A person’s tongue can become a correct indicator of the presence of certain diseases.

If there are deviations from the norm in its appearance, it makes sense to consult a medical specialist and conduct a diagnosis.

1. What are language changes

Changes in the tongue mean violations of its color, surface integrity, pathology of shapes and sizes. In normal condition, the tongue should be moist and clean, without plaque on the surface.

Also, its two halves must be identical in shape and size. The normal color is bright pink. When the tongue protrudes, it should be centered without deviation of both the tip and the entire tongue to the right or left.

Everything else is considered changes that may indicate the presence of a serious disease.

2. Reasons for language changes

Basically, obvious changes in the language indicate the presence of a particular disease in a person. Independent tongue pathologies are much less common.

Its color may change when high temperature. Also, the causes of damage can be injuries to the tongue as a result of biting, burns, or wearing braces.

3. What diseases does this symptom occur in?

The most popular pathology of the tongue is a change in its color. Depending on what shade the tongue takes on, you can determine the disease that caused it:

• A red tongue can indicate severe infectious diseases, as well as impaired renal function;
• The crimson color of the tongue is associated with anemia, scarlet fever;
• Pallor of the tongue is also related to anemia, as well as severe exhaustion;
• A yellow tongue is a symptom of excess bile in the gallbladder or problems with the liver;
• A blue tint is almost always a sign of cardiovascular problems;
• A dark purple color of the tongue indicates heart failure, ischemia or bleeding disorders, as well as cerebral circulation;
• A black tongue may be a sign of dehydration, severe organ dysfunction gastrointestinal tract, liver, pancreas, gall bladder, cholera;
• Green color indicates stagnation of bile;
• A brown tongue is associated with kidney disease;
• A blue tongue indicates intestinal diseases.

A popular change in the tongue is the appearance of plaque. It can occur with the following problems:

• infectious diseases;
• problems with the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract.

You can determine in which organ the changes are taking place by the location of the plaque on the tongue and its nature:

• If there is a white coating in the center of the tongue that has a slightly grayish tint, this may indicate high acidity of gastric juice, a stomach or duodenal ulcer;
• If a white coating is accompanied by a dry tongue, this may be a sign of gastritis with low acidity of stomach juice;
• Plaque on the root of the tongue appears in intestinal diseases. Frequent constipation may also be the cause;
• Plaque along the edges of the tongue and on its root appears in kidney diseases.

4. Diagnostics for language changes

Diagnostics in this case will include the following steps:

• Analysis of complaints and anamnesis. Takes into account the nature of the changes, the time of their appearance, the disorders that accompany them and the presence of symptoms to which the patient can associate the changes that have appeared;
• Life history analysis. Chronic diseases, if any, hereditary diseases, bad habits, taking certain medications, contact with toxic substances;
• Physical examination. In the process, the shape of the tongue and its size, shade, presence of plaque, and surface are determined. The general condition of the patient is also taken into account;
• Scraping from the surface of the tongue and examining it. Performed when there is a risk of infectious diseases;
• Consultations with medical specialists narrow direction. This could be a dentist, neurologist, gastroenterologist, dermatovenerologist.

Additional research methods. They are performed in accordance with individual indicators in order to clarify the diagnosis.

These can be laboratory methods, such as urine and blood tests, as well as instrumental methods: ultrasound and fibroesophagogastroduodenoscopy.

5. Treatment

Drugs

Treatment in this case will be aimed at eliminating the disease that provoked the changes in the language. For tongue tumors, this may include radiation treatment and surgery.

With this infectious disease For candidiasis, antifungal drugs may be prescribed.

At home

At home, you can resort to rinsing your mouth with drugs that relieve inflammation. These can be decoctions of medicinal herbs such as chamomile or calendula, as well as alkaline solutions such as soda.

You need to rinse your mouth after every meal. Rinsing is especially useful when the integrity of the lingual surface is damaged, for example, in the presence of cracks or desquamation of the epithelium.

6. Preventive measures

To prevent diseases that can cause changes in the tongue, you should follow these preventive measures:

• The right diet, suggesting restrictions on fatty, spicy and fried foods. A balanced diet helps prevent diseases of the digestive system;
• It is recommended to quit smoking, since because of it, the surface cells of the oral cavity die, the risk of infectious diseases increases and the blood supply deteriorates, both in the oral cavity and in the digestive organs;
• Be sure to maintain oral hygiene, which will help prevent the development of bacteria.

