SLAVIC LANGUAGES, a group of languages ​​belonging to the Indo-European family, spoken by more than 440 million people in Eastern Europe and North and Central Asia. The thirteen currently existing Slavic languages ​​are divided into three groups: 1) the East Slavic group includes Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages; 2) West Slavic includes Polish, Czech, Slovak, Kashubian (which is spoken in a small area in northern Poland) and two Lusatian (or Serb Lusatian) languages ​​​​- Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian, common in small areas in eastern Germany; 3) the South Slavic group includes: Serbo-Croatian (spoken in Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina), Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. In addition, there are three dead languages ​​- Slovene, which disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century, Polabian, which became extinct in the 18th century, and Old Slavonic - the language of the first Slavic translations of the Holy Scripture, which is based on one of the ancient South Slavic dialects and which was used in worship in the Slavic Orthodox Church, but was never the everyday spoken language ( cm. OLD SLAVONIC LANGUAGE).

Modern Slavic languages ​​have many words in common with other Indo-European languages. Many Slavic words are similar to the corresponding English ones, for example: sister – sister,three - three,nose - nose,night and etc. In other cases, the common origin of the words is less clear. Russian word see related to Latin videre, Russian word five related to German funf, Latin quinque(cf. musical term quintet), Greek penta, which is present, for example, in a borrowed word pentagon(lit. "pentagon") .

An important role in the system of Slavic consonantism is played by palatalization - the approach of the flat middle part of the tongue to the palate when pronouncing a sound. Almost all consonants in Slavic languages ​​can be either hard (non-palatalized) or soft (palatalized). In the field of phonetics, there are also some significant differences between the Slavic languages. In Polish and Kashubian, for example, two nasalized (nasal) vowels have been preserved - ą And ERROR, disappeared in other Slavic languages. Slavic languages ​​differ greatly in stress. In Czech, Slovak and Sorbian, the stress usually falls on the first syllable of a word; in Polish - to the penultimate one; in Serbo-Croatian, any syllable can be stressed except for the last one; in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, the stress can fall on any syllable of a word.

All Slavic languages, except Bulgarian and Macedonian, have several types of declension of nouns and adjectives, which change in six or seven cases, in numbers and in three genders. The presence of seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, local or prepositional and vocative) testifies to the archaism of the Slavic languages ​​and their closeness to the Indo-European language, which supposedly had eight cases. An important feature of the Slavic languages ​​is the category of the verb form: every verb refers either to the perfect or to the imperfect form and denotes, respectively, either a completed, or a lasting or repetitive action.

The habitat of the Slavic tribes in Eastern Europe in the 5th–8th centuries. AD expanded rapidly, and by the 8th c. the common Slavic language spread from the north of Russia to the south of Greece and from the Elbe and the Adriatic Sea to the Volga. Up to the 8th or 9th c. it was basically a single language, but gradually the differences between the territorial dialects became more noticeable. By the 10th c. there were already predecessors of modern Slavic languages.

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. It belongs to the eastern group of Slavic languages. Among the Slavic languages, Russian is the most widespread. All Slavic languages ​​show great similarities among themselves, but Belarusian and Ukrainian are closest to the Russian language. Together, these languages ​​form the East Slavic subgroup, which is part of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family.

1. Name the two most characteristic features of the grammatical structure of the Russian language

The first feature that creates the complexity of Russian morphology is the changeability of the word, that is, the grammatical arrangement of words with endings. The endings express the case and number of nouns, the agreement of adjectives, participles and ordinal numbers in phrases, the person and number of present and future tense verbs, the gender and number of past tense verbs.

The second feature of the Russian language is word order. Unlike other languages, the Russian language allows great freedom in word arrangement. The subject can be either before the predicate or after the predicate. Permutations are also allowed for other members of the sentence. Syntactically related words can be separated by other words. Of course, this or that word order is not at all random, but it is not regulated by purely grammatical rules, as in other European languages, where, for example, such word functions as subject and object are distinguished with its help.

