Who is Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak. Biography of Andrei Zaliznyak. Deciphering birch bark letters

We thank Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak and the Moomin school
for providing the transcript of the lecture.

I decided that today it's worth telling you briefly about what, in my opinion, is missing in school curricula - about the history of the Russian language.

The course of the history of the Russian language is taught in full at universities, sometimes for a year, sometimes for two years, so you yourself understand what it is in full. To try, however, to tell you something significant about all this in one lesson is a somewhat daring task. But I still think that this is not meaningless, although, of course, it will be necessary to mention various aspects of the matter from such a vast subject very superficially. I hope that in some way this will expand your understanding of how the language was formed, which we all know. I will have to repeat something from what I have already said a little in this audience on a different occasion, since these are related things, but you will bear with me. In the same way, I will have, among other things, to tell some well-known things. A significant part of those present should already know them, but again - be restrained, because for integrity we will sometimes need them. So, the conversation will focus on the main topics that arise in the study of the history of the Russian language.

The first small preliminary digression is to once again (because I have already talked to you about this) to responsibly declare the numerous inventions about the infinite antiquity of the Russian language to be nonsense. The fact that the Russian language existed three thousand years ago, five thousand years ago, seven thousand years ago, seventy thousand years ago - you can find similar statements in various writings. About those who are fond of this kind of fiction, it was wonderfully said that these are theories of how a person came from a Russian.

In fact, the history of any language with a certain name: French, Russian, Latin, Chinese - is the history of the period of time when this name exists. Moreover, we cannot draw any clear boundary that separates the language from the previous stage of its existence. Generational change with small changes from one generation to another occurs continuously throughout the history of mankind in every language, and, of course, our parents and our grandfathers speak the same language from our point of view as we do. We digress from trifles and generally believe that two or four hundred years ago we spoke the same language. And then there are some doubts.

Can you say that our ancestors, who lived a thousand years ago, spoke the same language as we do? Or is it still not the same? Note that no matter how you decide this question, these people also had their own ancestors who lived a thousand, two, three thousand years earlier. And each time from generation to generation, the change in language was insignificant. From what moment can we say that this is already the Russian language, and not its distant ancestor, which - and this is very significant - is the ancestor not only of our Russian language, but also of a number of related languages?

We all know that Ukrainian and Belarusian are closely related to the Russian language. The common ancestor of these three languages existed - by the standards of history - not so long ago: only about a thousand years ago. If you take not a thousand, but three thousand years, five thousand years, and so on deep into antiquity, it turns out that the people to whom we go back purely biologically are the ancestors not only of today's Russians, but also of a number of other peoples. Thus, it is clear that the history of the Russian language proper cannot be extended indefinitely into the depths of time. Somewhere we have to set some conditional start point.

In reality, such a point is almost always the moment when the current name of the language is fixed for the first time. That is, temporary s Here the boundaries turn out to be connected not with the essence of the language itself as a means of communication, but with the fact that the people who speak it call themselves some kind of term. And in this sense, different languages have very different depths of history. For example, Armenian language called by the same name hai, as it is now, for several thousand years. Some other languages have relatively recent history in this sense. For the Russian language, this is a period of about a few more than a thousand years, since the first mention of the word Rus belong to the end of the first millennium AD.

I will not go into the complex history of where the word itself came from. There are several theories about this. The most common and most likely of them is the Scandinavian theory, which consists in the fact that the word itself Rus not Slavic in origin, but Old Norse. There are, I repeat, competing hypotheses, but in this case we are not talking about this, it is important that this name itself begins to be mentioned in the 9th-10th centuries. and initially clearly applies not yet to our ethnic ancestors, but to the Scandinavians. In any case, in the Greek tradition the word grew up denotes the Normans, and it begins to denote our Slavic ancestors only from about the 10th-11th centuries, passing to them from the name of those Varangian squads that came to Rus' and from which the princes came Ancient Rus'.

Starting around the 11th century. this name extends to the Slavic-speaking population of the territory around Kyiv, Chernigov and Pereslavl South. During a certain period of the history of Eastern Slavs, the term Rus denoted a relatively small area, roughly corresponding to the current north-eastern Ukraine. So, for a long time Novgorodians did not consider themselves Russian at all, did not consider that the word Rus belongs to their territory. In Novgorod birch bark letters, as well as in chronicles, for some time there are stories that such and such a bishop in such and such a year went to Rus' from Novgorod, that is, he went south, to Kiev or Chernigov.

This is easy to trace through the annals. Such word usage is normal for the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. and only in the XIV century. we see for the first time that the Novgorodians, fighting with some of their external enemies, call themselves Russians in the annals. Further, this name expands, and from about the 14th century. it already corresponds to the entire East Slavic territory. And although at this time in this territory there are already the beginnings of three different future languages, they are all equally called Russian.

In a remarkable way, this term narrowed again later: now we call Russian only a part of the East Slavic population, namely, that which can be called otherwise Great Russian. And two other languages in this territory: Belarusian and Ukrainian - have already formed as independent languages, and the word Russian broadly, they are no longer generally applied to them. (True, about two hundred years ago, such word usage was normal that all this is a Russian population, which has a Great Russian part, a Little Russian [now Ukrainian] part, and a Belarusian part.) This is how the expansion first occurred, and then the narrowing of the term “Russian ".

Most of you have an idea about the genealogical tree of the Russian language to one degree or another, but nevertheless I will briefly repeat this information. Now this genealogical tree in a simplified form must be derived from some reconstructed ancient language, called Nostratic, to which the languages \u200b\u200bof a very significant part of the inhabitants go back the globe. It has existed for a very long time; estimates vary, but apparently on the order of twenty-five thousand years ago.

One of its branches is the Indo-European branch, which includes most of the languages \u200b\u200bof Europe and India, hence the name itself Indo-European languages. In Europe, they are an absolute majority, in India - a significant part, but also, in general, the majority. In the east, these are the Indian and Iranian groups; in Europe - Latin with the Romance languages that arose from it: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian; and the Greek branch, which in antiquity is represented by the ancient Greek language, and now by modern Greek. Further, the Germanic branch: German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, English; and the Balto-Slavic branch, which combines the Baltic languages and Slavic. Baltic is Latvian, Lithuanian and now extinct Old Prussian. Slavic, well known to you, is traditionally divided into three groups: South Slavic, West Slavic and East Slavic languages.

Now there are some adjustments to this traditional division of the Slavic languages, but the traditional scheme is just that. The South Slavic languages are Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovenian, Macedonian; Western - Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian. And the East Slavic languages, originally united according to the traditional scheme, are Russian (otherwise Great Russian), Ukrainian and Belarusian.

After this general introduction, let us touch on some of the more technical aspects of the history of language. First of all, it should be understood that language is an unusually complex mechanism that includes a number of aspects, each of which may have some specificity and some dynamics and instability. This is primarily a variety of styles of the same language. Within any language there is what can be called high style or good literary language, and there is the opposite pole - vernacular, vulgar speech. Between them there are various kinds of intermediate layers such as colloquial, everyday language. All this is fully observed in the Russian language, including at the present moment, as well as at any moment in history.

This is one side of the matter. The other side of the matter is that any language is heterogeneous in the dialectal sense, in any language there is a wide variety of local dialects, and sometimes even dialects that differ quite a lot from each other. From this point of view, languages can be different, that is, more or less monolithic. There are languages in which the differences are so great that mutual understanding is not at all easy. An example is modern Italy, where the dialect of the extreme south and the dialect of the north, say Venice, differ so significantly that understanding between them, although possible, may well be difficult. And what they have in common is precisely the literary form of the language. The situation is the same in many other languages of the world. She is especially strong in Chinese, where the northern and southern dialects in their oral incarnation do not actually provide the possibility of direct mutual understanding.

In some other languages, the situation is more favorable. So, in the Russian language, the differences in dialects are small, the native speaker of the literary language has no special problems in understanding even when communicating with the most distant dialects. Of course, we will not understand some words, in some cases there may be individual misunderstandings, but on the whole, this distance is still relatively small.

But, I repeat, differences between dialects and dialects exist in any language. Thus, several different linguistic mechanisms coexist, interacting with each other and generating various complex effects in the way the central literary form of the language is formed. The literary language, as a rule, to some extent absorbs elements of different dialects. It rarely happens that the literary language exactly coincides with the dialect of, say, the capital of the state, as it sometimes seems at first glance. Similarly, for the Russian language, the situation is such that although our literary language is very close to the dialects of the Moscow region, it still does not completely coincide with them. He absorbed whole line elements more distant to the north, south, east and west.

Further. The complexity of the mechanisms of functioning of any language is determined by the fact that no language exists in complete isolation from its neighbors. Even in such extreme cases as, for example, Iceland, an island country where, it would seem, there are no contacts with its neighbors, there are still some connections. Someone travels from Iceland to the outside world, someone comes to Iceland and brings with them some elements of foreign speech. So even the Icelandic language, although it is more protected from foreign influences than any other, nevertheless, to some extent, perceived these influences.

As for the languages that closely communicate with each other in neighboring territories, then mutual influence and mutual penetration is very active. It is especially active where there is a two-part, three-part or multi-part population in the same territory. But even if state and ethnic boundaries are relatively clearly defined, contacts are still quite intense. This is expressed, first of all, in the penetration into any of the languages of a certain number of foreign words. And a deeper influence consists in the penetration of some elements of the grammatical structure of neighboring languages.

In particular, the Russian language, which is not separated from its immediate neighbors by any seas, has always been in intensive contact with them both in the direction of the west and in the direction of the east, partly in the direction of the south and even to some extent in the direction of the north, although the population there is no longer so dense. . So in modern Russian there are traces of influences from almost all four corners of the world.

In general, the degree of foreign influences at different moments in the life of a linguistic community or a given state can be very different. It is clear that these influences become especially intense during times, for example, of foreign occupation or with a massive introduction of a new population into some part of the old territory, etc. And in calm periods of weak communication, they will be less intense. In addition, it often happens that more or less foreign influence can be strongly promoted or, on the contrary, opposed by purely internal events in the history of a given community. It is quite obvious that in the last twenty years the Russian language has been in a state of unusually active absorption of foreign elements, primarily English, with an intensity many times greater than what it was only half a century ago. This is happening in connection with major social changes, the opening of international contacts on a scale that was unthinkable two or three decades ago. Implementation in progress new technology, new elements of a foreign civilization, etc. We all feel this ourselves.

There have been times like this in the past. There was, say, in the history of the Russian language a period of intensive penetration of elements of the French language, into more early era- intensive penetration of German elements, and even earlier - intensive penetration of Polish elements.

I will give some illustrations of how the modern Russian language was fueled in various ways with words from other neighboring languages. Of course, influences concern not only words, but it is more difficult to talk about it, and words are just a very visual thing.

This story can be started from any point - actually from the Russian language or, delving further into the past, from the Proto-Slavic language. It is possible, generally speaking, to consider even borrowings from the Proto-Indo-European time, but this will be too far for us. If we start from the Proto-Slavic, then it is essential to point out that it contains a significant layer of Germanic borrowings, which were later preserved not only in Russian, but in all Slavic languages X. They took root and became part of the actual Slavic lexicon.

Now, about some of them, it’s even hard for us to believe that these are not native Russian words; but historical linguistics inexorably shows that many words have just such an origin. For example, the word prince, surprisingly, is exactly the same word as the German Konig or English king. Its ancient form kuningaz, which was borrowed, eventually gave Russian word prince. Or let's say the word bread is the same word as English loaf"bun". This borrowing, most likely, should be attributed to the period of wide expansion of the Goths, when these active Germanic tribes owned vast territories of almost all of modern Ukraine, a significant part of the Balkans, Italy, Spain, part of France, etc. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that in all the languages of these countries there are some traces of the ancient Gothic rule.

It is worth mentioning Crimea specifically, since the Goths lived in Crimea until the 16th century. Dutch diplomat of the 16th century Busback was surprised to find that he understood some words in the speech of a Crimean resident speaking an unknown language. It turned out to be the Crimean-Gothic language, the latest remnant of the Gothic language, which had died out in all other places.

Germanic borrowings in Slavic are also, for example, the word regiment or verb buy; in modern German the corresponding Old Germanic words gave Volk"people" and kaufen"buy'.

Here it must be pointed out that if the word is borrowed from German, then the German word in itself O m Germanic was not necessarily native. Often it was itself borrowed from somewhere else. So, the German word that gave the German kaufen, is a borrowing from Latin. And whether the corresponding word is originally in Latin is still a debatable question. Indeed, it often turns out that latin words borrowed from Greek, and Greek from Egyptian.

I'll take a word from another row: emerald. Its initial origins are established not quite reliably. Most likely, the original source was some kind of Semitic language, from where the word was borrowed into Sanskrit. During the campaigns of Alexander the Great, it was borrowed from Sanskrit into Greek, from Greek - into Arabic, from Arabic - into Persian, from Persian - into Turkish, and the Russian word comes from its Turkish form emerald. So here linguistics can establish six or seven stages of the “journey” of this word, which resulted in our Russian word emerald.

Some of the foreign borrowings do not cause us any surprise. For example, we call a certain fruit kiwi. It is clear that the word is not Russian. Until relatively recently, no one suspected that such a thing existed. Some 20-30 years ago this word did not exist, because the subject did not exist. That is, when the object itself comes from some distant country, it is quite obvious that it comes along with its name. And then it is quite natural that we call it as it was called there. There are a huge number of such examples in the Russian language, many hundreds. Perhaps even thousands.

But, of course, examples like bread, or regiment, or prince where everything seems to be our own. Let's say words letter is also an Old German loanword. It's the same word as the name of the tree beech. Initially, there were wooden beech plates on which something was carved, and, accordingly, the sign itself carved on them bore the same name. And in Russian there are both words: and beech, And letter Both are borrowed from Germanic.

Another example: word donkey; but it can still be said about him that this animal is still not found at every turn in Russian lands, that is, it can be classified as exotic animals. But in some other cases it will not work. So, Germanic borrowings are also the words glass, boiler, artist, hut and many others.

I will not list borrowings from Greek, they have been throughout the existence of the Russian language. The most ancient of them are still quite simple words, For example ship or sail. Sail is the same word as Greek pharos, - in the Slavic version. There are a lot of Greek borrowings among the words of the high style. Some of them are borrowed directly (say, Eucharist from the church lexicon), part - by tracing, that is, the transfer of the original word by Slavic means ( blessing, piety etc. - all these are calques, exact equivalents of Greek compound words with their components).

Throughout a long history, starting from the Proto-Slavic time and further almost to the present day, there has been a strong influence Oriental languages into Russian. In this sense, the Eurasian position of the Russian language, which, on the one hand, has contacts in the direction of the West, on the other hand, in the direction of the East, is very clearly reflected in the language. Sometimes Eastern borrowings are roughly called Tatar, but this is very conditional. In a broad sense, they are Turkic, since there are many Turkic languages \u200b\u200bthat have been in contact with Russian. This is Turkish, and Tatar, and Chuvash, and Bashkir, and Chagatai - the ancient literary language of Central Asia, and the Kipchak language of the Polovtsy, with whom our ancestors have been in contact since antiquity, and the language of the Pechenegs. So it is often not possible to establish from which particular Turkic language this or that word is borrowed, since these languages are closely related to each other. It is important that this fund of such words in the Russian language is very large.

