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Projective lexicon of the Russian language September 9, 2007
In this issue: The website of the Center for Creative Development of the Russian Language has been opened.
The longest words in European languages are also in Russian.
Competition for the longest word.
Dear friends!
In the July issue of the magazine "Continent" (132, 2007) my article Good and Evil in the Mirror of the Russian Language was published, which was previously published in separate chapters in issues of "The Gift" (167-169). For the paper edition, these issues have been significantly revised.
On September 17 - 23, 2007 in Varna (Bulgaria) the XI CONGRESS of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature will take place: “The World of the Russian Word and the Russian Word in the World.” At this congress I will give a presentation on the prospects for the lexical and grammatical development of the Russian language. Upon my return, I’ll tell you about my impressions of the Congress.
The current issue of "The Gift" is the anniversary issue, already the quarter thousandth. This is if you count not only author’s issues, but all issues: readers’, guest’s, competition’s. I never expected when I started this business that it would turn out to be so long. And by association, a topic arises, seemingly a little humorous, but in fact quite serious: what is the longest word in the Russian language? And in general, which languages have longer words?
Competition
Projective lexicon of the Russian language September 9, 2007
In this issue: The website of the Center for Creative Development of the Russian Language has been opened.
The longest words in European languages are also in Russian.
Competition for the longest word.
Dear friends!
After the summer break, we are resuming fresh episodes of The Gift. True, in September-October they will be published once every two weeks (as always, on Sundays), since my holidays, and therefore my travel absences, will last longer than usual this year.
First of all, I would like to welcome new readers and subscribers. Their number has crossed the symbolic threshold of three thousand (look at the number at the top of each number - there, in a rectangle, it is indicated how many people are receiving the current “Gift”). Dear new subscribers! I am very glad about your interest in “The Gift” and invite you to actively participate in our discussions, guest and reader issues! Write to me, ask questions, share your thoughts about the Russian language, send me new words.
russmne@emory.edu
Mikhail Naumovich Epstein
Subject: dar Encoding: KOI8 (or application in Word format)
The website of the Center for Creative Development of the Russian Language has opened.
The center was created in December 2006 under the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature (MAPRYAL) on the basis of St. Petersburg State University. The main task of the Center is to promote the creative development of the Russian language, the dynamic updating of its lexical composition and grammatical structure, the expansion of its conceptual and communicative capabilities and its more active inclusion in the global semiosphere and noosphere of the 21st century. The work of the Center is based on the idea that “language should not be considered as a dead product, but as a creative process” (Wilhelm von Humboldt). Language is being created today, now, and the task of the Center is to unite the most active and conscious participants in this process, to connect scientific linguistics with creative linguistics . Hence the name of the site - " Languologist ".
http://www.russkoeslovo.org/yazykovоd/
On it you will find several headings, including periodically updated ones: “Word of the week”, “Question for language”, “Facts and news of the linguistic sphere”, as well as “Lingvarium. Collection of thoughts and aphorisms about language”, “Projective dictionaries”, “ Literature on the dynamics and development of language,” etc. All sections are interactive, and you can already use them, make your comments and suggestions.
deserve special attention The sections “Word of the Year” and “Anti-Word of the Year” . We will choose them together with you. Propose your candidates, and then we will hold a vote. The “Word of the Year” is an even more important milestone than the “Person of the Year” that has long been elected in many countries. The word of the year: the one that most concentrates its problems, concern and interest. Anti-word of the year: the most false, propaganda, immoral. For example, over the past year I have heard the word “successor” all the time. Should we consider it a “Word” or an “Anti-Word”? Another word that has recently begun to be emphasized has gained popularity: “sharpen under”, “sharpened under”, “sharpening under”, for example, “sharpen under a program, advertising, broadcast, format”, etc. Perhaps this is how a new, heightened sense of practical expediency is expressed?