Diagnosis by language

7. Forecast

For any changes in the tongue, the prognosis will be favorable if the diagnosis is made on time and, accordingly, the correct treatment is prescribed.

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 in language is a continuous development. Language change occurs first in the speech of some people, particularly the younger generation. The desire of the younger generation to adapt to the feeling of a new era is reflected and distributed within the language as a subject of social and cultural formation of the public masses. When the transformation of individual speech penetrates into general use, the change does not stop, but is strengthened by general language skills, although this penetration into the 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 in the person of the powerful center of society acts and prevents this penetration. It is clear that even during the life of one generation many changes occur in a language, but only some of them are fixed at the level of the entire native speaker nation and remain in the language for a long time.

Change occurs at different rates in different aspects of language.

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 types of activities, etc.), and in the example large quantity loanwords from English into Korean, almost all of which date back 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 the culture; 3) intralingual processes in which a word or expression, originally coined and used by a small group of people, spreads to the language of the entire nation, 4) changes in 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 exchange of information between people than ever before in history. Naturally, in parallel there is a process of some words falling out of use.

Let's look at all these 4 processes using Korean and other languages ​​as an example:

1) borrowing. Hieroglyphic words have been borrowed from the Chinese language since the 4th century and from the Japanese language since the late 19th century. The share in modern Korean is 70%, in special terminology it is higher. Since the 20th century there has been active borrowing from English.

2) the emergence of new words to designate new objects or phenomena. In Korean, they can be composed both from native Korean roots, and from hieroglyphic and even English ones, while the meaning of the word can be completely unrelated to the original meanings of the roots (원피스, 소개팅, 왕따, 고스톱, 화이트 데이),

3) the penetration of words from the vocabulary of a small group of people into the masses: Korean modern slang 화이팅, 공주병, 호박, 당근, 깡통, 형광등, Russian “teapot”, “brake”, etc.

4) changing 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 ...

The reverse processes also operate: expulsion and colloquial vulgarization of words. A dead language is also a product of this process. In modern language, words with the suffixes “-뱅이”: “가난뱅이 - poor man», «주정뱅이 - alcoholic»; «-치»: «장사치 - huckster», «거라치 – princeling", etc., are disparaging in nature, but previously they had the opposite meaning: a polite address to males

The suffix “-뱅이” is formed from the word “방(房)” in the nominative case. The suffix “-치” was formed in the following order: first the suffix “-디” softened - [디>지], after which “-지” softened again - [지>치] (4.15).

An example of the following words can be given: “디새 – tiles», «고마 – concubine», «구위 – department" These words were replaced by their characters and disappeared, being variants of the dialect.

Thus, at first glance, vocabulary appears to be a rather unreliable guide in determining the related 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 in studying the origin of a language and its related ties.

Changes somewhat slower than vocabulary phonetic composition of the language: the appearance and disappearance of individual phonemes, the possibility or impossibility of their combination, various alternations. This process involves centuries, and as a rule, written language records these changes much later than they occur in spoken language. Examples of such changes include:

1) the disappearance of phonemes: in the Russian language in 1917, the use of the letters fita, izhitsa, a hard sign at the end of a word, yat was abolished (well, I didn’t find them in the symbols!!!). That is, previously these letters meant speech sounds, then the sounds gradually fell out of use, and only then the letters were withdrawn from use. A similar process occurred in the Korean language, when, following the sounds v, zh, and some complex diphthongs and triphthongs, letters 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 than in the language of previous periods, since the appeared phonemes, like the disappeared ones, are not immediately and not always recorded in written language. In modern Russian, we can talk about the appearance of “e closed”, for which there is no separate letter, but 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 also know well that the phoneme “f” also came into the Russian language along with borrowed words. In the Korean language, one can trace the formation of the diphthongoids 에, 애 and 얘 from the 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 nearby, which is quite possible in modern Russian: modern. Building - 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, apparently there was a pronunciation norm “I”, 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 the details of the Russian alternations “k-ch”, “m-z”, “o-a” and “e-i” in the roots of the word (those who wish can try to think about what we are talking about), let’s go straight to the well-known you to the Korean language, in which the alternation “ㅂ – 우” is a direct consequence of the presence once in the language of the sound “v”, which fell out of use, turning into “p” before vowels” and “w” before consonants. Also, the alternation of “ㄷ – ㄹ” was the result of a historical process (that is, most hieroglyphic syllables ending in ㄹ at the time of their borrowing ended in ㄷ, this is clearly traced 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 analyzing its origin. Thus, in the group of Altai languages ​​there are several important features (the impossibility of placing certain phonemes at the beginning of a word, the euphony of vowels, and some others), which allowed linguists to carry out one or another classification within this language family.

