R The Russian language belongs to the eastern group of the Indo-European family of languages, the formation of which dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. It is believed that first Slavic alphabet - created a verb Kirill, Bulgarian philosopher over 10 centuries ago. Subsequently, with the participation of his brother Methodius Cyril the Cyrillic alphabet was created, with the help of this alphabet the first Orthodox Bible was translated and written down for the Slavic people, who converted to Christianity.
AND exactly Church Slavonic becomes the main language for several centuries, with the help of which both church rites and legislative acts, as well as trade documentation are recorded, and although the main letters are still similar to the Glagolitic, they nevertheless contain Slavic sounds and denote native Russian speech . But by the 16th century, many are already beginning to understand that the Church Slavonic language is increasingly moving away from the Slavic language, with which people communicate in everyday life.
AND It was Peter I who decided to carry out the first reform of the language and the Church Slavonic alphabet was replaced by the civil alphabet, while five letters were excluded from the alphabet. The next reform is Lomonosov in the 18th century, in his opinion, the Russian language is very rich and provides many opportunities for creating new expressions, therefore, it needs to change the grammatical rules of writing. And the last reform takes place in 1918, where not only changes are made to spelling and grammar, but some letters are also excluded.
And, nevertheless, many ancient words in a modified form continue to exist in the modern language, although their roots go back to the Church Slavonic language. For example, the word " power"refers to the Church Slavonic period, then is transformed into the word" parish"and in the modern sense, this word already sounds like" region».
IN Due to the fact that Russia was constantly attacked and influenced by other nationalities, many words were introduced into the Russian language that are currently considered Russian. For example, the word " the God"roots back to the ancient Indo-European language and means" get a share", subsequently by meaning this word is transformed into" wealth", and then in the common Slavic language in literal translation this word means" giver of blessings».
Modern Russian is considered one of the most widespread, beautiful and difficult to learn. This is due to the fact that the modification of the language occurs constantly, under the influence of the development of technology, science and, of course, computerization. There are new professions, new scientific terms, new Russian words. And if, over the past half century, the English language has almost doubled and the number of words in this language is approaching a million. That Russian language cannot be counted until now, because from one word it is possible to make a derivative of at least six words, therefore, even with the help of computer technology, no one can accurately assess the richness of our language.
On June 6, the Russian Language Day is celebrated all over the world. It is celebrated on the birthday of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, the great writer and poet, the founder of the modern literary language. The holiday was established in 2010 at the UN, and a year later - in Russia itself. the site recalls how the “great and mighty” has changed over the past hundred years and what the Russian language of our recent past, the 20th century, was like.
1918 - goodbye, Yat!
Our modern alphabet, the same one that was taught in kindergarten, is not at all what Cyril and Methodius once invented. In the original Old Slavonic Cyrillic there were 43 letters, while in our alphabet there are only 33.
The modern alphabet appeared only 98 years ago, when the newly minted Soviet government issued a decree "On the introduction of a new spelling" - this was the third major reform of the Russian language in its entire history.
According to this decree, the letters “yat”, “fita”, “and decimal” were forever excluded from the alphabet, somehow the “Izhitsa” gradually disappeared by itself. But the “e” had just appeared there “officially”, although back in 1797 it was unofficially recognized Nikolai Karamzin.
Cutting: White, pale, poor demon / Hungry ran away into the forest. / He ran around the forest, / He ate radish with horseradish ... ". A poem that schoolchildren learned to remember the spelling of words with "yat"
In addition, in connection with the reform, the hard sign at the end of words (and parts of compound words) has disappeared - this has seriously reduced printing costs. And the endings in some cases of nouns have also changed, which brought the sound of the speech of that time closer to our modern one. Here are some before and after pairs, for example:
new - new
lachshago - the best
new - new
Thanks to the reform of 1918, learning Russian became easier. And in the conditions of that time it was the most urgent task. According to the 1919 census, only 41.7% of the country's population aged 8 and older could read and write - and even less. That is, more than half of the country's inhabitants were totally illiterate, they could not write letters or statements, they could not read the name of their native city or even their own surname.
It is natural that it was in the same year that the decree “On the Elimination of Illiteracy in the RSFSR” was issued, which marked the beginning of a large-scale educational program, so much so that we still use this word in everyday life. In 1920-1920, the USSR annually spent about 12% of the budget on education. The world was changing.
In the Soviet period of history, new realities burst into the culture of the country. Accordingly, new concepts appeared that were supposed to somehow explain these realities - Komsomol and pioneers, party cards and workers' schools ...
