The State Duma approves the creation of the National Dictionary Fund

The State Duma Committee on Science supported the adoption in the first reading of the government bill on the creation of a National Dictionary Fund in the Russian Federation. We are talking about a publicly accessible portal that will unite the “norms of the modern Russian language” enshrined in classical normative and modern dictionaries. The Institute of Russian Language told Kommersant that the fund will include at least 33 dictionaries, and the search system will not only give answers about the rules of writing and pronunciation of words, but will also tell about the history of changes in these processes.

The government submitted draft amendments to the law “On the State Language of the Russian Federation” to the State Duma in January 2024. It is proposed to add Art. 4.1 on the creation of the National Dictionary Fund (NDF) – an information system “about the norms of the modern Russian literary language, enshrined in normative dictionaries” and “dictionaries recording information about the development of norms of the Russian literary language.” The fund should become publicly available, and the purpose of its creation is to post on the Internet “information about the norms of the modern Russian literary language.” The operator and customer of the NSF is the Ministry of Education and Science; its powers in this matter will be approved by a separate regulation by the government of the Russian Federation. The creation of the fund will cost 182.3 million rubles, according to the financial and economic justification for the bill.

From the conclusion of the State Duma Committee on Science, it follows that the fund is being created on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation and will become “a logical continuation of improving the mechanisms for ensuring the status of the Russian language as the state language.” Let us remind you that in February 2023 the law on the state language was changed. Now it talks about the need “when using Russian as the state language” to comply with literary norms, checking them with special reference books (they should be developed by a government commission on the Russian language). And federal authorities should not only “provide state support for the publication of dictionaries, reference books and grammars of the Russian language,” but also promote “the creation of information resources containing information about the norms of the modern Russian literary language.” The NSF should become such a resource. “In the context of digitalization of all spheres of life,” the creation of the fund “is of particular relevance, helping to increase the overall level of literacy and ensuring the preservation, dissemination and protection of the state language, and its popularization abroad,” says the conclusion of the Duma committee.

The first deputy chairman of the commission for the development of higher education and science of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Maxim Krongauz, previously explained that the need for a resource arose a long time ago and if citizens can understand in “one click” how to correctly “use this or that word, everyone will be comfortable” (see . “Kommersant” dated July 11, 2023). Doctor of Philology, Head of the Department of Ancient and Modern Languages ​​at Sretensky Theological Academy Larisa Marsheva called for taking into account the “variability and plasticity” of language, explaining that codification “always lags behind the real language norm,” and the NSF will help reduce such a gap.

It should be noted that in 2000, the portal “Gramota.ru” appeared on the RuNet (operates with the financial support of the Ministry of Digital Development). Dictionary entries are published on the portal and it is possible to check language norms. The editor-in-chief of Gramota, Vladimir Pakhomov, said that the project with the NSF would not be competitors, since the portal was originally created to check words by journalists.

Amendments to the fund were introduced to parliament in January 2024, but the development of the system has been going on since 2019, Maria Kalenchuk, chief researcher at the V. V. Vinogradov Institute of Russian Language and director of the NSF, told Kommersant. According to her, 33 dictionaries have already been prepared for the fund, mainly from the second half of the 20th – 21st centuries, but there are also books from the late 18th century. Among them are several explanatory dictionaries, as well as spelling, orthographic, etymological and “a whole series of historical ones, from the ancient Russian period to the present day.” “This is not just a set of dictionaries. The Foundation is intended as a tool for their use. For example, at the primary level a person is interested in how a word is written, pronounced, what it means and what grammatical forms it forms. But it will be possible to obtain other information – how the word has changed over time, how its meaning, spelling, emphasis in it have changed, and what phraseological units it can form,” the expert told Kommersant. Ms. Kalenchuk said that such information systems exist in Germany and Great Britain, but in Russia there were none until now.

Alexander Voronov