Record-breaking words
The longest word listed in the Guinness Book of Records is found in the Hungarian language. It consists of 44 letters: megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. When trying to accurately translate it, experts disagree, and obviously not everyone will be able to pronounce this “rebus”. According to some versions, the word can be roughly translated as follows: “due to (your) desire to maintain an untarnished reputation.”
Difficulties in pronouncing a foreign word correctly often arise. Thus, in the spring of 2010, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland seriously frayed the nerves of airlines and passengers, and for news anchors it became a real test to correctly pronounce its name.
The Guinness Book of Records also mentions the word that has the most meanings in the English language - the word "set". According to the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), the word "set" has 430 different meanings.
The rarest sound found in European languages is Czech [rzh]. The most common sound is the vowel [a], there is not a single language in the world that does not have it.
At the same time, in the Serbian and Croatian languages there are words that do not contain vowels, for example, the name of the island of Krk in the Adriatic Sea.
Record-breaking people
Powell Alexander Janulus (74 years old), a former employee of the court of the Canadian province of British Columbia, is considered one of the greatest polyglots - he speaks 41 languages. Another great polyglot of the 18th-19th centuries. Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti was considered, who knew 38 languages and 50 dialects, while he never left his native Italy.
Italian Vanessa Morabito was able to pronounce the most words per minute on February 8, 2012. She managed to say 380 words in the allotted 60 seconds. But Shishir Khatva set another record: on May 12, 2012, he managed to pronounce 50 words backwards in 1 minute 23 seconds.
Amazing facts about languages
The Basque language, spoken in northern Spain, is not part of any language group. There are 800,000 native speakers of this language, and most of them live in the so-called Basque Country - an autonomous region of Spain.
Enantiosemy is known as a linguistic phenomenon where the same word has opposite meanings.
There is also interlingual enantiosemy, which often appears in Slavic languages. Thus, the Polish uroda means “beauty”, zapominać - “to forget”. Czech čerstvý means “fresh”, potraviny - “products”, pozor! - “attention!”, úžasný - “delightful”, and the Serbian “harmfulness” is translated as “value”.
It is interesting to note that “Russia” sounds quite unusual in some European languages. For example, for Estonians it is “Venemaa”, and for Finns it is “Venäjä”.
At the moment, as a primary school teacher, I work in the 3rd grade, on the basis of which an experimental site for multilingual education “Optimization of the multilingual education system in a general education lyceum” was opened last year.
The object of her research is the process of teaching primary schoolchildren two foreign languages, German and English, with a simultaneous start. The purpose of this experiment is to create an effective system for organizing the process of multilingual learning.
Together with foreign language teacher O.V. Gunkina tasks were outlined that would contribute to the implementation of this goal, in particular, this
- bring the content of the educational process in foreign and native languages into line;
- development of integrated lessons based on the subjects FL, FL1 and FL2, as well as other subjects;
- development of extracurricular and reporting activities in FL1 and FL2 and RY
As part of this experiment, I developed elective course program
"Entertaining linguistics."
Program of the optional course "Entertaining linguistics"
Explanatory note
The Russian language is a complex academic subject, but at the same time it is also socially significant: it is both a means of communication, an instrument of cognition, and the basis of our culture. Without a good knowledge of the language, it is impossible to achieve success in studies and professional activities. Nevertheless, insufficient literacy remains one of the “sore spots” of our society. In Russian language school curricula, great importance is attached to lexical work, which is mainly aimed at practical exercises in connection with the study of a number of rules, rather than generalizing theoretical foundations.
Today, a new idea is being formed that involves taking into account the versatility of the language itself in teaching.
The success of learning largely depends on interest in the subject being studied. Unfortunately, it is not often that you meet students who say their favorite subject is Russian. The main task of school is to teach students to write correctly. Meanwhile, the language has wonderful transformations of words, beautiful logic, the distance of history and the diversity of countries and peoples, but all this is not discussed in lessons.
Purpose of the program "Entertaining linguistics"- make learning the Russian language exciting and joyful, and, therefore, effective; help students understand the complex structure of the Russian language, comprehend its many mysteries and secrets, turning serious study into an interesting journey into the fairyland of Entertaining Linguistics.
The strict framework of the lesson and the richness of the Russian language program do not always allow this. In this case, extracurricular activities come to the rescue.
Extracurricular work in the Russian language helps fill this gap, because it encourages students to learn something new about the Russian language, to develop students’ independence and their creative initiative.
A distinctive feature of this program is the activity-based approach to the education, training and development of students using the Russian language. At all stages of education, a variety of knowledge is provided that is associated with the curriculum. Classes are based on gaming methods work. The gaming technique helps to involve students in the creative process, activates cognitive activity, and promotes students’ general interest in the subject.
At each lesson of this elective course, I use multimedia presentations, funny poems, riddles, crosswords, games, proverbs, etc., which help increase the activity and efficiency of students in the classroom, affect the quality of academic performance, and develop logical and abstract thinking.
We should not forget that a rich vocabulary and a high level of speech competence in the native language are a prerequisite for successful mastery of various types of competencies in a foreign language.