All this broke into the life of the people of that time, mixed with the usual "home" speech, with dialects, sometimes acquiring bizarre forms. Many everyday words appeared, even jargon, in which one could see the whole way of life of a simple Soviet person - string bag (mesh bag), denatured alcohol (denatured alcohol with additives of an unpleasant smell and taste), redneck (miser), waste paper (trash paper or low-grade literature), defector (a person who went abroad and stayed there), deviator (a person, views which differed from the "general line" of the party), hula hoop (large light hoop), chifir (very strong brewed tea), hit (fashionable pop song).
The main “feature” of the Soviet era, and so beloved by schoolchildren, is the reduction of everything that can only be reduced. Abbreviations and abbreviated phrases were firmly entrenched in the language of that time and swam into our 21st century. For example, words such as TsU (valuable indication), university, wall newspaper, hydroelectric power station, thermal power plant and nuclear power plant are no longer associated with a specific historical period - we use them in our speech as independent and “full” words.
Climbing up again looking at the night
on the top floor of a seven-story building.
"Did Comrade Ivan Vanych come?" —
"At a meeting
A-be-ve-ge-de-e-zhe-ze-coma.
Mayakovsky's satirical poem "Prosessed", ridiculing meaningless abbreviations
Letter Yo - a story with a sequel
In 1942, the use of the letter Ё became mandatory, but already in 1956 it was used to clarify the pronunciation, which is done to this day. In the same 1956, “double” adjectives began to be written with a hyphen, and before that everything was merged, just look: dark red, blue green- that's how it was grammatically correct until that time. The spelling of some other words has also changed - adequate / adequate, diet / diet, scurvy / scurvy, acorn / acorn, itti / go, etc.
The ice has broken, gentlemen of the jury, the ice has broken!
Cinema has become a real outlet for Soviet life. Catch phrases from popular Soviet films, which the whole country watched on the first and second channels, quickly "flew" into Russian speech and language. This amazing phenomenon has become part of the original culture that now unites both Russia and the post-Soviet space. Let's recall just a few of them:
- Shurik, maybe not?
- You must Fedya, you must!To live well! A good life is even better!
Komsomol member, athlete and just a beauty!
Sorry bird!
Slow down, please, I'm scribbling...
What a muck - this is your aspic fish
We have forgotten how to do big good stupid things. We stopped climbing out the window to the women we love
Black caviar! Red caviar! Overseas caviar, eggplant!..
King, nice to meet you, king!
Girl, girl, what's your name?
— Tanya.
- And I'm Fedya!
- Well, you fool!
Cleaning is not cleaning, office manager is not a secretary
What is our modern Russian language? The dominance of foreign words, the replacement of simple Russian expressions with newfangled and foreign ones. Such a global trend. Many experts believe that this is a completely natural and not at all terrible phenomenon. The language should be flexible, reflect the culture and way of life of the people who speak it. But Russian is now spoken by about 260 million people, and native speakers among them are only 166 million. The Russian language is actively integrated into the global communication of people, it is one of the six official languages of the UN. And it is quite clear that it cannot remain unchanged, primordial, language is a reflection of ourselves.
And if “fake” and “looks”, “trollers” and “spoilers”, “startups” and “brandings” appeared in our realities, then this is only an indicator of the flexibility of our great and powerful, capable of carrying the culture of the past and “absorbing” present trends. The Russian language has been "absorbing" foreign words for several centuries. Starting with the eastern "diamond", "cockroach", "iron", continuing with the French "cream", "stool", "omelette" and ending with the English "clown", "tram" and "spam". And if you can still pick up a Russian analogue for some borrowed words, then most of them have already become firmly established in everyday life.
Valeria Manzhelievskaya
In the field of phonetics.
Over the centuries, the number and quality of sounds in the Russian language has changed. The Old Russian language had a different system of vowel phonemes (basic sounds) than now. There were more vowel sounds. The exact sound of the disappeared sounds is unknown (because there were no sound recording devices) - there is, however, indirect evidence of what kind these sounds were.
Here is one fact.
Science has established that along with [I] and [E] in the Old Russian language there was a similar to them, but still an independent vowel sound. He was in the words: run, white, forest, bread and many others. The proof that it existed is at least the fact that when the alphabet was invented, a special letter was invented for it. It was called “yat”. (Perhaps you know that all the letters in the Cyrillic alphabet had their own names, for example: “az”, “beeches”, “lead”, etc. How the letter “yat” looked like can be seen in any image of the old Russian alphabet).
Over time, the sound denoted by the letter “yat” changed so much that it coincided with [E], and the Russian people stopped distinguishing them. The letter, however, - as is usually the case - was preserved by tradition for a long time.
Another fact.