So, our Center establishes its observation post over the Russian linguistic sphere. Propose your candidates for the titles Slovo-2007 and Antislovo-2007! It is desirable (but not necessary) that each proposal be accompanied by at least a brief motivation. Send your words to: russmne@emory.edu Subject: dar Don't forget to indicate your first and last name, place of residence, preferably also your area of occupation and interests. The selection of Word and Anti-Word 2007 will obviously take place in December or January, but the sooner I receive your proposals, the sooner they can be sent to members of the Scientific and Creative Council of the Center - philologists, philosophers, writers (you will find their names on the Center’s website ). Readers who are the first to suggest words subsequently selected by the jury will receive memorable awards. Therefore, it is highly advisable to receive all your letters and proposals before December 10 , the earlier the better.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Evgeniy Efimovich Yurkov, Deputy General Secretary of MAPRYAL and Vice-President of ROPRYAL, Dean of Specialties. Faculty of Philology, St. Petersburg State University. Thanks to E.E. Yurkov, administrative and financial support for the Center is provided. Special thanks to Olga Igorevna Glazunova, executive director of the Center, philologist and linguist, associate professor at St. Petersburg State University. The site was created thanks to her constant efforts to provide organizational and technical support to the Center.
In the July issue of the magazine "Continent" (132, 2007) my article Good and Evil in the Mirror of the Russian Language was published, which was previously published in separate chapters in issues of "The Gift" (167-169). For the paper edition, these issues have been significantly revised.
On September 17 - 23, 2007 in Varna (Bulgaria) the XI CONGRESS of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature will take place: “The World of the Russian Word and the Russian Word in the World.” At this congress I will give a presentation on the prospects for the lexical and grammatical development of the Russian language. Upon my return, I’ll tell you about my impressions of the Congress.
The current issue of "The Gift" is the anniversary issue, already the quarter thousandth. This is if you count not only author’s issues, but all issues: readers’, guest’s, competition’s. I never expected when I started this business that it would turn out to be so long. And by association, a topic arises, seemingly a little humorous, but in fact quite serious: what is the longest word in the Russian language? And in general, which languages have longer words?
ABOUT THE LONGEST WORDS
First, a fun note :
Analyzing the history of World War II, the Americans discovered an interesting fact: in the event of a sudden clash with the Germans, US military personnel, as a rule, made decisions faster. The reason is that the average length of an English word is 5.2 letters, while that of a German word is 10.8. And, consequently, it took Americans 52% less time to issue orders.The fact that Russian words are longer than English ones (about 1.4 times) follows from the difference between the synthetic and analytical structure of the two languages: a synthetic word absorbs grammatical forms and meanings (case, modal, tense), while an analytical word transfers this function to others , service words (prepositions, auxiliary verbs, etc.).Just for fun, the same scientists analyzed Russian speech, and it turned out that the average length of a Russian word is 7.2 characters. However, in critical situations, Russian-speaking command staff switches to profanity, due to which the average word length is reduced to 3.2 letters. Some phrases and even phrases are replaced by ONE word. As an example, the phrase “32nd! fuck..and for this x..yu” is given (“32nd, I order to immediately destroy the enemy tank firing at our positions”).
In general, the Russian language loves to stretch out words to the greatest possible length, which was noted with displeasure by V. Dahl, who was surprised that the language preferred the stringy and unpronounceable “property”, with a jumble of four consonants “bstv”, to the simple and short word “so’b”. Yes, not only Russian songs are drawn-out, but also words; our language has a tendency to string together, concatenate morphemes. If the average Russian word is longer than English, then in theory the longest Russian words should be much longer than the longest English, French, Spanish words, since all these languages are analytical. But is this really so?
Let's leave aside arthropod scientific terms (especially chemical ones) and numerals that can be increased endlessly ("one hundred billion and eighty two million...") Let's turn to commonly used words. According to Wikipedia, the longest word in the Russian language is “private entrepreneurial” (25 letters). Adjacent to it are words of 24 letters: “misanthropy”, “re-examine”, “excellency”, as well as the rarer “internationalize” and “substantialize”. To them we can add the word that is the author’s, but has long been widely known - “low-artistic” (M. Zoshchenko).