In this regard, this elective course promotes mutual enrichment of native and foreign languages(in particular German and English), improving linguistic thinking and speech culture.
During classes it is decided problem of differentiation training, the scope of the curriculum is expanded.
The main objective of this course is to promote the intellectual, moral and aesthetic development of junior schoolchildren through improving their linguistic thinking, speech culture, and children's speech creativity; to help them feel the Russian language as a harmonious system, to convince children of the need to constantly improve their spelling skills.
This goal is achieved through:
- familiarization with the main branches of linguistics,
- improving linguistic analysis skills,
- familiarization with various dictionaries and the rules for working with them,
- clarification and enrichment of vocabulary
- conducting integrated lessons.
In an accessible and exciting way, students get acquainted with the wonderful world of words and their meanings, the origin and history of phraseological units, the laws of formation and change of words in the Russian language.
Extracurricular activities with junior schoolchildren are important for ensuring continuity in work on the Russian language between primary and senior classes.
By the end of the training, students should have an understanding of the basic terms and concepts of linguistics;
- basic linguistic terms and concepts;
- main sections of linguistics (lexicology, phonetics, morphology, syntax, punctuation, word formation, spelling, phraseology);
- spelling and conditions for their selection;
- phrases and sentences;
- - sounds and letters, stress, syllable, word;
- - lexical meaning of the word
- -basic rules of orthoepy;
- genres of journalistic style (article, note)
- -the origin of some words and expressions;
- have an idea of the Russian language as a system;
- -use words correctly in speech;
- - distinguish words-paronyms, antonyms, synonyms, archaisms, neologisms, etc.;
- -make proposals of different types;
- explain the meanings of different words and use them correctly, use various dictionaries;
- write articles and notes in accordance with the norms of the modern Russian literary language;
- to interview;
- determine the topic and main idea of the text;
- improve the content and linguistic design of the essay (in accordance with the studied language material).
The program lasts 34 hours.
Approximate thematic planning. 3rd grade.
| № | Subject | Basic Concepts |
| 1 | Great, powerful, magical language. | Historical path of the Russian language. Writers about language. The most precious words. Thematic groups of words. |
| 2 | Wonderful transformations of words. | Charades, metagrams, loggriffs, shapeshifters |
| 3 | On a visit to phonetics and graphics. Orthographic dictionary. | Spelling. What is a spelling? Introducing a spelling dictionary. |
| 4 | How do the words sound? Our friend is the emphasis. Pronouncing dictionary. | Orthoepy. Pronouncing dictionary. Emphasis. A culture of speech. |
| 5 | Word or not word. Getting to know the explanatory dictionary. Multiple meaning words. | Word, syllable. Dictionary. Multiple meaning words. |
| 6 | Origin of words. Introduction to the etymological dictionary. | Etymology. Etymological dictionary. |
| 7 | What do our names mean? | Origin and meaning of names. Old Russian names. Surname. Surname. |
| 8 | Seasons. Where did the names of the months come from? | Origin of the names of the months. History of the Russian calendar. |
| 9 | Why are they called that? Journey into the world of plants. |
Plant names. Origin of plant names. |
| 10 | Why are they called that? Journey into the world of animals. |
Animal names. Origin of animal names. |
| 11 | Journey into a fairy tale. | Names of fairy-tale characters. |
| 12 | Twin words. Introduction to the dictionary of homonyms. | Homonyms. Dictionary of homonyms. |
| Words are friends. Synonym dictionary | Synonyms. Synonym dictionary. | |
| 14 | The use of synonyms in speech. | |
| 15 | Words are enemies. Dictionary of antonyms. | Antonyms. Dictionary of antonyms. |
| 16 | Words are old and words are babies. | Outdated words, archaisms, neologisms. |
| 17 | Journey through Phraseology. Introduction to the phraseological dictionary. | Phraseology. Phraseological turnover. Winged words. Phrasebook. |
| 18 | The proverb speaks beautifully. | Proverbs and sayings. Their interpretation. |
| 19 | The word under a microscope. Introduction to word-formation dictionary. |
Word formation. Morpheme. Word-formation dictionary. |
| 20 | Adventures in the land of Morphology. | Morphology. Morphological analysis. |
| 21 | Let's take a closer look at the cases. | Noun and adjective case. Case ending. |
| 22 | Journey to the land of Action. Where does the verb fall? | Verb - as a part of speech. Mood of verbs. |
| 23 | Journey to the Land of Signs. With a dictionary of epithets. | Adjective. Epithets. |
| 24 | "You can't execute, you can't pardon." Journey to the land of unlearned lessons. |
Syntax. Punctuation. Punctuation marks. |
| 25 | Spelling tales. | |
| 26 | Visiting unstressed vowels. | Rules for checking unstressed vowels. |
| 27 | A chest with unverifiable unstressed vowels. | Vocabulary words |
| 28 | The consonants are twins. | Double consonants. |
| 29 | Invisible people in the fog. | Unpronounceable consonants. |
| 30 | Visit the hissing ones. Visiting Tsarevich Ts. | Rules for writing words with sibilants. |
| 31 | On a visit to silent letters. | Words with ь and ъ. |
| 32 | Together or separately. | Working with dictionaries. |
| 33 | Crosswords in Russian | Vocabulary. |
| 34 | Tournament of Russian language experts | Summarizing the material covered |
10 myths about the Russian language
What kind of “coffee” is it, should “president” be capitalized, and is it polite to say “eat” instead of “eat”.
