How, when and why the Russian language changed and absorbed foreign words

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The actual always seems to be unshakable, what should be and what has always been. First of all, this is how the perception of language works, which is why it is so difficult to get used to new words - borrowings or neologisms. We absorb language together with the laws of nature: it is dark at night, light during the day, words in a sentence are built in a certain way. In fact, the Russian language changed several times, and each time the innovations that have now become part of our ordinary speech were perceived by many very painfully.

How and why to leave the simple Russian language and come back to it

If you try to read the Russian texts of the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, you will see how difficult the former are now perceived and how much easier the latter. The point is two things. First, in fashion.

The eighteenth century is the century of fashion away from naturalness as indicators of grace and culture. A decently dressed and painted person should look like a porcelain figurine, no matter if he is a gentleman or a lady. The house of a decent person should look like a giant box with graceful, curled, curved legs and knickknacks inside. The same was expected of the language. It is just that only commoners should speak. The more cultured a person is, the more difficult he is to make constructions out of words and the more he uses intricate comparisons.

The nineteenth century loved to combine the play of naturalness with decorativeness. A lady should not look as if she was powdered with white lead, and a gentleman does not need to be as elegant as a Christmas tree ornament (well, unless his regiment's uniform looks like that, then there is nothing to do). Ceremonial bedrooms - which are needed only to receive guests “informally”, are dying away. Decorativeness should no longer confuse the eye.

The entire beginning of the nineteenth century is actually the development of a new language that would still be Russian, but would take the simplicity of the natural, familiar to everyone from the peasant dialects of speech without its rudeness, would be suitable not only for primitive feelings and thoughts, but also for complex, would allow you to maintain a polite distance without turning it into ridiculous ceremony. This process went on for virtually the entire nineteenth century.

Many phrases that seem familiar and familiar to the modern Russian ear, in fact, it was in the first half of the nineteenth century that they were borrowed from French or German by literal translation. Here are just a few of them: “to kill time”, “a matter of life and death”, “wear an imprint”, “be on pins and needles”, “without a second thought”, “at first sight”, “from the bottom of my heart” - from French … “Winged words”, “daily routine”, “smash them all out”, “regardless of faces”, “that's where the dog is buried” - from German.

It was in the first half of the nineteenth century that many French came to the Russian language, which nowadays look like native. "Baton", "author", "vase", "hero", "screen", "chic", "blond", "hair", "trick" are just a few examples. At the same time, the English "club" also joined the Russian speech. The transitional era from the post-Peter to Pushkin Russian language also gave us invented words with a Russian basis, for example, "touching", "in love", "industry", "attraction" - for them and some others thanks to Karamzin.

Many, however, did not like borrowing from French. It was proposed to look for an alternative based on Slavic roots. Why a frock coat if you have a caftan? Let's assume that the caftan just changed its style … that is, the shape … that is, fie, cut it. However, upon close examination, the caftan also turned out to be non-Russian in its origin, and the people were still in no hurry to switch from galoshes to wet shoes.

When the whole world changes

A new category of words was presented by the second half of the nineteenth century, when young women began to go to work en masse. Some did it for ideological reasons, others - because after the abolition of serfdom they found themselves without a source of income. In addition, women began to study. In the press and in speeches, word-versions of the names of professions, new and old, appeared in the feminine gender.

Of course, new words were resisted again. Is it not ugly, such freaks as “student”, “telephone operator”, “journalist” sound across the Russian ear, the guardians of the Russian language asked in their articles (and the “tourist” has not yet overtaken them). Throughout the last third of the nineteenth and first third of the twentieth centuries, female forms for professions will multiply: lecturer - lecturer, aviator - aviatrix, sculptor - sculptress, salesman - saleswoman, sailor - sailor, worker - worker, scientist - scientist, chairman - chairwoman. And only already under Stalin, with a general fashion for conservatism, and in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, as an example in many things, the masculine gender will again begin to oust the feminine from the "professional field".

A huge change in language happened after the February and October revolutions. Writers, journalists, officials began to look for words and word forms that are more energetic and reflect changes in life. Acronyms and abbreviations in the first syllables have become widespread: shkrab is a school worker, a workers' faculty is a working faculty, an rationalization proposal is a rationalization proposal, an idea for improving something, a city department of public education, an educational program - the elimination of illiteracy. In an intelligent environment, words made up of abbreviations evoked a painful reaction. Throughout the Soviet era, there will be a tendency towards such words: consumer goods are a consumer product, an analogue of the current mass market, custom tailoring is individual tailoring.

At the very beginning of the Soviet era, the word “weekend” appeared, which was used to refer to days of rest. Before the revolution, workers rested on holidays of their faith: either Sunday, or Saturday, or Friday. The mesh bag, which began to spread at the end of the nineteenth century, finally got the name - "string bag". They began to carry it with them at random, all the time - suddenly they manage to buy something.

"Police" changed its meaning from the people's militia to the executive branch. A "drummer of labor" appeared - a person who works especially selflessly and productively. “Oblasts” and “districts” began to be applied in relation to administrative territories. The construction of sentences has changed a lot. The journalistic and clerical style began to include many impersonal sentences, where the action took place as if by itself, which means that many verbal nouns began to be used.

It was during the Soviet era that such constructions as “Air temperature is expected to rise” instead of the less impersonal “Air temperature is predicted to rise” became generally accepted and almost neutral. In the ads, there is a "compelling request" to do this or that.

A separate influence was exerted by universal literacy and economy on the letter E: it was usually denoted in writing by the letter E. In words rarely used in everyday life, the pronunciation and sometimes stress changed as a result: birch bark became birch bark, bile - bilious, newborn - newborn, nonsense - nonsense, faded - faded.

English: never disappeared from the horizon

The flow of English words went into colloquial speech for almost the entire twentieth century. So, at the beginning, they began to go in for "sports" and play "football", "volleyball" and so on. In the middle, they wore breeches and a polo shirt. In the end, we watched the video "thrillers" and began to dress in "jeans" en masse.

Many Anglicisms came to develop vocabulary related to entrepreneurship in the nineties when necessary: business, manager, office. Very often, foreign words were replaced not by native ones, but simply by old borrowings. So, the "hit" replaced the "hit", the same "office" - "office", and later, in the 2000s, the English-language "make-up" noticeably replaced the French "make-up".

In the 2000s, words from English, connected with the active use of the Internet, including, in fact, the word "Internet" itself, moved into the Russian language. In the tenth, it became popular to use English-language words related to fashion (starting with the fact that the French-language word “fashion” went to be replaced by “fashion”) and with the culture of a new “beautiful life” - not rich or sophisticated, but in the style of popular blogs on Instagram, at the same time careless and extremely neat, balancing between comfort and sterility. North American pancakes instead of Russian pancakes, coworking spaces instead of workshops and workshops instead of master classes became a sign of this beautiful life; however, both “master” and “class” are also far from Slavic roots.

As always, any wave of changes will end with the fact that what is really relevant in everyday life will be fixed, and the rest will be forgotten; as always, any wave is accompanied (and will be accompanied) by protests and resurrection of words that were almost buried by time for a long time, only with a new, now ironic connotation. Nobody knows what turn the living language will face tomorrow. Only with the dead everything is clear.

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