Start in science. Korney Chukovsky: Alive like life Korney Chukovsky alive like life summary

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Introduction

Where did the expression “Alive as life” come from? This is the name of the book by Korney Chukovsky. He dedicated it to the history of the development of the Russian language, the culture of speech, and “imaginary and real” diseases of words. This book was first published in 1961 and has become a classic, a seminal work. Preparing for the presentation, I re-read several books on the same topic and found out that they are largely based on the experience of K. Chukovsky. Therefore, this book was taken by me as a basis.

Relevance of the problem

Language is a living organism, just like a person. Language development is, for example, the enrichment of vocabulary, the transition from one part of speech to another, the obsolescence of words, the expansion of the meaning of a word, and much more. It's sad when a language stops developing. After all, some ancient languages ​​are now dying along with their speakers. Therefore, every nation must take care of the development of its language, know and respect it.

Goals of work:

Show that the Russian language is alive and can develop.

Find out what diseases may be present in the Russian language?

To prove that the Russian language can be treated.

Job objectives:

Study K. Chukovsky’s book “Alive as Life” and the works of other authors on this topic.

Show with examples that the Russian language is alive and developing.

Choose aphorisms, poems, a song about the Russian language.

Find out what diseases the Russian language suffers from.

Determine which diseases are imaginary and which are genuine.

Show the main directions in the fight against diseases of the Russian language.

To prove that diseases of the Russian language can be treated on your own.

Methods used in preparing my work:

Own reasoning

Browse books on my topic

Conversations with Russian language teachers at our school

Internet using

A survey of schoolchildren in my class on the topic: “Can we say that the Russian language is alive?” and “What, in your opinion, needs to be removed from Russian speech?”

Conversations with random passers-by on the topic “Are you concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language?”

Main part

You marvel at the jewels of our language: no matter what the sound,

it’s also a gift; everything is grainy, coarse, like pearls themselves,

and truly, another name is even more precious than the thing itself

Russian language is alive

“When you read biographies of words, you are finally confirmed in the idea that the Russian language, like any healthy and strong organism, is all in motion, in the dynamics of continuous growth” K. Chukovsky

Outlandish biography of the word "family". The word “family” first meant “a group of relatives,” then slaves and servants, and then a wife. Moreover, simultaneously with this meaning (family-wife), the main meaning (family-relatives) was also preserved. Subsequently, the first of these meanings was discarded and forgotten. They say it is living out its life in some places on the Don and in the Volga region.

The word has an interesting “pedigree” "a mess." At first, this was the name of a very refined dish of the 17th century, beloved by the boyars. Then they began to call a mess a sharp pain in the stomach caused by a bad talk (soldiers' cooks threw uncleaned fish in the sand, onions, crackers, sauerkraut and everything that was at hand into the cauldron). And only then did “chaos” acquire the familiar meaning of “confusion, disorder.”

“These transformations are natural, language grows and develops, and it is impossible and even stupid to resist this” K. Chukovsky. The former semantic meanings of words disappear without a trace, the language moves forward without looking back - depending on changes in the social system, on the achievements of science and technology, and on various other reasons.

If you look in a modern dictionary, you will read that scrupulous- this is “strictly principled in relations with someone.” Meanwhile, in Pushkin’s time it meant “a haberdasher, selling haberdashery goods: ties, gloves, ribbons, combs, buttons.”

And if you take the word poster. Who doesn’t know these street, dazzlingly bright, multi-colored paintings, painted for propaganda or advertising and commercial purposes? We are so accustomed to posters, to poster painting, to poster artists that it is very difficult for us to imagine the recent time when posters were called... passports for peasants and townspeople.

But at the same time, in the life of language there is another extremely powerful tendency of a directly opposite nature, just as important, just as useful. It consists in stubborn and decisive resistance to innovation, in the creation of all kinds of dams and barriers that greatly impede the too rapid and disorderly renewal of speech.

No matter how much the storm worries

The tops of centuries-old trees,

She won't give a damn

Can't even swing

Reserved forest to the roots.

(Nekrasov, II, 461)

Even in those eras when the greatest number of new expressions and terms penetrate into the language, and dozens of old ones disappear, in its main essence it remains the same, keeping intact the golden fund of both its vocabulary and its grammatical norms developed in past centuries.

“Foreign words” are the first ailment of the Russian language

This is the name given to the Russian language’s attraction to foreign words.

Many believed that foreign words should be banished as quickly as possible. But there are examples of foreign words that have long since become Russian: algebra, alcohol, stocking, artel, meeting, rudder, rails, naive, serious... “Is it really possible to throw them out of living Russian speech?” - asks Chukovsky. At the same time, he is glad that many foreign words have not taken root in everyday life and have not supplanted the original Russian ones. For example, the once popular “freeshtik” will never come to the tongue of an ordinary person. Instead, we'll have breakfast."

And, of course, it is excellent that such a Russification of words is happening today, that the airplane has been replaced by an airplane, a helicopter by a helicopter, a goalkeeper by a goalkeeper, and a driver by a driver.

Many are frightened by such a dominance of “foreignness,” but Pushkin said this very correctly: “True taste does not consist in the unconscious rejection of such and such a word, such and such a turn of phrase, but in a sense of proportionality and conformity.” See Appendix 1

"Umslopogasy" - the second "imaginary disease" of the Russian language

These are the names of fashionable verbal abbreviations. “Imaginary disease” - because it is not able to spoil the Russian language. It is the abbreviations that show how important moderation is in everything. For example, such abbreviations as Moscow Art Theater, Civil Registry Office, house manager, savings bank, and workday have not spoiled Russian speech at all. But the fashion for reductions has also given rise to many “monsters”. Tverbul Pampush is indeed Tversky Boulevard, a monument to Pushkin. Names were shortened en masse - Pyotr Pavlovich turned into Pe Pa. But the worst of all were the pallindromic abbreviations Obluprpromprodtovary, Rosglavstankoinstrumentsnabsbyt, Lengorshveitrikotazhpromsoyuz, Lengormetallorempromsoyuz and others of this type. One must also conclude from this: everything comes down to a sense of style and proportionality.

In words hitherto unknown,

A great year has been sealed -

In short cycles, Councils of People's Commissars

And in the heavy word Narkomprod.

I marvel at the flowering of words,

And I would listen to everyone! And I would have watched everything!

Words lie as an eternal shadow

From changing affairs

[E. German, Poems about Moscow. 1922, pp. 23, 24].

Along with umslopogas, other verbal forms have also penetrated into modern Russian speech, also caused by the desire to save it. Such truncated words or “stubs” as cinema, kilo, auto, etc., have firmly entered our literary language, and there is no reason to expel them from there. And who will demand that instead of the wonderful “stump” of the metro we say metro? See Appendix 2

“Vulgarisms” - the third disease is as imaginary as the first two

This is the name for clogging speech with obscene rudeness.

Such jargons as “bullshit”, “shendyapilsya” (instead of “fell in love”), “chuvikha”, “kadrishka” (instead of “girl”), “lobuda”, “shikara” and so on desecrate not only the Russian language, but also the concepts which young people denote by them. “The dude who stuck himself in the frame” experiences far from those sublime feelings of love that are described in the poems of Alexander Blok.

Here is an example of a literary conversation that three schoolchildren had in the library, choosing an interesting book:

- Take this: a valuable thing. There's one there that produces soot!

- Don't take this one! Labuda! Millet.

- This is a terribly powerful book

An interesting example is also given by M. Krongauz in his book “The Russian Language on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”: “During the session, two students who had not received the test came to me and said: “We really prepared.” “Then I won’t bet,” I answered, succumbing to emotions. I love my students, but some of their words annoy me. Here’s a short list: damn, in shock, wow, life-like, well, it’s very real, naturally. Dear students, be careful, do not use them during the session.” This incident tells us that all incorrect words and speech patterns must be eradicated. And it is spoken language that is an indicator of the growth or decline of cultures.

“Cynicism of expressions always expresses a cynical soul” Herzen

Thus, in order to achieve purity of language, one must fight for the purity of human feelings and thoughts. See Appendix 3

“I hope that anyone who carefully read the previous chapters could not but agree with me that in most cases these diseases are really imaginary. The Russian language was not significantly damaged either by foreign terms that penetrated into it, or by the so-called “umslopogasy”, or by student or school jargon.” K. Chukovsky

“Clericalism” is a real disease of Russian speech.

