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Every person possesses a magic tool used for communicating thoughts to other people. Each nation regards this tool as a treasured asset, jealously guards it and takes pride in it. We are talking about the language. If the stranger is an accurate and articulate speaker of the language used by his parents or his ethnic community, we automatically tend to identify him as a good-mannered interlocutor. However, if one has a good command of both one’s native tongue and other world languages, he impresses us as a well-educated and, needless to say, highly intellectual person coming from sophisticated backgrounds. As to Russian, it is one of the most geographically widespread languages. Approximately 400 million members of the global community are more or less fluent in it, with only 160 million people regarding themselves as native speakers. These are people who make a Russian nation, which is seen as the world’s most enigmatic community in terms of mindset.
Russian Language
Every person possesses a magic tool used for communicating thoughts to other people. Each nation regards this tool as a treasured asset, jealously guards it and takes pride in it. We are talking about the language. If the stranger is an accurate and articulate speaker of the language used by his parents or his ethnic community, we automatically tend to identify him as a good-mannered interlocutor. However, if one has a good command of both one’s native tongue and other world languages, he impresses us as a well-educated and, needless to say, highly intellectual person coming from sophisticated backgrounds.
As to Russian, it is one of the most geographically widespread languages. Approximately 400 million members of the global community are more or less fluent in it, with only 160 million people regarding themselves as native speakers. These are people who make a Russian nation, which is seen as the world’s most enigmatic community in terms of mindset.
HISTORY
Russian boasts of "good origins" and sound roots. The Proto-Slavonic language dates back as far as the second millennium B.C. It comes from a good family of Indo-European languages. Suffice it to say that English, French, Spanish and Italian as well as Hindi, Urdu and other widespread world languages are derived from the same source. The Old Slavs, the immediate descendents of Proto-Slavs, occupied vast territories of the East-European Plane in the first seven centuries A.D. In the Great Migration period, which is dated between the sixth and
eighth centuries A.D., Old Slavs began to disintegrate as an ethnic entity, and as a result, formed three closely related groups: eastern, western and southern ones.
Together with Ukrainian and Byelorussian, Russian forms the eastern group of Slavic languages. The western group includes such languages as Polish, Czech, Slovak and Sorbian. The southern group is made up of Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian languages.
Research findings indicate that the language which was spoken by the eastern Slavs was intimately related to their culture, religion and patterns of life. Written artifacts provide clues for solving multiple riddles of the past.
ALPHABET AND SCRIPT
Some researchers argue that Slavs living before the ninth century A.D. employed runic and knot scripts. Christianity adopted by Old Rus in the late first millennium A.D. generated the need for alphabetic script. The recent excavations have discovered a great number of Cyrillic records dating from the early Middle Ages. Acting on the order of Byzantine emperor Michael III, brothers Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius of Thessalonica standardised the Slavic writing system circa 863 A.D. Made up of thirty eight characters, or forty three as some sources have it, the new script bore some resemblance to the Greek alphabet. The accepted term for this system is Cyrillic alphabet. As a result of education efforts carried out by the brothers, this alphabet came into wide use. Some letters having the numerical meaning, it was made possible to establish sacral meanings of transliterated biblical names when translating Greek sacred books into Slavic.
The new Russian alphabet has its roots in the Old Russian Cyrillic writing. By the turn of the last century the Russian alphabet had experienced significant changes. Many letters fell out of use as the Russian phonetic system evolved. In 1708 the alphabet was modified into two versions used in secular and religious writings. The former version was based on uppercase and lowercase letters. Gradually the secular script became the major writing system whereas the religious literature was relegated to a secondary role in developing standard language forms. The church idiom limited to rites and rituals, the secular script gained universal currency in the Russian empire.
The last major alphabet reform was carried out in 1918. Since then the Russian alphabet made up of thirty-three letters has remained unchanged. This alphabet is represented below:
GENERAL DETAILS ABOUT MODERN RUSSIAN
Modern standard Russian is the language used in such areas as literature, science, media, theatre, education and official documents. Its major feature is the use of standard forms. This means that its vocabulary is carefully selected from the general national word stock. The semantic patterns and vocabulary usage as well as pronunciation, spelling and grammar forms are in conformity with the accepted norms.
The Russian standard language has two forms – spoken and written. These two forms have distinctive features as to vocabulary and grammatical usages. Written speech is replete with periods, abstract and specialist vocabulary. It is explained by the fact that written discourse in is meant for visual perception. At the same time spoken language is marked by simpler grammatical and syntactic patterns, while its intonations are more varied - this feature is aimed at facilitating listening comprehension.
The course in modern Russian features five divisions:
- Lexicology and phraseology focus on Russian vocabulary and idioms (set phrases).
- Phonetics describes sounds employed in modern Russian as well as major sound processes underway in the language.
- The reading division explains the Russian alphabet as well as correlations between sounds and letters.
- Orthography provides spelling rules to generate written discourse.
- Orthoepy gives insight into ways of standard Russian pronunciation.
- Word-building studies the morphemic composition of words and major word-building patterns.
- Grammar is a domain of linguistics which provides theoretical insights into word-forms and inflections as well as into word structures, types of grammatical collocations and sentences. It includes two divisions: morphology and syntax.
- Morphology is a science about word structures, inflection patterns, ways of expressing grammatical meanings as well as about parts of speech.
- Syntax concentrates on collocating patterns and sentences.
- Punctuation is a set of rules for using punctuation marks.
RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN THE GLOBAL CULTURAL CONTEXT
The relevance of each language in terms of world culture is determined by the body of literary works using this tongue. The surviving Russian folklore, which dates back to ancient times, exists in spoken idiom and is used as part of traditions and customs. Also, it is the feature of the speech of literary characters. In the eighteenth century common people and the nobility in Russia used to speak different languages. In the wake of reforms carried out by Peter the Great, the upper classes developed a steady habit of speaking French and gave preference to foreign literature.
It is believed that Alexander Pushkin was the first to rejuvenate the interest of educated classes in Russian. Alexander Pushkin, who was a poet, playwright and writer, created internationally renowned Russian-language masterpieces of literature. He is often referred to as the founder of the Russian standard language. It was due to his efforts that Russian literature had won the international acceptance.
Today, Russian is not limited to the native speech community. It used as a lingua franca by members of Russia’s ethnic minorities. It also serves the same purpose in the post-Soviet countries. Russian is one of the UN’s six official languages. Besides, along with other tongues it is used as a working language in the UNESCO.
References:
Розенталь Д.Э., Голуб И.Б., Теленкова М.А. Современный русский язык. - М.: Рольф, 2002.
Виноградов В.В. Русский язык (Грамматическое учение о слове). - М.: "Русский язык", 2001.
Валгина Н.С. Розенталь Д.Э. Фомина М.И., Современный русский язык. Учебник – М. Логос 2002
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