The Ministry of Education and Science published a draft law on the creation of the National Vocabulary Fund

The Ministry of Education and Science published a draft law on the creation of the National Vocabulary Fund, a state Internet portal with “information about language norms.” “Kommersant” learned from the developers of the system at what stage the work is. And he asked the linguists what they expect from the state language system.

The Ministry of Education and Science published for public discussion a draft amendment to the law “On the State Language of the Russian Federation”. It is dedicated to the creation of the National Vocabulary Fund (NSF) – an information system “which is a collection of information contained in dictionaries about language norms.” The purpose of the NSF is to place on the Internet “information about the norms of the modern Russian literary language.” The Ministry of Education and Science will be responsible for the creation and development of the National Dictionary Fund. Yesterday, the department was unable to promptly respond to Kommersant’s request.

Recall that in February 2023, the law on the state language was already changed. Now it speaks of the need “when using the Russian language as the state language” to comply with literary norms, comparing them with special reference books (they should be developed by the government commission on the Russian language). And the federal authorities should not only “provide state support for the publication of dictionaries, reference books and grammars of the Russian language”, but also contribute to the “creation of information resources containing information about the norms of the modern Russian literary language.” The NSF should become such a resource.

Doctor of Philology, First Deputy Chairman of the Commission for the Development of Higher Education and Science of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation Maxim Krongauz told Kommersant that the need for such a resource arose a long time ago: “Non-specialists most often turn to the Internet for information in order to understand how to use or pronounce one word or another. If they can do it in one click, everyone will be comfortable.” The linguist admits that the strict unification of the norm – “as was the case in Soviet dictionaries for speakers, even when the literary norm allows for variations” – impoverishes the language. However, with the right approach to compiling dictionaries, this can be avoided, he says: “It is a very important job to select a list of marks (short designations in dictionaries, most often indicate the stylistic affiliation of a word.— “b”). If the creators cope with this, we will be able to see all the richness of the Russian language.”

Doctor of Philology, Head of the Department of Ancient and New Languages ​​of the Sretensky Theological Academy Larisa Marsheva believes that the main thing in fixing the language norm is to clearly understand that “the norm itself is very changeable and plastic.” The expert notes that codification always lags behind the real language norm – the way the majority says. “The COVID-19 era, the time of the NWO – it all affects the vocabulary,” the expert explains. “New words appear, the old ones fade into the background, and codification must keep up with the norm.” Ms. Marsheva hopes that the NSF, “with the right professional approach,” will help close this gap. Separately, the philologist notes: despite all the attempts of specialists to fix a certain standard, the language norm still develops autonomously. Therefore, it is impossible to draw a line between a codified and an uncodified norm.

Teachers feel the need for an authoritative electronic resource with the rules of the Russian language, says Olga Levushkina, professor at the Department of Russian Language Teaching Methods at Moscow State Pedagogical University. “The headache of teachers is the habit of students to check the information on the first link on the Internet,” she says. “Students believe that they have turned to a dictionary, although this may just be someone’s incomprehensible opinion from a blog. And now we cannot recommend a specific proven resource due to its absence.” Ms. Levushkina notes that children are taught to work with classical paper dictionaries, but modern schoolchildren are reluctant to use them and continue to “increase illiteracy”, focusing on scattered Internet portals.

Although amendments to the NSF are just being submitted for consideration, the development of the system has been going on for several years. This is done by the interdepartmental scientific council at the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Maria Kalenchuk, chief researcher at the Vinogradov Institute of the Russian Language, told Kommersant. According to her, the council includes the most authoritative experts in the field of Russian lexicography; most of them are themselves authors or editors of dictionaries. “This is a state order, but we have done everything so that there are no officials in the council,” emphasizes Ms. Kalenchuk. Council members have already chosen 30 dictionaries that will form the information base of the NSF. “Among them, only publications recognized by the scientific community were chosen,” explains the professor. “In addition, these are dictionaries of various types: explanatory, spelling, orthoepic, and so on. We tried to harmoniously reflect the best dictionaries of different types and times of writing.

Maria Kalenchuk especially notes that the members of the council are not going to influence the language norms: in the NSF “there will not be a single word written by us.” “It’s kind of like a dictionary library, but with tools to use and retrieve different information. There will be no editing of articles,” the linguist assures. “In the middle of the 20th century, variance was not welcomed, but now we believe that the norm is, among other things, choice.” She notes that “there can be inconsistency between dictionaries.” According to Ms. Kalenchuk, with the help of the resource it will be possible to see how the norm has changed over time and what options exist today. Digitization, proofreading, technical editing of dictionaries are now underway, she says. Next year, programmers will join the linguists to work together on the interface of the digital platform.

It should be noted that back in 2000, a reference and information portal Gramota.ru appeared in Runet. It was created on the recommendation of the Russian Language Council under the government and is supported financially by the Ministry of Digital Development. Dictionary entries are published on this portal and it is possible to check the language norms. However, the editor-in-chief of Gramota, Vladimir Markov, believes that he and the NSF will not be competitors. According to him, Gramota.ru was originally created to check the words of journalists and “the functionality is still sharpened just for checking.” The NSF, according to Mr. Markov, will provide an opportunity for in-depth use of normative dictionaries in full and will be needed not only by ordinary people, but also by linguists.

Polina Yachmennikova