It is clear that many of these words denote typical Eastern concepts. But there are many words of a more general meaning; so, of Turkic origin, for example, words such as shoe, boar, cap,brick, product, lumber room, Cossack, cauldron, mound.

Often a word is borrowed in a different way than it has in the source language. For example, the word mess, which now stands for a mess, actually does not mean it at all in Turkish: there it is a designation for a certain type of fried meat.

Very often, Turkish or Tatar, like German, turn out to be transmitters for other Eastern languages, in particular, for such a huge source of vocabulary for the entire East as Arabic; another such primary source is Persian, less often Chinese.

Such is, for example, the word watermelon which came to us from Persian through Turkic media.

Note that a linguist can recognize such words as not actually Slavic, even without knowing their origin. Yes, the word watermelon has a structure that is abnormal for Slavic languages: the root of the word consists of two syllables, and with an unusual set of vowels.

Using this word as an example, one can even show how linguists can generally establish that a word came, say, from Turkish into Russian, and not from Russian into Turkish.

This is a typical situation that is useful to understand. The principle here is always the same: if a word is native, then it breaks up into meaningful parts within the framework of a given language and has related words in it. For example, in modern French there is a word snacks It is not, of course, an active word in the French language, but it exists nonetheless. And one could say here too: “Perhaps our word snacks borrowed from French? Why not, if in French and in Russian they say the same: snacks?»

The answer is very simple: snacks- a Russian word, not a French one, because in Russian it is perfectly divided into meaningful parts: prefix behind, root cous, suffix To, ending And. Each of them is meaningful and appropriate. For the root cous you can find other words for the prefix behind there are many other examples, there are a huge number of words with the suffix To. And in French, this word falls out of all the norms of the French language. So French words are not built, there is nothing similar.

Here is the main criterion: within the framework of one language, the word is natural, while in other languages it betrays its heterogeneity by a number of signs and there are no words related to it.

The same with the word watermelon. In Persian it is watermelon, Where char it's 'donkey', and buza- "cucumber'. Together it turns out" donkey cucumber', and, by the way, it means there not a watermelon, but a melon.

Among the words of Eastern origin, there are also many that may surprise us. We are not surprised that the word emerald foreign: the emerald is really not very common in Russian life. And here is the word fog at first glance it gives the impression of a Russian. Nevertheless, it was born in the Persian language, and there its sound composition has its own foundations. From Persian it passed into Turkish, and from Turkish into Russian. Similar origins are, for example, bazaar, barn, attic.

Sometimes words are misleading. Linguistically interesting in this sense is the word flaw. It denotes a certain defect, shortcoming, and sounds very Russian: something was removed from some object or from some norm, and thus it turned out to be an object with a flaw. It turns out, however, that this is not a Russian word at all, but a borrowing from Persian, either directly or through Turkish.

In Persian, this is a word with a slightly different order of phonemes: ziyan; it means “lack, vice” and is quite derivable from the Iranian lexicon. And flaw is the form that ziyan adopted in Russian, that is, the word has undergone some change, giving it meaning. Indeed, ziyan says nothing to the Russian ear, but flaw this is already almost clear, especially since the meaning is already ready - this is a “flaw”. This is what is called folk etymology: the people slightly correct the foreign word in the direction of greater clarity.

It's great that the word ziyan in a somewhat less explicit form is found in Russian in another word very well known to us - monkey. Monkey is Arabic-Persian Abuziyan. Word ziyan has a second meaning - "sin, vicious action'. And abu is the ‘father’. So the monkey is the ‘father of sin’, for obvious reasons.

Western languages also contribute to the Russian vocabulary.

First in order is the closest language of the Western world to us - Polish. This is a related language, but it absorbed the words of Western languages much more actively than Russian, firstly, because of its proximity to the Germanic and Romance world, and secondly, due to Catholicism. So the Polish vocabulary is saturated with Western elements incomparably more strongly than the Russian one. But many of them switched to Russian. This happened in the 16th-17th centuries, in the era of active Polish influence. A mass of new words then entered the Russian language; in some cases the Polish form is directly visible, in others it is established only by linguistic analysis. In most cases, however, these are not actually Polish words, but words that in turn came from German, and into German - usually from Latin. Or they came to Polish from French, but got into the Russian language already in the Polish form.

This series includes, for example, the words knight, mail, school, sword- all of them have a Polish form in Russian. Let's say in a word school there would be no initial shk, would cleavage, if it were borrowed directly from Western languages. This is the German transition effect that gives w in Polish, and from Polish it is w goes into Russian.

There are a number of Swedish loanwords, for example herring, herring. One of the wonderful Swedish loanwords is the word Finns. Because, as you may know, the Finns not only do not call themselves Finns, but, strictly speaking, a normal, not very trained Finn cannot even pronounce this word, because there is no phoneme in the Finnish language f. Finns call themselves suomi; A Finns- this is the name that the Swedes called them. phoneme in swedish f is, and it occurs frequently. In Swedish, this is a meaningful word, with the meaning "hunters'," seekers' - from the Swedish verb finna"to find' (= English. find). This word has entered not only the Russian language, but all the languages of the world, except Finnish. So the country is called by the Swedish name - this is such a particularly refined case of foreign borrowing.

The next cultural and lexical onslaught on the Russian language was made by the German language, mainly in the 18th, partly in the 19th century. True, in Peter's time - along with the Dutch. In particular, most of the maritime terms are borrowed from the Dutch language - in accordance with the hobbies of Peter I and with his direct ties with Holland, where, as you know, he even worked as a carpenter. Words cruiser, skipper, flag- Dutch. There are dozens of such words.

There are even more German words, as the German influence was wider and longer lasting. And again, some of them are easily identified as German, for example hairdresser. But there are also words of German origin that you would never recognize without special analysis. About the word plane it definitely does not occur to me that this is not a Russian word: it seems that it is so named because it has something cut down or cut down. In fact, they do something else, however, we perceive it as a very good name. It's actually a German word. Rauhbank- "cleaning board".

Another tricky word baking sheet on which they are fried. A completely Russian type of word. But it's German Bratpfanne- "frying pan". Simplifying and Russifying, Bratpfanne gave not just a Russian, but a folk Russian word baking sheet. There is also an option baking sheet- also not random and even older.

Painter, dance, patch, soldier, pharmacy and many others - all these words came directly from the German language, but now they have taken root very well.

Next, 19th century gave an extensive layer of French borrowings. Many of them have taken root quite well, let's say bottle, magazine, nightmare, courier, scam.

Continuing this list, one could also cite Portuguese, Spanish, old English borrowings. And there is nothing to say about new English - you yourself, perhaps, can name them more than linguists.

Thus, you see how strongly neighboring language arrays influence the vocabulary of a language. In particular, for the Russian language, this story includes communication with at least two dozen languages. And if we count isolated cases, then with long-distance connections there will be dozens more.

Let's move on to next topic: let's talk about style differences within the Russian language at different points in its history. It turns out that in this respect the Russian language has been in a difficult situation since ancient times.

For all languages with a certain cultural tradition, it is normal that there is a language of high style, perceived as more elevated, more refined, literary. And this situation is not always the same. So, there are languages where one of the variants, dialects, dialects that exist within the same language, which for some reason has received more prestige, is used as a high style. In Italy, for a long time, the dialect of Florence was considered the most prestigious and, accordingly, the Tuscan dialect since the time of Dante was taken as the most refined, highly literary form of speech on the Apennine Peninsula.

And in some languages, a situation arises when not their own language, but some foreign one is used as a high-style language. Sometimes it may not even be related to its own, then this is pure bilingualism. But more often there are examples of this kind using another language, closely related to the one spoken by the people. In the Romanesque world throughout the Middle Ages, Latin was used as a high language, despite the fact that the own languages of these Romance peoples come from Latin and Latin is close to them to some extent. Not enough to understand, but, in any case, they have a lot of common words.

Sanskrit played a similar role in India. It was used along with those languages that had already gone very far from the Sanskrit state and were used in everyday communication. In essence, there is something similar in the current Arab world, where there is the classical Arabic language of the Koran, which is already very different from the living languages of Morocco, Egypt, Iraq. The high language, which is considered the only one suitable for a certain type of texts - religious, highly solemn - remains classical Arabic for the Arab world. And for everyday communication there is the language of the street.

A similar situation was in the history of the Russian language. I gave foreign examples to show that this is not a unique case, although, of course, the situation is far from being the same in all languages. In the history of the Russian language from the time when we are dealing with the word Russian, two Slavic languages exist and are used: Russian proper and Church Slavonic.

Church Slavonic is, in essence, the Old Bulgarian language, closely related, but still not identical to Russian. It was the language of the church and of any text requiring stylistic loftiness. This left an imprint on the further development of the Russian language throughout its history and continues to influence to some extent to this day. The Russian language turned out to be, as it were, linguistically bifurcated into the natural that arose in the everyday, colloquial language, and that which corresponded to Russian forms and syntactic turns in the Church Slavonic language.

Of course, you know the most striking difference: this is the so-called full agreement and disagreement. Fullness is side, watchman, shore, head With -oro-, -here-, -olo-, and disagreement - a country, guardian, shore, chapter. The Russian form has two vowels here, and the Church Slavonic one.

Now we do not perceive the word at all a country as something alien to us. This is a normal part of our natural vocabulary with you. And it's natural for us to say chapter of the book, and it does not occur to me that this is something imposed. We don't feel like talking book head, just like we won't try to name a country side.

The Russian language throughout its history has absorbed a huge number of Church Slavonic words, which occasionally mean the same thing as in Russian, but almost never one hundred percent. Sometimes it's just not the same at all; So, head And chapter- these are completely different meanings, they could well be called words that have nothing in common with each other. In other cases, it's just a stylistic nuance, but it is clearly felt. Let's say enemy And enemy is, of course, more or less the same in meaning, but in the word enemy there is a connotation of nationality, folklore, poetry, which in the word enemy absent.

The modern Russian language has used these Church Slavonic units as separate words or separate variants of the word, and thus has already mastered them.

The same thing happened in the history of the Russian language and with syntactic constructions. And here it must be said that, since for most of the history of the Russian language it was Church Slavonic that was literary and high, our literary syntax is much more Church Slavonic than Russian.

This is where I really express my disappointment. Because now, in many respects, that authentic folk Russian syntax, which is best seen on birch bark letters, has been lost. In many respects, they are admired precisely by the fact that there are absolutely no Church Slavonic turns in them - this is pure colloquial Russian. Unlike our literary language. The Russian literary language at every step uses syntactic devices that are not found in the living language, but come from Church Slavonic.

First of all, almost all participles: doing, doing, who saw, seen etc. The only exception is the short forms of the passive participles of the past tense. Made is the Russian form drunk is the Russian form. And here is the full form: made- already Church Slavonic. And all the sacraments on -yushchy, -ing Church Slavonic, which is already evident from the fact that there are suffixes -usch-, -yusch-. I did not say this, but you probably know yourself about the ratio of Church Slavonic sch and Russian h. Night, power- Church Slavonic night, be able- Russian. For -yushchy, -ing, -ing Russian correspondences, therefore, would be - uchy, -yuchy, -yachiy. They are in Russian, but in Russian they are no longer participles, but simply adjectives: ebullient, dense, standing, sedentary, recumbent. Their meaning is close to participles, but still not the same with them. And the real participles, which can be used in syntax precisely as a verb form (and which we really learned to use as a convenient syntactic tool, because they help us, for example, save ourselves from unnecessary words which), represent Church Slavonicism.

Less well known is another phenomenon of this kind. In everyday conversation, we often deviate from how we should write if we handed over our literary essay to the editor. And you wouldn't get approved if your school essay you started the sentence like this: Do you know what I saw yesterday?. Meanwhile, the initial A - this is a completely normal form of colloquial Russian speech: And here's what I'll tell you. And after that, there was this and that. In live speech A almost most sentences begin. And this is exactly what we observe in birch bark letters. Word A at the beginning of a phrase means something like this: "Here's what I'm going to tell you now." But in the norms of the Church Slavonic language this word was absent. The Church Slavonic norm not only did not use it, but also forbade it. That is, it prohibited, of course, not in the sense of a state edict, but in the sense of editorial pressure, which is still in effect. Editor you this A cross out now.

Excuse me, this is outdated now, there are almost no editors now. But in the recent past, editors were an essential part of any publishing business. It is now that a mass of books comes out with monstrous misprints and flaws of all kinds, because they were not edited at all; came new era with an inattentive attitude to the quality of the text. But even a relatively recent era required the actual observance of the Church Slavonic norm, although the editor, of course, did not know this. Russian literature also observes this norm, despite the fact that the same authors in everyday speech, referring to their own children or wife, spoke, of course, in normal Russian, almost every sentence starting with A.

Such details show that the duality of the Russian language, which has two sources: Russian and Church Slavonic, is expressed not only in the choice of words and in their forms, but also in syntax. And Russian literary syntax is thus noticeably different from Russian colloquial syntax.

Not without reason, about 25 years ago, a new direction in the study of the Russian language arose - the study of Russian colloquial speech. They began to write their own grammars for it, they began to describe it as if it were a separate independent language, with respect for every element of what is actually heard. The very possibility and the very need to approach this in this way is largely a consequence of this ancient situation that developed in the tenth century, more than a thousand years ago, when a related, but different language, Church Slavonic, came to Rus' as a literary and high language.

I'll move on to the next aspect.

This is that aspect of the history of the Russian language that is related to dialects and dialects, to dialect division and interaction. I outlined the traditional scheme in the most general form above. It consists in the fact that around the tenth century. there was a single Old Russian language, also known as East Slavic, from which, over time, by branching, developing some differences, three modern East Slavic languages \u200b\u200bare originated: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. And in each of these three languages, according to the traditional scheme, there are even thinner branches. The Russian language has, say, Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Novgorod, Kursk dialects, Siberian dialects, etc. In Ukraine, a number of dialects can also be distinguished; the same in Belarus. And inside, for example, a block of Vologda dialects, still small groups of some districts or even sometimes individual villages stand out. Here is a tree that branches from a powerful trunk to the smallest branches at the end.

This is a simple traditional scheme. But in it, as I have already warned you, you will have to make some adjustments. To a large extent, these adjustments arose after the discovery of birch bark letters.

Birch-bark letters, which in their vast majority come from Novgorod, showed that in Novgorod and the surrounding lands there was a dialect that was more different from the rest than was imagined before the discovery of birch-bark letters. In it, even some grammatical forms were not the same as in the classical Old Russian language known to us from traditional literature. And, of course, there were some of their own words.

At the same time, an amazing, unexpected and unpredictable event from the point of view of the representations that existed before the discovery of birch bark letters was as follows: it turned out that these features of the Novgorod dialect, which distinguished it from other dialects of Ancient Russia, were most clearly expressed not at a later time, when, it would seem, they could already gradually develop, but in the most ancient period. In the XI-XII centuries. these specific features are presented very consistently and clearly; and in the XIII, XIV, XV centuries. they weaken somewhat and partially give way to more common features for ancient Russian monuments.

