A new dictionary of accents is being released: how to correctly write the adjective “kitchen”

Linguists have created a Large Dictionary of Russian Stresses. It would seem that this was an event for a narrow circle of specialists and experts. But the Unified State Exam is just around the corner. And, of course, the schools were alarmed – will the new rules and regulations be included in the exam tasks?

When people talk about the complexity of the Russian language, they most often remember participial and participial phrases, difficulties with numerous prefixes, suffixes, declensions and conjugations.

However, stress also constitutes a separate complexity in the Russian language. Their role may even be social: the correct emphasis in cakes, cottage cheese and Wednesdays (day of the week) was once used to identify one’s own. And today those who are in the know know that only professional linguists or very good experts on the rules correctly place absolutely all the stresses in words.

But school graduates must take the Unified State Exam in Russian. And the “tickets” traditionally contain task No. 4 on spelling norms and stress.

In the holy of holies of the Unified State Exam examples, on the website of the FIPI (Federal Institute of Pedagogical Measurements) in the demo version for 2024, you need to select words with correctly indicated stresses: shoe, understanding, completely, self-interest, Wholesale.

Also in the demo version there is a so-called “spelling vocabulary”, where all the correct accents are placed. However, upon careful comparison, it turns out that the compilers of “dictionaries” are not chasing the dictionary from the Academy of Sciences. And they indicate a more stringent standard where it has long been relaxed.

“We have been fighting with them (compilers of tasks for the Unified State Exam) for many years, trying to persuade them that everything that is available in academic dictionaries has the right to be,” says the chief researcher at the Institute of Russian Language. Vinogradov RAS Maria Kalenchuk. According to her, the scientists still “persuaded to remove a lot” of the writers of the Unified State Exam assignments. But enough is left.

For example, the word “pamper,” Kalenchuk clarifies. Once upon a time in Russian there really was “to pamper” with the emphasis on the first syllable, period. But in the academic dictionary both options have long been equal. At the Unified State Examination we still only “pamper”, as if we were Pasternak’s contemporaries.

“MK” also studied dictionaries and easily found examples of strict norms on accents where they had long since been softened. For example, “tvorog” or “tvorog”, “pizzeria” or “pizzeria”. Both accents are academically equivalent, but the Unified State Examination requires only one option. By the way, now both variants of emphasis in the words “marketing”, “phenomenon”, “characteristic”, “simultaneously” and others are now equivalent.

“Yes, the situation is such that children have to learn the correct accents by heart,” says Russian language and literature teacher Larisa Panina. – Some tutors even come up with rhymes for memorizing them. Because it’s one thing when mistakes are made with accents on words such as “agreement”, “beautiful”, “obituary” or “review” – you need to know this. But there are still a bunch of words that most people, even educated ones, pronounce incorrectly in everyday life. Because it’s more convenient.

People most often say “joiner”, not “joiner”, “plum”, not “plum”, “bows”, not “bants”…

In general, there are a lot of exceptions “not like in life”, memorizing by heart is necessary in order to write only one spelling task with good scores. Of the 27 tasks offered in the Russian language exam. Why don’t the compilers of KIMs (testing and measuring materials, task forms for the Unified State Exam) simplify everything that is possible and allowed by linguists? Of course, the norms from the new dictionary will not be included this year. It will be good if this happens in a few years.

A large dictionary of Russian accents will be published before the end of 2024. Not the least of it were such relatively new and fashionable words as “covid”, “vegan”, “millennial”, “guest worker”. The authors report that the new Big Dictionary of Stresses includes about 30 thousand words.