24-25 letters - is it a lot or a little? Let's compare with the longest words in English, French and Spanish (analytical) and German and Bulgarian (more synthetic).
The longest English word is “antidisestablishmentarianism” - 28 letters. It is still used in the language to refer to the 19th century political movement in England directed against the separation of church and state, i.e., literally, against those who opposed the establishment.
The longest French word is "anticonstitutionnellement" ("anti-constitutional") - 25 letters.
The longest words in Spanish are even shorter, 23 letters, but there are two of them: the same "anticonstitucionalmente", anti-constitutional, and "electroencefalografista", "electroencephalographist" (i.e. specialist in the field of electroencephalography). The last word can be disqualified as too special.
It turns out that the longest Russian words (24-25 letters) are approximately equal in length to Western European ones. But the Bulgarians stood up for the honor of the Slavic languages; their longest word contains 39 letters! "Neprotivokonstitucionstvuvatelstvutaite" literally means: do not oppose the constitution, so to speak, "do not contradict the constitution."
It is surprising that in three languages at once: French, Spanish and Bulgarian, the longest words are associated with the idea of resistance to the constitution. It turns out that such resistance is a long and boring matter, you can barely pronounce it. And in all noted languages, including English, the first element of the longest word is "anti-" or "counter-".
But all these languages find it difficult to compete with German, where words are easily glued together by their stems. A classic example of the longest German word is "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitаn" (41 letters), which translates as "captain of the Danube Shipping Company." But here's a cooler word: Rindfleischetikettierungsуberwachungsaufgabenуbertragungsgesetz (63 letters) - a legal term denoting a system of laws and regulations for the trade labeling of beef products. But this last word can hardly be read, it is too special.
Let's not envy the Germans - they paid enough for the cumbersomeness of their words with defeat in the Second (and possibly in the First) World War (see note above). While they gave one command, the British managed to give two in their gentlemanly language, and the Russians in their obscene language. The fact that Russian is in the middle between English (5.2) and German (10.8) in terms of average word length (7.2 letters) seems to speak in its favor. And yet I would like for the longest words to also appear in the Russian language, at least in comparison with English and French - after all, the synthetic system gives it every right to do so.
And it provides an opportunity. Which we simply haven’t had time to use yet.
Let us remember, first of all, that in Russian, as in German, you can endlessly string adjectives, but spelling rules require that they be separated by a hyphen if they are formed from coordinating phrases, for example, “agricultural-engineering” - 38 letters (agriculture and mechanical engineering). However, if a complex adjective is formed from a subordinating phrase, then it is written not with a hyphen, but together (“agricultural”). For example, “dialectical materialistic” (from the subordinating phrase “dialectical materialism”) is a very real word, found even on the Internet, and not just in dusty textbooks of the Soviet era, and it has 28 letters. And if you put it in the masculine genitive case or in the instrumental plural, then there will already be 29 letters - the English record has been broken.
Don’t rush to come out with your dialectical-materialist views, they are not in fashion today.Or, if we are talking about philosophy: there is such a well-known direction - “existential psychoanalysis” (founded by J.-P. Sartre). And the adjective from it is “ existential-psychoanalytical ” (approach, method) - 33 letters, gender. pad. - 34!
Of course, one could argue that these words are too technical (though no more so than the English “antidisestablishmentarianism”). Does the language have a need for long words with wide application? This is where our linguistic creative intuition, the art of alternative linguistic thinking, comes into play.
THE LONGEST RUSSIAN WORD
So far, our longest word is “private enterprise”. But is it only private individuals who engage in entrepreneurship? It is known that our main entrepreneur is the state. It controls the oil and gas industry, and energy resources in general. For example, Rosenergoatom is a completely state-owned company, RAO UES is almost state-owned, and all of them, as befits companies, are engaged in entrepreneurial activities. Such activities can and should be called state-entrepreneurship . If the language reflects private property and entrepreneurship ( private property , private enterprise ) then why not reflect the fact of both state ownership ( state-owned ) and entrepreneurship?