More precisely, the statistics simply change. So, in the Old Novgorod dialect, the nominative case of the masculine singular had the ending -e: livestock- this is the Novgorod form, in contrast to the traditional form, which was considered common Russian, where the same word had a different ending: in antiquity -ъ, and now zero. The difference between the common Old Russian livestock and Novgorod livestock found from ancient times. And the situation looks like this: in the letters of the XI-XII centuries. form nominative case the masculine singular in about 97% of cases has an ending -e. And the remaining 3% are easily explained by some extraneous reasons, for example, the fact that the phrase is church. From this we can conclude that in the ancient period the end -e was practically the only grammatical arrangement for the nominative case singular. And in letters of the XV century. the picture is already significantly different: approximately 50% livestock and 50% livestock.

Thus, we see that the features of the Old Novgorod dialect partially lose their brightness with the passage of time. What does this mean and why was it such news and surprise for linguists?

This means that, along with the traditional scheme, which looks like a branching tree, the opposite phenomenon must also be recognized in the history of languages. The phenomenon that something originally united is divided into several parts is called divergences, that is, splitting, divergence. If, however, the opposite occurs, that is, something originally different becomes more similar, then this convergence- convergence.

Little was known about convergence, and its very existence in the history of dialects and dialects Old Russian language almost never discussed and did not attract attention. Therefore, the evidence of birch bark letters turned out to be so unexpected. If in the ancient Novgorod birch bark letters of the XI-XII centuries. type endings livestock make up 100%, and in the 15th century - only 50%, and in the remaining 50% there is a central (it can be conditionally designated as Moscow) ending livestock- this means that there is a convergence of dialects. Partial rapprochement, the Novgorod dialect still does not completely lose its features, but already expresses them inconsistently, in contrast to antiquity, when it was consistent. We see a typical example of convergence, that is, the convergence of what was originally different.

And this forces us to thoroughly reconsider the traditional scheme of how the dialect relations of Ancient Rus' were arranged. We have to admit that in the X-XI centuries, that is, in the first centuries of written history, on the territory of the Eastern Slavs, the division was not at all the same as one might imagine on the basis of today's division of languages: Great Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. It ran very differently, separating the northwest from everything else.

The northwest was the territory of Novgorod and Pskov, and the rest, which can be called the central, or central-eastern, or central-east-south, simultaneously included the territory of the future Ukraine, a significant part of the territory of the future Great Russia and the territory of Belarus. Nothing to do with the modern division of this territory into three languages. And it was a really profound difference. There was an ancient Novgorod dialect in the northwestern part and some more familiar classical form of the Old Russian language, which equally united Kyiv, Suzdal, Rostov, the future Moscow and the territory of Belarus. Relatively speaking, the zone livestock to the northwest and the zone livestock in the rest of the territory.

Scott And livestock is one of the very significant differences. There was another very important difference, which I will not talk about now, because it would take a very long time. But it is just as solid, and the territorial division here was exactly the same.

It may seem that the northwestern part was small, while the central and southern parts were very large. But if we take into account that at that time the Novgorodians had already colonized a huge zone of the north, then in fact the Novgorod territory turns out to be even larger than the central and southern ones. It includes the current Arkhangelsk region, Vyatka, the northern Urals, the entire Kola Peninsula.

And what will happen if we look beyond the Eastern Slavs, look at the West Slavic territory (Poles, Czechs) and the South Slavic territory (Serbs, Bulgarians)? And we will try to somehow continue the revealed line of separation in these zones. Then it will turn out that the northwestern territory is opposed not only to Kyiv and Moscow, but also to the rest of the Slavs. In all other Slavs, the model is presented livestock, and only in Novgorod - livestock.

Thus, it is revealed that the northwestern group of Eastern Slavs is a branch that should be considered separate already at the level of Proto-Slavism. That is, Eastern Slavism developed from two initially different branches of the ancient Slavs: a branch similar to its western and southern relatives, and a branch that is different from its relatives - Old Novgorod.

Similar to the South and West Slavic zones - this is primarily the Kiev and Rostov-Suzdal land; and it is essential that, at the same time, we do not see any essential differences between them for the ancient period. And the ancient Novgorod-Pskov zone is opposed to all other zones.

Thus, the current Ukraine and Belarus are the heirs of the central-east-south zone of Eastern Slavism, which is more linguistically similar to Western and Southern Slavism. And the Great Russian territory turned out to consist of two parts, approximately equal in importance: northwestern (Novgorod-Pskov) and central-eastern (Rostov, Suzdal, Vladimir, Moscow, Ryazan).

As we now know, these were the two main components of the future Russian language in dialect terms. At the same time, it is not easy to say which of these two parts took part in the creation of a single literary language to a greater extent. If you count by signs, then the score is about 50 to 50.

As already mentioned, the central and southern dialects of the Old Russian language differed from Novgorod in a number of important features, but did not differ from each other in any significant way. The new borders between the future Great Russia and the future Ukraine, together with Belarus, largely coincide with the political borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the XIV-XV centuries, when the expansion of Lithuania led to the fact that the future Ukraine and Belarus were under the rule of Lithuania. If you map the borders of the possessions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 15th century, it will be approximately the same border that now separates the Russian Federation from Ukraine and Belarus. But the fifteenth century - this is a later time in relation to our ancient articulation.

Let us consider more specifically a number of dialectal phenomena and their correspondence in the modern literary Russian language.

Words with root type structure whole, with initial ce-(from former cѣ-), are typical for the central-eastern region. In the northwest, these roots had an initial ke-. Behind this is a very important phonetic phenomenon, which can be talked about at length; but here I have to confine myself to a simple statement this fact. Another related fact is that in the northwest they spoke On the hand, while in the east it was on the hand. Now we're talking whole, But On the hand. This is nothing but a combination of whole that comes from the east, so On the hand which comes from the northwest.

The nominative singular masculine form in the northwest was city(as well as livestock). And in the east she was city. The modern literary Russian form, as we see, comes from the east.

Genitive singular female: in North-west - sister, in the east - sister

Prepositional case: in the northwest in the ground, on a horse, in the east - into the lands, on horseback. Literary forms - northwestern.

Plural feminine (take the example of a pronoun): in the northwest - my cow, in the east - my cows. The literary form is oriental.

Former dual number two villages is the northwestern form. Eastern form - two villages

help, eastern help. Literary form - northwestern.

Third person present tense of the verb: in North-west lucky, in the east - lucky. The literary form is oriental.

Imperative: northwestern take, eastern - you're lucky. Literary form - northwestern.

Northwestern gerund carrying, eastern - luck. Literary form - northwestern.

You see that the ratio is really about 50 to 50. This is what our modern Russian language is morphologically. This is a clear result of the convergence of the two main dialects - like a deck of cards, where the two halves of the deck are inserted into each other.

Linguistics in some cases can give, if not a definitive, then a conjectural answer, why in some points the northwestern member of the pair won, and in others the eastern one. Sometimes it can, sometimes it can't. But this is not the most important.

First of all, the very fact that the modern literary language obviously combines the features of the ancient northwestern (Novgorod-Pskov) dialect and the ancient central-east-south (Rostov-Suzdal-Vladimir-Moscow-Ryazan) dialect is essential. As I have already said, this fact was unknown before the discovery of birch bark letters. A much simpler scheme of a tree branching by pure divergence was presented.

From this follows, by the way, a very significant consequence for some of today's not linguistic, but social or even political ideas. This is that the slogan, popular in present-day Ukraine, of the primordial ancient difference between the Ukrainian branch of the language and the Russian one, is incorrect. These branches are, of course, different. Now these are, of course, independent languages, but the ancient articulation did not take place at all between Russian and Ukrainian. As already mentioned, the Rostov-Suzdal-Ryazan language zone did not differ in any significant way from the Kiev-Chernigov zone in antiquity. Differences arose later, they date back to a relatively recent, by linguistic standards, time, starting from the XIV-XV centuries. And, on the contrary, the ancient differences between the northwest and the rest of the territories have created a special situation in modern Russian, where elements of two originally different dialect systems are combined.

Please questions.

E. Shchegolkova ( Grade 10): You spoke about the place of foreign languages. What is it like in English in India?

A. A. Zaliznyak: Yes, the current English language in India does indeed have a special position, since it is not just a foreign language along with the local one. In India, as you know, there are a huge number of languages, it is believed that up to two hundred. Thus, in some cases the only way communication between Indians is that both will know English. In this situation, the English language finds itself in a functionally very special role, not just an imposed foreign language but also means of communication. So this is somewhat similar to the situations that I described, but in view of the multilingualism of the country, the case is perhaps special.

- You said that before the XIV century. Novgorodians did not call their language Russian. Is there a word that the Novgorodians used to call their language and themselves?

A. A. Zaliznyak: They called themselves Novgorodians. It is well known that the question "Who are you?" the normal answer of a simple person - a peasant, a fisherman - who lives somewhere permanently, will be: "We are Volgars, we are Vologda, we are Pskov." He will not say that he is Russian, Tatar or French, but will name a relatively narrow region. This is not a nation or a special language, it is essentially a territorial indication. For example, it was difficult to get Belarusians to call themselves Belarusians, because they are used to talking about themselves: Mogilev, Gomel etc. Only special propaganda brought them to their consciousness that they should call themselves Belarusians. This concept was actually formed very late.

G. G. Ananin ( a history teacher): Did I understand correctly that you associate the formation of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages exclusively with the political moment of the Polish-Lithuanian influence?

A. A. Zaliznyak: Not exclusively. Exceptional - that would be overkill. But it defined the boundaries of the division. As always happens in different parts of the territory, there, of course, various phonetic and other changes naturally occurred. And they were not connected with political reasons. But some separation from each other of the two communities, which began to develop separately, was largely political. And the actual linguistic development was, of course, independent.

– Why did two languages develop: Ukrainian and Belarusian?

But this is a very difficult question. It is being very hotly and sharply discussed now in Ukraine and Belarus. The differences between these languages are significant. At the same time, the Belarusian language as a whole is much more similar to Russian than to Ukrainian. The proximity between the Belarusian language and the South Great Russian dialects is especially great.

The situation is also complicated by the fact that Ukraine big country, and Belarus is not very big. And someone may be tempted to look at it as such a small appendage of the great Ukraine. But historically it has been exactly the opposite. Historically, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania used the language, which is correctly called Old Belarusian. Although the Lithuanian princes were Lithuanians by origin and spoke Lithuanian in everyday life with their servants, in all other cases of life they spoke Old Belarusian. And all state activity in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was carried out in the Old Belarusian language; sometimes it is also called Western Russian. So culturally, the selection of Belarus precedes the allocation of Ukraine. This creates extremely difficult problems, which I would not even like to formulate here, since whatever I say should cause a protest from the opposite side.

- When can we talk about separating the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages from Russian? At least a century.

A. A. Zaliznyak: Not from Russian. This is a division of what is called Western Russian or, otherwise, Old Belarusian, which had a Ukrainian dialect in the south. There was a purely linguistic emphasis, simply as a function of time. Conscious selection by some writers, writers, consciously calling themselves Belarusians or Ukrainians, occurs rather late, around the 18th century.

– The modern Russian language has developed as a result of convergence. Are there other examples of the same convergence?

A. A. Zaliznyak: Yes, I have. Now I am not very sure that I will immediately give you such a thing so that there is a balance of the components. Because balance is a unique case. And if we are not limited only to those examples where there really is an balanced participation, then, of course, this is literary English. The Old English zones varied quite a bit in language, and the enormity of modern English orthography is largely a product of that. Say why what is written bury, read take? But simply because they are different dialect forms. The dialect had its own pronunciation, but at the same time the old spelling remained, in which there should have been a different reading. There are many such examples in English. Although, of course, in English it is not so bright.

- Can you still give some explanation, a small example, why the northwestern or eastern form won?

A. A. Zaliznyak: An example can be given, but not a small one. Because I will have to back off so far that it will be half a lecture. You are asking me a very difficult task. I can only try to describe the scheme of what would have to be explained here. I would then have to consider not only illustrative examples, but the entire declension system in one dialect and the entire declension system in another. In each it is about fifty phenomena. And I would show that if at a certain point such and such a change occurs, then this will generally create a more consistent system. But you yourself understand that if I now begin to analyze fifty of those phenomena and fifty others, then the audience will not approve of you a little.

A. B. Kokoreva ( geography teacher): I have a question about verbs withdraw And gape. Does linguistics allow such a thing that in different, completely unrelated languages, one-sounding words can arise?

A. A. Zaliznyak: It could be by accident, of course. Moreover, it is unbelievable that this does not happen anywhere. It's unlikely, but every unlikely event will ever happen.

A. B. Kokoreva: Then the question arises, what is the proof that the word withdraw is Persian in origin?

A. A. Zaliznyak: The fact is that this word is fixed in the monuments in the form flaw recently, and in the XVI century. it is written ziyan.

– Can we talk about a separate Pskov dialect? Are there any borrowings from there?

A. A. Zaliznyak: I constantly spoke to you either about the Novgorod or the Novgorod-Pskov dialect. In fact, there is some linguistic difference between Novgorod and Pskov. And this difference is remarkable in such a way - perhaps this is unexpected against the background of what I told you - that the real purity of the Novgorod dialect is observed in Pskov. The true 100% Northwestern dialect is represented precisely in Pskov, while in Novgorod it is already slightly weakened. Apparently, this can be explained by the fact that Novgorod is already on the way from Pskov to the east, to Moscow.

For example, if the Novgorod-Pskov dialect is somewhat crudely described as a set of 40 characteristic phenomena, then it turns out that in Pskov all 40 are represented, and in Novgorod - 36 from this list. Pskov in this sense is the core of the dialect.

Dialectologists know that the Novgorod region is an interesting area for research, but still greatly spoiled by the many migrations that began with Ivan III and took place especially intensively under Ivan IV. In contrast to the Pskov zone, which remarkably preserves antiquity in the villages - better than anywhere else.

So you very correctly named the Pskov dialect, it is indeed one of the most linguistically valuable. It is not for nothing that a wonderful dialect dictionary, one of the two best, is the regional dictionary of the Pskov dialect. The dialect is chosen in particular for this reason, and the vocabulary is very sensibly done. It is not finished yet, but has many dozens of issues.

Thus, it is a dialect that has its own face and value. Some words can be borrowed from there. But it is difficult to say with certainty that there was no such word in Novgorod. You can say that there was a word when you once found it in some village. But to say that in some area there was no word - do you understand how much it takes to assert this?

- This is Persian. gape- same root as ours gape?

A. A. Zaliznyak: No, there is not gape, there already finished word ziyan. It is not the same root as Russian, it is of a different origin. It's a noun and gape as a verb it is actually a Russian word.

- A word burden associated with monkey?

A. A. Zaliznyak: No, burden this is a Russian word. Normal about- And -bond, how in prisoner. There is consonance, but the words are from completely different sources.

E. I. Lebedeva: Thank you very much, Andrey Anatolievich!

Photo of a 10th grade student of the M-T school Anastasia Morozova.

