somewhat different carriers (these are rather young men, with secondary or secondary specialized education; drivers, porters, hairdressers, salesmen, workers, etc.); secondly, it has not dialectal, but slang "roots"; thirdly, it differs from the literary language mainly lexically: Well youthe thing isoh so!, he has money -be healthy, crutches'legs', organize a snack, break off the horns, zenki'eyes'.

Since the early 1990s. this vernacular became even more jargonized (it included words previously used only in thieves' jargon like rubbish‘Policeman’, ksiva‘Document, passport’, wet‘Kill’), which gave rise to the category “common jargon” (“common slang”) in modern Russian.

2.2 Dialects

Dialects (territorial dialects) that exist in any developed language are locals speech... They are formed even earlier than the literary language, their carriers were representatives of different Slavic tribes: the north - the Ilmen, Novgorod Slavians; southern Russia - Vyatichi (between Bryansk and Kursk); Smolensk and Polotsk Krivichi (they moved higher than Smolensk to Vladimir, Moscow), etc. It is usually noted that a kind of "peak" in the development of territorial dialects is an era of feudal fragmentation. It is important to remember that dialects are formed in rural areas, therefore, with urbanization (the outflow of the population from the villages), the old dialect system is gradually being destroyed. Dialects differ from the literary language in phonetic, grammatical, and lexical features. For example, in one of the northern Russian dialects there is still an interesting - very ancient - feature: there are differences between [o] closed and [o] open.

But more often they talk about the lexical features of dialects, that is, dialectisms. Dialectisms can penetrate into vernacular, colloquial speech, LA. Moreover, at first the word is perceived as a dialect or regional one. So, Ushakov's dictionary (1935-1940) gives bike‛Short story, fable’ with a label reg... (regional), and in the Ozhegov-Shvedova dictionary (end of the 20th century) bike‛Fable, fiction, fable’ has already been marked as colloquial ( unsettled.). The same: at Ushakov troublemaker (reg.) ‛Restless, troublemaker; a person who brings disorder, discord, in the Ozhegov-Shvedova dictionary - unsettled.

2.3 Sociolects

If dialects make up the peculiarities of the speech of residents of a certain area, then sociolectisms are words that are found in the speech of only representatives of a certain social group... Thus, the term sociolects different variants of the Russian language are indicated, called that slang then jargon or argo... For example, in the Russian language there are sociolects such as youth slang (or youth jargon), criminal (thieves') jargon (the so-called thug fenya), there are various professional slangs (jargons): computer scientists, military, athletes, participants in network games, etc.

As well as dialectisms, sociolectisms can fall into the general literary language. It is clear that this process intensifies depending on some social phenomena. In particular, in the twentieth century. The Russian language experienced two waves of expansion of jargon and argotism: after the 1917 revolution and in the early 1990s.