Russian language is known for its lexical wealth. According to the "Big Academic Dictionary" in 17 volumes, it contains more than 130,000 words. Some of them are native Russian, while others were borrowed at different time periods from different languages. Borrowed vocabulary is a significant part of the dictionary of the Russian language.
Origin of words
Russian language belongs to the East Slavic family of languages. In linguistics, there is an opinion that initially there was a single Indo-European language. It became the basis for the formation of a pan-Slavic or pro-Slavic, from which Russian stood out in the future.
Further, under the influence of social and cultural factors, new words began to penetrate the vocabulary that came to us from a number of languages. It is customary to highlight the original Russian and borrowed vocabulary.
Native layer
The native vocabulary includes Indo-European and pan-Slavic lexemes, as well as the East Slavic stratum and words called proper Russian.
Indo-European layer
Indo-European words were in the language even before the collapse of the ethnic Indo-European community, which occurred around the end of the Neolithic.
Indo-European tokens include:
- Words indicating the degree of kinship: “mother”, “daughter”, “father”, “brother”.
- Names of animals: "sheep", "pig", "bull".
- Plants: "willow."
- Food: bone, meat.
- Action: "take," "lead," "see," "command."
- Qualities: "decrepit", "barefoot".
General Slavic layer
General Slavic vocabulary was formed before the VI century. n e. These words were inherited from the language of Slavic captives who lived in the territory between the upper reaches of the Western Bug, Vistula and Dnieper rivers.
It includes:
- Names of plants and cereals: "oak", "linden", "maple", "ash", "mountain ash", "branch", "pine", "bark", "bough".
- Cultivated plants: "barley", "millet", "spruce", "peas", "wheat", "poppy".
- Names of housing and its components: "house", "floor", "shelter", "canopy".
- Food products: "cheese", "lard", "kvass", "kissel".
- Names of birds (both forest and domestic): "rooster", "goose", "crow", "sparrow", "nightingale", "starling".
- The name of the tools and processes: “weave”, “chop”, “shuttle”, “hoe”.
- Action: wander, share, mumble.
- Temporary concepts: "spring", "winter", "evening".
- Qualities: "neighbor", "funny", "evil", "affectionate", "pale", "dumb".
According to N. M. Shansky, they occupy about a quarter of the words we use most in everyday life and are the core of the Russian language.
Old Russian vocabulary
The words that arose in the language of the Eastern Slavs in the VI – VII centuries belong to the Old Russian or East Slavic stratum of vocabulary. These are words that are part of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages ​​- of those tribes that then formed Kievan Rus.
This includes words to indicate:
- The properties and qualities of objects and actions: “good”, “gray”, “rumble”, “dark”, “sharp-sighted”, “blond”, “dense”, “cheap”.
- Action: “fidget”, “shiver”, “sorry”, “sway”, “boil”.
- Designations of family ties: "uncle", "nephew", "stepdaughter".
- Household concepts: "graveyard", "rope", "bast basket", "samovar", "twine".
- The names of some birds and animals: "squirrel", "bullfinch", "cat", "marten", "jackdaw", "finch", "viper".
- Verbal designations of numbers: "ninety, forty."
- Tokens for designating time intervals and concepts: "now", "today", "after".
Actually Russian words
Actually Russian words include words that came into use after the language of the Great Russian nation was formed, that is, from the fourteenth century, and then Russian in the seventeenth century.
These include:
- Names of household items: “wallpaper”, “spinning top”, “fork”.
- Products: "jam", "tortilla", "couleby", "cabbage rolls".
- Natural phenomena: "blizzard", "bad weather", "ice", "swell".
- Plants and fruits: "Antonovka", "bush".
- Representatives of the animal world: "rook", "desman", "chicken".
- Actions: “influence”, “uproot”, “destroy”, “loom”, “coo”, “bake”.
- Signs: "convex", "flabby", "painstaking", "seriously", "catch a glimpse", "waking up".
- The name of abstract concepts: "deception", "damage", "experience", "neatness", "caution".
One of the signs of the actual Russian words is the presence of the suffixes "-ost" and "-stv."