It was Korney Chukovsky’s book “Alive as Life” that gave the name to the only real “disease” of Russian speech - clericalism. This is the use in everyday speech of words and expressions used to write business papers. This term is used by linguists, including translator Nora Gal in the book “The Living and the Dead Word.” Chancery is the language of bureaucracy, business papers and offices. All these “the above”, “this certificate was issued”, “the specified period”, “based on this”, “and therefore”, “for lack of”, “due to absence”, “as regards” have firmly taken their place in business documentation. But the problem is that the clerk has penetrated into ordinary spoken language. Now instead of “green forest” they began to say “green area”, the usual “quarrel” became a “conflict”, and so on. Many people believe that every cultured, well-educated person should have such words in their vocabulary. To say on the radio “It rained heavily” is considered simple-minded and uncultured. Instead, it sounds like “Heavy precipitation occurred.”

Unfortunately, the problem of clericalism has not disappeared even today. Today, this disease has strengthened its position even more. No scientist can defend a dissertation written in simple, understandable language. In everyday life, we constantly insert clerical phrases without noticing it ourselves. This is how lively, strong, sparkling Russian colloquial speech turns into gray and dry. And this is the only disease of the tongue that needs to be fought.

Here is how K. Chukovsky speaks about this disease: “The name of the disease is clerical disease (modeled on colitis, diphtheria, meningitis) ... Remember that the forms of speech recommended here should be used exclusively in official papers. And in all other cases - in letters to family and friends, in conversations with comrades, in oral answers at the blackboard - it is forbidden to speak this language. This is not why our people, together with the geniuses of the Russian word - from Pushkin to Chekhov and Gorky - created for us and for our descendants a rich, free and strong language, amazing with its sophisticated, flexible, infinitely varied forms, this is not why this was left to us as a gift the greatest treasure of our national culture, so that we, discarding it with contempt, reduce our speech to a few dozen cliched phrases"

An example by K. Chukovsky: a letter that one eight-year-old schoolgirl wrote to her own father:

“Dear Dad! I congratulate you on your birthday, I wish you new achievements in your work, success in your work and personal life. Your daughter Olya.”

The father was upset and annoyed:

- It’s as if I received a telegram from the local committee, honestly.

Of course, it is impossible to consider the patterns of human speech always, in all cases of life, as evidence of its emptiness. We always say such stencils as “hello”, “farewell”, “welcome”, “you are welcome”, “sleeping like a log”, etc. out of inertia, without thinking about their true meaning. But there are such everyday cases when verbal stencils are unthinkable.

A young man, passing by the garden, saw a five-year-old girl standing and crying at the gate. He leaned over her tenderly and said:

— Why are you crying?

His feelings were the most tender, but there were no human words to express tenderness. A person seems to be speaking from the heart, but cold verbal dust is scattering around him. See Appendix 4

The main problem is that clerical speech, by its poisonous nature, tends to poison and destroy the most living words. No matter how elegant, poetic and expressive a word is, as soon as it becomes part of this speech, it completely loses its original human meaning and turns into a boring template.

School literature

The point is that schoolchildren’s essays are more like a stencil and represent a repetition of the same words and concepts. For example, "M. Sholokhov showed us perfectly... He showed us how... The writer perfectly showed us the class struggle... He showed us a face-to-face confrontation... M. Sholokhov showed us especially well the Cossacks who... The author with the help This image indicates that... The book showed us how, overcoming all obstacles...”, etc.” He showed and revealed, and showed again, and again, and again. It’s as if the entire Russian language with its magnificent wealth of diverse words disappeared, was forgotten, and only two or three dozen standard words and phrases survived, which are combined by schoolchildren. See Appendix 5

Thus, true literacy is not only about the correct spelling and pronunciation of words. “When we succeed in completely destroying the bureaucratic relations of people, the office will disappear by itself. Ennoble the morals of young people, and you will not have to eradicate rude and shameless jargon from their everyday life. So it will be, I’m sure” K. Chukovsky

Speech deformities

“We can conclude from Otsedov”, “- Lie down!”, “- Now I’ll shave and go out!”, “- Don’t take off your coat!”

“In our country,” Pavel Nilin rightly said, “where the doors of schools, both daytime and evening, are wide open, no one can find an excuse for their illiteracy” [New World, 1958, No. 4]. Therefore, it is impossible to allow Russian people to continue to retain in their everyday life such ugly verbal forms as “bulgakhter, likes, rush, want, worse, obnakovenny, wants, kalidor.” See Appendix 7

Linguistic nonsense: absurdity or quirks of Russian speech?

Well-known expressions: “dim music”, “flashy colors”, “terribly fun”, “terribly beautiful” sound somewhat strange due to the incompatibility of words, sometimes denoting opposite things. But is the living Russian language determined solely by logic?

For example, the usual words “great-grandson, great-granddaughter.” After all, “great” means great antiquity, and great-grandson, on the contrary, is the youngest descendant. Or “ink”, that is, a black (blackening) liquid. Why do we say: blue or red ink? All this indicates that language is not mathematics, and in every living language there are many “absurdities” rooted in them, which have long been legitimized by time.

It is impossible to eradicate in our speech other formulas “shame and disgrace”, “entirely and completely”, “neither light nor dawn”, “life-being”, “around the bush”. Although it is clear to everyone that “shame” is the same as “disgrace,” and “completely” means “entirely.” The formation of speech is determined not only by the laws of logic, but also by the requirements of musicality, beauty and artistry.

Living languages ​​can “forget” the original meaning of some words. But in order for this word to harmoniously merge into the modern Russian language, one thing is necessary: ​​for oblivion to be massive, nationwide. This is, for example, the word to goof up. “I’ve lost my hair,” a village woman said about herself, taking off the traditional scarf from her head. But now this meaning has been completely forgotten, and no one notices that this word contains hair. Therefore, now even a bald man can say about himself: “I lost my hair!” After all, now “making a fool” means making a mistake, being left in the cold, making a mistake.

But there are fresh, so to speak, young nonsense in our speech, such that cannot be justified by the prescription. We have no right to put up with them. It is one thing to forget the original meaning of expressions and words as a normal historical process, and another thing is to disregard this meaning, inspired by cynicism and sloppiness. For example, a price list is an absurd form, because preis means price in German. Equally unacceptable are the expressions memorial monument, timekeeping, memorable souvenirs, industrial industry, folklore - because memorial means memory; chronos means time, souvenir means a memorable gift, industry means industry; folk means people, and folklore means folk art. See Appendix 6

But as the famous linguist Maxim Krongauz said in his book “The Russian Language is on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”, where the author explores the state of the modern Russian language, oversaturated with new words dependent on the Internet, youth, fashion: “The most noticeable of the changes taking place in the language - this is the appearance of new words and - a little less striking - the emergence of new meanings... For example, the names of animals - mouse, dog - acquired new, “computer” meanings, and in completely different ways.” Well, everything is clear with the mouse, this meaning is well known to everyone: “a special device that allows you to control the cursor and enter various kinds of commands.” At first, the computer mouse really looked like a regular one, both in shape, in the tail-wire, and in the way it ran across the mousepad.

But the dog as a name for @, the email icon, was invented by the Russian language itself (more precisely, by an unknown author, or, as they say in such cases, the people). Again, I picked up something similar and invented a new metaphor, although, I must say, the resemblance to a dog is very doubtful. Foreigners are perplexed at first, but then doomedly accept the strange Russian metaphor

Thus, 1) there is excellent confirmation of the creative nature of the Russian language as a whole, and 2) it is clear that the Russian language has very powerful protective resources, which do not consist in rejecting borrowings, but in their rapid development.

Research results and discussion

Video a survey of teachers at our school on the topic: “Are you concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language?”

Results of a survey of teachers at our school

What in the modern Russian language worries you?

Speech deformities (incorrect stress, distortion of words))

Profanity

Mixing styles (using business words in everyday speech, etc.)