"Elements"

Is academician A.A. Zaliznyak a dilettante?
Academician A.A. Zaliznyak is an amateur?
V.A. Chudinov Sometimes I look at the site against linguistic freaks to find out who the righteous anger of these tireless workers of science is now directed at, who sometimes do not disdain even a swear word or an obscene caption under a picture. And with great surprise I learn that it turns out that I am the most important and the most terrible of them. And now they have included Academician A.A. Zaliznyak, who gave a lecture at Moscow State University against amateurs from linguistics. And examples of such dilettantism are most often cited from my works. Therefore, I would like, as I constantly do, to listen to the opinion of a more experienced linguist and learn from where I have gaps. I will not hide that I am flattered that I am now being quoted by academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Therefore, something in my research does not suit them.

I will try to quote the entire article by Academician A.A. Zaliznyak (HALL) without exception and comment on the relevant provisions.

Where did it come from, how did this or that word come about? These questions are of great interest to many. In search of an answer, a person who is far from linguistics often begins to make guesses based on the random similarity of words. Amateur linguistics is not such a harmless hobby as it might seem at first glance. ABOUT common mistakes amateur linguists and the dangers of an amateurish approach to language learning, tells the well-known linguist Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak. With his kind permission, the editorial board publishes an extended version of the text of the lecture given at the Third Science Festival at Moscow State University.

« Freedom of the press and the advent of the Internet are the great achievements of our era. But any steps of progress also have their shadow sides. Today, the rapid development of dilettantism and the decline in the prestige of professionalism have turned out to be such a shadow side. Representatives of various sciences and arts speak about this. For example, Alexander Shirvindt bitterly writes in his memoirs about Zinovy Gerdt: “In the era of the widespread victory of amateurism, any manifestation of high professionalism looks archaic and implausible.».

A very curious passage. First of all, I pay tribute: the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences does not quote some Golda Meir or Herzl, little known to students of Moscow State University, but everyone’s favorite Russian Shirvindt and Gerdt (although Russians often pronounce these names as Shirvind and Gerd, but only because of their professional ignorance. In this sense Russians - the most undemocratic Russians. It would be just great if there were as few of them in Russia as possible).

Further, I am surprised: if Shirvindt recalls Gerdt with such words, then it follows from this that Shirvindt assigns him, Gerdt, the role of the winner, that is, amateur, which he criticizes for lack of high manifestation professionalism. This follows from the very construction of the phrase: Shirvindt writes in his memoirs about Zinovy Gerdt bitterly. If Shirvindt wrote about Gerdt with joy, then the reader would understand that Gerdt is a professional. And so - no. For if Shirvindt wrote with bitterness about the lack of professionalism of others, then Zaliznyak's sentence would have a different word order. True, a vague suspicion creeps in that the Russian academician does not speak Russian very well (however, for modern Russia this is not so important), but I indignantly dismiss this assumption as unworthy. A linguist, by definition, must know the language of his country of residence.

« Amateurishness in the area of reasoning about language is more widespread than in other areas - because of the illusion that no special knowledge is required here. Everyone knows that there are such sciences as physics and chemistry; and that there is also a science of language - linguistics - too many do not even suspect. Try to imagine an amateur book about celestial bodies, where the question of whether the moon is the size of a plate or a coin is discussed. Meanwhile, amateur writings on the language of exactly the same level circulate in considerable numbers and are readily read and taken seriously by a fairly wide audience.».

Also a very interesting argument. For example, on the site against linguistic freaks, right after my photo there is a photo of Dragunkin, professor of linguistics, doctor of philological sciences. Naturally, according to Zaliznyak, he had never heard of what linguistics was. To teach - teaches, but what it is - has no idea. Thanks to Andrei Anatolyevich for opening our eyes to him. And at the same time on me, because I also teach a number of linguistic disciplines. Having an appropriate education.

« A particularly sad indicator of the state of our education is that among the authors of amateur essays on the language, and among their readers and admirers, we meet quite educated people and even holders of high academic degrees (of course, other sciences). I must warn you that today I will have to state a lot of things that have long become common truth for linguists, the basics of the profession. If in such a lecture someone thought of expounding the basics of mathematics, or physics, or chemistry, it would be absurd, since everyone got to know them already at school. But, unfortunately, no basics of historical linguistics are taught at school, and almost nothing is known about them to people of other professions.

I prefer not to name specific names of amateur linguists - especially since many of them just want to be mentioned, even in condemnation, in order to look like serious opponents with whom they argue. I am trying to oppose not specific authors, but a whole amateur trend, in essence, rather monotonous in its declarations and in its mode of action.».

Again, wonderful: Zaliznyak firmly understands that the basics of linguistics absurd, but - by some strange coincidence - begins to state them. After all, such a discipline as the Russian language is studied at school, and, among other things, in the historical aspect. And then he admits that it happened a whole amateur trend, in essence, rather monotonous in its declarations and in its mode of action. Well, any scientific the direction is precisely distinguished by the unity of methods. But the actions of amateurs do not possess just such unity, everyone acts in his own way. This I can say as a methodologist of science. So here the academician, how to put it mildly, ... speaks not quite professionally. Naturally, he considers the competing direction amateurish, since new methods of research are unknown to him. Well, as for his fear of mentioning my name, this caution of the academician is quite understandable: Zhivov in the program “Gordon Quixote against Zadornov” simply seethed with indignation at a specific address, and made a very depressing impression on viewers.

« I will make an exception only for the most famous of these authors - academic mathematician Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, whose performances as an amateur linguist I have already had occasion to criticize in print. The absolute majority of those who are familiar with his so-called new chronology are by no means familiar with his mathematical works, but with books on the history of the most different countries(Russia, England, Rome, Greece, Egypt, etc.), which in the image of Fomenko has nothing to do with the usual ideas. Many take these books seriously because they naively believe that the story they tell is revealed through mathematics. But in reality, at best, only Fomenko's assertion that the traditional chronology is incorrect could have anything to do with mathematics. Fomenko did not even prove this statement of his. But in this case, something else is even more significant for us, namely: the main content of Fomenko’s books is detailed stories about what the history of all countries supposedly was, different from traditional ideas: what conquests were made by this or that people, who were the rulers of empires, what they sent out orders, etc. And these stories have nothing to do with mathematics, but are almost entirely based on reasoning about words - geographical names and names of people. And alas, these arguments contain exactly the same gross and naive errors that amateurs without degrees and titles, that is, entirely belong to the field of amateur linguistics».

Again, I note with regret that although I am not among the admirers of Fomenko, Academician Zaliznyak is still telling a lie here. Fomenko considers the most different methods verification of the current chronology, including horoscopes and data on solar eclipses, which have nothing to do with linguistics. In other words, Fomenko criticizes the chronology systemically and not purely linguistically.

« True, now Fomenko's fantasies on the topic of history are already drowning in a stream of other print and television appearances of the same kind, uncontrollably reshaping - each time in their own way - the history of Russia and the whole world. But still, it is regrettable, especially for the scientific and university environment, that a person of high scientific and university status turned out to be among the irresponsible amateur dreamers.».

But isn't this an indication that the existing historiography has already proved its fallacy in a number of cases? And here it is not the herald who brought the bad news that is to blame, but the lie of the current historiography that it preaches.

Language interests people. "For most people, the language they speak is not only necessary for practical life a tool, but at least for some moments also an object of lively disinterested interest. People of all walks of life and levels of education ask questions about language from time to time. Most often, these are questions about which is more correct from one or another of the options encountered in speech, for example: A l or pr O gave? exp e mouth or uh expert? wherever he is neither was or wherever he Not was? In these cases, the answers may also have some significance for practical life. But questions often arise, so to speak, disinterested, generated by pure curiosity. For example: what exactly does the word lurid mean? Where did it come from? When did it appear? Or: is there any connection between the words crumpled and mint? or court and vessel? Or potassium and calcium? or bite and bite? And so on.»

From his academic distance, Andrey Anatolyevich sorts out cases of appeals to linguists by readers of the level of the Krestyanka magazine. As if people were interested in purely applied orthoepic and etymological problems, but not in the general origin of the Russian language. He specifically seeks to fence himself off with private questions, the answers to which have long been known to science, in order to reduce much more serious linguistic problems to them.

How amateur linguistics is born. "School tradition, unfortunately, is such that all such issues remain outside the scope of education. The school teaches grammar and spelling of the native language and elements of a foreign language, but does not give even the most initial ideas about how languages change over time. As a result, in order to satisfy a lively interest in issues related to language, most people read or heard on radio or television. Many people try to get answers to these questions through their own reflection and conjecture. Fluency in their native language gives them the feeling that all the necessary knowledge about the subject has already been given to them and it remains only to think a little to get the right answer. This is how what can be called amateur linguistics is born.».

We are publishing a transcript of a lecture by an outstanding Russian linguist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Philology, Chief Researcher of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University Andrey Anatolievich Zaliznyak read on May 28, 2010 at the Polytechnic Museum as part of the Polit.ru Public Lectures project. The lecture was organized jointly with the Polytechnic Museum.

Next lecture Andrey Anatolyevich " Novgorod Rus according to birch bark letters" - September 8, 2012, from 16.00 to 17.00 V lecture halls of the Muzeon park, as part of the "Public Lectures of Polit.ru" at the BOOKMARKET book festival.

Lecture text

Thank you. I have to talk about the now widespread amateur fabrications on the subject of the history of words and the history of entire languages. Here a possible objection immediately arises: is it worth criticizing such fabrications? Does it have any significance for our real practical life. Here is the disaster at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station or explosions in the mines or the failure of the newly built great Volgograd bridge - these are real, real tragedies. And if someone likes to fantasize about the origin of words, even if he invents all sorts of fables at the same time, what harm can be from these trifles?

I will answer like this. Now in our country, people who are able to think not only about the current moment, but also about the future, are sounding the alarm about the threat of a new Middle Ages. The authority of science, previously unusually high, is steadily declining among the broad masses. Its place is taken by various forms of the irrational: divination, magic, evil eye, love spells, prediction of fate by the name or surname of a person and belief in various kinds of paranormal and parascientific. What we have just heard about how many people sign up for parapsychology compared to the actual scientific lecture, alas, makes it extremely clear that this is exactly the case. And at the same time, the level is inexorably decreasing. school education. I will quote the words of Vladimir Igorevich Arnold, which he said at the turn of the millennium, however, quite recently: "Given the explosive nature of all kinds of pseudosciences like astrology in many countries, in the coming century ( that is, now in the current) it is quite likely that a new era of obscurantism, similar to the medieval one, will begin. The current flowering of science may be replaced by an irreversible decline. "This is one of the many quotes that can be quoted on this topic from the statements of scientists and cultural figures. The attack on science, unfortunately, is essentially supported by the ruling elite. The recent scandal that erupted in Russian Academy science in connection with the attacks on the commission of the Academy of Sciences for the fight against pseudoscience, coming from high-ranking officials, shows more clearly than anything else that this is exactly the case. And in the media, we often see statements such as that scientists are, generally speaking, parasites, eaters of people's money. Television, which could help with its enormous influence on minds and souls, is actually playing a very bad role. Since it is unfortunately now driven by the pursuit of ratings, this pursuit dictates with absolute necessity a situation where they will in any case prefer what is more catchy, more sensational, regardless of whether this is true, which ultimately means stupidity. audience. And they, alas, quite willingly provide their screen for various kinds of superstition, for magic and for all kinds of sensational pseudo-discoveries. Experts from various professions bitterly point out the acute shortage of qualified personnel in various branches of the national economy and other places where real work is needed, especially middle-level personnel: the older generation is leaving, they complain, and there is not enough full-fledged replacement for him.

And now, more and more often, catastrophes like the one that occurred at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station occur, when just the middle link of workers was not able to fulfill the instructions corresponding to the case. Such things testify to the developing indifferent and incomprehensible attitude towards questions of both science and technical correctness.

All this concerns not only Russia. In particular, Arnold's statement mentions not only Russia, but also other countries. In fact, the intellectual current called postmodernism, started about half a century ago by the works of Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, introduces the concept of the absence of truth and the existence of opinions alone. This so-called "postmodernist paradigm", initially eagerly perceived as a sign of a new freedom, in fact, now brings a lot of destruction. Having begun as some kind of intellectual fashion, this postmodernist paradigm is spreading much more widely and, in fact, is now capturing science to some extent. This is the idea that the truth is not just hard to find, but it does not exist, but there are only different opinions on this issue. And the next step - that all opinions are just different texts, strictly speaking, from this point of view, they are no different - one text says one thing, another text says another. And this is all that remains in the place of what was once the concept of true and untrue, right and wrong. I think that there is a connection between this seemingly lofty, distant and philosophical concept, and the real behavior in the lives of a large number of people who are gradually weaning themselves from the rigid opposition of true and untrue, right and wrong.

Therefore, I see a connection between these seemingly different circumstances. What is happening is certainly also a discrediting of such humanities, like linguistics and history, turns out to be part of this process. The attitude towards science, although, of course, it is not the same - if we talk, say, about the attitude towards physics and about the attitude towards linguistics - there, nevertheless, it is nevertheless characterized by a certain unity, and it consists in the fact that respect as a whole is falling. If you are taught that linguistic scientists are worth nothing, then you will very easily extend this notion to the fact that, apparently, scientists, the Academy of Sciences and so on, were valued too highly, and should be put in their place.

The idea of the equality of all possible opinions, which is extremely flattering, in particular, to the numerous young people living on the Internet, when it opens up an immediate opportunity for them to realize their opinion on any issue and send it to millions of possible users, creates a situation where it is practically possible to express the opposite opinion about any stable idea and, it would seem, accepted, becomes a matter of everyday life, natural and extremely frequent. On the Internet, we meet an incredible number of know-it-alls who, on any issue, boldly and confidently speak out - as a rule, the opposite of what traditional science says about this matter.

This kind of destruction of ideas about right and wrong, scientifically tested and just came to mind a few minutes ago, is, of course, a very destructive idea. I do not think that the idea of equality of opinion, as proposed by Derrida, included such extremes as we are now reaching. Hardly. I think Derrida would have recoiled if he had been told, for example, that the idea that there were concentration camps, and there was Auschwitz, and there was the Shoah, and the idea that it was all fiction and it never happened, have the same value. Nevertheless, from the point of view of strict postmodernism, this is exactly the case. Two ideas, two opinions that need to be expressed now in parallel - if you said one, then you must mention that there is also an opposite opinion. These are the kinds of situations that make us think that it still makes sense to try to protect traditional values.

In the scientific community, the position is quite common, which consists in the fact that one should not fight against fictions such as amateur writings about the history of words or the history of languages, because this is an ordinary childhood illness that will pass by itself. Alas, it does not seem to me that this optimistic point of view is confirmed by practice. Over the past 10-15-20 years, the circle of this kind of amateur compositions has expanded unusually, and, what is most distressing, the circle of consumers of these compositions, the circle of admirers, is also very large. They, of course, satisfy a certain need to know something sensational, especially something from which it will follow that previous statements, which were considered stable and unshakable, turn out to be completely unnecessary - you can set out the exact opposite concept in one or two sentences in a minute or two. and believe in it.