Finally, the most stable and subject to the slowest changes is grammar and language structure. Thus, some Chinese grammatical forms came into the Korean language, the most famous of which is the suffix 적, as well as attributives and some other constructions, but they did not have much influence on everyday speech, and especially on the structure of the language.

Korean scientists also have their own interesting view on the REASONS for changes occurring in the language. The reasons for language changes lie, firstly, within the nation responsible for the language; secondly, in changing the shapes of letters and words. The first reason has three types: physiological, psychological, spiritual.

Among physiological factors Particular importance is attached to the condition of the vocal apparatus. Each person’s vocal apparatus has its own characteristics, but there are regional commonalities in the process of mastering methods of articulation.

For example, in Seoul and Southern dialects, when pronouncing the phrase “나의 것” - “ my thing» the obvious features of each are visible: “나으 것”, “나에 것”. This phenomenon during the operation of the vocal apparatus is especially evident in the case of the so-called change in conditionally connecting phonemes, which occurs due to adjacent sounds, for example, in such phenomena as assimilation, dissimilation, palatalization. There are also changes in unconditional spontaneous phonemes that do not arise due to adjacent sounds.

Among psychological factors The most important thing is the instinct to strive for simplification. This instinct, arising from the tendency to seek convenience, is expressed by assimilation, addition and compression.

This tendency to search for simplicity of speech becomes one of the factors in changing the so-called folk etymological form of speech. This can be seen in words such as [낟알→나락]; transition phenomenon “녀름” - (obsolete “여름- summer"): "여름" (obsolete "열매- fetus"), respectively, [녀름>여름:여름>열매] (4.14).

Another important factor is the process of making 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 language. All of the above psychological factors are closely related to each other.

Peculiarity spiritual factor is that it surpasses the first two to varying degrees. This influence is reflected more in changes in content than in changes 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 to the meaning [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”, conveying the meaning “members of the same clan”, began to mean “민족 - nation"(4.15).

In addition, the cultural realities of other countries constantly penetrate into the language, bringing with them new semantic meanings. Changes in the language of the ancient period go back deeply to changes in religion, culture, politics, economics, and society. Even if we look at the Neolithic period, we will see that even then Korean culture had diverse 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 ties between the Chinese and the population of the Japanese islands. By the 4th century, Confucian ideas had become the state ideology of Koguryo. 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 constantly change or disappear altogether, new word formations still constantly arise. Typically, changes in language can occur involuntarily in any territory, but when new words are created, a planned force operates. In the case of the Korean language, this is confirmed if you look at new words like 매, 가름, 조각, 목. This is a spiritual influence, participating in the process of becoming new speech, either expands the territory of the language to accommodate an 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 for the structure of the vocabulary of languages ​​such as English and French is completely different. For example, if you compare the words 거짓말 (거짓 – falsehood + 말 - word) - lie ( lie), 눈물 (눈 – eyes + 물 - water) - tear ( tears), you can find out their structural features, that is, you can find out: how motivated the structure of the Korean language is compared to English; did the language constantly develop in line with the analytical structure? But the crux of the question at this time is to what extent the inner power of language operates and whether the cause of these changes can be found in humanity itself.

One of the significant driving forces of phoneme change can be found in connections with accent. Accent is divided into strong or weak mechanical accent-stress, which emphasizes one word, syllable, sound, and into musical-modulation accent-level, which sets the pitch of the sound. However, the phenomenon of vowel emergence middle length among short vowels it can create a connection with a musical modulation accent of medium length; due to changes in sound length, the phenomenon of becoming either long vowels or short vowels can create an association with a strong or weak mechanical accent.

From this point of view, it becomes necessary to think at least once about creating a connection with such an emphasis on the following phenomena: the differences between short and long vowels of the modern language; the process of converting mid-length vowels from short vowels and vice versa; the disappearance in the language of modern times of points in the text of the language of the medieval period. Perhaps all of the above changes in language arise in one community with one person and spread through imitation. When language changes spread, the instinct of imitation becomes the most important internal driving force. But in the instinct of imitation, the process occurs spontaneously, without experiencing social restrictions.