Poor vocabulary (use of SMS messages, Internet communication)

Questioning of schoolchildren

A survey was conducted among schoolchildren in grades 7 “B” and 8 “A” at our school.

51 students took part in the survey.

Questionnaire for schoolchildren, see Appendix 8

Are you concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language? See diagram appendix 9

Would you like to communicate with each other competently?? See diagram appendix 10

What words do you use most often? See diagram appendix 11

“In short” immediately makes the interlocutor wonder whether further information will be interesting, otherwise why shorten it?

See diagram appendix 13

Video a survey of random passers-by on the topic: “Are you concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language?”

Comparison of the answers of adults and schoolchildren to the question “Are you concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language?” See diagram appendix 14

See diagram appendix 15

Why don't people correct others? Most common answers:

They still won't understand

What if they answer rudely?

Inconvenient

I think this is tactless

A cultured person will not correct...

I can only correct people close to me

But if not us, then who? See Appendix 16

"Total dictation"

Goal: to awaken interest in improving literacy.

Large-scale event. In 2017, 866 cities in Russia and the world took part in the event. Annual educational event. It has been in existence for 14 years.

The “Total Dictation” event in Svetlogorsk took place on April 16, 2016. My family took part in this event. See Appendix 17

Conclusion

1) We saw that K.I. Chukovsky in his book “Alive as Life” analyzes the state of the Russian language and cites seven main problems of the Russian language: foreign language, vulgarisms, contamination with dialects and, conversely, expulsion of them from one’s speech, sanctimonious tastes, but the main thing is clericalism and compound words.

2) Analyzing the state of the Russian language and our speech together we come to disappointing conclusions: we ourselves are distorting and mutilating our great and powerful language.

The Russian language is beautiful, rich, polysemantic and capable of modification. This statement is accepted without objection. But can we consider that its potential is inexhaustible? Love the Russian language and protect it from distortion, remember that this powerful language was given to a great people.

“Speak Russian, for God’s sake! Bring this novelty into fashion.” (A.M. Zhemchuzhnikov.)

Print lists of incorrect and correct words on the covers of school notebooks

Indicate words that cripple our language on postcards and envelopes.

While watching movies, show the film magazine “Why do we say that?” or “Learn to speak correctly.”

How not to talk should be printed on stickers on matchboxes, candy and cookie boxes.

Mass press organs can make a significant contribution if they establish a permanent department on “How not to speak and write.”

Perhaps the creation of a special public organization advocating for the purity of the language. For example, to establish the “All-Russian Society of Russian Language Lovers.” The society must have branches and primary organizations at all institutions, enterprises, educational institutions without exception, and must also be a mass organization, and access to members of the society is unlimited.

An organizing committee or initiative group is needed to fight for speech culture in every region of Russia. Hundreds of thousands of active fighters for high speech culture will join such an organization.

Make the annual holiday (May 24 in Russia the Day of Slavic Literature and Culture) a day off and coincide with it mandatory events that will help cleanse the Russian language.

Organize a network of literacy corners, which should become centers for instilling the culture of the native language in institutions, enterprises, educational institutions, including kindergartens.

Disseminate the experience of “fighting illiteracy” to everyone at their place of work or study. For example, compile and distribute in your school a list of words that are most often distorted when written and pronounced.

See Appendix 18

But even if all these measures are implemented, they will still not be enough. “After all, the culture of speech is inseparable from general culture. To improve the quality of your language, you need to improve the quality of your intellect. Some people write and speak without mistakes, but what a poor vocabulary he has, what tired phrases!” - K. Chukovsky tells us. Here we need other, longer, broader methods. We need to raise the general culture, and thereby improve the culture of our language. And everyone should participate in this hot struggle for our verbal culture!

Dictionary

Conclusions:

I confirmed the fact that the Russian language is as alive as life.

I found out that the Russian language has diseases: imaginary and real.

I proved that the Russian language can be treated. You just have to want it!

4) I am pleased that most people are concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language.

4) I believe that it is still necessary to correct others if they make mistakes in speech.

“I love my native language:

It is clear to everyone

He is melodious

He, like the Russian people, has many faces,

Like our power, mighty!” (A. Yashin).

Song about the Russian language “We speak Russian.” See Appendix 19

Music: Grigory Vasilievich Gladkov, Lyrics: Olga Anatolyevna Alexandrova

Russian words are a deep current

Gives strength to the song line.

Oh, what a pleasure this is -

Speak Russian!

List of used literature

K.I. Chukovsky “Alive as life”, M., 1982

N. Gal “The Living and the Dead Word”, M., 2001

M. Krongauz “The Russian language is on the verge of breakdown”, M., 2009

Internet sites

“Electronic Library” http://modernlib.ru/books/chukovskiy_korney_ivanovich/zhivoy_kak_zhizn

Official page of Nora Gal: http://www.vavilon.ru/noragal

Annex 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Appendix 6

Appendix 7

Appendix 8

Questionnaire for schoolchildren

1) Are you concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language?

2) Would you like to communicate with each other competently?

a) yes, b) rather yes, c) rather no, d) no, e) I don’t know

3) Do I need to apply the rules of the Russian language to communicate on the Internet?

a) yes, b) rather yes, c) rather no, d) no, e) I don’t know

4) What words do you use most often? (emphasize)

like, in short, cool, damn, well, that's it

5) Do you correct others if they make mistakes in their speech?

a) yes, b) rather yes, c) rather no, d) no, e) I don’t know

Appendix 9

Are you concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language?

Conclusion: most schoolchildren are concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language.

Appendix 10

Would you like to communicate with each other competently?

Conclusion: most schoolchildren would like to communicate with each other competently.

Appendix 11

What words do you use most often?

Appendix 12

Appendix 13

Do you correct others when they make mistakes in their speech?

Conclusion: more than half of schoolchildren notice, but do not correct others when they make mistakes in speech

Appendix 14

Comparison of the answers of adults and schoolchildren to the question “Are you concerned about the problem of clogging the Russian language?”

Conclusion: as expected, for adults the problem of Russian language obstruction is more pressing.

Appendix 15

Do you correct others when they make mistakes in their speech?

Conclusion: but adults only sometimes correct others when they make mistakes in speech.

Appendix 16

Appendix 17

Appendix 18

The book "Alive as Life" by K.I. Chukovsky is presented as a journalistic study of the Russian language.

In the first chapter, Chukovsky introduces the reader to the elderly lawyer and academician Anatoly Koni. He was very sensitive to the Russian word and was always indignant when he heard the word used in a context unsuitable for him. For example, Koni perceived “necessarily” to mean “with respect, kindly,” when everyone around him used it in the semantics “certainly” that is familiar to us now. A person brought up on the old norms of the language could not come to terms with its changes.

Outdated interpretations of words are rarely revived. Thus, the familiar word “family” once meant the servants and slaves of the feudal lord, then it became a replacement for the concept of “wife”. The tongue is constantly moving, and it is stupid to fight it. But one cannot, blaming its eternal change, neglect the norms of speech.

The borrowing of foreign words in the 1960s caused concern among educated people, but Chukovsky did not consider them dangerous. There are many words that have firmly taken root in speech and are so euphonious that they don’t even need to look for a Russian equivalent: ammonia, sonata, dome, station, sport, naive, etc. Undesirable “foreigners” such as airplane and solution were still in everyday use replaced by the familiar “plane” and “solution”.

The style and proportionality of the Russian language must be matched by composing and abbreviations, which became fashionable in Soviet times. Russian speech is harmed by vulgar youth slang, which demeans not so much the word itself as the concept hidden behind it.

Chukovsky considered the dominance of clericalism in the language to be a disease. Dry business and scientific speech expelled liveliness and culture from everyday communication. He argued vehemently with teachers who were introducing clericalism to schoolchildren, but this war, as can be judged now, was lost.

Picture or drawing Alive as life

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In him(In russian language) all tones and shades, all transitions of sounds from the hardest to the most gentle and soft; it is limitless and, living as life, can be enriched every minute.

Anatoly Fedorovich Koni, honorary academician, famous lawyer, was, as you know, a man of great kindness. He willingly forgave those around him for all sorts of mistakes and weaknesses. But woe to those who, while talking with him, distorted or mutilated the Russian language. Kony attacked him with passionate hatred. His passion delighted me. And yet, in his struggle for the purity of language, he often went overboard.