There are standard errors that guardians of the Russian language like to refer to: incorrect emphasis in the word “simultaneously” or confusion with the gender of “coffee”. But there are more interesting cases. Most native speakers, for example, mispronounce the phrase “opinions vary”: the norm is that the stress of this verb should be on the first syllable. We have selected the 10 most common misconceptions about the Russian language based on a lecture by Vladimir Pakhomov, editor-in-chief of the Gramota.ru portal, about myths in the Russian language.
Coffee
Coffee is a loanword ending with the letter "e", but is masculine. In the vast majority, such words acquire a neuter gender in our language - that’s how it is structured, and this tendency is unusually strong. For example, “metro” used to be also masculine (from “metropolitan”), and even the newspaper “Soviet Metro” was published. It is always a mystery to foreigners why in Russian “cafe” is neuter, and “coffee” is masculine. But the masculine gender is maintained by the presence of the obsolete forms “coffee” and “coffee”. This is a kind of linguistic memorial.
"in Strogin"
Anna Akhmatova was very indignant when they said in front of her “I live in Kratovo” instead of “I live in Kratovo.” Another writer suggested that everyone who says “from Kemerovo” should use the same model to say “from the window.” Apparently, during the decade during which the new inflexible version spread, we managed to forget that this rule always sounded different. The indeclinable names of settlements arose from the language of the military, for whom it was important to give the initial forms in the message. Let’s take, for example, Kratovo - from the declension “in Kratovo” it is not clear whether this is Kratovo or Kratovo. One of the most authoritative dictionaries today, the Zaliznyak dictionary, writes about the indeclinable form as follows: “the degree of prevalence of this phenomenon is so great that, apparently, it is already approaching the status of acceptable.”
"call"
“Ringing” - this bogeyman arises in any thematic discussion. There is a logic by which stress shifts in language, and whether we like it or not, these laws work. The transfer of stress from the ending to the root is natural - “smoke”, “cook” and “give” were also previously pronounced with stress on the last syllable, they just have already passed this path. Despite the fact that this makes everyone very angry, we will indeed say “calling” in the future.
President and Patriarch
In fact, these words are written in capitals only for official titles, in the texts of official documents. For example, in the text of the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, this word is written with a capital letter. But in a newspaper article there is no reason for this, and you need to write it in lowercase. There is also a very persistent myth that when congratulating a person, “birthday” must be written with two capital letters - no, both words are written with small letters.
"in Ukraine"
This is a very sensitive issue, and it constantly goes beyond the boundaries of linguistics. We adhere to this position: the norms of the Russian language have been developing over centuries, and they cannot change in five, ten or twenty years to suit some political processes. Therefore, in Russian it is correct to say “to Ukraine”. In general, the formation of prepositions is not always explainable. Why, for example, “at school”, but “at the factory”? It happened that way. Many people don’t like this, everyone needs to get to the bottom of it. “Everything must have an explanation” is another myth; many things in language cannot be explained.
There must always be one correct option
It’s not good when there are two norms, as is the case with the word “cottage cheese”. This is a very common myth. Variation is in no way a flaw for a language; on the contrary, it is its wealth. And there are different options. There are equal options, as is the case with cottage cheese. There are options for the categories “preferred/acceptable”, “modern/obsolete”, and even errors in dictionaries have their own gradations. In the spelling dictionary and in the dictionary of difficulties there is a clear system of notes in this regard. Let's say a non-recommended option is “vandal”, for example. There are wrong options, and there are grossly wrong ones. The approach in which it is believed that only one option is needed is typical for dictionaries addressed to radio and television workers. There are dictionaries that are aimed specifically at showing the dynamics of change and the richness of language norms. A dictionary is not a textbook; it should not record the only possible options.
Instead of “who is last” you need to say “who is last”
Uspensky wrote about this myth in the fifties in his book “A Word about Words.” Uspensky also explains in the book that each object - the same line - has two edges, and the question is thus untenable. Kolesov has an explanation that this use of “extreme” instead of “last” is borrowed from the Ukrainian language. There is also a superstition: everyone began to say “this was my last performance, last lecture, last show.” The word “last” has several negative connotations. For example, “bad” is the last scoundrel. It is clear why people who risk their lives avoid using this word: climbers, divers, circus performers and pilots. But when we hear in the speech of an ordinary person “when was the last time I was there,” it sounds funny.
The word “eat” is spoken only by ill-mannered people
There was such a recommendation in the dictionary of speech etiquette, according to which you can use this verb in relation to children, women can talk about themselves this way, but men should not say this. I don’t know how fair it is, but it is there - as a simple recommendation.
