How the Russian language has changed

Any language is a dynamic phenomenon. Dictionaries and reference books do not forever fix the rules for its use, but only fix the rules of use at a certain stage. The Russian language is no exception. Today you will hardly understand the texts of written monuments of the 11th century, you can hardly and completely understand the correspondence of Pushkin's contemporaries, even the speech of your own great-grandmother would raise questions from you.

Instruction manual

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Most actively in the Russian language is changing vocabulary. Words are borrowed from dialects, professional dictionaries, foreign dialects. Most often this is due to the emergence of some concepts. So, recently “merchandisers” and “headhunters” entered the speech. At the same time, other words die or mutate. This usually happens when the thing that it denotes disappears in non-existence, or a synonym arises. Scientists invented a tricky device for computing - and instead of a long “electronic computer”, a short “computer” soon entered the language. And if earlier “fingers” and “cheeks” were replaced by “fingers” and “lanita”. The expansion of the commonly used vocabulary vividly characterizes society. For example, in the 1990s, a lot of criminal vocabulary appeared in the Russian language: “bot”, “kickback”, etc.

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Changes in spelling recorded in several reforms. The first was conducted by Peter I, eliminating duplicate or unused letters from the alphabet. And a few simplified drinking. In 1917-1918, several more obsolete letters were deleted from the Russian alphabet: yat, fitu, and decimal. and also abolished the obligation of a hard sign at the end of words and parts of compound words. In 1934, “y” was returned to the alphabet, in 1942 - “ё”. And before that in the dictionaries they wrote like this: iodine, yog, Yorkshire.

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The grammar of the Russian language has noticeably changed over ten centuries. For example, 600 years ago the dual number fell away - a special form of noun formation, if it was a couple of things or phenomena. It is reminded of the plural forms of some words: the ear - the ears (and not the ears, as would be the case with the usual plural). Another loss is a vocative case. The memory of him is kept by prayers (“Our Father

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”) And folklore monuments (“ son ”, “ mother ”). True, in fact, he continues to exist in modern Russian: “Mom! Dad! ” - children cry instead of the full “mom” and “dad”. In addition, before the Russian verbs there were four types of past tense with special meanings.