For example, he demanded that the word Necessarily only meant kindly, obligingly.

But this meaning of the word has already died. Now both in living speech and in literature the word Necessarily came to mean certainly. This is what outraged Academician Koni.

Imagine,” he said, clutching his heart, “I’m walking along Spasskaya today and hear: “He Necessarily will punch you in the face!” How do you like it? A person tells another that someone kindly beat him up!

But the word Necessarily doesn't mean anymore kindly, - I tried to object, but Anatoly Fedorovich stood his ground.

Meanwhile, today in the entire Soviet Union you will no longer find a person for whom Necessarily would mean kindly.

Nowadays, not everyone will understand what Aksakov meant when he spoke about one provincial doctor:

“In relation to us he acted Necessarily" [S.T. Aksakov, Memoirs (1855). Collection cit., vol. II. M., 1955, p. 52.]

But no one seems strange anymore, for example, Isakovsky’s couplet:

And where do you want

Necessarily you'll get there.

Much can be explained by the fact that Koni was old at that time. He acted like most old people: he defended the norms of Russian speech that existed during his childhood and youth. Old people almost always imagined (and still imagine) that their children and grandchildren (especially grandchildren) were deforming correct Russian speech.

I can easily imagine that gray-haired old man who, in 1803 or 1805, angrily pounded the table with his fist when his grandchildren began to talk among themselves about the development of mind and character.

Where did you get this obnoxious thing? development of the mind? Must speak vegetation"[Works of Y.K. Grota, vol. II. Philological research (1852-1892). St. Petersburg. 1899, pp. 69, 82.].

As soon as, for example, a young man said in a conversation that now he needed to go, well, at least to the shoemaker, the old men angrily shouted to him:

Not necessary, A necessary! Why are you distorting the Russian language? [In the Dictionary of the Russian Academy (St. Petersburg, 1806-1822) there is only what is necessary.]

A new era has arrived. The former youths became fathers and grandfathers. And it was their turn to be indignant at these words that the youth introduced into everyday use: gifted, distinct, voting, humane, public, whip[Neither in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, nor in the Dictionary of the Pushkin Language (M., 1956-1959) the words gifted No. It appears only in the Dictionary of Church Slavonic and Russian, compiled by the second department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, 1847). Words distinct not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy. Words vote not in any dictionary until Dahl, 1882. Word asshole created by Ivan Panaev (along with the word hanger-on) in the middle of the 19th century. See also Works of Y.K. Grota, vol. II, pp. 14, 69, 83. ].

Now it seems to us that these words have existed in Rus' since time immemorial and that we could never do without them, and yet in the 30-40s of the last century they were new words, with which the then zealots of the purity of language could not come to terms for a long time .

Now it’s even hard to believe what words seemed base and street-smart at that time, for example, to Prince Vyazemsky. These words: mediocrity And talented.“Mediocrity, talented,” Prince Vyazemsky was indignant, “new areal expressions in our literary language. Dmitriev said the truth that “our new writers learn the language from the labazniks” [ P. Vyazemsky, Old notebook. L., 1929, p. 264.]

If the youth of that time happened to use in conversation such words unknown to previous generations as: fact, result, nonsense, solidarity[Not a word fact, not a word result, not a word solidarity not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy.] representatives of these past generations stated that Russian speech suffers considerable damage from such an influx of vulgar words.

“Where did this come from? fact? - Thaddeus Bulgarin, for example, was indignant in 1847. - What is this word? Distorted” [“Northern Bee”, 1847, No. 93 dated April 26. Magazine stuff.].

Yakov Grot already at the end of the 60s declared the newly appeared word ugly inspire[Works of Y.K. Grota, vol. II, p. 14.]

Even a word like scientific, and that had to overcome great resistance from the Old Testament purists before entering our speech as a full-fledged word. Let us remember how Gogol was struck by this word in 1851. Until then, he had never heard of him ["Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries." M. p. 511.].

The old people demanded that instead scientific they only talked scientist: scientist book, scientist treatise. Word scientific seemed to them unacceptable vulgarity. However, there was a time when even the word vulgar they were ready to consider it illegal. Pushkin, not foreseeing that it would become Russified, preserved its foreign form in Onegin. Let us remember the famous poems about Tatyana:

No one could make her beautiful

Name; but from head to toe

No one could find it in it

That autocratic fashion

Now it seems strange to everyone that Nekrasov, having written in one of his stories nonsense, should have explained in the note: “The lackey word, equivalent to the word - rubbish" [Cm. “Petersburg corners” in Nekrasov’s almanac “Physiology of Petersburg”, part 1. St. Petersburg, 1845, p. 290, and in the Complete Works of N.A. Nekrasova, vol. VI. M, 1950, p. 120.], and the “Literary Newspaper” of those years, talking about someone’s virtuoso soul, felt compelled to immediately add that masterly-“newfangled word” [“Literary Newspaper”, 1841, p. 94: “The soul is visible in the game and in the techniques virtuoso to show off a newfangled word.”].

You marvel at the jewels of our language: no matter what the sound,
it’s also a gift; everything is grainy, coarse, like pearls themselves,
and truly, another name is even more precious than the thing itself.

Gogol

Chapter 1

OLD AND NEW

I

Anatoly Fedorovich Koni, honorary academician, famous lawyer, was, as you know, a man of great kindness. He willingly forgave those around him for all sorts of mistakes and weaknesses.
But woe to those who, while talking with him, distorted or mutilated the Russian language. Kony attacked him with passionate hatred.
His passion delighted me. And yet, in his struggle for the purity of language, he often went overboard.
For example, he demanded that the word Necessarily only meant kindly, obligingly.
But this meaning of the word has already died. Now both in living speech and in literature the word Necessarily came to mean certainly. This is what outraged Academician Koni.
“Imagine,” he said, clutching his heart, “I’m walking along Spasskaya today and hear: “He Necessarily will punch you in the face!” How do you like it? A man tells another that someone will kindly beat him up!
- But the word Necessarily doesn't mean anymore kindly“,” I tried to object, but Anatoly Fedorovich stood his ground.
Meanwhile, today in the entire Soviet Union you will not find a person for whom Necessarily would mean kindly.
Nowadays, not everyone will understand what Aksakov meant when he spoke about one provincial doctor:
“In relation to us, he acted without fail.”
But no one seems strange anymore, for example, Isakovsky’s couplet:

And where do you want
You'll definitely get there.

Much can be explained by the fact that Koni was old at that time. He acted like most old people: he defended the norms of Russian speech that existed during his childhood and youth. Old people almost always imagined (and still imagine) that their children and grandchildren (especially grandchildren) were deforming correct Russian speech.
I can easily imagine that gray-haired old man who, in 1803 or 1805, angrily pounded the table with his fist when his grandchildren began to talk among themselves about the development of mind and character.
-Where did you get this unbearable development of the mind? Must speak vegetation.
As soon as, for example, a young man said in a conversation that now he needed to go, well, at least to the shoemaker, the old men angrily shouted to him:
- Not necessary, A necessary! Why are you distorting the Russian language? 1

And when Karamzin expressed in “Letters of a Russian Traveler” that under such and such conditions we become more humane, Shishkov attacked him with mockery.
“Is it characteristic of us,” he wrote, “from the name Human make an equalization degree more humane? Therefore, can I say: my horse more equine yours, my cow cow yours?
But no amount of ridicule could drive such precious words from our speech as more humane, humanity(in the sense of more humane, humanity).
A new era has arrived. The former youths became fathers and grandfathers. And it was their turn to be indignant at these words that the youth introduced into everyday use:

Now it seems to us that these words have existed in Rus' since time immemorial and that we could never do without them, and yet in the 30s and 40s of the last century they were new words, with which the then zealots of the purity of language could not come to terms for a long time .
Now it’s even hard to believe what words seemed base and street-smart at that time, for example, to Prince Vyazemsky. These words: mediocrity And talented.
“Mediocrity, talented,” Prince Vyazemsky was indignant, “new areal expressions in our literary language. Dmitriev said the truth that “our new writers are learning the language from the labazniks.”
If the youth of that time happened to use in conversation such words unknown to previous generations as

fact,
result,
nonsense,
solidarity 3,

Representatives of these past generations stated that Russian speech suffers considerable damage from such an influx of vulgar words.
"Where did this come from? fact? – Thaddeus Bulgarin, for example, was indignant in 1847. - What is this word? Distorted" 4 .
Yakov Grot already at the end of the 60s declared the newly appeared word ugly inspire.