Later, there is conscious intervention by people from the upper classes or political control of the state. Control and intervention play a decisive role in the process of emergence of the cultural, spiritual language of the nation and, depending on the circumstances, indicate the achievement of political development of society at a certain stage. In this case, the emerging trend rather determines the development within the language and usually seeks to protect it rather than introduce something new. Such things that we observe today (norms of correct pronunciation or norms of spelling) are interconnected with these processes.

Interview with Maxim Krongauz. Video: Yle.

The global changes that have occurred in society over the past decades have not spared the Russian language. This sometimes gives reason to talk not just about simplification, but literally about the death of the language. Internet slang is especially condemned, as is the abundance of foreign borrowings in modern Russian speech. The Russian News Service ULE talked about new trends and what awaits our language in the future with Maxim Krongauz, a popular linguist, professor, Doctor of Philology and director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State University for the Humanities.

Language norms change all the time. Now in the Russian language coffee can be neuter, perhaps we will soon see the legalization of the form “zvonit” instead of “zvonit”. What is your personal attitude, not as a linguist, but as a person, towards such phenomena?

I always split into two in such questions, it’s a bit of a schizophrenic split. As a linguist, I understand that change is inevitable, perhaps with the exception of some significant cases. I think we still need to insist on “calling” while we have the opportunity. But as a native speaker, I’m always against it, but I’m still a cultural speaker, which means I’m for preserving the old norm. However, change is inevitable and this must be understood. Language must change, especially in such difficult periods when the world is changing very much. Corresponding changes must also occur in the language.

You write a lot in your books about foreign borrowings, and any person who watches TV, reads the press, notices how many foreign words enter the lexicon: all these trendsetters, realtors, bloggers, devices, price lists - they are countless. Are new Russian words appearing?

Words appear, but here I must note that these listed borrowings - they also become Russian. Our language is remarkably mastering and, I would even say, domesticating such words with suffixes and prefixes. Sometimes someone else's word suddenly becomes Russian. I would like to say about many long-borrowed words that we no longer remember their foreign origin. For example, cucumber, tomato, dog, cat - these are all borrowed words. I think that after some time we will forget about devices, but a couple of centuries must pass.

Why do modern youth strive to distort their native language on the Internet? This happens not only in the Russian-speaking environment, do English-speaking people suffer from this no less than us?

In many ways, this is happening precisely under the influence of experiments on the English-language Internet. In part, this occurs as a protest against the norm, against the rules of spelling. This is very curious, since perestroika was perceived as a violation of not only political, but also cultural and even spelling prohibitions. It initially spread from the counterculture, and then became fashionable, everyone picked it up. But now this fashion is passing. It is no longer worth talking about excessive distortion of spelling; now everyone writes to the best of their own illiteracy.

The next question will be a logical continuation of the previous one: why do you think the “Padonkaff” slang died? Why didn't it take hold?

Because any fashion is finite, its time passes. Protest is no longer so important; other games are appearing. Intellectual hooligans have been replaced by girly girls. Now words from girls’ diaries are fashionable: “vanilla”, “cookie”, “sadness”, “nyashka”, “mimimi”. Interestingly, this goes beyond girl culture. Well-educated people can also sometimes, with slight irony, write “mimimi.” This is fashion. The layer of people has changed, the vocabulary has changed, and this is quite natural.

Are today's youth, for the most part, more illiterate than, say, teenagers twenty or thirty years ago?

Hard to say. Obviously, illiteracy has become public, we notice it. I think that, on average, teenagers are less literate now, because the period of playing with spelling on the Internet and such timelessness has made those children who learned to read from a computer screen more illiterate. This generation has now entered universities, and we see that they are truly illiterate. Now it seems that there is a rollback: literacy is becoming more prestigious. But overall, I'm afraid the situation can no longer be corrected.

Do you think that over time, say, 100 years, there will be any extinction in the language in the grammatical sense, for example, the declination of numerals, which causes so many problems not only for schoolchildren, but also for public people?

Yes, they will happen, but this is also a natural process. When they say that numerals stop declining, I would like to remind you that they have been declining poorly for at least fifty, or even a hundred years. This is a long-standing process. Declension of numerals is a complicated thing, and many people have been confused for a long time, and even quite educated people can stumble and decline a long numeral somehow incorrectly. We don't do this very often, so there is no speech practice. The process of corruption, or, if you will, declination, has dragged on for a long time, but I don’t think that we will finally stop declining numerals. I think it will continue to pass... something like this.