In some modern Russian words there is a so-called. fluent vowels - [O] and [E]: sleep - sleep, day - day. This alternation is evidence that in ancient times the Russian language had special vowel sounds, very short. In science, they are called "reduced" (reduction - reduction, weakening of something). According to indirect data, science has established that in sound they were similar to full (non-reduced) sounds: [O] - in some words, or [E] - in other words. For their designation, there were special letters: b and b. On the letter it looked like this: SEN, DAY. Over time, the reduced sounds have changed. Their fate is this: in some conditions they “cleared up”, that is, they became full-sounding and coincided with [O] or [E], while in others, on the contrary, their reduction intensified and they disappeared completely. So, from [СЪНЪ] it turned out [SLEEP], and from [СЪНА] - [СНА]. As for the letters denoting these sounds, they have survived to this day, but they are used in a completely different function: these are the well-known “hard sign” and “soft sign”. They no longer represent individual vowel sounds. In deeper antiquity, even in the Proto-Slavic language, there were other vowel sounds, which also disappeared over time.
The system of consonants was also different. If the number of vowel phonemes in the history of the Russian language has decreased, then the number of consonant phonemes, on the contrary, has increased. The process of changing consonants also has traces in writing. It is not for nothing that one has to specifically teach that “after Zh and Sh, Y is not written, but Y is written”: before these consonants were soft, but now they are hard (it began to sound [zhyr], [shyla]), but by tradition we continue to write like this, as if W and W are soft - fat, awl.
Note that the ancient letters are not the only evidence that the sound system was different than it is now.
In the field of grammar.
Many changes have taken place over a thousand years in morphology, in particular in declension and conjugation. The number of types of declension of nouns has significantly decreased: now, as you know, there are 3 of them, but there were much more - in different periods, a different number. For example, "son" and "brother" were inclined differently for some time. Nouns such as sky and word were declined in a special way (features were preserved in the forms of heaven, words), etc.
Among the cases there was a special case - “vocative”. This case form was received by the appeal: father - father, old man - elder, etc. In the prayers in the Church Slavonic language it sounded: our father, who art in heaven..., glory to you, Lord, the king of heaven.... The vocative case has been preserved in Russian fairy tales and other works of folklore: Kitty! Brother! Help me out! ("Cat, rooster and fox").
The Old Russian verb was significantly different from the modern one: there was not one past tense, but four: each with its own forms and its own meaning: aorist, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect. Three tenses were lost, one was preserved - the perfect, but it changed its form beyond recognition: in the annals "The Tale of Bygone Years" we read: "why are you going to sing, you took all the tribute" (why are you going again? - after all, you have already taken all the tribute) - auxiliary verb (thou) fell away, only the participle form with the suffix L remained (here “caught”, i.e. took), which became for us the only form of the past tense of the verb: walked, wrote, etc.
The composition of parts of speech also changed: numerals appeared relatively late, adverbs - they were formed from other parts of speech. The fate of the numerals is especially interesting, because even now the numerals are undergoing changes, and not everyone has yet finally decided. Thus, the word thousand behaves partly as a numeral, partly as a noun.
A special story is the history of Russian syntax: some rules for combining words, rules for constructing sentences have changed. For example: in ancient times, a short adjective was used both as a predicate and as a definition, which is not accepted in modern Russian, cf.: nice man, blue sea. Traces of these combination rules have been preserved in some stable expressions, in folklore (permanent epithets), for example: in broad daylight, on bare feet, by S. Yesenin: I pray for scarlet dawns ...
In the field of vocabulary.
The vocabulary of the Russian language is in a state of constant change (this is typical for all languages). Such a process is visible, as they say, with the naked eye, that is, without special scientific research. (The same cannot be said about changes in phonetics or morphology). Dictionaries, although updated, do not have time to reflect all changes in the meanings of words or the emergence of new words (neologisms). One of the ways of changing vocabulary is borrowing from other languages. This process in different historical periods shows a different degree of activity. For example, in the modern Russian language, it turned out to be very noticeable in the last decade of the twentieth century, which is associated with a sharp change in the social system in Russia, with economic reforms.
Many words that came into use could not be found in any dictionary for some time, such as: image, mentality, barter, voucher, etc. I had to look for them in the dictionary of the source language and translate into Russian. This shows that the vocabulary of the language is in a state of continuous change, it is indeed alive. New words not only come from other languages, but are also born on the basis of the language itself - in live colloquial speech, according to productive word-formation models, i.e., according to samples. For example, the concept of "alternative military service" gave rise to the word alternative - on the model of a recruiter, atomist, a smoker, etc.
Less noticeable for native speakers is the disappearance of words into the past; we rarely notice the aging of a word. This process is also gradual, and sometimes the word simply passes into a passive stock, and then it can return. So in our time, the departed word has returned to use for, returning to active use rather than good and other service words. Sometimes they come back. "historicisms" if the phenomenon they designate is reborn. Examples: mayor, duma, governor, gymnasium, diocese, priest, etc.