Even a word like scientific, and even that had to overcome great resistance from Old Testament purists 5 before entering our speech as a full-fledged word. Let us remember how Gogol was struck by this word in 1851. Until then he had never heard of him. The old people demanded that instead scientific they only talked scientist: scientist book, scientist treatise. Word scientific seemed to them unacceptable vulgarity.
However, there was a time when even the word vulgar they were ready to consider it illegal. Pushkin, not foreseeing that it would become Russified, preserved its foreign form in Onegin. Let us remember the famous poems about Tatyana:

No one could make her beautiful
Name; but from head to toe
No one could find it in it
That autocratic fashion
In high London circle
It's called vulgar (I can't...
I love this word very much
But I can’t translate;
It’s still new to us,
And it is unlikely that he will be honored.
It would be suitable for an epigram...

There was no need to translate this word into Russian, because it itself became Russian.
Of course, the old people were wrong. Now the word necessary, and the word nonsense, and the word fact, and the word vote, and the word scientific, and the word creation, and the word Necessarily(In terms of certainly) are felt by everyone, both young and old, as the most legitimate, root words of Russian speech, and who can do without these words!
Now it seems strange to everyone that Nekrasov, having written in one of his stories nonsense, should have explained in the note: “A lackey word, equivalent to the word - rubbish,” and the “Literary Gazette” of those years, talking about someone’s virtuoso soul, felt compelled to immediately add that virtuoso –“newfangled word” 6 .
According to academician V.V. Vinogradov, only by the half of the nineteenth century did we receive citizenship rights in the following words: agitate, maximum, publicly available, indisputable, event, individual, identify etc.
There is no doubt that they, too, at one time offended old people born in the eighteenth century.
As a child, I also found old people (albeit rather decrepit) who said: at the ball, Alexandrinsky theater, genvar, rouge, white, furniture(plural) and were angry at those who said otherwise.
In general, old people are extremely picky and intolerant people in this regard. Even Pushkin was pestered in print by an old man about one line in Onegin with such reproaches:
“Is this how we, who learned from ancient grammars, express ourselves? Is it possible to distort the Russian language like that?”

II

But the years passed, and I, in turn, became an old man. Now, at my age, I am supposed to hate the words that are introduced into our speech by young people and cry out about the corruption of the language.
Moreover, like any of my contemporaries, more new concepts and words flooded into me at once in two or three years than my grandfathers and great-grandfathers over the past two and a half centuries.
Among them there were many wonderful ones, and there were also those that at first seemed to me illegal, harmful, spoiling Russian speech, subject to eradication and oblivion.
I remember how terribly indignant I was when the young people, as if in agreement with each other, began to instead Goodbye talk for some reason Bye .

Or this form: I went instead of I'm leaving. The man is still sitting at the table, he is just about to leave, but he portrays his future action as already completed.
For a long time I could not come to terms with this.

At the same time, young people began to feel the verb in a new way worry. We said: “I am experiencing grief,” or: “I am experiencing joy,” but now they say: “I am so worried” (without addition), and this word now means: “I am worried,” and even more often: “I am suffering.” , “I’m suffering.”
In Vasily Azhaev’s “Preface to Life” in the author’s speech:
“And Boris worried in vain.”
Neither Tolstoy, nor Turgenev, nor Chekhov knew this form. For them worry has always been a transitive verb. And now I heard with my own ears the following funny retelling of a fashionable film about some ancient era:
- I'm so worried! - said the countess.
- Stop worrying! - said the marquis.

The verb has been rethought imagine.
Previously it meant “to fantasize.” Now it most often means: “to swagger, to put on airs.”
- He's so imagines, - they now say about a person who is arrogant.
True, it happened before: to imagine about oneself (“imagine a lot about oneself”, etc.). But now no additional words are required.

The immodest, arrogant expression really offended me I am eating. In my time it was a polite form with which a person addressed not himself, but others:
- Please eat!
If he said about himself: “I eat,” it felt like a funny air of self-importance.

It's been thirty years now in common parlance the word has become established back- With crazy meaning again.
I remember when I first heard from the lips of a young housekeeper that last night the dog Barmaley “barked back at Marina and Tata,” I thought that Marina and Tata were the first to bark at the dog. But little by little I got used to this form and was no longer at all surprised when
heard one venerable woman say to another:
- And Masha gave birth back.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, a new phrase invaded not only oral, conversational, but also written and book speech to and in a very short time replaced the previous form by the address. Being unaccustomed to it, it was strange for me to hear: “she said some kind of taunting address to me,” “there was applause addressed to him.”
With amazement, I heard the other day how a certain student (from a very cultured family) said, among other things, in a conversation:
– Nyura laughed so much at Kolka.
And how surprised Chekhov would have been if he had read in one article dedicated to the production of his play “Ivanov”:
“Actress Podovalova, apparently, was repulsed by Astrov’s words spoken by Sonya to him.”

With the same suddenness the word entered our lives exciting. I heard with my own ears how the efficient beauty in the theater box playfully said to two middle-aged officers who, obviously, had just met her:
- You are exciting, but you, excuse me, are not at all exciting.
Out of habit, this word surprised me. The one she called unexciting, was very upset and even offended.
They say this word comes from the acting environment. The greatest masters of our stage, Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov, Kachalov, willingly applied it, though not to people, but to plays and books.
“I will never part with Akhmatova’s volume,” wrote Kachalov in 1940. “It’s a lot of excitement.”
And in 1943:
“I was left with an exciting impression from Bulgakov’s Pushkin.”
In K. Fedin’s novel “An Extraordinary Summer,” the writer Pastukhov says:
“Exciting! I hate this word! Actor's word! Fictional, non-existent, contrary to language.”
It seems to me that Pastukhov was wrong. This is the most Russian word.

Soon after the war, another new word appeared - kiosk, so alien to Russian phonetics that I initially considered it the exotic name of some warlike African leader: Kio-Sker.
It turned out that he was a peaceful “counter worker” selling in a newspaper or bread stall.
Word kiosk existed before, but before kiosk at that time no one had thought of it yet.

The newly appeared form caused me the same bewilderment: choice(instead of elections), agreement(instead of contracts), lecturer(instead of lecturers).
I heard something dashing, reckless, booming, and wild about her.
It was in vain that I consoled myself with the fact that this form had long been legitimized by the Russian literary language.
“After all,” I said to myself, “Lomonosov argued two hundred years ago that Russian people prefer the ending A"boring letter" And at the endings of words:

clouds, islands, forests instead of clouds, islands, forests.

In addition, a hundred years have passed, and perhaps more, since Russian people stopped speaking and writing: houses, doctors, teachers, professors, mechanics, cadets, bakers, clerks, outbuildings and willingly replaced them with the following forms: home, teacher, professor, mechanic, outhouse, cadet, baker etc. 7.
Not only that: the next generation gave the same rollicking form to dozens of new words, such as accountants, toms, boats, poplars, camps, diesels. They began to speak and write: accountant, volume, boat, poplar, camp, diesel etc.
If Chekhov, for example, had heard the words volumes, he would have thought that we were talking about the French composer Ambroise Thomas.
It would seem enough. But no. A new generation came, and I heard from them:

And a few years later:

exit, soup, mother, daughter, secretary, plane, speed, statement, age, area 8 .

Each time I came to the conviction that it was useless to protest against those ugly words for me. I could be indignant and lose my temper as much as I wanted, but it was impossible not to see that here, over the course of a century, there has been some kind of non-stop process of replacing the unstressed ending s(s) strongly accented ending and I).
And who can guarantee that our great-grandchildren will not say and write:

crane, actor, bear, acorn.