1. What do you think is the difficulty of the Russian language for an Englishman?

The main difficulty lies in the change of the word. Russian people, of course, do not notice this, because it is natural and easy for us to say either EARTH, then EARTH, then EARTH - depending on the role of the word in the sentence, on its connection with other words, but for speakers of languages ​​​​of a different system - it is unusual and difficult. The point, however, is not at all that there is something superfluous in the Russian language, but that those meanings that are conveyed in Russian by changing the form of a word are conveyed in other languages ​​in other ways, for example, using prepositions, or word order, or even a change in the intonation of a word.

1. Does the Russian language need foreign words?

The lexical richness of a language is created not only by its own capabilities, but also by borrowing from other languages, since political, economic and cultural ties have always existed and still exist between peoples. The Russian language is no exception. In different historical periods, words from various languages ​​penetrated into the Russian language. There are very ancient borrowings. Speakers may not even be aware of it. For example, “foreign” words are: sugar (Greek), candy (Lat.), August (Lat.), compote (German), jacket (Swedish), lamp (German) and many other familiar words. Starting from the Petrine era, for obvious reasons (“a window to Europe”), borrowings from European languages ​​became more active: German, French, Polish, Italian, and English. At present - the end of the 20th - the beginning of the 21st century - the dictionary of a Russian person is replenished with Americanisms, that is, English words that came from the American version of the English language. The flow of borrowings in different historical periods is more or less active, sometimes it becomes stormy, but over time, its activity is lost. In the late 18th and early 19th century, there were many borrowings from French. Borrowing words from any language, the Russian language adapts them to its system, that is, foreign words are mastered. So, in particular, nouns acquire Russian endings, acquire a sign of gender, some begin to decline.

1. Why do Russian people so often make mistakes when using numerals?

An extremely complex system is represented by Russian numerals. This applies not only to their variability. Number names have different structures and represent different types of declension. Wed one (changes as an adjective), two, three, four (a special type of declension), five (changes as a 3rd declension noun, but not in numbers), forty, ninety and one hundred have only two forms: in all oblique cases the ending is -a: forty, one hundred. However, if one hundred is part of a compound number, it changes differently, cf. five hundred, five hundred, about five hundred.

At the moment, for example, there is a very noticeable tendency to simplify the declension of numerals: many Russians decline complex numerals only by half: cf. with fifty-three instead of the correct one with fifty-three. The system of declension of numerals is clearly being destroyed, and this is happening before our eyes and with our participation.

6. Name one of the changes in sounds and two changes in morphology known from the history of the Russian language (optional)

The sounding speech of a Russian person in that ancient era, of course, was not recorded by anyone (there were no appropriate technical methods), however, science knows the main processes that have taken place in the Russian language over the centuries, including processes that change the sound structure of the language, his phonetic system. It is known, for example, that in the words forest and day until about the 12th century there were not three sounds, but four, and that different vowels sounded in the first syllable of these two words. None of those who speak Russian today can accurately reproduce them, including phonetic experts. but experts know how they roughly sounded. This is because linguistics has developed methods for the study of ancient languages.

The number of types of declension of nouns has been significantly reduced: now, as you know, there are 3 of them, but there were much more - in different periods, a different number. For example, a son and a brother leaned differently for some time. Nouns such as sky and word were declined in a special way (features were preserved in the forms of heaven, words), etc.

Among the cases there was a special case - "vocative". This case form was received by the appeal: father - father, old man - elder, etc. In the prayers in the Church Slavonic language it sounded: “Our Father”, who art in heaven…, glory to you, Lord, the king of heaven…. The vocative case has been preserved in Russian fairy tales and other works of folklore: Kitty! Brother! Help me out! (Cat, rooster and fox).

The Old Russian verb was significantly different from the modern one: there was not one past tense, but four. - each with its own forms and meanings: aorist, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect. Three tenses were lost, one was preserved - the perfect, but it changed its form beyond recognition: in the chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years" we read: "why are you going to sing, you took all the tribute" (why are you going again? - after all, you have already taken all the tribute) - auxiliary verb (thou) fell away, only the participle form with the suffix L remained (here “caught”, i.e. took), which became for us the only form of the past tense of the verb: walked, wrote, etc.

7. In what area of ​​the Russian language system are the changes most noticeable and understandable: in phonetics, in morphology, or in vocabulary. Why?