Examples of obsolete words (archaisms) used by Pushkin: this, this, amiable (friend), biography, treat (contact), venerable, husband (male person). Examples of older words that have fallen into disuse several centuries ago: zelo (very), velmi (very), tokmo (only), vborze (soon), zakyhati (sneeze), otrokovitsa (teenage girl), lie (you can). These words have been superseded by their synonyms.
Only the main, most noticeable facts from the history of the Russian language are named here, but it is important to understand that the language is a single system, and some changes entail others.
Reasons for language changes.
Of course, language does not change on its own: it reflects - directly or indirectly - changes in people's lives, in their consciousness and in the material side of life. Language is not influenced by every individual, but by speakers as a whole, or at least by large groups of speakers. True, it happens that one person - a writer or a historical figure - introduces a word or expression into use. For example, it is known that N. M. Karamzin introduced the word touching and some other words into use. However, such exceptional facts do not make the weather. And in these cases, the word enters into circulation if it corresponds to the laws of the language, meets the needs of the speakers.
There are different reasons for changes in different parts of the language. Some remain unknown to science, others are quite obvious, others are interpreted as hypotheses. The causes of changes in phonetics and the grammatical structure of a language are a special area of linguistics.
It is important to understand the main thing: the language, its composition and system, will not change according to someone's will. The concept of "reform" is not applicable to the language. Quite another thing is writing. It can be changed and even reformed. The letter is not part of the language, but only corresponds to it, serves as its reflection. It is invented by society for practical purposes. With the help of a system of graphic icons, people capture speech, save it and can transmit it over a distance. The letter can be changed at the will of the people, reformed if there is a practical need for this. The history of mankind knows many facts of changing types of writing, that is, ways of graphic transmission of speech. There are fundamental changes, for example, the transition from the hieroglyphic system to the letter system or within the letter system - replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin one or vice versa. Smaller changes in writing are also known - changes in the style of letters. Even more frequent changes are the elimination of some individual letters from the practice of writing, and the like. An example of writing changes: for the Chukchi language, writing was created only in 1931 on the basis of the Latin alphabet, but already in 1936 the letter was translated into Russian graphics.
In the history of Russian culture, there were also changes in writing - larger and smaller. So, for example, in Ancient Russia they used not only the Cyrillic alphabet (a set of letters that we use now), but for some time also the Glagolitic alphabet (a set of letters that have completely different styles) - no one uses it now. The Cyrillic alphabet itself also changed - the lettering of the letters: at first it was so-called. "Charter", then "half-charter", and the reform was carried out by Peter 1.
As you can see, there is a fundamental, fundamental difference between changes in writing (graphics) and changes in language: no king, no ruler can change the language by his will. It is impossible to order speakers not to pronounce any sounds, not to use any cases. Changes in the language occur under the influence of various factors and reflect the internal properties of the language. They occur against the will of the speakers (although, of course, they are created by the speaking community itself).
So, when we talk about changes in the Russian language, about its history, we mean the language (in oral and written form), but not writing. We are not talking about changes in the style of letters, in the number of letters, in spelling rules. The history of language and the history of writing are different stories.
Science (the history of the Russian language) has established how the Russian language has changed over the centuries: what changes have occurred in the sound system, in morphology, in syntax and in vocabulary. Development trends are also studied, new phenomena and processes are noted. New trends are born in live speech - oral and written.
Module 2. Normative aspect of speech culture (6 hours)
Lecture 3. Normative aspect of speech culture. Orthoepic, accentological and lexical norms of the modern Russian language, their composition and features (2 hours)
Orthoepic norm- this is the only possible or preferred option for the correct, exemplary pronunciation and correct placement of stress. It is studied by a special section of linguistics - orthoepy (Greek orthos - correct and epos - speech). Orthoepy is also called the set of rules for literary pronunciation. Orthoepy determines the pronunciation of individual sounds in certain phonetic polices, in combination with other sounds, as well as their pronunciation in certain grammatical forms, groups of words or in individual words. Maintaining uniformity in pronunciation is of great importance. Orthoepic errors always interfere with perceiving the content of speech: the listener's attention is distracted by various pronunciation irregularities and the statement in its entirety and with sufficient attention is not perceived. Pronunciation, corresponding to orthoepic norms, facilitates and speeds up the process of communication. Therefore, the social role of correct pronunciation is very great, especially at present in our society, where oral speech has become the means of the widest communication at various meetings, conferences, and congresses.
In general, the current orthoepic norms of the Russian language (and their possible variants) are registered in special dictionaries that belong to the orthoepic group. Consider the basic rules of literary pronunciation, which must be followed.
Stand out:
a) rules for the pronunciation of individual sounds (consonants, stressed and unstressed vowels), reduction of unstressed vowels;
b) rules for pronunciation of combinations of sounds;
c) rules for pronunciation of individual grammatical forms;
d) rules for pronunciation of individual borrowed words.