Observing the magnificent flowering of this swaggering form, I more than once consoled myself with the thought that this form would take over mainly those words that are mentioned most often in this professional (sometimes very narrow) circle: form cake exists only in pastry shops, soup– in restaurant kitchens, area- in house administrations, tractors And speed- from tractor drivers.
Firefighters say: torch. Electricians – cable And plugs.
Singers in Sleptsov’s “Spevka”; concerto, tenor (1863) 9 .
We will not now deal with the question of whether this process is desirable or not, we will talk about this later, but for now it is important for us to note one significant fact: all the efforts of countless zealots of the purity of language to stop this stormy process or at least weaken it still remain fruitless.
Even if I even thought of writing now: “ then we Shakespeare,” I can be sure in advance that they will print in my book: “ volumes Shakespeare" because then we so outdated that a modern reader would sense in them stylization, affectation, and mannerisms.

The word sounded new like. It began to mean “as if”, “as if”, “seems”:

They were like their.
Your deeds like not bad.
Like you disliked him.
All like it turned out to be 10 by chance.

Interestingly, the same form has recently appeared in English colloquial speech: “she sort of began" (it looks like she started), "I sort of can’t believe it” (I still kind of doubt it).

And a new meaning of the word read out.
Before read out meant: he cheated the book, took it to read and did not give it back. And yet - I’m terribly tired of my reading: “he read out me to death." And now: I read aloud at an official meeting some official document:
"Then there was read out draft resolution."
However, as it now turns out, some people – albeit jokingly – consider it possible to apply this term to the reading of poetry:
"A word for credits Academician Laginov has poems of his own composition” 11.

Suddenly it turned out that all the children call every unfamiliar adult uncle, uncle:
- There's some uncle standing in the yard...
It took me many years to get used to this new term, which entered our speech from the philistinism.
Now I seem to have gotten used to it, but I will not forget how amazed I was by one young student from a cultured family who told me about her adventures:
- I’m walking down the street, and behind me is this uncle...

Before, when addressing kids, we always said: children. Now this word has been replaced everywhere by the word Guys. It sounds in schools and kindergartens, which is extremely shocking to old people who dream of children being called children again. Before guys Only peasant children were named (along with soldiers and boys).

There are only guys at home.

(Nekrasov, III, 12)

"The street says:" Can you do it? will you come to me?” The newspaper writes: “The steamer failed break through the ice." This does not mean at all that the ship had an inept captain or a low-quality crew. The newspaper wants to say that the ship had no way of breaking through the ice, that it could not do it, just as a street question means: “Can you come to me?” - and it has nothing to do with the “ability to come”.”
Next, Konstantin Fedin tells how in Kislovodsk one of the resort doctors dumbfounded the writer Olga Forsh with a question whether she would be able to take the required number of baths.
“What can you do here? – she objected. “There is no trick here.”
I think that this answer remained incomprehensible to the doctor, who was innocently sure that his question meant: “Will you have the opportunity to take a few more baths?”

Instead of broad masses of readers an unprecedented general reader.

Another innovation in the modern Russian language: the names of professions performed by women now very often acquire a masculine gender ending:
– Metal turner Elena Shabelskaya.
– Workshop foreman Lidia Smirnova.
– Designer Galina Muryshkina.
– Prosecutor Serafima Korovin.
The same thing happens with honorary titles:
– Hero of Labor Tamara Babaeva.
These forms have become so firmly ingrained in the consciousness of Soviet people that such forms as “master of the workshop”, “heroine of labor”, etc. would have seemed to them gross errors. Previously, Anna Akhmatova was called a poetess, now both newspapers and magazines publish: “Anna Akhmatova is a first-class poet.”
Many live observations of this trend in modern language are collected in a thoughtful article by the doctor (but not doctor) of legal sciences S. Berezovskaya.
However, women were called doctors and academicians before.

At first I was very annoyed by the new role of the word easily. Previously it meant: without ceremony.
- Come to us easily(that is, in a friendly way).
Now this word is understood differently. Almost all young people say:
- Well it easily(ie: no problem).

I will not list all the words that, over the course of my long life, have entered our native language literally before my eyes.
I repeat: among these words there are many that I met with love and joy. We'll talk about them later. And now I’m only talking about those that disgusted me. At first I was firmly convinced that these were degenerate words, renegade words, that they distorted and distorted the Russian language, but then, despite my tastes and skills, I tried to treat them much kinder.
If you endure it, you will fall in love! Except for the word back(in the sense again), which never claimed to be included in our literary language, but a vulgar expression I am eating, many of the words listed could, it seems, little by little win the right of citizenship and no longer offend me.
This is a highly curious process - the normalization of a recently emerged word in the minds of those to whom, when it appeared, it seemed completely unacceptable, grossly violating the norms of established speech.
Academician Yakov Grot very accurately depicts this process of formation of new language norms. Having mentioned that in his memory such words as

figure,
initiative,
influential,
restrained,

the scientist rightly notes:
“The process of introducing such words usually goes like this: at first the word is allowed by very few; others are shy of him, looking at him distrustfully, as if he were a stranger; but the more successful it is, the more often it begins to appear. Little by little they get used to it, and its novelty is forgotten: the next generation already finds it in use and completely assimilates it. This was the case, for example, with the word figure; The current young generation may not even suspect how this word, when it appeared in the 30s, was met with hostility by some of the writers. Now it is heard incessantly, it is already included in government acts, but there was a time when many, especially older people, preferred it doer(see, for example, the works of Pletnev). Sometimes it happens, however, that a completely new word will immediately fall in love and come into fashion. This means that it has appealed to modern tastes. This happened most recently with the words: influence(And influence), influential, to regard something in one way or another and etc.".
Why shouldn't this happen with the words I just talked about?
Of course, I will never introduce these words into my own speech. It would be unnatural if I, an old man, said in a conversation, for example, agreement, or: volumes, or: I'm so worried, or: well, I'm off, or: Bye, or: I'll definitely come to you today. But why shouldn't I make peace with people who use such language?
Really, it would be very easy to convince yourself that these words are no worse than others: they are completely correct and even, perhaps, desirable.
“Well, what’s wrong,” I say to myself, “at least in a short word.” Bye? After all, exactly the same form of saying goodbye to friends exists in other languages, and there it does not shock anyone. The great American poet Walt Whitman, shortly before his death, said goodbye to his readers with a touching poem “So long!”, which means “Bye!” in English. The French a bientot has the same meaning. There is no rudeness here. On the contrary, this form is filled with the most amiable courtesy, because the following approximately meaning is compressed here: “Be prosperous and happy, Bye we won't see each other again."

I try to argue with myself, I try to suppress my usual subjective tastes and, having made an effort on myself, I try to at least partially come to terms with even the word that offends me read out.
“After all,” I say to myself, “now this word has acquired a specific meaning, which was not found in any derivative of the verb read; The meaning of this, it seems to me, is this: to announce one or more official papers at some (mostly crowded) meeting.

Yes and with an expression well, I'm off It’s not as difficult to reconcile as it seemed to me at first.
The great linguist A.A. Potebnya, back in 1874, found examples of this form in Lithuanian, Serbian, Ukrainian texts, as well as in our Old Russian spiritual poems:

Pray to the Lord, work
For Alexei, a man of God,
And I went to another land.

Seeing this I went in an ancient song that has existed for at least half a thousand years, I could no longer rebel against this, as it now turned out, far from a new “innovation”, legitimized by our language for a long time and completely justified back in the 70s by one of our most authoritative linguists .
However, even if this strange form had not been legitimized by ancient tradition, I would still have to recognize it, since it came into use even among the most cultured Soviet people.
It was not so easy to overcome the instinctive aversion to forms: engineer, contract, area, speed.
But here, too, I decided to overcome my personal tastes and think about all these words impartially.
“It is beyond doubt for me,” I said to myself, “that the massive shift of emphasis from the first syllables to the last is happening in our time for a reason.” Village, Nekrasov Rus' did not know such re-emphasis: the language of the patriarchal village gravitated towards drawn-out, leisurely words with dactylic endings (that is, words that have stress on the third syllable from the end):

Turned tables are arranged there,
There are broken tablecloths spread out there.