Different aspects of the language change with varying degrees of activity: vocabulary changes most actively and most noticeably for speakers. Everyone knows the concepts of archaisms / neologisms. The meanings of words and their compatibility change. The phonetic structure and grammatical structure of the language, including Russian, is much more stable, but changes are taking place here too. They are not immediately noticeable, not like changes in the use of words. But specialists, historians of the Russian language, have established very important, profound changes that have taken place in the Russian language over the past 10 centuries. The changes that have taken place over the past two centuries, since the time of Pushkin, are also known - they are not so profound. For example, a certain type of noun. husband. p changed the form of the plural. numbers: in the time of Zhukovsky, Pushkin they said: houses, teachers, bread with an emphasis on the first syllable. The replacement of the ending Y with a shock at first occurred only in individual words, then more and more words began to be pronounced this way: teachers, professors, haystacks, workshops, locksmiths. Characteristically, this process is still ongoing and involves more and more words, i.e. you and I, who speak Russian now, are witnesses and participants in this process.

8. What is the essential difference between changes in language and changes in writing?

As you can see, there is a fundamental, fundamental difference between changes in writing (graphics) and changes in language: no king, no ruler can change the language by his will. It is impossible to order speakers not to pronounce any sounds, not to use any cases. Changes in the language occur under the influence of various factors and reflect the internal properties of the language. They occur against the will of the speakers (although, of course, they are created by the speaking community itself). We are not talking about changes in the style of letters, in the number of letters, in spelling rules. The history of language and the history of writing are different stories. Science (the history of the Russian language) has established how the Russian language has changed over the centuries: what changes have occurred in the sound system, in morphology, in syntax and in vocabulary. Development trends are also studied, new phenomena and processes are noted. New trends are born in live speech - oral and written.

9. Is it possible for a language to exist without writing? Argument your answer

In principle, a language can exist without writing (although its possibilities in this case are limited). At the dawn of mankind, there was at first only oral speech. Until now, there are peoples in the world that do not have a written language, but, of course, they have a language. Other proofs of the possibility of language without writing can be cited. For example: without writing, small children speak the language (before studying at school). So, the language existed and exists, first of all, in oral form. But with the development of civilization, it also acquired another form - written. The written form of speech developed on the basis of the oral one and existed, first of all, as its graphic display. In itself, it is a remarkable achievement of the human mind to establish a correspondence between a speech element and a graphic icon.

10. In what other way, besides writing, is it possible in our time to save speech and transmit it over a distance? (There is no direct answer in the textbook)

Speech in our time can be recorded - stored on various audio and video media - discs, cassettes, etc. And later on such media you can transfer it.

11. Is it possible in principle to reform writing? Argument your answer

Yes, it can be changed and even reformed. The letter is not part of the language, but only corresponds to it, serves as its reflection. It is invented by society for practical purposes. With the help of a system of graphic icons, people capture speech, save it and can transmit it over a distance. The letter can be changed at the will of the people, reformed if there is a practical need for this. The history of mankind knows many facts of changing types of writing, that is, ways of graphic transmission of speech. There are fundamental changes, for example, the transition from the hieroglyphic system to the alphabetic or within the alphabetic system - replacing the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin one or vice versa. Smaller changes in writing are also known - changes in the style of letters. Even more frequent changes are the elimination of some individual letters from the practice of writing, and the like. An example of writing changes: for the Chukchi language, writing was created only in 1931 on the basis of the Latin alphabet, but already in 1936 the letter was translated into Russian graphics.

12. With what historical event is the emergence of writing in Rus' connected? When did it happen?

The emergence of writing in Rus' is associated with the official adoption of Christianity in 988.

13. Why is the Slavic alphabet called "Cyrillic"?

Russian alteration of the Greek alfabetos, composed of the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet - alpha and beta - in the Slavic version of az and beeches. It is generally accepted that the names of the Slavic letters were invented by the creator Slavic alphabet Cyril in the ninth century. He wanted the very name of the letter to be not a meaningless complex of sounds, but to have meaning. He called the first letter azъ - in ancient Bulgarian “I”, the second - just “letter” (this is what this word looked like in ancient times - bouks), the third - veda (from the ancient Slavic verb vedi - “to know”). If we translate the name of the first three letters of this alphabet into modern Russian, we get "I learned the letter." Slavic alphabet (Cyrillic) was developed by a team of missionary scientists led by the brothers Cyril and Methodius, when the adoption of Christianity by the Slavic peoples required the creation of church texts in their native language. The alphabet quickly spread in the Slavic countries, and in the 10th century it penetrated from Bulgaria to Rus'.

