How to make the Russian language more Russian

As a result, the modern Russian language has the form that it has – an abundance of original words with a considerable number of borrowings. But the latter have never been dominant, unlike Polish or English, which almost completely, if you rise a little above everyday speech, consists of Latinisms and Gallicisms, and there are much more actively used “bookish” Latinisms in it than in languages ​​originating from Latin , – French, Spanish or Italian.

If we compare Russian with the leading European languages ​​with their international vocabulary, then it is striking how much he was able to enrich himself. Let’s consider it on the example of scientific vocabulary.

Let’s start with linguistics (the word itself is an alternative to “philology”), the members of the sentence are “subject”, “predicate”, “addition”, “definition”. We take them for granted from school years. But this is not so, this is the conscious work of Russian scientists (“scientist” and “science” are also not from science, but invented by themselves), who wanted something of their own, not to be “like everyone else”, dreamed of self-respect and dignity. And in English it’s all stolen from Latin – subject, predicate, object, definition. The same – “noun”, “verb”, “adjective”, “participle”, “adverb”, “germanial”, “pronoun”, “preposition”, “union”, “vowels”, “consonants”, “prefix ”, “root”, “end”. “Question” and “exclamation” marks, “period”, “comma”, “brackets”, “quotes” – you can see for yourself how it will be in English: everything is dragged from Latin or French – noun, verb, adjective, participle, adverb, etc.

Mathematics – “straight line”, “circle”, “line segment”, “angle”, “curve”, “division”, “addition”, “multiplication”, “subtraction”, “equation”, “example”, “task” – line, circle, segment, angle, curve, etc., nothing of their own.

Chemistry: “hydrogen”, “oxygen”, “acid”, “alkali” – hydrogen, oxygen, acid, alkali.

Astronomy: “satellite”, “constellation”, “eclipse” – satellite, constellation, eclipse.

Biology: artiodactyls, equids, proboscis, pinnipeds, marsupials, rodents, insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, platypuses, aardvarks, “predatory”, “insectivorous”, “bats” – artiodactyls, equids, proboscis, pinnipeds, marsupials, rodents. But our ancestors, too, could not think about anything and clog their tongues with “rodents” and “insects”. But Russian biologists wanted the terms to sound beautiful, unique. And in the classification – “genera”, “families”, “orders”, “species”, “subspecies”.

Geography: “peninsula”, “latitude”, “longitude”, “circumnavigation” – peninsula, latitude, longitude, circumnavigation.

Technique – “locomotive”, “steamboat”, “airplane”, “helicopter”, “vacuum cleaner”, “refrigerator”, “locomotive”, “truck”.

Politics – “society”, “elections”, “voters”, “juries”, “staff bailiff”, “criminal police officer”, “police warden”, “zemstvo”, “self-government”, “national economy”, “volost gathering”, “deanery office”. In English, almost everything is borrowed, starting with society, elections, voters, jury.

That is, I want to show that unknown Russian scientists in the 18th-19th centuries did an enormous and unappreciated work. The feat they accomplished in inventing and selecting thousands of new Russian words and concepts has been forgotten, everyone uses its fruits, but without thinking why we have “science” and not “science”. Thanks to their work, we have such an expressive and euphonious language that is unlike any other.

Yes, there are a lot of borrowings in Russian, more than in Czech, where there is no “music” and “theater” (hudba and divadlo), but there is nothing wrong with that, I think our ancestors found a reasonable balance between borrowings and word creation.

The problem is that today the traditions of Karamzin, Lomonosov and Pushkin are completely rejected and forgotten. Nothing is created. Even what already exists is rejected, for example, the “prefix”, which has almost universally been replaced by the “prefix”. As one linguist (!)-migrant said, “nobody speaks like that anymore,” they say, it’s a shame for a learned person to speak in Russian.

Or a “collider”: it would seem that the “push” is what it asks for. But no! For physicists whose lifelong dream is to get a grant abroad, the very thought of choosing their own word seems blasphemous. Although collider in Polish is zderzacz, the Poles, for all their pro-Westernness, were able to show independence. Naturally, for Czechs it is urychlovač, for Hungarians it is hadronütköztető, for Finns it is hadronitörmäytin (in both cases, a one-word hadron collider), and even for Azerbaijanis it is sürətləndiricisi. And we are again language slaves without fiction.

The same in biological classification: if earlier they used “genus”, “species”, “family”, etc., that is, they selected terms according to need, now “tribes” and “clades” have gone in a jamb, but no one includes brains .

You can often hear the thesis that since we do not invent or discover anything, we do not have the right to our words. But a steam locomotive with a steamboat is not a Russian invention. Oxygen and hydrogen were not discovered by Lomonosov or Mendeleev. (I remember how a certain migrant literary critic scoffed at my defending the established form of “repeated shock” against the “aftershock” that got into the speech. I think he would have scoffed in the same way in the 18th century: “oxygen – sour mouth! ha ha how divine it sounds in Latin – oxygenium!”)

Remarkably, the same public that stands for Latinisms and Anglicisms to death today, with might and main supports the complete Ukrainization and the purge of the Ukrainian language from Russianisms. At the same time, the literary Ukrainian language basically consists of those invented in the 19th–20th centuries. words, when the main goal was – “not to be like the Russians.” Hence flyers, not planes, propeller wings, not helicopters, kisen and a steamboat instead of oxygen and a steamboat. That is, it was fundamentally important for Ukrainian philologists to differ. And our educated people, who have seized power in philological science, do not laugh at this desire, but treat it with emphasized humility and respect. But with regard to their native language, they have a completely different approach: to steal as much as possible from English. This is understandable, any Russian language amateur performance seems dangerous to them. Today he wants to find a replacement for the “collider” – tomorrow he will not listen to his uncle from Washington.

We need linguistic sovereignty. A special military operation, sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation should direct our language policy towards import substitution and self-sufficiency. Just as the generation of Pushkin rebelled against the gallomania of their fathers, switching to a pure and harmonious Russian language, proving that it is in no way inferior to French, so the current generation can throw off the fetters of English and begin to think and speak clearly in Russian, begin to create and invent .