There are as many as six polysyllabic words on two lines! Such long-windedness fully corresponded to the aesthetic tastes of the Old Testament village.
This taste was reflected in the poetry of Nekrasov 12 (as well as Koltsov, Nikitin and other “peasant democrats”):

All-bearing Russian tribe
Long-suffering mother!

It is not for nothing that long, drawn-out words, corresponding to the slow pace of patriarchal life, are so characteristic of Russian folk songs of past centuries. Due to the industrialization of the country, these slow tempos have been eliminated: along with the drawn-out song, a short ditty has appeared, the words have become more energetic, shorter, and more abrupt. And in long words, to which the aesthetics of old Russian works of folk poetry have gravitated for so many centuries - lullabies and wedding songs, epics, etc. - the stress migrated from the third syllable (from the end) to the last. A systematic process of replacing long dactylic words with words with a masculine ending began: instead of mothers became mother, instead of tablecloths - tablecloth, instead of poplars - poplars, instead of months - months.
So both these transformations of words and this craving for final stresses are historically determined by the long-standing trend of our speech development.

Back in the early eighties, Chekhov wrote: “addresses”, “accounts”. In Andrei Voznesensky’s poem in 1962, the form appeared peace:

A powerful eye looks into others peace.

Above I expressed the fear that the time is not far when our grandchildren will begin to speak bear, actor.
Reader V.N. Yakovlev (Lokot village) consoles me that this will never happen.
“Notice,” he writes, “the one who says agreement, will almost never say agreement, because agreement so it asks for the plural contracts. On the contrary, for the word agreement more natural plural agreement. Similar: driver - drivers, But driver - driver. For the transfer of stress to the last syllable in the plural never occurs in words with stress on the last syllable in the singular. From motor no one would think of forming the plural motor, this is completely excluded, since the stress on the last (root) syllable is preserved. They say: accountant, but not accountant; boats, but not longboat; cruisers, but not battleship
It should be expected that the same fate (stress shift) will befall tap, since monosyllabic
nouns are also affected by the tendency to shift stress. But actor And bear are unlikely to ever appear in literary language. I especially insist on this in relation to the word actor. As long as it sounds like that, there will always be a plural actors. It would be another matter if over time they began to speak in the singular actor. In short: those words that in the singular have stress on the last (root) syllable retain an unstressed ending in the plural s. I made this conclusion from observing the process of stress transfer and so far I have not seen a single case that would refute this conclusion.”
In vain. There are such cases. Let's remember, for example, the forms: officer, engineer, ship etc., where is the ending A assigned to those nouns that in the singular have stress on the last syllable: engineer, officer, ship.
However, such cases are still few and far between, and, in general, Comrade Yakovlev is right.
Whether we like it or not, the time is not far off when people will treat without any smile the poem I composed in the 1920s as a parody of the illiterate appeal of one editorial employee:

Yes and the form I worry, maybe not such a crime after all. After all, in any live conversation we often omit words that are easily guessed by both the speaker and the listener. We say: “It’s almost nine” (and we mean: o’clock). Or: “He has a temperature” (we mean: high). Or: “She’s over forty” (we mean: years old). Or: “We are going to Basmannaya” (meaning: street). “It’s clear as two and two” (meaning: four).
This omission is called an ellipsis. There is a completely legitimate economy of speech here. Let us recall another transitive verb, which has also recently lost its transitivity in some places: violate.
We all hear from conductors, police officers and janitors:
- Citizens, do not violate!
Implied: established rules.
And another similar form:
– Citizens, crossing the street where there is no crossing, you are exposed.
Whether this is an ellipsis, I don’t know. But worry, of course, not an ellipsis: the addition is not implied here, but simply absent.
The one who said: “I am worried” would even be surprised if he were asked what exactly he was experiencing: grief or joy. There can be no talk of joy; worry nowadays it means: to worry, to worry.
No matter how jarring this new meaning of the old word may be, it is so firmly established in the language that restoration of its former form, unfortunately, is hardly possible.

And should I say? I even made an attempt to come to terms with the Russian case endings of the word coat.
Of course, this is a little difficult for me, and I still suffer greatly if in my presence someone says that he cannot find anything anywhere. coat or goes to his home for coat.
But still I try not to get angry and console myself with this reasoning.
“After all,” I say to myself, “the whole history of the word coat tells us these forms. In stories and novels written around the middle of the last century or slightly earlier, this word was printed in French letters:
"He's wearing his fancy paletot."
"His blue paletot was covered in dust."
In French, paletot is masculine, and even when this word began to be printed in Russian letters, it remained masculine in our country for another eight or ten years. In the books of that time we could read:
“This beautiful paleto.”
“He opened his autumn paleto.”
In Herzen’s “Past and Thoughts” - warm coat 13 .

But after the coat became a very common garment, its name became popular, and when the people felt this word as their own, purely Russian, as, say, egg, wheel, milk, oatmeal, he began to decline it according to the rules of Russian grammar: coat, coat, coat and even polta.
- What's wrong with that? - I told myself and immediately tried to convince myself with new arguments. – After all, the Russian language is so viable, healthy and powerful that a thousand times over the course of centuries it has autocratically subordinated to its own laws and requirements any foreign word that enters its orbit.
Indeed. As soon as he took from the Tatars such words as sheepskin coat, robe, sash, barn, chest, fog, coat, watermelon, nothing stopped him from bending these foreign words according to the laws of Russian grammar: chest, chest, chest.
He did exactly the same with the words he obtained from the Germans, such as apron, hairdresser, resort.
From the French he took not only coat, but also words like broth, passenger, performance, play, backstage, ticket, - is he really so anemic and weak that he cannot dispose of these words in his own way, change them according to numbers, cases and genders, create such purely Russian forms as play, behind-the-scenes, stowaway, broth-maker, little chest, holiday-goer, nebula and so on.
Of course not! These words are completely within his control. Why make an exception for the word coat, which, moreover, has become so Russified that it has also acquired primordially Russian national forms: coat, coat etc.?
Why not decline this word, as they decline, say, awl, rocker, oar? After all, it belongs precisely to this series of neuter nouns.
Purists want it to remain among such inflexible words as domino, depot, cinema, dressing table, manto, metro, bureau etc. Meanwhile, it has already escaped from this series, and there is no reason to transfer it back to this series.
However, metro, And the Bureau, And depot, And movie They also don’t retain their immobility very well. After all, the vernacular inclines them in all cases:
- There is dancing in the depot.
– We’ll look at it tomorrow at the bureau!
- I’d rather take the meter!

Compare Mayakovsky:

I,
comrades, -
from the military bureaus.

And from Sholokhov:
“It’s not boring here: if kina no, grandfather will replace him.”
These forms did not appear just yesterday.
Also in “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy:
“We read a little, and now,” said Mikhail Ivanovich, lowering his voice, “the bureau must have taken care of the will.”
In the drama “Late Love” by A.N. Ostrovsky:
“What a great weather! In a light coat now... Oh-oh!”
In his comedy “The Forest”: “he wears short coats.”
The Russian language generally gravitates towards declension of indeclinable words. Isn’t that why, for example, the word was created coffee, What coffee Is it impossible to bend? Isn’t that why forms have become established in some places? for the sake of(instead of radio) And kakava(instead of cocoa), that these forms can be changed according to cases?
Every new generation of Russian children invents these forms again and again. The four-year-old son of Professor Gvozdev called radio towers - Radiva and firmly believed in the inflection of the word coat, introducing into your speech such forms as in a coat, coats. He was brought up in a highly cultured family where no one used these forms.