14. Name the most famous monuments of Russian writing

Monuments of ancient Russian literature about ancient Russian writing and literature: The Tale of Bygone Years, Book of Powers, Daniil Zatochnik, Metropolitan Hilarion, Kirill of Turov, Life of Euphrosyne of Suzdal, etc.

15. What is the significance of "birch bark letters" for the history of Russian writing?

Birch bark documents are both material (archaeological) and written sources; their location is just as important a parameter for history as their content. Letters “give names” to the silent finds of archaeologists: instead of the faceless “estate of a noble Novgorodian” or “traces of a wooden canopy”, we can talk about the “estate of the priest-artist Olisey Petrovich, nicknamed Grechin” and about “traces of a canopy over the premises of the local court of the prince and posadnik” . The same name in letters found on neighboring estates, mentions of princes and other statesmen, mentions of significant sums of money, geographical names - all this says a lot about the history of buildings, their owners, their social status, their connections with other cities and regions.

Slavic languages ​​are related languages ​​of the Indo-European family. More than 400 million people speak Slavic languages.

Slavic languages ​​are distinguished by the closeness of word structure, the use of grammatical categories, sentence structure, semantics (semantic meaning), phonetics, and morphonological alternations. This proximity is explained by the unity of the origin of the Slavic languages ​​and their contacts with each other.
According to the degree of proximity to each other, the Slavic languages ​​are divided into 3 groups: East Slavic, South Slavic and West Slavic.
Each Slavic language has its own literary language (a processed part of the common language with written norms; the language of all manifestations of culture) and its own territorial dialects, which are not the same within each Slavic language.

Origin and history of the Slavic languages

The Slavic languages ​​are closest to the Baltic languages. Both are part of the Indo-European family of languages. From the Indo-European parent language, the Balto-Slavic parent language first emerged, which later split into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. But not all scientists agree with this. They explain the special closeness of these proto-languages ​​by the long contact of the ancient Balts and Slavs, and deny the existence of the Balto-Slavic language.
But it is clear that from one of the Indo-European dialects (Proto-Slavic) the Proto-Slavic language was formed, which is the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages.
The history of the Proto-Slavic language was long. For a long time, the Proto-Slavic language developed as a single dialect. Dialect variants arose later.
In the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e. the early Slavic states began to form on the territory of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. Then the process of division of the Proto-Slavic language into independent Slavic languages ​​began.

The Slavic languages ​​have retained significant similarities with each other, but at the same time, each of them has unique features.

Eastern group of Slavic languages

Russian (250 million people)
Ukrainian (45 million people)
Belarusian (6.4 million people).
The writing of all East Slavic languages ​​is based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

Differences between East Slavic languages ​​and other Slavic languages:

reduction of vowels (akanye);
the presence of Church Slavonicisms in the vocabulary;
free dynamic stress.

Western group of Slavic languages

Polish (40 million people)
Slovak (5.2 million people)
Czech (9.5 million people)
The writing of all West Slavic languages ​​is based on the Latin alphabet.

Differences between West Slavic languages ​​and other Slavic languages:

In Polish, the presence of nasal vowels and two rows of hissing consonants; fixed stress on the penultimate syllable. In Czech, fixed stress on the first syllable; the presence of long and short vowels. Slovak has the same features as Czech.

Southern group of Slavic languages

Serbo-Croatian (21 million people)
Bulgarian (8.5 million people)
Macedonian (2 million people)
Slovenian (2.2 million people)
Writing: Bulgarian and Macedonian - Cyrillic, Serbo-Croatian - Cyrillic / Latin, Slovenian - Latin.

Differences of South Slavic languages ​​from other Slavic languages:

Serbo-Croatian has free musical stress. In the Bulgarian language - the absence of cases, the variety of verb forms and the absence of the infinitive (indefinite form of the verb), free dynamic stress. Macedonian language - the same as in Bulgarian + fixed stress (no further than the third syllable from the end of the word). The Slovenian language has many dialects, the presence of a dual number, free musical stress.