Speaking about the peculiarities of the pronunciation of consonant sounds, one should pay attention to the combination "ch", since mistakes are often made in its pronunciation. There is fluctuation in the pronunciation of words with this combination, which is associated with a change in the rules of the old Moscow pronunciation. According to the norms of the modern Russian literary language, the combination "ch" is usually pronounced like this [ch]. This is especially true for words of book origin (greedy, careless), as well as words that appeared in the recent past (camouflage, landing). The pronunciation [shn] instead of the spelling [ch] is currently required in female patronymics on “-ichna”: Ilini[shn]a, Lukshsh[shn]a, Fomini(shn)a. and is also preserved in separate words: kone [shn] o. re[shn]itsa. laundry. empty. Skvore [shn] ik, yai [shi] itza, etc. Some words with the combination “ch” are pronounced in two ways in accordance with the norm: order [shn] o and order [ch] o. In some cases, the different pronunciation of the combination ch serves for the semantic differentiation of words: heart [ch] beat - heart [shn] friend.
Pronunciation of borrowed words. They, as a rule, obey modern orthoepic norms and only in some cases differ in features in pronunciation. For example, the pronunciation of the sound (o) is sometimes preserved in unstressed syllables (m [o] del. [o] asis, [o] tel) and solid consonants before the front vowel [e] (s [te] nd. ko [de] ks, porridge [ne]). In most borrowed words, before [e], the consonants soften: ka[t"]et, pa[t"]efon, faculty[t"]st, mu[z"]her, [r"]ektor, pio[n" ]ep. Always before "e" back-lingual consonants are softened: [k "] egli, s [x"] ema. baguette.
Complexity and whimsicality Russian accent widely known. Perhaps no other area of the Russian language causes so many fierce disputes, bewilderment and hesitation. It is noteworthy that as early as 1927 D.N. Ushakov, when asked whether there are laws for the correct placement of stress, answered that "there are no established rules for stress." But already in the 60s and 70s, serious theoretical studies appeared in the field of historical and modern accentology, thanks to which the whims in the development of stress received scientific justification.
Back in the 4th century, the famous Greek philologist Diomedes called stress the "soul of speech." In addition, the correct placement of stress is a necessary sign of cultural, literate speech.
There are many words, the pronunciation of which serves as a kind of litmus test of speech culture:
YOUTH, PORTFOLIO, DO´CENT, PRO´CENT, A´TLET, KO´RYST, SHOP, DOCU´MENT, TOOL´MENT, PEOPLE´M, BEET´, INVENTION, NEWBORN , TRANSLATED, LIGHTER.
There are a fairly large number of accentological options, about which there is a sharp discussion today:
TVORO´G – TVO´ROG
LOOP - LOOP'
INDUSTRY´YA - INDUSTRY´STRIA
BORN´ – BORN´LESS
QUARTA´L - KVA´RTAL
PRODUCTION – PRODUCTION
Over the past decade, many dictionaries and reference books have been published that regulate modern Russian stress. However, not everything in the field of accentology has been fully developed yet. The assessment of the controversial facts of oral speech is still often carried out in an artisanal way, based on a subjective and often deceptive perception, without taking into account major trends in the development of stress. Many productive neoplasms are undeservedly declared speech errors, and the functional differences of coexisting accent variants remain unknown or are not taken into account.
Languages are changing at a rapid pace these days. And this trend is observed, perhaps, in all languages without exception. Moreover, they all exchange words much more often than before. It is believed that the main source of borrowing is English. But he, too, does not disdain to expand his lexical composition, drawing words from other languages.
For example, recently, thanks to the globalization of the gastronomic sphere, a lot of words related to ethnic cuisine have appeared: sushi, tapas, kulebyaka, and so on. From Russian, after the troika, vodka and pancakes, they went into English siloviki And spetsnaz.
An even more obvious trend is simplification. To a lesser extent, this is manifested in the literary forms of languages, and to a much greater extent - in colloquial versions. The reasons here are probably the following: it is required much faster than before to formulate and convey information to the interlocutor. Or to a large audience. Therefore, the volume of the sentence is reduced, the grammar is simplified, abbreviations are used more actively.
I think we can say that in the modern language (more precisely, in all languages), a new hybrid style has become the locomotive of development, which occupies an intermediate position between the literary and colloquial language. Previously, there was simply no such intermediate layer of language. It is the language of social networks and short messages. Saving time and space is a powerful incentive to reduce any text.
For example, in order to save just one letter, a Frenchman can instead of the usual combination qu in words what And who(fr. que And qui) use a letter they don't like k, which is not used at all in French.
This hybrid style owes its growing influence to the fact that almost everyone becomes its creators. Not a narrow group of writers, as it used to be, but anyone who leaves comments on the Internet or at least exchanges SMS messages.