The pronoun "you" is always capitalized
In fact, “you” is capitalized only when addressing one person and only in texts of certain genres: personal letters, memos, leaflets. This, by the way, is not always obvious to philologists. On Gramota.ru there is a section “Conference Calendar”, where applications from portal users come, and almost every explanation has to be edited, because addressing respected colleagues includes the pronoun “you” with a capital letter.
Electronic dictionaries are less reliable than printed ones
Electronic versions of printed dictionaries are posted on the Gramota.ru website - they are one and the same material. For objective reasons, we have cases of discrepancies in recommendations. Let’s say they often ask how to put the accent in the word “tiramisu”. Previously, we answered that the norm is not defined in the dictionary, and since this word is not established, you have the right to choose the option that you like best. The 2012 academic edition of the spelling dictionary was published, and it recorded “tiramisu” with the emphasis on the last syllable. That is, now that this word has received registration in the language and dictionary fixation, we will begin to answer differently. But, let’s say, for the word “arugula” there is no such fixation yet. Fluctuations in the spelling of recently borrowed words are quite natural for a language. The same goes for the words twitter, facebook and others. It has not yet been determined how to write them. I would write differently: in an article I would write “Facebook” using quotes and an uppercase letter, and in a chat - with lowercase and without quotes.
FUN PHILOLOGY
There are many languages and dialects in the world: English, German, Ukrainian, Belarusian...
For you and me, Russian is our native language. Everyone who lives in Russia must speak Russian, because... it is the state language of the Russian Federation. And we read books in Russian, while using the literary Russian language, created by A.S. Pushkin!
Poets of many nationalities have written about the Russian language. For example, a poem by the Ukrainian poet Rostislav Bratun:
Since childhood I have spoken the language of Russia
Taught from Pushkin's fairy tales
He is the light of an unquenchable dream
Placed in my heart forever.
Lviv was drowned in the autumn night,
And rain, and snow, and thick darkness...
I saw Tatyana's eyes,
Poltava golden afternoon...
Oleg calls the warriors.
Pugachev leads people into battle,
Illuminated with a magical fairy tale
I have childhood
Pushkin is a sorcerer.
And “the storm covers the sky with darkness...”
But the sun, I believed, would rise...
The day dawns with a new dawn -
Rus' is coming to our rescue!
That book is still with me,
My father taught me from it
Love Russia with all my soul,
Its language, its people.
People have long said: “Literacy is a second language.” The centuries-old dream, deep wisdom, clear mind and subtle observation of the people are contained in this apt proverb.
Ordinary people in Tsarist Russia dreamed of the ability to read and write. They were drawn to knowledge. Understanding perfectly well that “without literacy is like without a candle in the dark” and that “learning is light, and ignorance is darkness.” But people's dreams remained dreams for a long time.
Nowadays, literacy has become universal. But we also often encounter issues related to the Russian language. Why do they say this? What does this or that word mean? Where did the unusual phraseological unit come from?
These are the questions we will try to answer in our section.ENTERTAINING FIDOLOGY,Let's get acquainted with interesting and educational information about language, the purpose of which iseducation, training and development of children, let's solve our main problem -to instill in schoolchildren an interest in reading, teach them to competently analyze a literary text, and explain many phraseological units. Children must learn to understand which objects in a literary work no longer exist in modern times, and which are present in today's life.
Where does the Russian language come from?
Russian is one of the largest languages in the world: in terms of the number of speakers it ranks fifth after Chinese, English, Hindi and Spanish.
Among the Slavic languages, Russian is the most widespread
All Slavic languages show great similarities among themselves, but the ones closest to the Russian language are Belarusian and Ukrainian. The three of these languages form the East Slavic subgroup, which is part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family.
The Proto-Slavic language is the ancestor language of all Slavic languages. It had no written language and was not recorded in writing.
Where, on what territory did our common ancestors live?
The ancestral home of the Slavs, that is, the territory where they developed as a special people with their own language and where they lived until their division and resettlement to new lands, has not yet been precisely determined - due to the lack of reliable data. And yet, with relative confidence, we can say that it was located in the east of Central Europe, north of the foothills of the Carpathians.
The ancestor of modern Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian languages was Old Russian (or East Slavic) language.
The collapse of the Old Russian language led to the emergence Russian (or Great Russian ) a language other than Ukrainian and Belarusian. This happened in the 14th century. The modern Russian language is based on the northern and north-eastern dialects of Ancient Rus' (by the way, the Russian literary language also has a dialect basis: it was composed of the central Central Russian dialects of Moscow and the villages surrounding the capital).
It's all grass
Mysterious "tryn-grass" - This is not at all some kind of herbal medicine that you drink so as not to worry. At first it was called"tyn-grass" and tyn is a fence. It turned out«
fence grass»,
that is, a weed that no one needs, everyone is indifferent to.
Master of sour cabbage soup
Sour cabbage soup is a simple peasant food: water and sauerkraut. Preparing them was not particularly difficult. And if someone was called a master of sour cabbage soup, it meant that he was not fit for anything worthwhile.
Plant the pig
In all likelihood, this expression is due to the fact that some peoples do not eat pork for religious reasons. And if such a person was quietly put pork in his food, then his faith was desecrated.