Has the language become impoverished in 100 years? Is it possible to say that earlier the language was richer and more imaginative, but now everything tends to simplify? Is it even possible to evaluate a language from the point of view of “it used to be better, now it’s worse” or vice versa?

I think from the point of view of better or worse it is impossible, but to say that it has become impoverished is possible if we are talking about the number of words in the language. But at the same time, in my opinion, the Russian language has become richer, at least due to the huge number of foreign borrowings. Therefore, rather, the language has been enriched, but this enrichment is perceived negatively by many.

Have you ever had a case when you caught a linguistic Internet infection and started using all these bullshit and other language viruses?

I haven’t caught the infection, but there are rare cases when I can write, say, in response to something unexpected, touching and partly even inappropriate - something like: “I cried.” I do this with some irony, naturally, and I hope that those reading this understand this. Although sometimes people no longer read irony.

You are known as a linguist with fairly liberal views. Have you encountered criticism from colleagues or simply language purists for your language beliefs?

Yes, sometimes they say that I am behaving incorrectly, that I need to behave differently. However, in my opinion, it is correct that linguists look at the world differently, otherwise it would not be interesting. This is such an important debate between conservatives and liberals, but the fact is that as a speaker I am a conservative, and as a linguist I am a liberal.

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Nowadays, everything changes at such a speed that sometimes two generations of one family can no longer understand each other’s speech. In his text M.A. Krongaz raises the current problem of changes in the Russian language.

Discussing the topic, the author emphasizes that language, of course, must change along with the whole world and keep up with any trends in society. But the speed of such changes must be in balance: not too fast and not too slow, satisfying the needs of all people and at the same time giving them the opportunity to develop and improve their knowledge of the language. And, of course, under any circumstances the basic norms of the language must be preserved. The linguist brings us to the conclusion that he himself is not against all sorts of borrowings, not against slang and sports terms, more similar to the author's neologisms - this is development, but not in the case when all this turns into “linguistic chaos”.

The author believes that changes in language are natural - they go in step with changes in society. If this does not happen, the language loses its function, but these changes must be aimed at all layers of society and understandable to everyone.

I completely agree with the opinion of M.A. Krongauz and also believe that language should be free, flexible and change in connection with changes in society, while maintaining norms and accessibility.

Most Russian writers who have ever existed respected the language of their Fatherland and admired its beauty and grandeur. Some of them even dedicated their works to this topic, such as the well-known prose poem by I.S. Turgenev's "Russian Language", in which he praises the "great, powerful, truthful and free Russian language". For Ivan Sergeevich, language and society are two inseparable concepts, and he sincerely believes that the Russian people are able to value and respect their language and realize its greatness, and therefore deserve it.

A.A. Akhmatova also believes that society and language are inseparable, and the future of the country directly depends on the integrity of the language. In the poem “Courage,” the poetess describes her selfless love for the “Russian word” and demonstrates her readiness to fight for the purity and correctness of Russian speech, the “great Russian word,” because she understands that its future depends on her attitude to the language of her homeland.

Thus, we can conclude that the Russian language is capable of modification; it must change simultaneously with society. However, the potential of the Russian language is depleting, so it is important to take care of its dissemination and enrichment, thereby preserving its freedom, integrity and normalization for future generations.

At the Onezhsky cultural center, as part of a joint project of the website “Theories and Practices” and the Moscow Department of Culture “City Lecture Hall”, a lecture was held by the editor-in-chief of the portal “Gramota.ru”, candidate of philological sciences Vladimir Pakhomov. He told how spelling has changed in the history of the Russian language, why the use of the words “call” with an emphasis on the first syllable and “coffee” in the neuter gender is not an indicator of illiteracy, and why it makes no sense to ban foreign words. Lenta.ru publishes the main points of his speech.

How we hear and what we write

In the minds of most people, two different concepts are very often confused: language and spelling (spelling). Therefore, the Russian language is often perceived simply as a set of rules, once invented by someone and randomly systematized in textbooks and reference books. Many people sincerely believe that if a person has learned the rules, this means that he knows his native language.