As far as linguistic writing of this kind is concerned, one more side must be pointed out, which is very significant from the point of view of social influence. This is something that amateur linguists extremely rarely stop at just laying out their idea of where this or that Russian word comes from. They almost always go further and draw conclusions about history from their initial calculations. Sometimes about a relatively recent history - a few centuries, sometimes about a huge history, numbering thousands and tens of thousands of years - completely fantastic, always contradicting what the traditional knowledge of history says. Moreover, almost always it is not just a new picture, but a new picture, ideologically directed. For example, if we are talking about Russia, then to depict some kind of perfect, unlimited power of the Russian nation in insane antiquity. I make a reservation, because although we are talking about Russia, but exactly the same things are observed in other peoples - I will not name them so as not to offend anyone. And absolutely similar things are written about the insane antiquity of the corresponding people; and in relation to this ethnos, ideas are expressed such that all other peoples of the world originated from it. As you can imagine, this is no longer indifferent in terms of influencing the minds of the general public.

For all these reasons, I still consider it necessary, as far as possible, to give clarifications on this matter and try to appeal to those who are still ready to reasonably evaluate this kind of statements.

Amateurism in language is more widespread than in a number of other sciences, for the reason that linguistics is almost never studied at school. At school, they study the grammar of the native language, some basics of a foreign language, but, say, the concept of what happens to the language in the course of history, how the language changes, what are the connections between different languages - this circle of topics is completely absent in the school, and an ordinary person who does not have a linguistic background knows almost nothing about it. Against this background, of course, crazy inventions find a much freer response.

While criticizing this kind of construction, I will nevertheless avoid naming names. For a very simple reason: because it is well known that lovers of this kind are unusually happy when they are mentioned, even with the most terrible curses, because they see in this themselves the most valuable thing - advertising. And in this sense, television renders an extremely bad service to society, which from time to time arranges so-called disputes between representatives of science and representatives of this kind of pseudoscience, since representatives of pseudoscience and parascience always win morally in them. Even if they are logically completely shattered, they achieve a magnificent goal - they appeared on the screen, their names were recognized, and they were able to look like opponents worthy of argument. Therefore, although I will give various examples from real compositions this kind, unfortunately, very numerous, I will refrain from doing so.

I will, however, make one exception - for one very famous name, the mention of which will no longer add any advertising to him, since this person is too widely known. We are talking about academic mathematician Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko - the main, I would say, representative of this kind of "linguistic movement". They may say: "How so? We are talking about mathematics, what does the linguistic movement have to do with it?" This is very important in this case. Without in the least disputing Fomenko's merits in mathematics - it would not be my business to evaluate him at all - he is a respected and honored person there - I cannot help but admit that when he goes beyond mathematics and invades the field of linguistics and history, he leads himself exactly as the most banal amateur, ignorant and naive. Most of the examples I will quote from his works, since he is, I would say, the greatest danger to minds. A large number of people take seriously what he wrote on the history and on the history of words, since he has the authority of an academic mathematician. Believing that if a person is a mathematician and mathematical academician, then he cannot speak nonsense on any issues whatsoever. This, unfortunately, is not confirmed. It turns out that outside of his direct area, a person can say God knows what.

The following is essential. Fomenko likes to claim that everything he offers to the public is based on a solid mathematical foundation. And those who believe this naturally take his statements at face value, because as yet the reputation of mathematics in society is unusually high, and the guarantee of something mathematical means that it must be true. But the following is essential. Let me remind you that the main idea of the so-called "new chronology" according to Fomenko is that everything that we know about the history of almost all countries of the world is a gross delusion - that practically nothing that is told about events of more than 300 -400 years ago, in reality, it did not happen that the history of all countries was not at all the same as we taught it in school and how it is taught in universities. This applies to Russia, and Western Europe, and Egypt, and China, and India, and almost all countries of the world - in all cases, according to the idea of \u200b\u200b"new chronology" real story lasts much less time than we think, we do not really know any events older than the tenth century AD. It is argued that this is proved mathematically, on the basis of an analysis of astronomical phenomena - most of all astronomical phenomena - and some other calculations of a mathematical nature, which, of course, I will not delve into. The following is essential. Even if we assume that this part of the statements of this system is true (looking ahead, I will say that I claim that this is not so - but nevertheless), then the maximum that Fomenko could achieve with the help of his mathematical methods is to conclude that the traditional view of history is wrong. That, in fact, what is described for some 1st century AD or 5th century BC did not actually happen in those days. If it really were true that the whole of history should be compressed into ten centuries, then one might imagine that the conclusion should be drawn that the usual history is wrong. But a huge number of books by Fomenko and Nosovsky are being published, devoted not to this at all, but to the story of what, in fact, according to their concepts, the history of Russia, Egypt, England, Rome and so on was - with a lot of details, so these volumes have hundreds of pages, which tells about which country attacked which other, which emperors sent messages to which parts of the globe, how peoples reacted to these messages ... And a host of other events that take up tens and hundreds of pages of fiction. How can a mathematician know this? How can any mathematics or astronomy not only establish that the dates were wrong, but also answer the question of who really ruled, what kind of children he had, what subordinates he had, what countries he went to? sent his troops and so on. It is absolutely obvious that this has nothing to do with mathematics. And what's more, if you open Fomenko's latest books - and they come out annually - then there aren't even any references to mathematics and astronomy. He is already frankly writing from beginning to end about history and these events, except sometimes to say that in some other books "we have already proved something mathematically."

What are all these volumes really based on? And they are based on amateur linguistics and nothing else. Because the only material that the author possesses is words - the names of geographical places and the names of people, from which, using the methods of amateur linguistics, that is, his own inventions about what a word means and where it came from, he draws unusually far-reaching conclusions about who really was who, what kind of person is identical to another person, and comes to the most incredible conclusions, such as that Ivan Kalita and Batu are one and the same person, and so on. Well, a lot of other identifications, you can’t list everything.

The following is essential to me. Regardless of the first, mathematical part, about which I also undertake to assert that it is incorrect, but about which there is no need for me to talk now, I insist that the second part - and it is precisely this part that is known to the public immeasurably more than the first , - there is simply fiction. I think that for one person who read at least one mathematical work by Fomenko, there are 200 people who read his works not at all mathematical, but about what the history of Ancient Rus', Rome, and so on really was. So this second part, which is a pure exercise in amateur linguistics, just refers to what it makes sense to present quite accurately and show to what extent naive, ignorant and contrary not only to all linguistic knowledge of specialists, but simply to common sense, statements about the words and about the languages that are used. And it is amazing that the most diverse representatives of what I call amateur linguistics are extremely similar to each other. They use almost the same techniques. Both Academician Fomenko and some student who has not graduated from the university, who has taken up this kind of invention, make the same gross and most naive mistakes. It's sad, but true. Since, naturally, the maximum confidence in such cases on the part of the public will be in the venerable academician, I repeat, I will take examples mainly from his writings, and not from the works of less eminent authors.

Amateur linguistics actually responds to a certain natural need of a person - the need to answer some questions that he has in connection with his language. Each of us speaks the language completely, this does not cause us any problems, but from time to time anyone becomes interested in some issue, so to speak, disinterestedly, without any practical purpose other than pure curiosity. Let's say where such and such a word comes from, where my name comes from, where the word comes from Moscow and so on. School education does not answer any of these questions. Unless some fragmentary, scrappy information received on television or from books can answer this question to some extent. And many believe that, generally speaking, it is possible, with a little thought, to find the answers to this question yourself, especially since we have been given full knowledge of our native language, Russian in this case. Therefore, it seems that nothing else is needed. Moreover, a significant number of people simply do not know that the science of linguistics exists. Such a science is not on the school list, and the fact that there is some kind of discipline with its own rules, with its own achievements is a great innovation for a very significant part of the public. This is actually the basis for amateur linguistics. Another thing is that a significant number of people are engaged in this, as it were, frivolously, as such "home entertainment" and not attaching much importance to it. But a certain number of people go so far as to turn into such, so to speak, "professional amateurs" who go very far in this kind of thinking and even write books.

I note right away that this kind of activity should not be confused with games with words. Word games are a wonderful, pleasant, sweet activity that we are all ready to engage in to some extent: puzzles, charades, or such a wonderful game that philologists love, called "Why don't they say?". I, perhaps, will even introduce you to how this game is built, it is so captivating. This is about the same as charades: the word is divided, if possible, into some meaningful parts, and for each meaningful part either a synonym, or an antonym, or some word associated with it is invented, and then they ask: " Why don't they say something?" And the answer will be: "Because they say ..." and they give out the hidden word. I'll give you an example: say, why don't they say "whose face is red"? This is one of the most successful, I would say, cases of application of this game. And because they say: "al-someone-face."

(Laughter, applause)

It is clear that a very pleasant, funny game. The inventiveness of some of our colleagues reaches great heights in this game. The only difference is that a linguist will play this game with great pleasure, and an amateur linguist will say with an extremely high probability: "Ah! I figured out the origin of the word" alcoholic "! ". Wonderful! Everything fits!"

(Laughter, applause)

This will be the most typical course of amateur linguistics, and further it will be written with great seriousness. Well, I haven’t seen this specifically, but there are a lot of very similar things. It would be, I would say, still a very ingenious move. More often there are much less convincing and more stupid moves. Therefore, when people are engaged in leisure word games, there is absolutely no amateur linguistics in this. This is a wonderful game, wit and fun.

Amateur linguistics is a completely different thing when a person believes himself and convinces others that he has discovered the real origin of the word. Now, if he, for example, said: “Ah! I now know where the word "alcoholic" comes from.

The most typical action of an amateur linguist is to see two words that sound alike or even coincide, and say: "Ah! So one came from the other." These two words may be from the same language, but it may be, say, one word is Russian and the other is Chinese, one is, say, English and the other is Papuan. It doesn't matter. If they are similar, then the idea arises in the mind of an amateur linguist that it cannot be that there is no connection here. And he makes this connection.

I'll bring some artificial example, but there are plenty of them. Let's say some English net well it looks like russian No, it's true? But it means something else, really. It seems to be the meaning of "network" and the meaning of the word No they didn’t even lie close to each other, it’s impossible to link them in any way. But this is precisely the remarkable property of amateur linguistics: there are no two concepts that he could not connect. Here, for example, try to link the meaning of "network" and the meaning of the word No. For example, like this: "a network is where there is no way out for fish."

This will be very similar to the usual amateur explanation. And the next move will be serious: “Ah! so the British took this word from us. It is obvious!". One could, of course, say: "Why not the other way around?" But this is not accepted by amateurs.

The fact that all the words are taken from Russian is something you will find in all such writings, with approximately the same course of explanation.

What to say about this? How funny and obvious. But here, unfortunately, what I was warned about more than once affects: “What are you preaching to people who have a sensible look at things? You're talking platitudes because it's completely obvious nonsense." But for those who, on the contrary, are already inside it, everything is completely different, it is very difficult to move them. “There is a connection,” they say, “please, the words are the same, it cannot be by chance.”

Well, on quite a serious level. There are few phonemes in the language, a few dozen at most.

Boris Dolgin. Maybe we should introduce the concept of a phoneme? Because it is just in school linguistics, in my opinion, is not given.

Andrey Zaliznyak. Okay, thanks for that clarification. For the time being, however, I will confine myself to saying that the phoneme is a certain linguistic refinement of the concept "sound of language". For simplicity, we can assume that this is enough for us here. I could just talk about sound, but it would be a little unnatural for a linguist, so "phoneme" is easier to say. But we will consider that for our story these are synonyms. Hence, the three sounds here are, respectively, three phonemes in each case.

So, I repeat, there are not so many different phonemes - in some languages there are about 20, in some there are about 40, sometimes, in some exceptional languages, such as Caucasian ones, there are more, but still not too much more. This means that the number of possible combinations is not at all infinite, especially if you take short words, like triphonemes, like here. The phonemes of different languages do not exactly match in pronunciation, but, nevertheless, the similarities are very large, so that identification is very easy. If it were not so, then we would not be able to record the pronunciation of various other languages \u200b\u200bin Russian transcription. You open a newspaper and read about events taking place somewhere in Africa, in some African village - the village will be named and written in Russian letters, right? Therefore, everything will be transposed into Russian phonemes. Maybe with some inaccuracy - after all, Africans can pronounce sounds that are somewhat different from Russians, but similar enough for you to use the same 33 letters of the Russian alphabet in transcription as for Russians. That is, practically for us, and even more so for an amateur linguist, any word of any language is some combination of Russian letters. And if so, then, therefore, we are practically dealing with an arsenal of possible combinations of these 33 letters.

Considering that there are now about 6,000 languages in the world, in each language - well, some have a slightly larger lexicon, others have less - in any case, these are tens of thousands of words, sometimes hundreds of thousands of words that need to be conveyed by combinations of all the same 33 Russian letters. I will not appeal so strongly to mathematical intuition, but it is quite clear that a huge number of coincidences are provided. You will find practically some sound, for example, like [men], if not in 100% of languages, then close to it. That is, purely sound coincidences, at least with the approximation that is inevitable in Russian transcription, are absolutely guaranteed.

Thus, because you net And No similar, you are not moving at all towards establishing any real historical connection between them. Well, just take English dictionary, look through it a little and listen as if with a Russian ear. And you will see that there are such words as, for example, beach- why not a Russian word? Any boy, some bread. Well, it sounds a little different - Russian rave doesn't quite sound like english bread, but of course you can easily compare it. Any cry, some rye and so on. For dozens, hundreds of words, you will find that in Russian transcription the English word will coincide with some Russian, and, therefore, the following task will be possible: to figure out how this English word was borrowed from Russian, a task that is very successfully solved amateurs on so many occasions that it's sometimes overwhelming.

In fact, on a quite serious level, one should state the existence of three different types of correlations between some two consonant words, say, from two different languages. If these are related languages - for example, two related languages (not too closely related, rather distantly related), like Russian and English - there are pairs of all three types.

First couple - something like English goose and Russian goose. And the meaning coincides, and the sound almost coincides, and this is the case when this coincidence is a legacy of the ancient unity of the two languages. Both of these words are direct heirs, respectively, in Russian and English of some Proto-Indo-European word. Proto-Indo-European is the common ancestor of almost all European languages, including Russian and English. In Proto-Indo-European, the origins of Russian and English converge, and a certain number of words are in such pairing that the meaning is also preserved (there are not too many such words, but they can also be found) - some goose And goose or English three and Russian three etc. This is a case of similarity or coincidence due to historical relationship. With long-distance connections, as between Russian and English, there will be few such words, and when these connections are close, as, say, between Russian and Ukrainian, there will be hundreds and thousands of such words.

Another case is the case of borrowing. Let's say the English word goal and Russian word Goal randomly related to each other. Why? Because the Russian word Goal borrowed from English goal- "goal", "gate" in football, well, "goal". This is an example when from English to Russian, but there is a certain number of opposites: say, an English word tsar borrowed from the Russian word tsar. The consonance is incomplete, but, nevertheless, this is also a couple of the same kind. This is the second case.

And finally, the third case is presented on the board - some net And No: the sound is almost the same, but there is no connection between them, this is a coincidence. As I have already said, due to the limited phonemic composition of all languages of the world, there will always be a considerable number of such coincidences.

So far, I have given examples of whole word forms (that is, words taken in some form), for simplicity - whole words. In fact, for linguistics, the coincidence of the roots of words is more significant, it is more indicative, since the difference in endings or suffixes is already a secondary thing that can be neglected to some extent. And the similarity or dissimilarity of the roots is a real indication of the proximity or non-proximity, relatedness or non-relatedness of the corresponding words. So the roots are just usually short, most of the roots in the languages of the world are from three to five phonemes. Both shorter roots and longer roots are quite rare, so these are comparatively small segments.