Borrowing
Borrowed vocabulary is divided into two large groups:
- Words from Slavic, related languages.
- Tokens from non-Slavic languages.
Foreign words firmly entered the vocabulary of the Russian language due to cultural and political ties, trade and military relations with other states. In some cases, they assimilated, that is, adapted to the norms of the literary language and became generally used. Some of them have entered our vocabulary so firmly that we cannot even imagine that they are in fact not originally Russian.
True, the borrowings were bilateral - other languages ​​also replenished the vocabulary with our tokens.
Church Slavonic vocabulary
Borrowing from Slavic languages ​​took place at different time periods.
The earliest layer was Old Slavic or Church Slavonic borrowed vocabulary in Russian. It was used by the Slavic peoples as a written literary language for the translation of church books and the spread of Christianity in Slavic countries. It was based on one of the Old Bulgarian dialects, and Cyril and Methodius are considered its creators. In Russia, the Old Slavonic language appeared at the end of the X century, when Christianity was adopted. It is then that the rapid development of borrowed vocabulary begins.
Old Slavic tokens include:
- Church terms: "priest", "sacrifice", "cross".
- Abstract concepts: "power", "consent", "grace", "virtue".
And many other words: "mouth", "lanita", "finger". You can recognize them by a number of distinguishing features.
Signs of Old Slavicism
There are phonetic and morphological signs of Old Slavism, according to which you can quickly calculate the borrowed vocabulary.
Phonetic refers to:
- Incompleteness, that is, the presence in the words “-ra-” or “-la-”, “-re-” or “-le-” instead of the usual “-oro” and “-olo-”, “-ere-” and "-ele-" in the framework of one morpheme, most often, the root. For example: “gate”, “gold”, “succession” - “gate”, “gold”, “turn”.
- "Ra-" and "la-", replacing "ro-", "lo-" with which the word begins. For example: "equal" - "flat", "boat" - "boat".
- The combination of "railway" instead of "g": "walking", "driving."
- "" in the place of the Russian "h." For example: "lighting" - "candle."
- Percussion "e" in front of a solid consonant in the place of the Russian "e" ("o"): "sky" - "palate", "finger" - "thimble".
- "E" at the beginning of words, instead of Russian "o": "esen" - "autumn", "esero" - "lake", "unit" - "one".
Morphological features:
The prefix “voz-”, “from-”, “through-”, “pre-”: “repay”, “pour out”, “expel”, “overthrow”, “fall”, “excessive”, “despise”, “ deliberate".
Suffixes "-stv (e)", "-h (s)", "-knight", "-the", "-usch-", "-yushch", "-ash-", "-yash-" : “prosperity”, “hunter”, “life”, “execution”, “battle”, “knowledgeable”, “lying”.
Parts of the complex words “good”, “God”, “evil”, “sacrifice”, “one”: “grace”, “God-fearing”, “malevolence”, “love of love”, “uniformity”, “sacrifice” "
Borrowed vocabulary related to Old Slavonicism has a stylistic connotation of solemnity or elation. For example, compare words such as “breg” or “shore,” “drag” or “drag.” Such words are more often found in prose and poetic works and indicate the era in question in the work. They can characterize heroes by slipping in their speech.
Some works of the XIX century were used to create irony or satire, humor.
Gifts of Slavic languages
The most famous are borrowed words in the vocabulary of the Russian language from Polish, the so-called polonisms that penetrated our language around the XVII-XVIII centuries. These include:
- Names of housing: "apartment".
- Means of transportation and their parts: "carriage", "goats".
- Household items: "belongings".
- Clothes: "jacket".
- Military terms: “wahmister”, “hussar”, “colonel”, “recruit”.
- Actions: "paint", "draw", "shuffle".
- Names of animals and plants, products: "rabbit", "almonds", "jam", "fruit".
From the Ukrainian language into Russian came such words as “feta”, “kids”, “hopak”, “bagel”.
Greece
Greek words began to penetrate into the Russian language even during the period of common Slavic unity. The earliest borrowing includes household terms: “cauldron”, “bread”, “bed”, “dish”.