Writing of Slavic languages

The creators of Slavic writing were the brothers Cyril (Konstantin the Philosopher) and Methodius. They translated liturgical texts from Greek into Slavonic for the needs of Great Moravia.

Prayer in Old Church Slavonic
Great Moravia is a Slavic state that existed in 822-907. on the Middle Danube. In its best period, it included the territories of modern Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lesser Poland, part of Ukraine and the historical region of Silesia.
Great Moravia had a great influence on the cultural development of the entire Slavic world.

Great Moravia

The new literary language was based on the South Macedonian dialect, but in Great Moravia it adopted many local linguistic features. Later it was further developed in Bulgaria. A rich original and translated literature was created in this language (Old Church Slavonic) in Moravia, Bulgaria, Rus', and Serbia. There were two Slavic alphabets: Glagolitic and Cyrillic.

The most ancient Old Slavonic texts date back to the 10th century. Starting from the XI century. more Slavic monuments have been preserved.
Modern Slavic languages ​​use alphabets based on Cyrillic and Latin. The Glagolitic alphabet is used in Catholic worship in Montenegro and in several coastal areas in Croatia. In Bosnia, for some time, the Arabic alphabet was also used in parallel with the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets (in 1463, Bosnia completely lost its independence and became part of the Ottoman Empire as an administrative unit).

Slavic literary languages

Slavic literary languages ​​did not always have strict norms. Sometimes the literary language in the Slavic countries was a foreign language (in Rus' - Old Church Slavonic, in the Czech Republic and Poland - Latin).
The Russian literary language had a complex evolution. It absorbed folk elements, elements of the Old Slavonic language, and was influenced by many European languages.
Czech Republic in the 18th century dominated by the German language. During the period of national revival in the Czech Republic, the language of the 16th century was artificially revived, which at that time was already far from the national language.
The Slovak literary language developed on the basis of the vernacular. in Serbia until the 19th century. dominated by the Church Slavonic language. In the XVIII century. began the process of rapprochement of this language with the people. As a result of the reform carried out by Vuk Karadzic in the middle of the 19th century, a new literary language was created.
The Macedonian literary language was finally formed only in the middle of the 20th century.
But there are also a number of small Slavic literary languages ​​(microlanguages) that function along with the national literary languages ​​in small ethnic groups. These are, for example, the Polissian microlanguage, the Podlachian in Belarus; Rusyn - in Ukraine; vichsky - in Poland; Banat-Bulgarian microlanguage - in Bulgaria, etc.

Replenishment of the vocabulary with new words by creating them from the word-formation elements available in the language and by borrowing words from the languages ​​of other peoples is a natural phenomenon for all languages.

Russian language refers to Slavic group languages. Related to it are the living East Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200b- Ukrainian And Belorussian; West Slavic - Polish, Kashubian, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian; South Slavic - Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian; dead West Slavic - Polabian And Pomeranian; South Slavic - Old Church Slavonic.

Long before our era, tribes of Slavs settled on the lands between the Dnieper and the Vistula, who developed their own common Slavic language. By the 5th - 6th centuries. among the Slavs, who by that time had significantly expanded their territory, three groups separated themselves: southern, western and eastern. This isolation of the Slavic tribes was accompanied by the division of the common Slavic language into independent languages. East Slavic (Old Russian) language is the language of a separate eastern group of Slavic tribes.

Settlement of Slavic tribes in the tenth century.

From the 7th century by the ninth century developed, and from the 9th century. until the second third of the 12th century. there was an East Slavic (Old Russian) state - Kievan Rus. The population of Kievan Rus communicated through close dialects of the East Slavic (Old Russian) language. In the XII - XIII centuries. Kievan Rus broke up into separate principalities. The East Slavic (Old Russian) language gave rise to three languages ​​- Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. They separated already by the 14th century. On the northeastern outskirts of Kievan Rus in the XIV century. the state of Moscow Rus began to be created, the population of which spoke the emerging Russian language. In the era of the Muscovite state and in subsequent eras, the Russian language is the language of only one of the three East Slavic peoples.