Because of this, roots of almost the same kind are found in any language. So I took and looked at the root [men] in Russian transcription. I could not find a language where this root would not be found. In any case, having searched in a large fund of different dictionaries, I found something everywhere - from European languages to African ones, since this simple and natural combination of phonemes will be everywhere. Can you imagine what a huge field of action for amateurs. Since the Russian language also has this root, say, in change, exchange, then, according to amateurs, respectively, 50, 100, 200 languages borrowed this word from Russian and each time changed the meaning: in English it became "man", in French it became "leads", etc. Each time, the same meaning inference scheme is applied, as the one that I showed in the example. net"network" and No. And this fills, I repeat, tens and hundreds of pages of amateur writings.

Since there are an extremely large number of random consonances, then in some part of the random consonances the meaning will coincide just as randomly. Especially if you do not find fault with the accuracy of the match, but consider that some close values also satisfy our conditions. Of course, there will be much fewer of these cases, because in addition to what you have outwardly coincided, for example, net And No, the value must also match here. Nevertheless, linguists know quite a few such examples. Let's say italian strange will strano, and it's just very difficult to resist and not believe that, at least, the Russian took the word from Italian; Well, for an amateur, of course, I took Italian from Russian. Both of these are incorrect. This is a purely coincidental coincidence both in meaning and in form. It happens. How would you say "bad" in Persian? "Bad" in Persian bad, in exact accordance in sound and meaning with English bad. But without the slightest connection with English. This word existed in the Persian language many centuries before the first contacts with the British. Czech word vule"will" (this is the same as the Russian will, of course) almost coincides with modern Greek vuli"will". But nothing in common in origin. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin liked to give an example of the ancient Japanese word womina which means "woman". So such things are in small quantities, but there are. Against them, of course, an amateur linguist cannot resist in any way, he, you know, puts them on the banner.

These are good reasons to argue that if you only know that the two words that you have compared outwardly coincide, this still does not give you absolutely anything as to whether they are related or not, connected by a real historical connection - whether then kinship or borrowing - or not. In order to answer this question, it is necessary to mobilize a much deeper and wider fund of specialized linguistic knowledge regarding the history and prehistory of each of these languages. After that, it can easily turn out that what captivated you as a complete coincidence is not at all a coincidence if you dig a little deeper. For example, Czech vule, if you go back nth number of centuries, will give a form like * volja, very similar to will- really, it's not a big change. And modern Greek vuli"will" will give you first the ancient Greek βουλή, already far from vuli, A comparative analysis will show that this βουλή comes from the form βολσα, which has nothing in common with vuli. And so almost always in cases where there is a coincidence.

Here, in fact, is the linguistic answer about where the basis for endless amateur exercises with word coincidences comes from, which supposedly means that the ancestors of the British borrowed something from the ancestors of the Russians or something like that.

As I said, the writings of amateur linguists are extremely monotonous. Despite varying degrees education, varying degrees of ingenuity, practically they fall into the same traps. Actually, I have listed some of them. Here you can specify some general characteristics.

First and main characteristic- this is a complete lack of evidence. Any conclusion of an amateur linguist is limited to its formulation, practically no justifications are offered, it’s just that a person himself must understand how, in the case of net And No understand what an english word is net borrowed from Russian. It does not seem to the amateur that any additional arguments are needed. If he tries to be more careful, he will say "my hypothesis", the other will say "my opinion". In an age when opinion is so valued after Derrida, I think you understand that this looks very solid. "My opinion," he will say, "is that the English net comes from Russian No". And so on. The amateur is not at all embarrassed by the fact that his method of action can give, in addition to the result that he needs, another 25 results that he does not need. But if you ask him why he chose this particular one out of 25 possible, he will shrug his shoulders and say, "Well, I guessed it. That, in fact, is a technique that is, in fact, the opposite of how a scientific researcher operates. Unfortunately, as I mentioned at the beginning, this is in the spirit of the times. Such is the spirit of the times, which supports the idea that if you have expressed your opinion, then it, thereby, automatically enters into the most valuable fund of what mankind has expressed on this subject, on a par with all other statements that have been made before, no matter how much there is behind the opposite statement other people's work and other people's minds.

But the main feature that deprives amateur occupation of scientific value is that amateurs are catastrophically unaware of the fundamental fact that language changes over time. They speak modern, say, Russian, and it seems that it doesn’t even occur to them that sometime Russian words sounded a little differently or someday English words sounded a little different. For them, the world is limited to that knowledge of a strictly contemporary state, which is given to them by itself. Meanwhile, the simplest, most initial observation shows that this cannot possibly be so. Let's say, if you take to read something old in the original, even not very distant by linguistic standards, for example, the works of Ivan the Terrible, it is still difficult for you to understand some places. In general, you more or less understand, but some words are incomprehensible, some constructions are puzzling. And if you take an even more ancient, real Old Russian essay - a chronicle, say, "The Tale of Bygone Years", then it is quite obvious that an unprepared person stumbles at every step. He sees that it is still Russian, but so far from his understanding: a lot of incomprehensible, some forms of verbs that he has never seen or heard. That is, the very idea that the language of other times was different from the current one lies on the surface for every person who has even slightly come into contact with it, has slightly gone beyond the limits of his daily use of the current living language. An Englishman reads Shakespeare with some difficulty and certainly cannot read a chronicle of the 10th century without special linguistic training - Old English is simply a foreign language for him. The same - French X century for a Frenchman, without preparation he does not understand him. So the variability of the language in these examples is so clearly visible that it is enough to think about it a little, touch it a little, so that there is no problem here.

But it is remarkable that amateur linguists who write whole books on the topic of the origin of words either do not know this or deliberately ignore it. Why am I saying this? Yes, because an amateur linguist can tell you with full confidence that he read the Etruscan inscription in Russian, and gives a translation that is not even just a modern Russian text, but a Russian text, for example, with words that are borrowed from English 20 years ago. Or with some word like extract and so on. Not in the least suspecting that the Etruscan text that he is reading is from the 5th century BC, 25 centuries ago, nevertheless, even if it is written in Russian - let's say such a crazy thing - in no way can coincide with the modern one. You cannot imagine how many such translations of Etruscan and Cretan inscriptions exist, which supposedly read perfectly in Russian. The text of the “translation” turns out to be monstrous, but nevertheless, it consists of Russian words, somehow even connected - this is all our amateur read. By announcing that he has read this, he fully signs that he does not know the simplest fundamental principle of how a language lives.

I will formulate once again: this is the first, main fundamental law achieved by linguistics as a science - that every language changes. Only dead languages don't change. How and why - we will not talk about it, this is a very interesting problem, we just state only that this is absolutely true for all languages of the world. All levels of the language change: pronunciation, morphology, syntax, word meanings - some faster, others slower. Some languages quickly move to some new states, others slowly, but everything changes. This is the first.

This change may well lead to the fact that the heir of the word is completely different from its ancestor, may not have a single phoneme in common with it. For example, Latin factum"done", "accomplished" after not too much time, about 15 centuries - for linguistics this is a short time - gives what will be in French, what, say, will be in Spanish, and so on. (I write in transcription so as not to get confused with spelling.) As you can see, it is extremely far from factum. For example, it does not contain a single common phoneme with its ancestor. There are any number of such examples. Any old English verb scēawian. I do not think that those unfamiliar with linguistics can determine what this means, based on their knowledge of modern English. This is also after not too much time, it is only about the tenth century. So in just 10 centuries, this gives what we will now write as: toshow[šou] is the verb "to show". As you can see, also, strictly speaking, not a single common phoneme. Well, and so on. Some Sanskrit form bhavati- "he is" gives in modern Hindi the form hai. I take such striking examples, but countless examples can be given when, over a not very long time - because, I repeat, for the history of a language this is a short period, everything is measured in large intervals of time - there can be such radical changes. From which it is clear that if an amateur draws any conclusions from this current pronunciation of a word, he has zero chances to establish anything real, correctly establish about the origin of the word, while in reality the real solution lies in knowing the given above form. Well, and so on. And is it possible in general, having a French two-phoneme, in any way to compare it directly with other words? - everything you find will be similar to, but not at all like factum. And so on.

Thus, it is quite clear that modern linguistics assumes an obvious requirement - so obvious that it is not even stated explicitly - that if you are studying the origin of a word, then you must take the oldest known form of this word - if there is any written tradition from which you can see it. If you want to know the origin of the word "show" in English language, do not take modern show but go back in time to the earliest attested form. Then this sWithēawian, and try to find the answer to your problem already in it. And the same, of course, about all other problems of this kind.

Here is an example of how, from the very beginning, it turns out to be doomed to zero chances of guessing the truth of a naive solution obtained in such a way that a person takes a form in its modern form and trying to say something about her. A form about which its former state is known - only not to an amateur, but to a real linguist. Here is the French name of a well-known city Lyon, which is completely similar to the well-known French word lion'a lion'. And of course, it is obvious to any amateur linguist that this is a city of something like Lviv - there is nothing to say here, there is a complete coincidence, up to a spelling difference of one letter. But what happens if we look back into time? After all, Lyon has been known for a long time, and even the year when it was founded is well known - 43 BC. And its ancient name - Lugdunum. Can you imagine what it has to do with this lion - lion? None. And this name, in turn, is already completely decomposing, this is a completely understandable Celtic word, something like "Svetlograd".

Or here is an example for lovers to find Russian explanation for the names of foreign cities, rivers, mountains, and so on (of which there are a large number of my "clients", so to speak). There is such a river Seine. Well, it seems quite natural that, probably, it was named so because there were haystacks along the banks, and how could it have been called then other than the Seine? Everything would be fine if it were not for the fact that the ancient name is well known for it, and this ancient name is - Sequana.

Here are such examples. But these are fictional examples. And now I will give a real example from the writings of Fomenko, concerning the Rhone River. "Ron," says Fomenko, "is, of course, the Russian word from the verb drop. Why? Because it drops drops." This is the most characteristic property rivers, of course - to drop drops. However, this is written, published in large numbers and, alas, has a large number of readers and supporters. And I'm afraid that 600 people who sign up for parapsychology easily intersect with lovers of this kind of explanation. Again, if you know a little more, one step further, then Rhone was already perfectly known to the Romans, her Latin name is known, it is like this: Rhodanus. Slightly different from the verb drop. Well, and so on. These are examples of what you really need to know in order to really have reliable information about the origin of words to some extent, and not just fortune-telling when a person looked and quickly guessed which Russian word it is most similar to. This is about the first law governing the history of languages.

The second principle of historical linguistics - more special and completely fundamental - is that the external form of words in the course of history does not change individually for each individual word, but due to processes - the so-called phonetic changes or phonetic transitions - covering in given language in a given epoch, without exception, all words that contain certain phonemes or certain combinations of phonemes. This universality of each transition that has taken place is the great discovery of the 19th century, the main discovery of historical linguistics, which has the same fundamental significance for all further research in the field of the history of languages, as, for example, the law of universal gravitation for physics. A person who talks about language without knowing this law is completely similar to someone who tries to assert something physical without knowing the law of universal gravitation. Therefore, this chain between factum in Latin and in some French is a sequence of transitions, each of which took place not just in a word factum, but in all decisively words that had the corresponding phonemes.

Here I will write out the whole series: how over time (which in the diagram let me flow from top to bottom), this factum turns into French. The first stage is the loss of the final m: factu. Again, it is crucial that this did not happen with the word factum- it happened to tens of thousands of words ending in m. final m was lost in ALL of those words. This, I repeat, is immeasurably more important than what happens to single word, because it is an event that happens to the language as a whole. (Sorry: it's not clear how the letter is read here With, so let me transcribe it through k to make it clear that this is the sound [k]; consider this a transcription: facts - facts.) So this is k already in the future French part of the territory, Latin in this case softens. Again, this happens in all combinations. kt that occur in the language, and not only in this word. But I will not repeat this every time - this is the most important thing, that all the transitions that I show are not individual, they are all traced through the full array of words where this combination exists. The next step is k" simplified to j: fajtu. The next step is j along with the previous A gives a diphthong ai: faitu. The next step gives the fall of the final u: fait. Next step - ai changes to idle e: fet. And the last step - the final vowel is lost - it turns out fe. Here is the chain of passages that connects the Latin factum with French fait. Each step is an event traced by linguists on the entire array of words that have this property. The first is the entire array of words with a final m, then the whole array of words with the combination kt and so on. Well, you can roughly imagine the scope of the information contained here, and what is the way an amateur compares words in their current form, and says: "this one is similar to another" and nothing more. The most important thing here is that the amateur compares one word and another word. He has only two words in sight at this moment. The linguist here has hundreds of words in his field of vision at every step, and if their readings do not agree, then the problem has not been solved, then the study must be continued in some other way. Here is the most important point that distinguishes serious linguistics from the superficial amateur approach that I showed you.

Due to the fact that the chain of phonetic transitions in each language is different, languages are different even if they go back to the same ancestor - in fact, this explains that there is a genealogical tree of languages. One language eventually turns into two, three, n-th number of heir languages, since each of these languages has its own chain. Accordingly, words that come from the same ancient word look different because they have gone through a different history of change. Spanish is not at all like French, there is almost nothing in common, since the Spanish chain of transitions (I won’t write it out, we don’t have time for this) was different than in French. The difference in the chains of transitions can lead to the fact that two words that go back to the same ancestor are completely different from each other in different languages. Lucky case that English goose looks like Russian goose- this, generally speaking, is a rarity - here by chance the transition chains turned out to be such that almost the same result was obtained through big number centuries. In the vast majority of cases, the result should be different. This difference can be quite striking.

I will give you a few examples. Let's say Russian wolf is the exact match, phonemic, flawless, for Tajik gurg. Also, not a single phoneme matches, although it is even more or less possible to understand what corresponds to what. But from such examples, which are very fond of in the courses of comparative historical linguistics: what does the Russian two in Armenian. It seems that these two words are Russian two and Armenian erku - they have absolutely nothing in common with each other, however, this is an ideal phonetic correspondence. This is a wonderful example of Antoine Meillet, which he liked to demonstrate just to convince his listeners that historical linguistics is not an empty thing and has some knowledge. Well, or a more understandable example: let's say Greek (I will write it down not in Greek letters, but in transcription) is an exact, phonemic correspondence of English ten. Except that e matches, nothing else matches. Well, something quite amazing. french que(conjunction), that is, what is read as, is the exact phonemic correspondence of the German was. If I give you the whole chain of transitions, writing them out in reverse order - from que to Proto-Indo-European and from was to Proto-Indo-European, then exactly one and the same Proto-Indo-European form will turn out. And even, perhaps, it will be elegant to show it to you here. (Under the asterisk are written forms that are not attested, but restored.) In both cases, we will come to the Proto-Indo-European * kwod, which in a completely correct way in French will turn into que, and in German it becomes was. Each transition, again, is fully documented by the corresponding corpus of words. Here you go was especially admires, in which only w, perhaps inherits the Proto-Indo-European w directly.

These are examples showing the difference between a serious and non-serious approach to the history of real words.

