The deputies talked about the purity of the language – Newspaper Kommersant No. 232 (7433) of 12/14/2022

The State Duma adopted in the first reading a government bill that corrects the norms for the use of the Russian language as the state language. Now the Russian language is required to be used in government bodies, in elections, in courts, in the preparation of documents, in the media, in advertising and in some other cases, and the use of foreign words is permissible in the absence of their “generally used analogues”. The bill proposes to oblige to comply with the “norms of the Russian literary language”, comparing them and acceptable foreign words with reference books to be developed by the Cabinet. While some State Duma deputies were discussing the admissibility of the expressions “Petrushka went to an oversized second-hand trench coat,” others did not understand who would control compliance with the norms.

Project amendments in the law “On the state language of the Russian Federation” was submitted to the State Duma in October 2022 by the government of the Russian Federation. Now in this law the Russian language is proclaimed the state language, and Art. 3 obliges it to be used in a number of areas, including in government, in elections, in courts, when preparing documents and writing the names of geographical objects, in the media, advertising, when showing films and in other areas (for example, in notaries and radio communications in aircraft on the territory of the Russian Federation). Art. 6 of the law does not allow the use of words and expressions that “do not correspond to the norms of the modern Russian literary language (including obscene language)”. The amendments propose to compare these norms with dictionaries and reference books (they are to be developed by a government commission). It should be noted that some telegram channels and news agencies reported that the bill proposes to ban “the use of foreign words, with the exception of those that do not have commonly used analogues in the Russian language.” In fact, this provision is contained in Art. 6 of the law since at least 2013, while in 2014 a note was added to the document about the inadmissibility of obscenities in Russian when used as the state language. At the same time, the bill only proposes to check the admissibility of foreign words with the same dictionaries.

Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Tatyana Vasilyeva, who presented the project in the State Duma, drew attention to the norm on mandatory linguistic expertise, which, with the adoption of amendments, all “draft legal acts” will have to pass.

In general, the adoption of the document will allow “to increase the level of general literacy of citizens” and “correct use of the language,” Ms. Vasilyeva believes.

The co-speaker, the head of the Duma Committee on Culture, Elena Yampolskaya, immediately invited the deputies to “participate in the quiz”, reading out the translation of the poem “Dead Souls” into “modern Russian”, published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta (RG): “Petrushka went to oversized brown second-hand -hende trench coat and had a typical face. He was more sad-mood than talkative…”

Judging by the website of the RG, the deputy read out an excerpt from the “school classics in the retelling of the tiktoker”, published in November 2020. In this material, by the way, the publication suggested that the “modern grandmother” should not scold her grandchildren “for the words “densit”, “cool” and “crash”, because “this is a normal game for a young person with language and words.” However, Ms. Yampolskaya said that the committee stands for “the purity of the native language” and the fixing of norms in dictionaries. However, the deputy predicted that the necessary documents would appear no earlier than 2025, and in their absence, she proposed to adjust the laws on the media and advertising by the second reading of the amendments so that “all these illiterate accents, monstrous declensions of numerals, vulgarisms, almost obscenities on the air … ceased to be considered the author’s manner and style. How to deal with the fact that observance of the norms of the Russian language as the state language in the media and advertising is now spelled out in the law, Elena Yampolskaya did not explain. At the same time, the deputy believes that with the adoption of the document, “we will immediately get rid of all these open houses, sales, food courts, cashbacks, this lackey surzhik.” However, she assured, it would not be necessary to get rid of foreign signboards and trademarks yet.

State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party Sergei Leonov, meanwhile, did not understand who would control the implementation of the new norms. Nikolai Alekseenko from United Russia considered the Russian language to be “a living organism that develops and meets the requirements of the times,” and asked how he could hold the Bryansk Dialects contest in his hometown, where there are “a lot of their own specifics and some Surzhiks “. Tatyana Vasilyeva said that the government commission would have to decide on control and responsibility, and added for Mr. Alekseenko that control mechanisms would have to be “worked out with public organizations.”

“As I understand it, we can now take any speech, and we will find that many words are of foreign origin if there are analogues,” argued Alexei Kurinny from the Communist Party, who fears “possible excesses.”

At the same time, Mr. Kurinny has “great doubts about the feasibility (of the bill.— “b”) generally”. “Excesses and non-use of vocabulary that has become obvious to us,” would not like Ms. Vasilyeva, who hopes that the government commission on the Russian language, assembled from linguists, will again sort out this issue.

The draft was adopted by the State Duma in the first reading, 30 days were allotted for amendments.

Alexander Voronov