Russian Blog
This is a blog by JustRussian about learning Russian. You will find useful tips for learning Russian, Russian courses available in London, information about Russian culture and links to websites with information for students of Russian.
Learning more about the Russian Language: the scope of change
By Vlada 28 September 09
More info from a Russian teacher in London, or something you may be interested to know but may not learn in Russian lessons (although you should if your Russian teacher follows the latest news related to the Russian language!)
A modern language is much like a living organism. Languages can emerge, change, develop and die. Russian is not an exception: it has changed hugely in the last century, and even in the last decade. Most of this change is prompted by the changing realities of life, others are due to the fact that there is no censorship any more and there are more opportunities for people to publish materials written in real colloquial language that is not controlled or regulated by anyone. After all, it is almost impossible to find a human being who speaks any language perfectly correctly.
So here are a few things that happened to our language in the last hundred years (starting with the oldest one!)
• Those of you who are learning Russian already know that Russian spelling is based on the phonetic principle: one letter=one sound, to make reading and writing as easy as possible. But as the language developed and some pronunciations changed, this principle was weakened. After the 1917 revolution a major reform of the alphabet was carried out: 4 letters were scrapped because they were deemed unnecessary (they were either silent, or read in the same way as other letters) and some spelling changes were introduced, to simplify the spelling. Those changes, although implemented by the new Bolshevik government, had been prepared and proposed by Russian scholars long before the revolution. So spelling became easier, all books were reprinted using the new, revised and abridged alphabet, and it is said that “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy became 80 pages shorter! In libraries you may still see old books published before the revolution, with the old characters – still easy to read but looking a bit unusual.
• The letter E has lost its dots on top in the last 20 years, in my memory. I think it happened together with computerisation and switching from writing by hand to typing on computers. The thing is that when you are writing by hand, it’s easy to put on the two dots above your Es, but when you are typing (and trying to do it fast), you need to reach the very far corner of the keyboard to type the E with the dots. So most people don’t bother to do it, because it’s clear anyway to any native speaker where the dots should be. So the poor dots survived only in textbooks for foreign students of Russian and for children. You won’t see the dots in any documents or the press any more. In some books, the dots are sometimes used in the words “vse” (everybody) and “vsyo” (everything), to differentiate between the two, but not in any other words. And with its love for official regulations, the Russian authorities issued a decree a few years ago legalising the missing dots even in people’s passports and documents, which lead to mispronunciations of some less common surnames. There have been public complaints about it, but it looks like there is no way back now. People have already got out of use of putting the dots on the E! I usually mention it to my students in one of their first Russian lessons. Needless to say, they hate this development, and I apologise on behalf of the Russian people for inflicting it on you!
• Changes in grammar are less obvious and slower than the ones in vocabulary or spelling but they happen as well. We lost the vocative case at some point in the 19th century (we used to have 7 cases, and now there are 6), but that’s already ancient history in comparison with some modern changes. In modern Russian, for example, the plural masculine form ending in -Y (stol-stoly) is rather aggressively being replaced by the plural ending -A – which at the present moment is an exception but is becoming more and more common. So the traditional “professory” and “directory” is now almost completely replaced by the previously incorrect “professora” and “directora”, and these forms are now considered to be the norm. Another thing is that some previously undeclinable foreign words (such as “bigudi” – “hair curlers”, one of the many French words used in Russian) are becoming declinable, which is more natural for the Russian language.
• As far as the vocabulary is concerned, the most obvious change is of course the recent introduction of English words related to new technologies and the Internet culture. Unlike the French, we are not trying to counteract this trend, because it’s clearly futile – I don’t think you can regulate a living human language by law. So the word “e-mail” is used by almost everyone instead of the Russian equivalent “electronnaya pochta” – and you can see why!
• Russian slang, just like slang in any other language, changes all the time. So I always advise students of Russian to be careful with it. The words and expressions that were trendy when I was a student, now sound ridiculous and outdated. Teenage slang is a whole world in itself, and I don’t even want to go there. They use some words the meaning of which grown-ups don’t understand or find very strange. Among the numerous latest slang/colloquialisms that have taken off big time and are used by everyone, are “tarakany” (“cockroaches”) meaning problems or hang-ups, and “vynosit’ mozg” (“to take out someone’s brain”), meaning to load someone with your own problems, to give them unnecessary or boring information. I quite like both expressions: they are very juicy and create a good picture of what’s going on.
• The latest example of an official amendment to the Russian language is a regulation published on the 1st of September this year, the official beginning of the school year. Certain “doubtful” usages of words that people are usually not sure about have been made “legal”. So the word “coffee” is now officially both masculine and neuter: you can use it as you wish, although logically it should be neuter, and according to the rule it is masculine. That makes life a bit easier for people learning Russian!
• The greatest problem in Russian for native speakers is of course word stress. My students learning Russian always complain that it is impossible to stress Russian words correctly because stress is so unpredictable. It’s true, but the good news for learners is that Russians themselves get the stress wrong all the time! One of the most common examples is the verb “zvonit’” – “to telephone”. When people conjugate it, the majority tend to stress it incorrectly, on the 1st syllable instead of the last one. The question is – if 90% of the population prefers this variant, shouldn’t it be the norm? After all, it’s the native speakers who create and use the language, and not a small group of scholars in the Academy of Science or officials in the ministry of education. So the stress rules do change all the time as well.
The question is – can language norms be established by official directives from the relevant ministry? Of course not! As a teacher, I would love everyone to use the beautiful correct forms all the time, but after all, using this or that form is just a reflection of somebody’s education and background. The norms change, and what seemed to be incorrect and unspeakable 50 years ago is the norm now!