Let's continue. But I've really gone way beyond the timeline. The rest, perhaps, I will have to speak more concisely.

Of the other features that we constantly see in amateur writings, the fundamental laxity of everything that is offered is striking. As you have already seen, it is quite clear that a real linguist gives each phoneme its full meaning. In no case is it possible that suddenly by chance you, for example, instead of f appeared V or b. This is absolutely excluded; this can only happen in the case of some general transition that touches a given point of the system. Not so for amateurs. Lovers don't care at all, let's say P or b, With or h, T or With. And there is nothing to say about vowels. So it doesn't cost anything for a lover to say that satyr And bully is clearly one word. This is a real example. Well, you think there from - h, t - d, it can be seen that they are the same. There are as many examples of this kind as you like, and this is the perfect life of this kind of writing.

The next approximately the same feature is that amateur compositions are at a level below the school level, which consists in the fact that at school they are taught to divide a word into parts - into a root, a prefix, a suffix and an ending. An amateur is, as a rule, not something that does not know how, but despises. The result is some wonderful amateur explanations, some of which are almost certainly known to those present, because they have already simply burned the television screen, so often they are suggested to our public. Let's say a guess about where the word comes from back. It's interesting, though, why it's called that: back? It turns out that the amateur knows the answer perfectly. The back is very simple, it is back.

A little advice on how to sleep healthy person. What back has a root and an ending - well, what's the difference! And that there is no on it won't, if you bow a little, it will back, back, back and so on. But this does not concern the amateur at all. He sees back and gives you "sleep on". Well, in an infinite number - here, I think, many will recognize this - an absolutely wonderful word ra, which, it turns out, is represented in tens and hundreds of Russian words, and each time it is unheard of appropriately present there, because this is the name of the great sun god Ra. So let's say joy is "to get Ra", and blues- it's the other way around, "Khana Ra".

(Laughter, applause.)

Well, I hope that this applause is still not for the one who coped so well with the word blues. Here, by the way, there is also such a constant property of this amateurism - wild, utter ignorance. Let's say, if you take the name of an Egyptian god, well, at least look in the book and make sure that it was not called Ra, that Ra is a conditional European rendering of what we cannot convey. What is actually an Egyptian combination of the phoneme [r] and a special phoneme [‘], between which there was some kind of vowel, say, or - which one, unfortunately, is unknown. And Ra is a completely conditional reading. But, of course, for an amateur in all Russian words it was reflected in a magnificent way as it should.

I will give another example related to how a word is divided. Here is a well-known word - Ukraine. It is no coincidence that I wrote with a small letter, because even Dahl writes it with a small letter. Now you know him as a proper name, as the name of a country, but originally it was a common noun, and, of course, it was a complete analogue of the word outskirts. And, of course, the accent was exactly the same, the old accent was Ukraine. Ukraine is an emphasis taken from Ukrainian language, A Russian accent was Ukraine. And there was even some difference between Ukraine And outskirts. Ukraine- there was an area located at some edge of the state, and outskirts was the area around the edges. But then this difference was erased, now outskirts can mean both, but the word Ukraine just gone. But Ukraine is also perfectly evidenced, say, by poets of the 19th century. That is, the structure of this word in terms of division into a prefix, root, suffix and ending is completely transparent for schoolchildren - but not for theorists of amateur linguistics. True, it must be said that in this case we are talking about Ukrainian amateurs, and this, of course, is not accidental. And by virtue of the principle which I am describing, the difference between the different meaningful parts of a word is naturally unknown to them, or at any rate they do not wish to know it. And they see in the word Ukraine here's an element: Ukrainian. And this element is not a joke to you. He is, of course, the name ancient tribe, namely, the tribe named ukry.

These ukry did not just exist there, but, it turns out, they are excellently attested in the most ancient documents of the ancient Mediterranean. Namely, Homer's Trojans are called like this (I will write in transcription): teukroi. Accordingly, in Latin - teuWithri. In Russian, however, it is usually transcribed as teucers, but then the amateurs still felt that it was better to transcribe it as teukry. And then it’s already quite clear who it is: it’s just those ukry and not any others!

(Laughter, applause.)

Here you are, you understand, applauding, it means that you are laughing. But how funny it is when an unthinkable number of stories on this topic circulate, when it is said that the population of this country is the direct descendants of the Trojans and the inhabitants of Crete. But only modest amateurs do this, because real amateurs build this people back to 200 thousand years BC. There's nothing to be done when the fantasy is played out, why not give 200 thousand. Another thing is that 200 thousand years ago, according to all anthropological data modern man was not there yet. But there were already ukry.

Since I have already wasted my time, I will not continue these points, but will only name them. I can appeal to what I already wrote about this, and you can read it.

The myth that vowels can be ignored is constant and occurs among all lovers. And then, say, the words peace, pestilence, measure, mayor, scream, amour- it's all the same word - just small variations of the same thing.

Another similar myth, just as corrosive and persistent, is the so-called "reverse reading". You can read the word in reverse - read the word like this world, it will turn out Rome. AND Eastern peoples They supposedly do just that.

I will finish by analyzing exactly one example, taken from the same Fomenko, which will immediately show the whole bunch of how amateur linguistics works. This is the origin of the word Thames. As you can see, the names of rivers, etc. very attractive to fans. And it's very clear why. Because from this one can draw far-reaching conclusions about what happened to what peoples there.

So the word Thames. For the word Thames the sequence of actions of the amateur was as follows. There is a word in English sound. Not to be confused with the word "sound", this is its homonym. sound, of course, means "sound" too, but it also has a meaning that not everyone knows - the meaning of "strait". There really is such a word.

The next step is that, according to Fomenko's concept, which is completely the same for him with all other amateurs, vowels should not be taken into account at all, only the “backbone of consonants” should be taken. Then the backbone of consonants is taken s- n- d, right? Purely.

The next thing is. As we will see later, we are not talking about a strait, but if it is a strait, then which one? You understand, the Bosphorus. It is not necessary to find out - once the strait, then the Bosphorus. But this thing "takes place in the East," as the author says. And in the East, words are read from right to left. So don't read s- n- d, and must read d- n- s. How this is done is an amateur secret, but it is a permanent secret, that is, you need to turn the word around and read it the other way around - especially in this case, when it happens in the East. True, sometimes the same thing happens in the West, but at least in the East it is exactly the same. So it turns out d- n- s. Well, then you know what d And t- it's exactly the same n And m- it's the same plus s: t- m- s. You will learn? The vowels don't matter. The Thames is ready.

(Laughter, applause.)

The Thames is ready, but it is only linguistic artillery preparation. Because this linguistics itself, no matter how interesting it may be, does not give real satisfaction. It is needed in order to understand how things happened. So, if the Thames is actually the name of the Bosphorus - well, it's true, you've all seen it, the logical sequence was inexorable - then, therefore, London stood on the Bosphorus. But this is a serious thing - the fact that London was first on the Bosphorus. This is the main conclusion. And then its name was transferred to some distant and useless British city. This is Fomenkov's theory of what the prehistory of London is. This is how it is presented.

I will not give the rest - since our time has expired, I will only summarize. This kind of construction, of course, is not harmless, because practically all amateurs differ only in when Russia owned the whole world - 400 years ago or 7000 years ago. This is where they really differ. For some, like Fomenko, the whole story is compressed. Russia still owned the whole world, but only in the 16th century. In one of recent books Fomenko and Nosovsky, which is called "Old Maps of the Great Russian Empire" on the cover - a map of the world.

Well, the content is relevant. The book is entirely devoted to the analysis of geographical names that are found in different parts of the globe - 630 names are interpreted in Russian. Like the Seine, like the Rhone that drops the drops. In the same way, 630 words drop drops. There, Brussels, for example, it is very simply explained - this B. ruses, A B. is an abbreviation for white: "White Rus", i.e. Belarusians.

Thus, it turns out that about 400 years ago Russia owned the whole world. True, not quite alone - together with the Tatar Horde. Such was the Russian-Horde empire, which owned the whole world, and then very unpleasant, malicious and recalcitrant inhabitants of Western Europe conspired to undermine it and continue to carry out this subversive activity to this day. This is a story when everything is compressed to several centuries. And other amateurs explain that the Russians were the most ancient people in the world, and, accordingly, some have a figure of 7 thousand years, when all this happened, others have 3 thousand years. It seems that there are 70 thousand years. With a direct simple statement: all the languages of the world come from Russian.

I won’t comment anymore, it will lead us too far, I’ll only say that it’s impossible not to understand what kind of moral harm this kind of thing causes. First, it's like patriotism. But this is a monstrous form of patriotism, which is directly opposed to any reasonable patriotism, because reasonable patriotism can only suffer from this when people see that monstrous inventions are needed here, some kind of incredible lie, which most of all testifies, of course, not to the greatness of the country. but about a national inferiority complex. This is completely obvious. And it is clear that this kind of propaganda is not even designed to man of sense perceived it, it is designed for more or less unreasonable consumers. That is, for those who are ready to follow the slogan, without thinking at all about the degree of stupidity and lies invested in it. Well, judge for yourself: is it harmless in an age when the problem of interethnic tension is becoming one of the main problems of the whole world. To inspire such a general public does not mean anything else, except that it is necessary to oppose all other peoples, to be in conflict relations with them. Here is the summary of everything.

(Applause.)

Lecture discussion

Boris Dolgin. Thank you very much, Andrei Anatolievich. We don't have much time for questions, but we'll try to ask them anyway. Let me start with just one short one. And why, in fact, you don’t know, the basics of linguistic knowledge are not taught at school? Maybe it would help?

Andrey Zaliznyak. Well, experimentally somewhere this, of course, happens.

Boris Dolgin. I mean public school.

Andrey Zaliznyak. But this is an old tradition, when the corresponding discipline was simply called "Mother tongue", which was thought much narrower than the knowledge of what happens with languages in general. Therefore, something that goes, generally speaking, beyond the boundaries of grammar modern language, practically in this discipline traditionally was not. It so happened.

Boris Dolgin. It seems that some basic methods social sciences, humanities, natural sciences is the first thing to be taught. Not in first grade, of course, but in high school.

Andrey Zaliznyak. Well, first or not, I'm not sure about that, but which, among others, of course, should. But so far it hasn't been broken.

Boris Dolgin. Colleagues, the only request, apparently, is not to ask questions about the etymology of specific words.

Vladimir Alpatov. Andrey Anatolyevich, does the Marr Academy belong to amateur linguistics? He has a lot of similarities.

Andrey Zaliznyak. I think no. A lot of similar - this question, indeed, arose. That is, of course, at least in his later work, he has elements that bring him closer to the activities of amateur linguists. But in general, I would be sorry to take it there.

Boris Dolgin. Probably, it is still necessary for the general public to comment on it.

Andrey Zaliznyak. Marr is a wonderful scientist, a wonderful Caucasian scholar, and not only a Caucasian scholar. As a specialist in these languages, he did a lot of useful things. But, indeed, since 1922, if I am not mistaken, the year, I became a Marxist, and this ...

Vladimir Alpatov. Without any Marxism, he already argued that the German Hund and German hundert- there is such a semantic development: a dog - a dog, like a totem - people united by a totem - many people - many - one hundred. Where "ert" came from is unknown. And he wrote that smerds are the Sumerian-Iberian layer of Russians. Well, why is it not Fomenko?

Andrey Zaliznyak. Here I must agree that this kind of writing already places him in this category. It's a pity, but so.

Elena Nikolaevna Khasina. Andrey Anatolyevich, don't you think that Fomenko is laughing at us? He just arranged such an experiment and wants to see how many of us are fools, and how many are smart?

Andrey Zaliznyak. This is exactly what I even allowed myself to write in one essay on this subject - that I have such a suspicion. Exactly this, I won't even repeat it, literally. That this is such a mockery of how many idiots there are, to whom you can say incredible nonsense, and they will applaud.

Boris Dolgin. But this is a mockery with a very good business effect.

Andrey Zaliznyak. But somehow I don’t think that Fomenko is interested in the business effect. Gives a completely different impression. Gradually, observing some other things, I came to the conclusion that he simply firmly believes in his idea, that is, he belongs to the category of unshakable precisely for this reason. And in particular, I do not have any agreement with those who believe that this is a purely financial enterprise. Maybe someone has this kind of idea, but not himself, I think.

Boris Dolgin. No, no, I'm not talking about the origins, I'm talking about the fact that in fact this is a very serious enterprise.

Andrey Zaliznyak. In fact, definitely yes. On television, he gave the impression of a man obsessed with his idea one hundred percent.

Question from the floor. Probably in continuation of the question that was asked. In addition to these researches for the public, for the masses, there are many dissertations, philosophical, postmodern, and they are also defended.

Andrey Zaliznyak. They are a little off about it.

Reply from the hall. But they use. Regarding the Etruscans, for example, they told me that the real scientist of the department of philosophy, I won’t say, the university is Moscow, a comrade defended his doctoral dissertation on this topic. And they talked about him as a serious, real scientist.

Andrey Zaliznyak. I don’t have any specific information on this subject, somehow I didn’t have a chance to delve into it. There are probably some cases of this kind that you are talking about, although I think that when representatives of other sciences, in particular philosophy, quote something about the origin of words, they still take it from linguists, not necessarily with this kind of amateur linguists. So some quotes… Journalists almost always have God knows what, but I hope PhDs are a little different. But again, I say that I hope. I don't know, maybe you know this better than I do.

Mikhail Gelfand. In continuation of this question. The first books of Fomenko, as you know, were published by the publishing house of Moscow State University. Lomonosov.

Has anyone tried to look at the abstracts of doctoral dissertations from the same point of view, which are posted on the website of the All-Russian Attestation Commission? I strongly suspect that you can find it.

Andrey Zaliznyak. I haven't looked, so I can't really answer that question. And the fact that the university, of course, did this, is, alas, not very good for him.

Konstantin Sonin. I have a question. It's more about your introduction, which I thought was very important. You said that the level of students is falling. I'm wondering, is it really falling, or maybe the reference group is somehow increasing? There, say, 100 years ago, a scientist was addressing a very small percentage of the population. Now we have scientists, and you, too, who appeal to a huge percentage of the population, and Fomenko generally addresses 60% of the population there. Perhaps this effect, that more and more people in our country communicate more with science, does it in some sense produce a feeling of a weakening average? Given that the strongest scientists now, of course, are stronger than those who were 100 years ago.

Andrey Zaliznyak. Well, the latter causes me some doubt - about the strongest scientists. And the average, of course, falls. But if true - and, unfortunately, they seem to be true - are the complaints of those who are upset by the lack of qualifications of middle managers, then, alas, this is not only a question of quantity, which you speak of, but, apparently, some insufficiency though. Can't be sure; this judgment is approximate. Perhaps you are right, but, unfortunately, then I would not want to see this overall result.

Boris Dolgin. In continuation of this question: nevertheless, I would like to stand up for the Internet, because it is just a slightly denser environment, where, on the one hand, there may be those who are called "linguofreaks" by young linguists. And on the other hand, there are linguists themselves who describe, properly explain why they are freaks, and not scientists. That is, isn't it just a compaction of the medium? Instead of kitchens - some more unified space.