To write faster, you need to write shorter. Hence the tectonic changes in the use of grammatical forms. Let's take Russian. In its colloquial version, you rarely hear participial and participle turns. For example, instead of "man sitting at the table" we'd rather say "the person who sits at the table", but instead "I saw him coming up to the house" we prefer "I saw him when I was approaching the house".
Lewis Carroll gave up studying Russian when he came across the word defending. Not only is the word long, but there are three more SCH. Now he would probably see a combination of the words "which protect." And it's not so scary anymore.
An excerpt from the diary of Lewis Carroll about a trip to Russia
Our fellow traveler turned out to be an Englishman who had lived in St. Petersburg for 15 years and was now returning there after a trip to Paris and London. He extremely kindly answered all our questions and explained to us in great detail what we should see in St. Petersburg, how to pronounce Russian words, etc.; however, he did not at all reassure us, saying that among the local residents few people speak any language other than Russian. As an example of the unusually long words that characterize the Russian language, he wrote me the following:
DEFENDING,
which, if written in English letters, will look like this: Zashtsheeshtschayjushtsheekhsya.
Simplification is also observed in other languages. Let's say in English the form past simple or Past Indefinite(simple past) comes on Present Perfect.
According to statistics, a modern English-speaking person will more often prefer the form I took, but not I have taken, like before.
In French, too, there is a simplification. Entire grammatical forms are falling out of use. For example, the verb form Passe simple. This is a form of the past tense that used to dominate in fiction. And now it is used only to give the text more solemnity.
The interrogative form in French, which previously required manipulation of word order, now requires only a change in intonation. There are similar examples from other languages.
This process is objectively gaining momentum. Perhaps in the near future the changes will be comparable in scale to those that occurred at the beginning of the New Age, when modern European languages were formed on the ruins of Latin. You can treat it differently. You can even try to fight this process. But, in any case, it is better to know and anticipate this trend than to ignore it. After all, it's only just beginning.
Language is in a constant process of change. In connection with the historical change of phonemes, not only the form of the word changes, but the meaning and concept of the language. This change of language is a continuous development. Language change occurs first in the speech of some people, in particular the younger generation. The desire of the younger generation to adapt to the feeling of a new era is reflected and spread within the language as a subject of social and cultural formation of the masses. When the transformation of individual speech penetrates into common usage, the change is not halted, but reinforced by general language skills, although this penetration into a linguistic society is not so easy to achieve. As with any cultural transformation, so in the case of a change in language, a conservative force acts and prevents this penetration in the person of a powerful center of society. It is clear that even during the life of one generation, many changes occur in the language, but only some of them are fixed at the level of the entire nation-native speaker and remain in the language for a long time.
In different aspects of the language, changes occur at different rates.
subject to the most rapid changes lexical composition of the language. This can be seen both in the example of new words that have appeared in the Russian language over the past 10-15 years (all computer terminology, many new names of professions and activities, etc.), and in the example of a large number of borrowings from English in Korean, almost all of which belong to the period after 1945. As a rule, the emergence of new vocabulary is associated with the following phenomena: 1) borrowing a word from another language (with or without displacement of a previously used word); 2) the emergence of new words to designate objects and phenomena that were previously absent in culture; 3) intralinguistic processes, in which a word or expression, originally invented and used by a small group of people, spreads to the language of the entire nation, 4) changing the meaning of a word over time. Note that in recent years this process of updating vocabulary has accelerated in all languages due to the greater ease of information exchange between people than at any time in history. Naturally, the process of some words going out of use is also going on in parallel.
Consider all these 4 processes using the example of Korean and other languages:
1) borrowing. From the Chinese language, from the 4th century, and from the Japanese language from the end of the 19th century, hieroglyphic words are borrowed. The share in modern Korean is 70%, in special terminology it is higher. Since the 20th century, there have been active borrowings from English.
2) the emergence of new words to denote new objects or phenomena. In Korean, they can be made up of both native Korean roots, and from hieroglyphic and even English, while the meaning of the word may be completely unrelated to the original meanings of the roots (원피스, 소개팅, 왕따, 고스톱, 화이트 데이),
3) the penetration of words from the lexicon of a small group of people into the masses: Korean modern slang 화이팅, 공주병, 호박, 당근, 깡통, 형광등, Russian “kettle”, “brake”, etc.