In fact, spelling rules are not the language itself, but its shell. They can be compared to the wrapper in which a chocolate candy is wrapped (in this case it is similar to a tongue). And at school they mainly study the rules of spelling, and not the language. Writing competently does not mean having perfect command of the Russian language. Doctor of Philological Sciences Igor Miloslavsky rightly notes that “the level of proficiency in one’s native literary language is determined by a person’s ability to accurately and completely understand everything he reads or hears, as well as his ability to express absolutely clearly his own thoughts and feelings, depending on the conditions and recipient of communication.” . Let me emphasize: language and spelling are completely different things.

There is nothing specially invented by anyone in the spelling rules. Our spelling is harmonious and logical. 96 percent of spellings of Russian words are based on one single principle - the main principle of Russian spelling. This is a morphological principle, the essence of which is that each morpheme (prefix, root, suffix, ending) is written the same way despite the fact that it can be pronounced differently in different words. For example, we say du[p] and du[b]y, but we write this root the same way: oak.

How sailors changed the Russian alphabet

In the history of the Russian language there have been only two reforms of graphics and spelling. The first was carried out by Peter I in 1708-1710. To a greater extent, it concerned graphics: the writing of uppercase (large) and lowercase (small) letters was legalized, unnecessary letters were removed from the Russian alphabet and the writing of the rest was simplified. The second occurred in 1917-1918. This was already a reform of both graphics and spelling. During it, the letters Ѣ (yat), Ѳ (fita), I (“And decimal”), and the hard sign (Ъ) at the end of words were removed. In addition, some spelling rules have been changed. For example, in the genitive and accusative cases of adjectives and participles, the endings -ago, -яго were replaced by -ого, -и (for example, starago - old), in the nominative and accusative cases of the plural feminine and neuter genders -ыя, -ія - to - s, -ies (old - old).

By the way, the initiators of this reform were not the Bolsheviks at all. Changes in Russian spelling have been brewing for a long time; preparations began at the end of the 19th century. The spelling commission at the Imperial Academy of Sciences began working in 1904, and the first draft was presented in 1912. Some of the scientists' proposals were very radical: for example, at the end of words it was proposed to remove not only the hard sign (Ъ), but also the soft sign (b). If this proposal had been accepted (later linguists abandoned it), then we would now write not “night”, but “noch”.

In May 1917, the reform project was approved by the Provisional Government. It was assumed that the transition to the new spelling would take place gradually, and for some time both the old and the new spelling would be considered correct. But the Bolsheviks who seized power approached this issue in their characteristic manner. New rules were introduced immediately, and in the printing houses detachments of revolutionary sailors confiscated the “canceled” letters. This led to an incident: the hard sign (Ъ) was also selected, despite the fact that its spelling as a separating sign within words was preserved. Therefore, typesetters had to use an apostrophe (’), which is how spellings like s’ezd arose.

The adoption in 1956 of the officially still in force Russian spelling rules was not a spelling reform: the text did not contain many changes. For example, now it was necessary to write the words “shell”, “barber”, “scurvy”, “mat” with the letter “i” instead of “s”, “apparently”, “still” with a hyphen instead of the previously accepted continuous spelling , the spellings “devil”, “go”, “come” were approved - instead of “devil”, “itti”, “come”.

Hare and parachute

The next serious spelling reform in the Russian language was scheduled for 1964. Many linguists were aware of the incompleteness and some inconsistency of the 1956 rules, which were replete with a huge number of exceptions. The idea was not to simplify Russian spelling, but to make it even more coherent, more systematic and more logical, making it easier to learn at school. This was important both for teachers, who in the 1960s often complained about the low literacy of schoolchildren and the lack of hours to study the Russian language, and for the state. Why, for example, was it suggested to write “hare”? Look, we write “fighter” - “fighter”, “fighter”. In the controversial word, the vowel also disappears: “hare”, “hare”, so why not write “hare” by analogy with “fighter”? In other words, it was not a question of simplifying for the sake of simplifying, but of eliminating unjustified exceptions. Unfortunately, after Khrushchev’s removal, the country’s new leaders, who were “allergic” to the ideas of their predecessor, curtailed the already prepared reform.

The need to streamline the rules of Russian spelling was again discussed in the late 1990s. The country has changed, times have changed, and many of the rules of 1956 began to look not only outdated, but also downright ridiculous. For example, in the Soviet years, in accordance with ideological guidelines, the USSR army was required to be called exclusively the Armed Forces. At the same time, when writing the names of the armies of socialist countries, only the first word was written with a capital letter - Armed Forces, and the armies of capitalist states and NATO countries could only be called armed forces.