Add the first number
You won't believe it, but... from the old school, where students were flogged every week, no matter who was right or wrong. And if the mentor overdoes it, then such a spanking would last for a long time, until the first day of the next month. By the way, the same educational measure gave another phraseological unit - to register Izhitsa.
Register Izhitsa
Izhitsa is the name of the last letter of the Church Slavonic alphabet. Traces of flogging on well-known places of careless students strongly resembled this letter. So registering an Izhitsa means teaching a lesson, punishing it, and it’s easier to flog it. And you still criticize modern school!
Goal like a falcon
Terribly poor, beggar. People usually think that we are talking about a bird. But the falcon has nothing to do with it. In fact"falcon" - antique military battering gun. It was completely smooth ("naked") cast iron block attached to chains. Nothing extra!
Orphan Kazan
This is what they say about a person who pretends to be unhappy, offended, helpless in order to pity someone. But why an orphan?"Kazan"? It turns out that this phraseological unit arose after the conquest of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible. The Mirzas (Tatar princes), finding themselves subjects of the Russian Tsar, tried to beg all sorts of concessions from him, complaining about their orphanhood and bitter fate.
Unlucky man
In the old days in Rus'"by" They named not only the road, but also various positions at the prince’s court. The falconer's path is in charge of princely hunting, the hunter's path is in charge of hound hunting, the stableman's path is in charge of carriages and horses. The boyars tried by hook or by crook to get a position from the prince. And those who did not succeed were spoken of with disdain: “A worthless person.”
Inside out
Now this seems to be a completely harmless expression. And once it was associated with shameful punishment. During the time of Ivan the Terrible, a guilty boyar was placed backwards on a horse with his clothes turned inside out and, in this disgraced form, was driven around the city to the whistling and jeers of the street crowd.
Know all the ins and outs
The expression is associated with an ancient torture in which needles or nails were driven under the fingernails of the accused to extract a confession.
Lead by the nose
In the old days, trained bears were brought to fairs. Gypsies led bears by a ring threaded through their noses. And they forced them, the poor fellows, to do various tricks, deceiving them with the promise of a handout.
Sharpen the laces
Lyasy (balusters) are turned figured posts of railings at the porch. Only a true master could make such beauty. Probably first"sharpen balusters" meant to conduct an elegant, whimsical, ornate (like balusters) conversation. But in our time, the number of people skilled in conducting such a conversation became fewer and fewer. So this expression came to mean empty chatter.
Not appropriate
This is a very old sign: only the animal that the brownie likes will live both in the house and in the yard. If he doesn’t like it, he’ll get sick, get sick, or run away. What to do - not good!
Nick down
In this expression the word" nose " has nothing to do with the organ of smell."Nose" called a memorial tablet, or a note tag. In the distant past, illiterate people always carried such tablets and sticks with them, with the help of which all kinds of notes or notches were made as memories.
Break a leg
This expression arose among hunters and was based on the superstitious idea that with a direct wish (both down and feather), the results of a hunt can be jinxed. In the language of hunters, feather means bird, and down means animals. In ancient times, a hunter going on a hunt received this parting word," translation " which looks something like this:«
Let your arrows fly past the target, let the snares and traps you set remain empty, just like the trapping pit!»
To which the breadwinner, in order not to jinx it either, replied:" To hell! " And both were confident that the evil spirits, invisibly present during this dialogue, would be satisfied and leave behind, and would not plot intrigues during the hunt.
Beat your head
What are “baklushi”, who “beats” them and when? For a long time, artisans have been making spoons, cups and other utensils from wood. To carve a spoon, it was necessary to chop off a block of wood from a log. Apprentices were entrusted with preparing the bucks: it was an easy, trivial task that did not require any special skill. It was called preparing such chocks“to beat the thumbs.” Hence, from the mockery of the masters at the auxiliary workers -"Baklushechnikami" and our saying began.
After the rain on Thursday
The Rusichi - the most ancient ancestors of the Russians - honored among their gods the main god - the god of thunder and lightning Perun. One of the days of the week was dedicated to him - Thursday (it is interesting that among the ancient Romans Thursday was also dedicated to the Latin Perun - Jupiter). Prayers were offered to Perun for rain during the drought. It was believed that he should be especially willing to fulfill requests in" my day " - Thursday. And since these pleas often remained in vain, the saying«
After the rain on Thursday»
began to apply to everything that is unknown when it will come true.
Get into trouble
In dialects, BINDING is a fish trap woven from branches. And, as in any trap, being in it is not a pleasant thing. "
What does it mean to roar like a beluga? It turns out that we are not talking about the beluga, but the beluga whale, which is the name of the polar dolphin. He really roars very loudly.
Scapegoat
The history of this expression is as follows: the ancient Jews had a rite of absolution. The priest laid both hands on the head of the living goat, thereby, as it were, transferring the sins of the entire people onto it. After this, the goat was driven out into the desert. Many, many years have passed, and the ritual no longer exists, but the expression still lives on...