4) change in the meaning of words: Russian “comrade”, Italian “banca”, Korean originally hieroglyphic 생각 and 사랑, acquiring a new meaning 바가지, 동네북, changing the shade of the meaning of the word 아줌마 …
There are also reverse processes: expulsion and colloquial vulgarization of words. A dead language is also a product of this process. In modern language, words with "-뱅이" suffixes: "가난뱅이 - poor man», «주정뱅이 - alcoholic»; «-치»: «장사치 - huckster», «거라치 – princeling", etc., are disparaging in nature, but earlier they had the opposite meaning: a polite appeal to males
The suffix "-뱅이" was formed from the word "방(房)" in the nominative form. The "-치" suffix was formed in the following order: first, the "-디" suffix softened - [디>지], after which the "-지" softened again - [지>치] (4,15).
You can give an example of the following words: "디새 - shingles», «고마 – concubine», «구위 – department". These words were replaced by their hieroglyphs and disappeared, being dialect variants.
Thus, at first glance, the vocabulary looks like a rather unreliable guideline in determining the family ties of a language, but it also has a certain basic composition that is little subject to change over centuries and even millennia, and can be used to study the origin of the language and its family ties.
Slightly slower than vocabulary changes phonetic composition of the language: the appearance and disappearance of individual phonemes, the possibility or impossibility of their combination, various alternations. In this process, we are talking about centuries, and as a rule, the written language fixes these changes much later than they occur in oral speech. Examples of such changes are:
1) the disappearance of phonemes: in the Russian language in 1917, the use of the letters fita, izhitsa, a solid sign at the end of a word, yat (well, I did not find them in symbols !!!) was canceled. That is, earlier these letters meant the sounds of speech, then the sounds gradually fell into disuse, and only then were the letters removed from use. A similar process took place in the Korean language, when, following the sounds v, zh, and some complex diphthongs and triphthongs, letters also disappeared from use, the last of which - (●) - fell out of use only in the 20th century.
2) the appearance of phonemes: at the present stage, it is more difficult to track it than in the language of previous periods, since the phonemes that have appeared, like those that have disappeared, are not immediately and not always fixed in the written language. In modern Russian, we can talk about the appearance of “e closed”, for which there is no separate letter, however, this sound is often used mainly in borrowed words, where “e” is written, and “e” is read - stress, progress, process, Internet, computer, sex, etc. We are also well aware that the phoneme "f" also came into the Russian language along with borrowed words. In Korean, one can trace the formation of the diphthongoids 에, 애 and 얘 from full-fledged diphthongs "ai", "oi", "yai", the same can be said about 외 and 위.
3) combinations of phonemes: an example of this phenomenon in the Russian language is the impossibility in Old Russian of finding two consonants next to each other, which is quite possible in modern Russian: modern. The building is another building (from zida - “clay”), etc. This also includes, for example, the impossibility of combining sp or st at the beginning of a word in modern Spanish - they must be preceded by a vowel. In the Korean language in the Middle Ages and modern times, one can trace the process of transition from two or even three consonants at the beginning of a word / syllable to one consonant, and in modern Korean - a process officially recorded by the language only in the south of the peninsula: the transformation of ㄹ into ㄴ in hanmun words at the beginning of a word, and dropping ㄹ before soft vowels at the beginning of a word. That is, at the time of the division of Korea into north and south, the pronunciation norm “I” apparently took place, when writing the surname “리”, in the south the spelling of such words was brought into line with the pronunciation, and in the north - vice versa.
4) alternation. Without going into details of the Russian alternations of "k-ch", "Ms.", "o-a" and "e-i" in the roots of the word (those who wish can try to think about what it is all about), let's go straight to the well-known you Korean language, in which the alternation “ㅂ - 우” is a direct consequence of the once in the language of the sound “w”, which fell into disuse, becoming “p” before vowels and “w” before consonants. Also, the alternation of “ㄷ - ㄹ” was the result of a historical process (that is, most of the hieroglyphic syllables ending in ㄹ ended in ㄷ at the time of their borrowing, this is clearly tracked by a comparative analysis of the reading of hieroglyphs in various East Asian countries).
The phonetic features of a language can serve as important material for the analysis of its origin. So, in the group of Altaic languages there are several important features (the impossibility of the position of certain phonemes at the beginning of a word, the euphony of vowels, and some others), which allowed linguists to make one or another classification within this language family.
Finally, the most stable and subject to the slowest changes is grammar and language structure. So, some Chinese grammatical forms came to the Korean language, the most famous of which is the suffix 적, as well as attributes and some other constructions, but they did not have a big impact on everyday speech, and even more so on the structure of the language.
Korean scientists also have their own interesting view on the REASONS for the changes taking place in the language. The reasons for language changes lie, firstly, within the nation responsible for the language; secondly, in changing the forms of letters and words. The first reason has three types: physiological, psychological, spiritual.
Among physiological factors particular importance is attached to the state of the vocal apparatus. The vocal apparatus of each person has its own characteristics, but there are regional communities in the course of mastering the methods of articulation.