In addition, many new words have appeared, their first parts: media, Internet, web, business. Therefore, the Spelling Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences began work on a new edition of the spelling rules, with examples relevant to modern written speech. Linguists discussed changes in the spelling of individual words (many people remember the discussion about the words “parachute”, “brochure”, “jury”, which were proposed to be written with “u”; linguists later abandoned this idea). Alas, the work of linguists was not fully covered in the media; journalists talked about supposedly impending “language reform,” etc. As a result, society reacted extremely negatively to the work of the Spelling Commission, so the draft of a new edition of the Russian spelling rules prepared by it was not approved and the 1956 code remains generally binding to this day.

However, the work of the Spelling Commission was not in vain; its result was the complete academic reference book “Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation”, published in 2006, as well as the academic “Russian Spelling Dictionary” edited by Doctor of Philology Vladimir Lopatin - the most complete spelling dictionary of the modern Russian language . There are few changes compared to the 1956 rules. For example, the verbal adjective “read”, which was previously an exception and was written with two letters “n”, is now subsumed under general rule and is written with one “n”, while the participle is written with two (a few minutes and the money counted by the accountant, cf.: fried potatoes and potatoes fried in a frying pan).

Is it ringing or ringing?

We talked about how often spelling changes. How often does the Russian language change? Constantly, because the Russian language is a living language, and only dead languages ​​do not change. Changes in language are a normal process that should not be feared and considered degradation or destruction of the language.

The place of stress in words changes. Let's take the most famous example with the verb “to call”; anyway, not a single conversation about language can do without it. Some native speakers demonstratively depict painful suffering when they hear the stress zvonit (despite the fact that they themselves make similar spelling errors without noticing it at all, for example they say drills instead of the normative drills), and journalists in relation to the stress zvonit use their favorite cliche “litmus test of illiteracy.” Meanwhile, linguists are aware of the presence in the language of such a phenomenon as the shift of stress on verbs ending in -it in personal forms from the ending to the root (this process began at the end of the 18th century). Some verbs have already gone this way. For example, they once said: loads, cooks, rolls, smokes, pays. Now we say: loads, cooks, rolls, smokes, pays.

Photo: Alexander Polyakov / RIA Novosti

Knowledge of this trend gave the authors of the “Big Orthoepic Dictionary of the Russian Language”, published in 2012, grounds to record the option vklyuchit (previously prohibited) as acceptable (with a strict literary norm, vklyuchit). There is no doubt that this option, which has already passed the path from prohibited to permissible, will continue to move towards the only possible and sooner or later will supplant the old emphasis turns on, just as the new option pays once replaced the old emphasis pays.

The same process occurs with the verb “to call.” He would also follow this path, but we - native speakers - do not let him. The educated part of society has a very negative attitude towards the variant zvonit, and that is why it is not yet included in dictionaries as acceptable (although back in the 1970s, linguists wrote that the ban on the accent zvonit is clearly artificial). Now, in 2015, the norm is only calling. But knowledge of the orthoepic law, which is mentioned above, gives grounds to assert that this will not always be the case and the stress ringing, most likely, sooner or later will become the only correct one. Not because “linguists will follow the lead of illiterate people,” but because these are the laws of language.

In the process of language evolution, the lexical meanings of some words often change. Korney Chukovsky in his book “Alive as Life” gives an interesting example. The famous Russian lawyer A.F. In the last years of his life (he died under Soviet rule in 1927), Kony was very indignant when those around him used the word “obligatory” in the new meaning of “certainly”, although before the revolution it meant only “kindly”, “helpfully”.

Why are languages ​​simplified?

Language changes at the grammatical level. It is known that in the Old Russian language there were six types of declension of nouns, and in modern Russian there are three left. There were three numbers (singular, dual and plural), only two remained (singular and plural).

And here it is worth mentioning another interesting pattern. We know that evolution is a path from simple to complex. But in language it's the other way around. The evolution of language is a path from complex forms to simpler ones. The grammar of modern Russian is simpler than that of ancient Russian; Modern English is simpler than Old English; modern Greek is easier than ancient Greek. Why is this happening?

I have already said that in the ancient Russian language there were three numbers: singular, dual (when we were talking about only two objects) and plural, that is, in the minds of our ancestors there could be one, two or many objects. Now in Russian there is only singular or plural, that is, there can be one object or several. This is a higher level of abstraction. On the one hand, there are fewer grammatical forms and some simplification has occurred. On the other hand, with the advent of the “one - many” distinction, the category of number became more harmonious, logical and clear. Therefore, these processes not only are not a sign of language degradation, but, on the contrary, indicate its improvement and development.