Smoke rocker
In old Rus', huts were often heated in a black way: the smoke did not escape through a chimney (there was none at all), but through a special window or door. And they predicted the weather by the shape of the smoke. The smoke comes in a column - it will be clear, dragging - towards fog, rain, a rocker - towards the wind, bad weather, or even a storm.
Hair on end
But what kind of rack is this? It turns out that standing on end means standing at attention, on your fingertips. That is, when a person gets scared, his hair seems to stand on tiptoes on his head.
Get into trouble
Rozhon is a sharp pole. And in some Russian provinces this is what they called four-pronged pitchforks. Indeed, you can’t really trample on them!
Upside down
Loitering - in many Russian provinces this word meant walking. So, upside down is just walking upside down, upside down.
Grated kalach
By the way, in fact there was such a type of bread - grated kalach. The dough for it was crushed, kneaded, and grated for a very long time, which is why the kalach turned out to be unusually fluffy. And there was also a proverb - don’t grate, don’t crush, there won’t be a kalach. That is, trials and tribulations teach a person. The expression comes from a proverb, and not from the name of the bread.
Bring to light
Once upon a time they said to bring fish to clean water, i.e. in thickets of reeds or where snags are drowning in silt, a fish caught on a hook can easily break the line and leave. And in clear water, above a clean bottom - let him try. So it is with an exposed swindler: if all the circumstances are clear, he will not escape retribution.
And there is a hole in the old woman
And what kind of a hole is this (a mistake, an oversight / in Ozhegov and Efremova) is this a hole (i.e. flaw, defect) or what? The meaning, therefore, is this: And a person wise with experience can make mistakes. Interpretation from the lips of an expert in ancient Russian literature: And the old woman suffers from Porukha (Ukrainian). up-down 1) Harm, destruction, damage; 2) Trouble.
The language will take you to Kyiv
In 999, a certain Kiev resident Nikita Shchekomyaka got lost in the endless, then Russian, steppe and ended up among the Polovtsians. When the Polovtsians asked him: “Where are you from, Nikita?” , he answered that he was from the rich and beautiful city of Kyiv, and described the wealth and beauty of his native city to the nomads in such a way that the Polovtsian Khan Nunchak attached Nikita by the tongue to the tail of his horse, and the Polovtsians went to fight and plunder Kyiv. This is how Nikita Shchekomyaka got home with the help of his tongue.
Sharomyzhniki
...1812
year. When the French burned Moscow and were left in Russia without food, they came to Russian villages and asked for food She rami (“give me”). So the Russians began to call them that (one of the hypotheses)
Great and mighty
or interesting facts about the Russian language
MORPHEMICS
- There is a word in the Russian language with a prefix unique to the language co- - nook.
- The only word in the Russian language that does not have, on a surface level, root - remove . It is believed that in this word there is a so-called zero root, which alternates with the root-im- (take out). Previously, until about the 17th century, this verb looked like take out , and it had a material root, the same as inremove, hug, understand(cf. remove, hug, understand), but subsequently the root-nya- was reinterpreted as a suffix-well- (as in stick, blow).
- The only words in Russian with three letters“e” in a row is long-necked (and others on the -neck, for example, crooked-, short-) and “snake-eater”.
- The only one-syllable adjective in Russian is wicked.
- The Russian language has words with prefixes unique to the language. and-, - total and total and a- - maybe (obsolete avos " but no luck»), formed from unions and and a.
The words “for future use”, “all in” and “full face” are adverbs.
Concepts in RussianIndian(aboriginal America) And Indian(inhabitant India) are designated by different words (are nothomonyms). In almost all Western European languages, these two words are spelled the same.
- Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance(Lomonosov) , industry ( Karamzin), bungling ( Saltykov-Shchedrin) , fade away ( Dostoevsky), mediocrity ( Northerner), exhausted, pilot(Khlebnikov).
- Dahlsuggested replacing a foreign word"atmosphere" in Russian "kolozemica" or "world face".
- IN Explanatory Dictionary 1940 edited by Ushakovthere is a definition of the word"Figli-migli" (!): "...used to denote some tricks, jokes or some approaches to achieve something, accompanied by pleasantries, antics, tricks, winks").
In the title of the novel Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" the word peace is used as an antonym to war (pre-revolutionary"world"), and not in the meaning of "world around" ( pre-revolutionary"mir") All lifetime editions of the novel were published under the title"War and Peace" and Tolstoy himself wrote the title of the novel in French as"La guerre et la paix". However, due to typos in different publications at different times, where the word was written as"world" Disputes about the true meaning of the novel's title are still raging.
There is a grammatical rule according to which native Russian words do not begin with the letter “a”(!)
Almost all words in the Russian language starting with the letter" A ", - borrowed. Nouns of Russian origin on" A " in modern speech very few are words"ABC", "az" and "maybe".
- Words bull and bee - single-rooted. The fact is that in the works of ancient Russian literature the word bee was written as"beechela". The alternation of vowels ъ/ы is explained by the origin of both sounds from the same Indo-European sound U. If we recall the dialect verb to bochachat, which has the meaning« roar, hum, buzz» and etymologically related to the words bee, bug and bull, it becomes clear what was the general meaning of these nouns - producing a certain sound.