Originally Russian words are divided into three groups: common Slavic, East Slavic (Old Russian) and proper Russian. For example, common Slavic words: beard, eyebrow, hip, head, lip, throat and etc.; East Slavic (Old Russian) words: gaff, enough, rope, blackberry and others. From the XIV century. actually Russian words began to appear in the Russian language ( alcove, get lost, militia and etc.). They were created on the basis of common Slavic, East Slavic (Old Russian) and borrowed words. For example, in the XVI century. the word was borrowed from the Polish language pharmacy. On the basis of this word, the adjective arose in Russian pharmacy(according to the rules of Russian word production). Actually Russian words make up a significant layer of the vocabulary of the modern Russian language.

Everyone who was born and raised in Russia knows the song about the dashing Don Cossack Stepan Timofeevich Razin, the leader of the popular uprising in the early 70s. 17th century

From behind the island to the rod,

To the expanse of the river wave

Painted ones come up

Stenki Razin Chelny.

The words in this song are ancient. Let's look into their history, and at the same time into the languages ​​of neighboring peoples.

Word island in use since the 11th century; it has an attachment O- connected with the Indo-European root streu-, meaning "flow, leak, pour" (by the way, the same root is in the word jet). Wed: in Latvian strava and in Lithuanian srava, srove- current, flow; in german Strom- current, flow (strömen - flow, run, flow). Is there a connection between the island and the current? Of course have. After all, an island is a piece of land surrounded by water on all sides. Word island appeared not only in Russian, it has relatives in other Slavic languages: island(Ukrainian), vostrau(Belarusian), island(Bulgarian) island(Serbo-Croatian), island(Czech and Slovak), ostrow(Old Polish).

Word rod(a place in the river with the highest flow rate and depth) has been used since the 14th - 15th centuries; compare: shear(Ukrainian), stridzhan(Belarusian).

Words arose in antiquity river And river(Indo-European basis meant "flow, stream"); compare: rika and rich(Ukrainian), cancer and cancer(Belarusian), river and river(Bulgarian), river And speeches(Serbo-Croatian), river And recen(Slovenian), Reka And ricni(Czech), rieka And riecny(Slovak), rzeka And rzeczny(Polish).

From the 11th century the word used in ancient Russian shuttle; its basis is also Indo-European, meaning "to rise, to rise above something"; hence the English hill(hill, hill) and German Holm(elevation, hill, river island). But really dude (pl. canoes) - that is, a boat, a boat - was perceived from a distance as something towering above the smooth surface of the water. Of course, the diminutive is also remembered shuttle - firstly, like a small boat, and secondly, like a part of a loom (elongated in shape, like a boat). Wed: choven And official(Ukrainian), choven And chounik(Belarusian), chlun(Bulgarian) Coln And Colnicek(Slovenian), clun And clunek(Czech), cln And clnok(Slovak), czolno(Polish).

Sailing ships (boats) on the river; shuttle of an automatic loom; space shuttle Clipper (Russia)

How do scientists determine which words are common Slavic, which are East Slavic (Old Russian), and which are actually Russian? To do this, they compare in all Slavic languages ​​the meaning and pronunciation of words denoting the same objects, phenomena, signs, actions. Common Slavic will be those words that will appear in all or most Slavic languages, and each of the three groups of Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200bmust be represented (eastern, southern, western). If it turns out that words exist, for example, only in Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Slovene, then these words should be considered South Slavic; if only in Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, then these are East Slavic (Old Russian) words. If there are words in only one of the languages, then these are already their own formations of one or another Slavic language, for example, Russian.

The first scientific etymological dictionary of the Russian language appeared at the end of the 19th century. And in the last century, the Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language by A. G. Preobrazhensky and the Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language by Max Vasmer, as well as several short etymological dictionaries, were published.

In one of his books, L. V. Uspensky made an interesting comparison of Russian and Bulgarian words.

“When our soldier entered into a conversation with a Bulgarian, they, smiling sweetly at each other, all the time tried to moderate the pace of the conversation.

“My dear man,” the Russian persuaded, “don’t speak so fast, speak more slowly!”

- Pray those, friend, do not say such a borzo, say funny!