From masculine to neuter

Many people have the wrong idea about the work of linguists. Some believe that they invent the rules of the Russian language and force society to live by them. For example, everyone says “kill a spider with a slipper,” but the linguist claims that you can’t say that, because the word “slipper” female(correctly: “kill a spider with a slipper”). Some believe that linguists simplify the norm for the sake of poorly educated people and include illiterate variants in dictionaries like coffee in the neuter gender.

In fact, linguists do not invent language norms, they record them. Observe the language and record findings in dictionaries and encyclopedias. Scientists should do this regardless of whether they like a particular option or not. But at the same time, they look to see whether the option meets the laws of language. Depending on this, the option is marked as prohibited or allowed.

Why is the word “coffee” often used in the neuter gender? Is it just because of illiteracy? Not at all. The fact is that the masculine gender of the word “coffee” is resisted by the language system itself. This word is borrowed, inanimate, common noun, indeclinable and ending in a vowel. The overwhelming majority of such words in Russian belong to the neuter gender. “Coffee” was included in the exceptions because there were once in the language the forms “coffee”, “coffee” - masculine, they declined like “tea”: drink tea, drink coffee. And so the masculine gender of the word “coffee” is a monument to long-dead forms, while the laws of a living language drag it into the neuter gender.

And these laws are very strong. Even words that resist them still give in over time. For example, when the metro opened in Moscow in 1935, the media wrote: the metro is very convenient for passengers. The newspaper “Soviet Metro” was published, and Utesov sang: “But the metro sparkled with oak railings, it immediately bewitched all the riders.” The word “metro” was masculine (because “metropolitan” is masculine), but gradually “went” into the neuter gender. Consequently, the fact that “coffee” becomes a neuter word does not occur because people are illiterate, but because these are the laws of language development.

Who cares about foreign words?

Also, any conversation about the Russian language is not complete without discussing borrowing words. We often hear that the Russian language is becoming clogged with foreign words and that we urgently need to get rid of borrowings, that if we don’t take action and stop the flow of borrowings, we will all soon speak a mixture of English and Nizhny Novgorod. And these myths are passed on from generation to generation.

Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library/Global Look

It is very easy to prove that the Russian language is unthinkable without borrowed words. It is enough to give examples of words that seem to us to be originally Russian, but in fact are not. So, even in the Old Russian language the words “shark”, “whip”, “herring”, “sneak” came from the Scandinavian languages, from the Turkic - “money”, “pencil”, “robe”, from the Greek - “letter”, “ bed", "sail", "notebook". Even the word “bread” is very likely a borrowing: scholars suggest that its source is the Gothic language.

IN different eras In the Russian language, borrowings from one language usually predominated. When, during the time of Peter I, Russia was building a fleet in order to “open a window to Europe,” many words related to maritime affairs came to us, most of them from the Dutch language (shipyard, harbor, compass, cruiser, sailor), after all, The Dutch at that time were considered the best shipwrights and many of them worked in Russian shipyards. In the 18th-19th centuries, the Russian language was enriched with names of dishes, clothing, jewelry, and furnishings that came from French: soup, broth, champignon, cutlet, marmalade, vest, coat, wardrobe, bracelet, brooch. In recent decades, words have come into the Russian language mainly from in English and they are connected with modern technical devices and information technologies (computer, laptop, smartphone, online, website).

What has been said does not mean that the Russian language is so poor or greedy: it only receives and gives nothing. Not at all. Russian also shares its words with other languages, but exports often go not to the West, but to the East. If we compare the Russian language and the Kazakh language, for example, we will see that the Kazakh language has a lot of borrowings from Russian. In addition, the Russian language is an intermediary for many words coming from West to East and from East to West. Played the same role in the 17th-19th centuries Polish language, through which a lot of words came into Russian (thanks to the Poles, we say “Paris” and not “Paris”, “revolution” and not “revolution”).

If we ban foreign words, we will simply stop the development of the language. And then there is a threat that we will start speaking in another language (for example, in English), because the Russian language in this case will not allow us to express our thoughts fully and in detail. In other words, a ban on the use of foreign words leads not to the preservation, but to the destruction of the language.