From the 9th century, after the baptism of Russia, the period of cultural relations between Russia and Byzantium begins, at the same time fall into the lexicon:
- Religious terms and concepts: "angel", "demon", "metropolitan", "archbishop", "icon", "lamp".
- Scientific terms: "philosophy", "history", "mathematics", "grammar".
- A number of household concepts: "tub", "lantern", "notebook", "bathhouse".
- Names of flora and fauna: "cedar", "crocodile", "cypress".
- A number of terms from science and art: "idea", "logic", "anapaest", "trochee", "mantle", "verse".
- Linguistic terminology: “vocabulary” and “lexicology”, “antonym” and “homonym”, “semantics” and “semasiology”.
Latinisms
Latin terms mainly entered the Russian language from the 16th to the 18th centuries, significantly replenishing the lexical structure in the field of social, political, scientific and technical terminology.
These are terms used in most languages: "republic", "proletariat", "revolution", "dictatorship", "meridian", "minimum", "corporation", "laboratory", "process".
Turkisms
The following words were borrowed from the Turkic languages ​​(Avar, Pecheneg, Bulgarian, Khazar): "pearls", "jerboa", "idol", "beads", "feather grass".
Most of the Turkisms came to us from the Tatar language: "caravan", "mound", "karakul", "money", "treasury", "diamond", "watermelon", "raisins", "stocking", "shoe", "chest", "bathrobe", "noodles".
The names of the breeds and colors of horses are also included here: "roan", "bay", "brown", "kaury", "argamak".
Scandinavian footprint
A relatively small number of borrowed vocabulary from the Scandinavian languages ​​in Russian. Basically, these are words denoting household items: "anchor", "hook", "chest", "whip", as well as proper names: Rurik, Oleg, Igor.
German-Romance Relations
Quite a lot of borrowed vocabulary words from German, Dutch, English, Spanish, Italian and French:
- Examples of borrowed vocabulary from German can often be heard from the military. These are words such as "corporal", "paramedic", "headquarters", "guardhouse", "junker".
- This also includes the terms of the trade sector: "bill", "freight", "postmark".
- Concepts from the sphere of art: "landscape", "easel".
- Household vocabulary: “tie”, “leggings”, “clover”, “spinach”, “chisel”, “workbench”.
- During the reign of Peter I, the lexicon includes a number of nautical terms from the Dutch language: "tack", "flag", "skipper", "sailor", "steering wheel", "fleet", "drift".
- Names of animals, objects familiar to us: "raccoon", "umbrella", "hood".
The English language gave us words such as "boat", "yacht", "schooner" related to maritime affairs.
Also, social and everyday concepts, technical and sports terms were borrowed: “fight”, “meeting”, “tunnel”, “tender”, “comfort”, “gin”, “grog”, “pudding”, “football”, “ hockey "," basketball "," finish ".
From the middle of the XVIII — XIX, borrowing from the French begins. This is a newer borrowed vocabulary.
Here it is worth highlighting the following groups:
- Household items: “medallion”, “vest”, “coat”, “tights”, “toilet”, “corsage”, “veil”, “broth”, “marmalade”, “cutlet”.
- A number of words from the field of art: "play", "actor", "director", "entrepreneur".
- Military terminology: "attack", "squadron", "cannonade".
- Political terms: "parliament", "assembly", "exploitation", "demoralization".
From Italian came:
- Musical terms: "aria", "tenor", "sonata", "cavatina".
- Names of food: "pasta", "vermicelli".
Such words as “serenade”, “guitar”, “caravel”, “cigar”, “tomato”, “caramel” were borrowed from Spanish.
Today, the use of borrowed vocabulary from German-Romance languages ​​in everyday life is a common occurrence for us.
Conclusion
Primordial and borrowed vocabulary make up the vocabulary of the Russian language. The formation of the language is a rather lengthy process. During its development, Russian has replenished with a number of tokens from various languages. Some borrowings took place so long ago that we cannot even imagine that the word we are familiar with is not native Russian.