Andrey Zaliznyak. Well, of course, such a side is certainly present, and I would not want to look like a person who condemns the Internet. I recognize it as greatest achievement era, it is quite clear. But just in this case, here - this is some additional effect of a negative nature, which accompanies almost all great discoveries with a main positive balance.

Olga Evgenievna Drozdova, history teacher, Southern District. Mythological consciousness is present in all of us. Therefore, I would like to bring information. Works in some districts of Moscow school course"Linguistics" from the fifth grade. We have the author of the textbook "Linguistics". We have been following this course for several years now, so that fundamental science, the leaders of science, know how the working intelligentsia still works in the field. We are working.

(Applause.)

Andrey Zaliznyak. Thank you very much. I have a counter question. Tell me, who, besides your school, still uses this textbook?

Boris Dolgin. How massive?

Olga Evgenievna Drozdova. I am a graduate of the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics, I studied on the same course with Andrey Kibrik. IN last years already, in general, in Moscow there is a rather strong trend for the introduction of linguistics in schools. Moreover, for 14 years now a conference has been held where children prepare linguistic studies, it is called "Linguistics for All". Well, here is Elena Yakovlevna Shmeleva, who is actively involved in this process, as well as Vladimir Ivanovich Belikov and many well-known linguists are participating in this movement. Therefore, not everything is so bad, we try to involve children in this, but, of course, what you say is very important. Moreover, there are representatives of a whole experimental network of schools here, which officially, while money is still being allocated, although, of course, in connection with the crisis, there are all sorts of rumors that 21 Moscow schools are included in such an experimental platform called "Linguistic component of education and its role in the formation of key competencies of schoolchildren". Here, several teachers from these schools are present, and even children from these schools came to listen to you today.

(Applause.)

Andrey Zaliznyak. Thank you very much. Indeed, this information of yours makes me extremely happy. I myself was specifically connected with only one school, "Moomin-Troll", so to speak, I saw a little bit how it happens there, and I understand that there are such rare islands, and now I learn from you that there are much more of them than I thought. I am very happy.

Boris Dolgin. There is a chance that these children will teach their parents who did not study linguistics at school.

Olga Zakutnaya. I have a question, maybe a little naive, but maybe it interests not only me. He is, in fact, linguistics. That's when you wrote out the word change chain from factum before fait and they didn’t write it out for the Spanish counterpart, tell me, but does linguistics study the reasons why such a change occurs in a particular area, in another - another and what it is connected with. Thank you.

Andrey Zaliznyak. Thanks for the question. Unfortunately, the answer will not be happy. Linguists have been very concerned about this issue for a very long time, and a lot of linguists have dealt with it. At the present moment, on the whole, linguistics must nevertheless admit that it does not know a holistic answer to this remarkable and central question. Moreover, there is still the great formulation of Bloomfield: "The causes of phonetic changes are unknown." But this is not entirely true at the moment, something is known, but in general the problem is still waiting for a solution. So you asked a very painful question, but for linguistics this is a question of the future.

Konstantin Ivanovich. Tell me, please, from the point of view, all of humanity did come from monkeys, or in some other way?

(Laughter, applause.)

Andrey Zaliznyak. Well, this question puts us too far into this controversial area - the discussion regarding creationism. I would not like to intrude into it further than purely linguistic problems. There are currently two ideas about how language acquisition began: an idea called "monogenesis" and an idea called "polygenesis". That is, respectively, the origin of the language once in one place somewhere sometime, or a parallel origin in different places, perhaps not at exactly the same time, in different parts of humanity. The idea of monogenesis arose relatively recently, well, relatively recently, it was very actively developed by the late absolutely wonderful linguist Sergey Anatolyevich Starostin, and it has a chance to turn into a coherent scientific concept. While this is still a hypothesis, although quite possible. It is technically impossible to prove this even now by purely linguistic means, methods of comparative reconstruction, that is, to raise all the languages of the world to some initial single foundation. There are obstacles related to the fact that sufficient material has not yet been collected in many little-known languages (for the majority, in fact), and the fact that the question has not been resolved whether there are generally methods for moving to such historical depth that would allow everything here get some information. Both questions, generally speaking, will probably be resolved in the future. So, for the time being, it is premature to appeal to language in this famous dispute about creationism.

Alexander Strakhov. I have the following question. Don't you think that we, with such teachers and such teachers, will someday come to what we did 45 years ago? True, they did it in a slightly different language. When we took, for example, the word pipe and yet believed that trou in French, as you remember - "hole", and bass- "stocking".

Andrey Zaliznyak. And what do you think? I did not quite understand.

Alexander Strakhov. Will we come to the same thing that we did… We were simply, as I really think, taught well, you started today with this, and taught well not only the Russian language. I wrote a graduation essay of 6 sentences, but, really, it was 12 pages. Got 5/5.

Andrey Zaliznyak. This, of course, is very touching, but, in this case, I don’t really see the difference between the 45-year-old classes and the current ones.

Andrey Gennadiev, Faculty of Philosophy, Moscow State University. Still a few words in defense of philosophy. Now, you said that, thanks to people like Derrida, well, maybe there, Paul Feyerabend with his methodological anarchism, we have such a mess in the field of linguistics, which has an outlet, in general, in social problems. After all, as you know, when there was no Derrida and methodological anarchism, Freud wrote that Moses and Akhenaten are one and the same person, and in the 16th century the Bretons declared that, in general, all the languages of the world, well, Europe then, are derived from Breton.

Andrey Zaliznyak. I didn't understand what the question is.

Andrey Gennadiev. The question is, is there a connection with philosophy yet? Is philosophy to blame for these current problems?

Andrey Zaliznyak. Oh no, of course. To say that philosophy is to blame for what happens in the world would be to turn it upside down. It, I think, in parallel reflects much deeper processes, which, firstly, take place elsewhere, but philosophy is to some extent transposed into what we see in the form of postmodernism. No, of course not, that's the way it is.

Boris Dolgin. Unfortunately, time is almost up. Last questions.

Elena Medvedeva. that just exist different ways thinking, that clinical nonsense, like mythological thinking, they are not refuted. There will always be people who will say that spinzhak, it is called so because it is worn on the back. It's just one way of operating with language.

Boris Dolgin. Do you read it equally scientific?

Elena Medvedeva. No, definitely not. In my opinion - I am a philologist by education, not a linguist, but a philologist - the trouble is not that they do not study linguistics at school. Andrei Anatolyevich, you yourself said that they study the division of a word into morphemes, and then people calmly operate with incomprehensible things. Briefly speaking. Perhaps, at school, it is necessary to study not so much linguistics, but methods of argumentation. This is what we got, first of all. And secondly, probably, what linguists can do - we do not have good popular literature. Here my son is studying, he is a freshman at one of the humanities departments of Moscow State University, they have a course "Introduction to Linguistics". Was. I asked him: "Well, how are you?" He said, "Brain out." That is, they were read ugly, normal literature ... Here is what, perhaps, linguists could do - write books, moreover, with the ratio of this nonsense, school grammar, which is a legitimate area of \u200b\u200bknowledge, and scientific linguistics.

Andrey Zaliznyak. No, well, of course, teach logical thinking, the ability to reason, is more important than any science.

Boris Dolgin. Well, it's probably worth saying that there are still quite popular books on linguistics, for example, Vladimir Plungyan's book "Why are languages so different?"

Nikolay Leonov. Kindly tell me if, from your point of view, there is any reasonable correlation between the number of rules and the number of exceptions from them, well, for example, in grammar.

Andrey Zaliznyak. What does "appropriate" mean?

Nikolay Leonov. Expedient - I mean that quite often it turns out that in grammars the number of exceptions to the rules is greater than the number of rules themselves.

Andrey Zaliznyak. I think it's bad grammar.

Andrey Zaliznyak. This is indeed quite a task for linguists, and good linguists are quite busy with it. Build and rebuild the grammar so that the rules cover a larger volume, and there are fewer exceptions. Sometimes it succeeds quite successfully - even on material that seems to have been taught for a long time. So, in principle, the goal is completely clear that this proportion should be increased in favor of the rules, and in some cases linguists achieve this. In some cases, apparently, this is impossible, because a certain number of exceptions in any language are mandatory. I repeatedly had to explain to students that this is not some kind of defect in a particular language, but a property of the language in general. For reasons that would now be lengthy to state, there are no languages without exceptions. This is some consequence of the fact that the language changes.

Nikolay Leonov. And secondly, the conclusion. How do you feel about the fact that more and more often obscene things are being spread publicly?

Andrey Zaliznyak. Oh please. This has nothing to do with linguistics, it has to do with the social situation, where, indeed, freedom has come, and, in particular, one of its forms consists precisely in this.

Boris Dolgin. Well, sociolinguistics has something to do with it.

Andrey Zaliznyak. Sociolinguistics has. Linguistics, in some narrow, dry sense, may not do this. I do not want to welcome this, but, nevertheless, this is really a fact of our life.

Evgeny Teslenko. Please, I have a question from Bart, Kristeva, Derrida… Since we are all up to our ears in postmodernism, how do you assess the chances of returning the normativity of knowledge, well, in particular, linguistic, philological, more broadly, grammatical knowledge. Because after all, there are some things that communicate - here, the grammar of power, the grammar of the worldview, the grammar of the language, right? Any chance at all?

Andrey Zaliznyak. It seems to me that there is, because such movements, such as postmodernism, they are still not infinite in time, there is a kind of almost oscillatory motion. So, it seems that ... How much time will pass, I do not undertake to foresee, but some new movement, most likely, will be in opposite side, in the direction still more optimistic, in my opinion.

Evgeny Teslenko. Are there signs?

Andrey Zaliznyak. I don't see any signs.

Grisha Kolyutsky, mathematician. I would like to go back to the beginning of your talk today, you talked about truth and about opposing a set of opinions. For many years, almost 10, we have been observing your discussion, including in the press, with Fomenko, even a special conference about him. And why has the Academy of Sciences, within the framework of its commission on pseudoscience, still not taken up Academician Fomenko? If you claim that for the Academy the priority of truth is more important than a set of opinions of its members. Thank you.

Andrey Zaliznyak. It is not true that the commission was not involved. In the publication of the commission, which is called "In Defense of Science", among other articles, there are articles, in particular, by Efremov, about Fomenko - quite critical. So he is also included in the area of attention of this commission. As for the Academy as a whole, it is…

Boris Dolgin. Why, like the conclusion on Petrik, the conclusion on Fomenko was not developed? Perhaps this is the meaning of the question.

Andrey Zaliznyak. This is probably a question for Osipov, and not for me.

Boris Dolgin. Thank you very much. In fact, we will probably ask Andrei Anatolyevich, if he, of course, agrees - we may announce some address of ours, at which, following the results of the lecture, it will be possible to ask questions, and we will pass it on to Andrei Anatolyevich and publish it together with a transcript of the lecture. We will, in fact, announce this address directly to Polit.ru. Thanks a lot.

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/ Alexey Sergeevich Kasyan

Andrey Anatolievich Zaliznyak. He was an internationally recognized philologist-linguist. Immediately after defending his Ph.D. thesis in 1965 on the topic “Classification and synthesis of Russian inflectional paradigms”, Zaliznyak received for this work degree Doctor of Sciences.

In 1997 he was elected an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in 2007 he was awarded the State Prize of Russia. For many years, Zaliznyak worked at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1991 - RAS), taught at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov.

Famous writings

Full description of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals

In 1967, Zaliznyak published the book "Russian Nominal Inflection". It was a complete description of the declension of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals of the Russian language, the book also clarified a number of basic concepts of Russian morphology.

Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language

On the basis of this work, in 1977, Zaliznyak published a manually created “Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language”. In it, he described and classified the patterns of inflection of almost 100 thousand words of the Russian language. Years later, it was the work of Zaliznyak that formed the basis of the majority computer programs that use morphological analysis: spell checking systems, machine translation, Internet search engines. “Zaliznyak is a major figure in Russian studies. He is a specialist in the Russian language, in its entire history - from the ancient Russian period to the modern one. One of his great merits is the creation of the “Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language”, which can be consulted for references in various difficult cases the formation of forms of Russian words, given that the Russian language is distinguished precisely by the variability of forms, ”said AiF.ru Elena Kara-Murza, lecturer at the Department of Russian Language Stylistics at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, linguist.

Birch bark letters

The linguist gained the greatest fame after he was the first to be able to decipher the birch bark letters of ancient Novgorod. Since 1982, Andrey Anatolyevich participated in the work of the Novgorod archaeological expedition. The study of the features of the graphic system of Novgorod birch bark letters allowed the scientist to identify the features of the dialect of ancient Novgorod, which differed significantly from the dialect of most of Ancient Rus'. “His long-term activity, together with the archaeologist Academician Yanin, namely the work on reconstruction, on the interpretation of Novgorod birch bark manuscripts, has great importance for a cultural idea of what were the ideas that excited people at that ancient time in this, one might say, the reserve of Russian medieval aristocratic democracy,” Elena Kara-Murza emphasized.

Palimpsest

Zaliznyak also studied the palimpsests (texts hidden under layers of wax) of the Novgorod Codex. This is the oldest book in Rus'. She was discovered in 2000.

"The Tale of Igor's Campaign"

It was the studies of Andrei Anatolyevich in collaboration with other scientists that made it possible to finally prove the authenticity of the ancient Russian work "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", written at the end of the 12th century. At the heart of the story - unsuccessful trip Russian princes against the Polovtsy, organized by the Novgorod-Seversky Prince Igor Svyatoslavich in 1185. In 2004, Zaliznyak's book "The Tale of Igor's Campaign": a linguist's view was published. In it, with the help of scientific linguistic methods, he confirmed that the "Word" was not a fake of the 18th century, as many thought. According to the conclusions of Zaliznyak, in order to successfully imitate all the features of the Russian language of the 12th century. The author-hoaxer had to be not just a genius, but also possess all the knowledge about the history of the language accumulated by philologists by the beginning of the 21st century.

Popularizer of science

Andrey Anatolyevich was actively engaged in the popularization of science, composed linguistic tasks and lectured. Particularly popular were Zaliznyak's lectures on "amateur linguistics" - pseudoscientific theories about the origin of the Russian language and its individual words. In 2010, the scientist published the book “From Notes on Amateur Linguistics”, where he analyzed in detail the pseudoscientific nature of such ideas.

“Zaliznyak made a huge contribution to science, teaching and enlightenment. I would emphasize these moments in his work. What will be most important to Zaliznyak's descendants is his educational work in the field of linguistics. He proved the authenticity of The Tale of Igor's Campaign and was also one of those who opposed such a negative moment as folk linguistics in its obscurantist, that is, hostile to enlightenment, manifestations. In manifestations that undermine truly scientific achievements. In particular, Zaliznyak is known for his very active opposition to the specific historical and linguistic concept of the mathematician Fomenko. (Editor's note - "New Chronology" - concept Anatoly Fomenko that the existing chronology historical events is incorrect and requires a radical revision. Representatives of science, including authoritative professional historians and philologists, as well as publicists and literary critics, classify the New Chronology as pseudoscience or the literary genre of folk history),” said Kara-Murza.

See also:

Lecture text

Lecture discussion

In the cycles “Public Lectures “Polit.ru” and “Public Lectures “Polit.ua” were presented by:

Famous writings

Popularizer of science

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