III

So I convinced myself, and it seemed to me that all my arguments were irresistibly logical.
But, obviously, logic alone is not enough to accept or reject a particular linguistic phenomenon. There are other criteria that are stronger than any logic.
“Sometimes,” says Professor P.Ya. Chernykh, “an innovation, quite acceptable from the point of view of the logic of language, is still not retained in speech and is rejected by the “linguistic collective.”
We can prove to ourselves and others as much as we like that this or that word, both in its meaning, and in its expression, and in its grammatical form, does not cause any complaints. And yet, for some special reason, a person who utters this word in a society of educated, cultured people will compromise himself in their eyes. Of course, forms of word usage change enormously, and it is difficult to predict their fate, but anyone who says, for example, this year choice, will immediately establish himself as a person of not very high culture.
And no matter how convincing the arguments with which I tried to justify the inclination of the word coat, nevertheless, as soon as I heard from one very nice nurse that she likes to go in the fall without coat, I involuntarily felt antipathy towards her.
And then it became clear to me that, despite all my attempts to defend this seemingly completely legal form, I still, deep down, did not accept it. Under no circumstances until the end of my days could I write or say in conversation: coat, coat or coat.And it would not be easy for me to feel affection for that person - be he a doctor, an engineer, a writer, a teacher, a student - who would say in front of me:
- He laughed at me.
Or:
- Mother came to choose.
Perhaps in the future, in the 70s, these forms will finally establish themselves in the everyday life of cultured people, but now, in 1966, they still feel to me like a sure sign of lack of culture!
As for such forms as Bye, I'm off, it looks like it's raining and others, it is undoubtedly time to amnesty them, because their connection with the environment that gave birth to them has already been forgotten by everyone and, thus, from the category of colloquial and slang they have already firmly entered the category of literary ones, and there is not the slightest need drive them out of there.
“Literary language,” says a modern Soviet philologist, “can in no case be understood as the language of fiction only. This concept is broader... This includes the language of scientific, fiction, journalistic literature, the language of reports, lectures, oral speech cultured, educated people».

1 In the Dictionary of the Russian Academy (St. Petersburg, 1806–1822) there is only necessary.

2 Neither in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, nor in the Dictionary of the Pushkin Language (M., 1956–1959) the words gifted No. It appears only in the Dictionary of Church Slavonic and Russian, compiled by the second department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, 1847). Words distinct not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy. Words vote not in any dictionary until Dahl (1880). Word asshole created by Ivan Panaev (along with the word hanger-on) in the mid-nineteenth century. See also Works of Y.K. Grota. T. II. S. 14, 69, 83.

3 Not a word fact, not a word result, not a word solidarity not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy.

4 "Northern Bee". 1847. No. 93 of April 26. "Magazine stuff." Although the word fact already found in the works of Pushkin.

5 Purists are people who strive to protect, “cleanse” their native language from all innovations, and not allow any changes in it. The ideal of purists is the linguistic norms of the past, which they consider the only correct ones.

6 “Literary Newspaper”, 1841, p. 94: “The soul is visible in the game and in the techniques virtuoso to show off a newfangled word.”

7 In Gogol’s “Marriage” (1836–1842) there is also Houses(I, XIII), and houses(I, XIII).

8 According to Turgenev, the form area for a long time existed in the dialect of the peasants of the Oryol province: this is what they called “large continuous masses of bushes” ( I. Turgenev. Collection op. T. I. M., 1961. P. 9). There is reason to think that the current word area arose independently of this Orlov term. Leo Tolstoy (in 1874) argued that in “living speech the form is used cart, but not carts"(Vol. XVII, p. 82). In Ivan Panaev’s story “Khlyshch of Higher School” (1858) we read: “The first months of his marriage..." (see: I.I. Panaev. Selected works. M., 1962. P. 492).

9 D.N. Shmelev finds that I am “not quite right.” He recalls that forms such as wind, hair, officer, have existed for a long time and that M. Gorky in the merchant’s story had actor(see the interesting article by this author “Some issues of normalization of the modern Russian language” in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR” Department of Literature and Language. vol. XXI, issue 5. M., 1962. P. 429). But I never said that the transformation of an unstressed s in accented A there is innovation. I only noted that the pace of this process has accelerated extraordinarily and the number of words subject to it is multiplying with unprecedented force.

10. Vasily Azhaev. Preface to life. M., 1962. S. 25, 35, 48, 61.

11 I. Grekova. Under the lantern. M., 1966, P. 22. However, the original meaning of the word read out still remains unshakable. Both meanings coexist peacefully.

12 For more details, see the fourth volume of my collected works.

13 I.A. Goncharov testified in his memoir notes: “The guest... will throw off his overcoat or fur coat (coat then (in the 30s of the nineteenth century. - K.Ch.) was not known...)” (“Memoirs.” Complete collection of works. vol. IX. P. 67). By the end of the 30s they began to write paletot, and by the beginning of the 40s - paleto: “The picture of Parisian fashions... shows a new paleto” (“Bulletin of Parisian Fashions.” 1840. No. 47). Professor P.Ya. Chernykh in his “Essay on Russian Historical Lexicology” with quotations from Herzen and Pisemsky proves that in words coat originally designated home indoor clothing (op. op. p. 177).

Korney Chukovsky

ALIVE LIKE LIFE

Stories about the Russian language

Chapter first

OLD AND NEW

In him(In russian language) all tones and shades, all transitions of sounds from the hardest to the most gentle and soft; it is limitless and, living as life, can be enriched every minute.

Anatoly Fedorovich Koni, honorary academician, famous lawyer, was, as you know, a man of great kindness. He willingly forgave those around him for all sorts of mistakes and weaknesses. But woe to those who, while talking with him, distorted or mutilated the Russian language. Kony attacked him with passionate hatred. His passion delighted me. And yet, in his struggle for the purity of language, he often went overboard.

For example, he demanded that the word Necessarily only meant kindly, obligingly.

But this meaning of the word has already died. Now both in living speech and in literature the word Necessarily came to mean certainly. This is what outraged Academician Koni.

Imagine,” he said, clutching his heart, “I’m walking along Spasskaya today and hear: “He Necessarily will punch you in the face!” How do you like it? A person tells another that someone kindly beat him up!

But the word Necessarily doesn't mean anymore kindly, - I tried to object, but Anatoly Fedorovich stood his ground.

Meanwhile, today in the entire Soviet Union you will no longer find a person for whom Necessarily would mean kindly.

Nowadays, not everyone will understand what Aksakov meant when he spoke about one provincial doctor:

“In relation to us he acted Necessarily" [S.T. Aksakov, Memoirs (1855). Collection cit., vol. II. M., 1955, p. 52.]

But no one seems strange anymore, for example, Isakovsky’s couplet:

And where do you want
Necessarily you'll get there.

Much can be explained by the fact that Koni was old at that time. He acted like most old people: he defended the norms of Russian speech that existed during his childhood and youth. Old people almost always imagined (and still imagine) that their children and grandchildren (especially grandchildren) were deforming correct Russian speech.

I can easily imagine that gray-haired old man who, in 1803 or 1805, angrily pounded the table with his fist when his grandchildren began to talk among themselves about the development of mind and character.

Where did you get this obnoxious thing? development of the mind? Must speak vegetation"[Works of Y.K. Grota, vol. II. Philological research (1852-1892). St. Petersburg. 1899, pp. 69, 82.].

As soon as, for example, a young man said in a conversation that now he needed to go, well, at least to the shoemaker, the old men angrily shouted to him:

Not necessary, A necessary! Why are you distorting the Russian language? [In the Dictionary of the Russian Academy (St. Petersburg, 1806-1822) there is only what is necessary.]

A new era has arrived. The former youths became fathers and grandfathers. And it was their turn to be indignant at these words that the youth introduced into everyday use: gifted, distinct, voting, humane, public, whip[Neither in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, nor in the Dictionary of the Pushkin Language (M., 1956-1959) the words gifted No. It appears only in the Dictionary of Church Slavonic and Russian, compiled by the second department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, 1847). Words distinct not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy. Words vote not in any dictionary until Dahl, 1882. Word asshole created by Ivan Panaev (along with the word hanger-on) in the middle of the 19th century. See also Works of Y.K. Grota, vol. II, pp. 14, 69, 83. ].

Now it seems to us that these words have existed in Rus' since time immemorial and that we could never do without them, and yet in the 30-40s of the last century they were new words, with which the then zealots of the purity of language could not come to terms for a long time .

Now it’s even hard to believe what words seemed base and street-smart at that time, for example, to Prince Vyazemsky. These words: mediocrity And talented.“Mediocrity, talented,” Prince Vyazemsky was indignant, “new areal expressions in our literary language. Dmitriev said the truth that “our new writers learn the language from the labazniks” [ P. Vyazemsky, Old notebook. L., 1929, p. 264.]