For example, in Seoul and Southern dialects, when pronouncing the phrase "나의 것" - " my thing” you can see the obvious features of each: “나으 것”, “나에 것” . This phenomenon during the action of the vocal apparatus is especially revealed in the case of the so-called change in conditional-connective phonemes, which occurs due to adjacent sounds, for example, in such phenomena as assimilation, dissimilation, palatalization. There are also changes in unconditional self-generating phonemes that do not arise due to adjacent sounds.
Among psychological factors the most important is the instinct for simplification. This instinct, arising from the propensity to seek convenience, is expressed by assimilation, addition, and contraction.
This tendency to search for simplicity of speech becomes one of the factors that change the so-called folk-etymological form of speech. This can be seen in words such as [낟알→나락]; phenomenon-transition "녀름" - (obsolete "여름- summer”): “여름” (obsolete “열매- fetus”), respectively, [녀름>여름:여름>열매] (4,14).
Another important factor is the process of drawing analogies, for example, [한길- big road→행길(行- direction, line)]. In addition, concern for the beauty of intonation, the desire for a clear transmission of thought, the instinct to imitate certain vocabulary - all this entails changes in the language. All of the above psychological factors are closely related to each other.
Peculiarity spiritual factor consists in the fact that it surpasses the first two in various degrees. This influence is more reflected in a change in content than in a change in phoneme or form of speech. Changing the content means changing the concepts of the language. For example, the word "사랑" in the language of the medieval period had the meaning [思∙憶] - " think, remember", but gradually the meaning narrowed down to the value [愛] -" love". Accordingly, it turns out that an action arises that expands the content of meaning in a unit of speech. For example, the word of the language of the medieval period "겨레 - relatives”, which conveys the meaning “members of the same genus”, began to mean “민족 - nation» (4.15).
In addition, the cultural realities of other states constantly penetrate the language, bringing with them new semantic meanings. Changes in the language of the ancient period are deeply rooted in changes in religion, culture, politics, economics, and society. Even if we consider the Neolithic period, we will see that even then Korean culture had various origins and connections with the cultures of neighboring regions and even remote lands of Siberia and Transbaikalia. In the first centuries of the new era, the population of the Korean peninsula was influenced by China. Some Korean communities acted as intermediaries in trade and cultural relations between the Chinese and the population of the Japanese islands. By the 4th century, Confucian ideas had become the state ideology of Goguryeo. Confucianism and Buddhism, along with a huge number of new concepts, appeared in Korea precisely with the advent of Chinese writing.
Even if the content and forms of words in a language are constantly changing or disappear altogether, new word formations are constantly emerging. Normally, language changes can occur involuntarily in any territory, however, there is a planned force at work in the creation of new words. In the case of Korean, this is confirmed by looking at new words like 매, 가름, 조각, 목. This spiritual influence, participating in the process of the formation of a new speech, either expands the territory of the language, accommodating advanced culture, or changes it, and it is so huge that it cannot be expressed.
Very often, due to the specifics of the lexical structure of the Korean language, motivation appears in words. In fact, this motivation in the structure of the vocabulary of such languages as English, French, is completely different. For example, if we compare the words 거짓말 (거짓 – falsehood + 말 - word) - lie ( False), 눈물 (눈 – eyes + 물 - water)-tear( tears), you can find out their structural feature, that is, you can find out: how motivated the structure of the Korean language is compared to English; Has language constantly evolved along the lines of an analytic structure? But the essence of the question of this time is to what extent the inner force of language operates and whether the cause of these changes can be found in humanity itself.
One of the significant drivers of phoneme change can be found in the relationship with accent. The accent is divided into a strong or weak mechanical accent, which emphasizes one word, syllable, sound, and a musical-modulation accent, which sets the pitch. However, the occurrence of mid-length vowels among short vowels can create a connection with a mid-length musical-modulation accent; due to the change in sound length, the phenomenon of becoming either long vowels or short vowels can create a connection with a strong or weak mechanical accent.
From this point of view, it becomes necessary at least once to think about creating a connection with such an emphasis on the following phenomena: differences between short and long vowels of the modern language; the process of converting medium length vowels from short vowels and vice versa; the disappearance in the language of the new time of points in the text of the language of the medieval period. It is possible that all of the above language changes occur in one collective in one person and spread through imitation. With the spread of changes in language, the instinct to imitate becomes the most important internal driving force. But in the instinct of imitation, the process occurs spontaneously, without experiencing social restrictions.
Later, there is a conscious intervention of people from the upper strata of society or the political control of the state. Control and intervention play a decisive role in the process of the birth of the cultural, spiritual language of the nation and, depending on the circumstances, testify to the achievement of the political development of society at a certain stage. In such a case, the emerging trend rather determines the development within the language and usually seeks to protect it instead of introducing something new. Such things that we observe today (the norm of correct pronunciation or spelling norms) are interconnected with these processes.
