Why do we say so? 5 most popular books about the Russian language

About how the Russian language has changed in recent years, Maxim Krongauz, director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State University for the Humanities, discusses without any professional snobbery. He vividly and witty tells what confusion and confusion reign in the head of modern man: we almost no longer notice the border between slang and literary language and barely manage to dodge the shaft of borrowings, jargon and parasitic words. The author shows how he himself solves these problems in his own speech practice, and suggests how to successfully avoid two extremes in speech – stiffness and vulgarity. A special topic is the adventures of the Russian language on the Internet. Therefore, Maxim Krongauz devoted a separate book to them in 2013 – “Albany’s Self-Teacher”.

(Corpus, 2011)

The book by Gasan Huseynov, Ph.D., a specialist in ancient and modern culture, is built like a dictionary: each word (often, in principle, untranslatable) is devoted to a separate and very capacious essay. Some words are useless to look up in a dictionary. And to explain them, sometimes you need to tell a whole story. And even then it is not known – will it help? For example, the author of this book once did not succeed, despite all his academic regalia and the highest qualifications. His acquaintance, a German doctor, could not figure out why his patient, a Jewish emigrant from Donetsk, calls the ham (Schinken) the Talmud, and the headache – hemorrhoids. It sounds strange, but the answer is simple: “Talmud” in the meaning of “a very thick book” is translated into German as “ham”, and the Russian “hemorrhoids” in the meaning of “difficulty” is not translated into any of the languages ​​​​at all. Behind each of these words and phrases is a whole system of connections, events, layers of the cultural unconscious. Language turns modernity into a cipher, the key to which is lost over time – if you do not fix this elusive, do not remove it from the language. This is exactly what Huseynov is doing.

(Case, 2012)

Is it possible to call a dog a “scoundrel”, how “playing tricks” is connected with a church service, who is a freemason, why is the incredible abundance of food celebrated at Malanya’s wedding, and finally, where is the correct emphasis on the word “cottage cheese”? The reader will find the answers in the book, which, having opened it from any place, will certainly read it to the end, because, as it turns out, investigations in the field of the native language are an incredibly exciting activity. Author, Marina Koroleva. For several years now, he has been conducting the “We Speak Russian” column on the Ekho Moskvy radio station, in which he analyzes difficult cases of pronunciation, explores the origin of words, the history of their use, clarifies grammatical norms – in a word, staunchly and heroically fights for the purity of the Russian language, for attention, interest and love for him, for understanding why this is important. Journalistic curiosity and passion for investigation, on the one hand, and a philological education (and, therefore, strict verification of facts), on the other, give a brilliant result in total, which has now been embodied in a wonderful book.

(Studio pagedown, 2014)

Very professional, but fun and popular linguist Irina Levontina talks about the history of the origin of the words “glamorous” and “positive”, analyzes “wet in the toilet” and “bloody snot” from a notorious politician and illiterate advertising slogans. “Oops”, “wow”, “shopping”… These brilliant, sharp, sometimes caustic essays (which, by the way, have a sequel – the no less vivid collection “What is it about” (Corpus, 2015) provide not just a picture of the modern Russian language but also a picture of the changes that have happened to all of us lately.

(Alphabet, 2010)

In the first edition of the Dictionary of Fashionable Words in 2005, Doctor of Philology Vladimir Novikov included only 70 stories about the most popular and controversial words of the Russian language at the beginning of the 136st century. In the fourth edition there were 200 such words, and in the new, fifth, there are already XNUMX of them. Today, “shocked”, “opposition”, “content”, “stupid”, “nyashka” are in vogue – some appear after new phenomena, others we borrow from foreign languages ​​with particular ease, and without hesitation we repeat the third after teenagers or acquaintances whom we consider more “advanced” … You need to know all the words, Vladimir Novikov believes, but which ones to use and which ones to refuse is up to each of us. And judging by the popularity of this publication, the author copes well with his task – to educate the reader in a creative attitude to the language.

(Dictionaries of the XXI century, 2016)