- Mongol warriors wore armor called"dick". During the wars of Rus' with the Golden Horde, this word penetrated into the Russian language, but in an ennobled form - eastern armor of the brigantine type began to be called"kuyak".
- The words soufflé and souffler have little in common in meaning, but both come from French"souffle" ( exhale, blow). The soufflé is so named because it is light and airy, and the prompter is so named because it must prompt the actors very quietly.
- The word "umbrella" appeared in Russian from Dutch in exactly this form. Only later it was perceived by the people as a diminutive, and they began to use the word for large umbrellas" umbrella ".
AND MORE...
- In the 19th century in Russian translations"Ivanhoe" called in Russian -"Ivangoe"
- Until the 14th century in Rus', all obscene words were called"ridiculous verbs"
- From 1910 to 1920, freight locomotives of the Y series were mass-produced in Russia
THE MOST, THE MOST, THE MOST...
The sunniest geometric figure?
Biggest bear?
The largest predatory animal?
The most toothy cutlery?
Most travel bag?
Best swimming shoes?
The sharpest heel?
The most heavenly color?
The most children's theater?
The most toothy ballet?
Most geometric headdress?
The most dishonest headdress?
The most crying character in ancient Russian literature?
The most famous song of Solovyov-Sedoy?
The most peaceful outcome of the fight?
The most children's swimming device?
Biggest sporting event?
Longest distance in athletics?
The most “sporty” female name?
The very first school textbook?
Southernmost continent?
The highest scientific title in Russia?
The best feathered singer in Russia?
The most famous nanny of the most famous Russian poet?
The smartest sport?
Biggest waves?
Tallest policeman?
Longest parallel?
Biggest piece of ice?
The most ballet skirt?
The kindest doctor?
The bloodiest pirate captain?
The most loyal animal to humans?
The most star-studded flag in the world?
The world's largest gorge?
Slowest clock hand?
The lightest chemical gas?
The most athletic village?
The most famous theatrical phrase with which many famous actors began their careers.
The most musical flower?
The best expert and teller of fairy tales?
The most truthful baron in the world?
The oldest medicine?
The strongest fairytale girl?
The most vegetable fairy tale?
Flower City's most famous resident?
The most Ural stone?
Sherlock Holmes's most famous line?
The most popular instrument on the Dark Continent?
The most beautiful bird in the world?
The world's most famous tourist?
The most camp musical instrument?
What is the longest key on a standard computer keyboard?
The world's largest nut?
The brightest star in our sky?
The most cosmic cape?
The most fabulous Russian artist?
Is the artist the creator of the most mysterious smile?
The most "American" statue?
The saddest knight?
The crookedest of rulers?
The fastest way to sport swim?
The most famous tower in the world?
The most famous wall in the world?
The largest football stadium?
The most Russian musical instrument?
The most wedding march?
The most famous letter from the fronts of the Great Patriotic War?
The best crocodile in the world?
What is the name of a book that tells about the very best?
FUN LINGUISTICS
Having forever remembered how I was surprised and how pleased I was by a randomly observed pattern in the language, I made the decision someday in the future to start writing books on “Entertaining Linguistics.”
L. Uspensky. "According to the law of the letter."
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Science and life // Illustrations
Lev Vasilievich Uspensky (1900-1990) - writer, popularizer, author of a dozen popular science books
Scientific and entertaining books by Lev Vasilyevich Uspensky (1900-1990) on linguistics “You and your name”, “The name of your house”, “Why not otherwise? (Etymological dictionary of a schoolchild)”, “According to the law of letters” and others have gained the greatest popularity since since the 50s of the last century.
Lev Vasilyevich changed many occupations and professions: he was a topographer, a teacher, a farmer, an assistant forester, worked as an editor, studied local history, and compiled a dictionary of the Old Russian language. He was interested in biology and geography, paleontology and drawing, gliding and land management, literature and linguistics... He became one of six enthusiasts who founded a unique cultural and educational center in Leningrad in 1934 - the House of Entertaining Science (DZN), in which he headed the department entertaining geography and entertaining geology, which aroused great interest among visitors of all ages.
At the beginning of the blockade, Lev Vasilyevich volunteered for the front and fought as a fleet captain in the Baltic, and after the war he wrote scripts for radio and television programs, translated poetry (from several languages), and acted as a publicist and philologist.
Readers of the older generation became acquainted with Lev Uspensky through his works of fiction and popular science books - about the myths of Ancient Greece, about the secrets of archeology, about the history of the city on the Neva. All of them are among those books that Science and Life advises you to read.
We offer readers a chapter from L. V. Uspensky’s book “A Word about Words,” which was not published in the magazine.
Y. MOROZOV.THE MOST AMAZING LETTER OF THE RUSSIAN ABC
Now you will be surprised.
Open the volume of poems by A. S. Pushkin to the famous poem “Through the Wavy Mists...”. Take a piece of paper and a pencil. Let's count how many different letters are contained in its first four quatrains: how many "a", how many "b", etc. Why? You'll see.
Take the more voluminous work of the same poet - “Song of the Prophetic Oleg”. Do the same calculation here.
In the “Song” there are about 70 letters “p”, 80-odd - “k”, more than a hundred - “v”... The letter “f” does not appear even once here. How's that? However, it is quite possible.
Let’s do the same experiment with Pushkin’s wonderful unfinished fairy tale about the bear: “Like warm spring times...”.
It also contains 60 letters "p", even more "k" and even more so "v". But letters "f" and here you are you won't find a single one. This is where it gets weird.
What is this - an accident? Or did Pushkin deliberately choose words without “f”?
There are about 30,000 letters in this magnificent poem. But neither in the first, nor in the third, nor in the fifth thousand will you find the letter “f”. Only after reading four or five pages out of fifteen will you come across it for the first time. You will encounter this on line 378 of “Poltava” in the mysterious phrase:
In the darkness of the night they
like thieves...
Add up the numbers
station wagons...
“Universals” in the Ukrainian language of those days were called the hetman’s decrees, and “digits” then meant what we now call “cipher” - a secret letter. The first letter “f” is found in this word.
Having read “Poltava” to the end, you will encounter it two more times in the same word:
Anathema thunders in the cathedrals...
Once a year is anathema to this day,
The cathedral thunders and thunders about her...
"Anathema" means curse. The traitor Mazepa was cursed in all churches.
Thus, among the 30,000 letters of “Poltava” we found only three “f”. What about “p”, “k” or “w”? Yes, there are certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of them. Well, did Pushkin have an obvious disgust for one of the letters of the Russian alphabet, for the innocent letter “f”?
This is undoubtedly not the case. Study the poems of any of our other classic poets - the result will be the same. The letter "f" is not present either in Lermontov's "When the Yellowing Field is Worried" or in Krylov's "The Crow and the Fox." Is she really hated by them too?
Apparently, this is not the case.
Pay attention to the words in which we found the letter "f" in "Poltava". Both of them are not Russian in origin. A good dictionary will tell you that the word “number” penetrated into all European languages from Arabic (it’s not for nothing that our numbers themselves are called Arabic, as you know), and “anathema” is a Greek word. This is a very interesting fact for us.
In Pushkin's "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" the letter "f", as in "Poltava", appears three times, and all three times in the same word - "fleet". But this word is not Russian, it is in international circulation: in Spanish the fleet will be “flota” (fleet), in English - “fleet” (fleet), in German - “Flotte” (flott). All languages used the same ancient Roman root: in Latin “fluere” (fluere) meant “to flow” (about water).
An unexpected thing is discovered: every word of the Russian language in which the letter “f” is written at the beginning, at the end or in the middle turns out to be not a native Russian word, but one that came to us from other languages and has an international circulation.
Thus, “focus” meant “hearth” back in Ancient Rome. "Lantern" means "lamp" in Greek. "Coffee" is borrowed from the Arabs. “Maffyan”, “taffeta”, “sofa” came to us from other Turkic countries of the East.
It's the same with our proper names: Foka- means “seal” in Greek; Fedor(more precisely, Theodore - Theodore) - “God’s gift” in the same language, etc. Having looked through any good dictionary of the Russian language, you will find in it literally a dozen or two such words with “f” that appear only in Russian speech. And what kind of words are these! “Snort”, “fuknut” are clearly onomatopoeic formations or artificial, and for the most part also onomatopoeic, made-up words like “bullshit”, “figli-migli”, “falya”, “fufaney”.
This kind of “word” can be invented for any sound that is not even in the language: “dzeknut”, “kheknut”, etc.
Now everything is clear.
Great Russian writers and classical poets wrote in pure, truly folk Russian. In his abundant and rich vocabulary, words that came from afar and borrowed always occupied a secondary place. Even fewer of them contain the letter “f”. So is it surprising that it occurs so rarely in the works of our Slavic literary artists?
Don't take my word for it, though. Unfold your favorite books and for the first time in your life, re-read them not from the usual reader’s point of view, but, so to speak, from a linguistic point of view. Take a closer look at the letters that make up the words in these books. Take a closer look at them. Ask yourself, for example, this question: are those words that begin with the letter “f” the same as all the others, or do they also have some peculiarity?
You are reading "Boris Godunov". The immortal drama of Pushkin. Look: in those scenes where the life of the Russian people is depicted, there are almost no words with the letter “f”: only a few names contain it (Tsarevich Fyodor, Efimevsky Monastery, clerk Efimev), and the map that the Tsarevich draws is called “geographical”.
But here we are in Poland or on the Lithuanian border. There are foreigners around - Rosen, Margeret with their non-Russian speech. And the crafty foreign letter is right there. On the page where these mercenary warriors operate, it appears seven times in a row! Doesn’t this speak volumes about the amazing skill and care with which the great poet chose the words he needed?
The rarity of the letter "f" in our literature is not an accident. It is evidence of the deep nationality and high purity of the Russian language among our great writers.
Chapters from the book “A Word about Words” were published in the journal “Science and Life” No. 6, 8-12, 1962; Nos. 1-3, 5-9, 1963; Nos. 7,9, 11, 1966; No. 5, 1974; No. 5, 1977