So, here is a completely natural, living word that reflects a completely significant, socially and economically dominant aspect of modern Russian reality. And this word has 33 letters ! And in some indirect cases - 34
public entrepreneurial
Derived from the subordinating phrase “state enterprise,” this adjective is written together, like “private enterprise.”
So far, they themselves are benefiting more from the state-entrepreneurial enthusiasm of our new oligarchs than society.Word combinations: public entrepreneurial activity, initiative, action, office, accounting; state-entrepreneurial calculations, concerns, ambitions, developments, personnel, managers...Can Russia boast of bold public entrepreneurial projects in the field of complex intellectual technologies?
Но на этом возможности "удлинения", т.е. органического морфологического роста русского слова, не кончаются. Вспомним, что длиннейшие слова во всех упомянутых языках (кроме немецкого) начинаются с префикса "анти-" (а в болгарском - "не-" и "противо-"). Использование таких отрицательных префиксов - регулярный способ удлинения слов, поскольку где есть некое свойство, может быть и его отрицание. В этом "длиннотном" отношении славянские языки имеют даже больше возможностей, поскольку противо- на три буквы длиннее, чем анти- . Итак, возникает слово из 40 (сорока!) букв:
anti-state-entrepreneurial - directed against the dominance of the state in the field of economics.
Examples: anti-state-entrepreneurial union, conspiracy, coalition, platform, campaign - a union of forces opposing state capitalism, against the state as the main owner and entrepreneur in a given country. In indirect cases, this word grows to 41 letters, which leaves all Romance languages far behind and puts the length of the Russian word on par with German. In essence, this word is much higher quality than the longest German: it is more conceptual and does not include the occasional proper name (Donau - Danube)
There is no such word in Russian yet, but if you use it on your website or blog, then Google and Yandex will begin to produce it in response to a request, which means it will appear, and the whole world, including the Book of Records, will have to reckon with it Guinness. In order for a word to be recognized as existing in a language and worthy of being recorded in dictionaries, several cases of its independent use by different authors in different publications are needed. "Dar" now has about 3 thousand subscribers. If at least one out of 100 uses this word in his blog or other online publication, the word anti-state entrepreneurial can be considered actually part of the Russian language, recognized in the dictionary. And this will bring the Russian language the laurels of one of the most long-winded European languages. The maximum capacity of our lexical unit will immediately increase from 25 to 41 letters, i.e. by 64%. Russia is the largest country in the world, and it should have the longest words.
So, for the greater glory of the Russian language, let's create an anti-state-entrepreneurial coalition. Let's exchange ours
anti-state-entrepreneurial views . Announce in your LiveJournal the preparation of an anti-state-entrepreneurial manifesto, and perhaps plans to conduct an anti-state-entrepreneurial campaign in alliance with right-wing, liberal, opposition forces.
Maybe the state won’t like this word, but the language will. But language, as I. Brodsky said, is older and more powerful than the state.
Competition
A competition is announced for the longest Russian word. This word must be morphologically correct, i.e. compiled according to the rules of Russian word formation, and have a generally understandable meaning. It must contain at least 26 letters (i.e. more than the already existing word “private entrepreneurial”), and preferably more than 40 (i.e. more than the newly created word “anti-state entrepreneurial”). Send your words to: russmne@emory.edu Subject: dar Don't forget to indicate your first and last name, place of residence, preferably also your area of occupation and interests. Your proposals will be accepted until November 1st . The results of the competition will be announced at the end of November.
To encourage the competitors, I will note that it is not so difficult to surpass the previously marked record (25 letters). Here are some examples.
The Russian economy, overly blessed (27 letters) by high oil prices, showed significant growth last year.
Our poet, over-blessed (28) by a generous patron of the arts, is now more numerous. attracted to memoirs than to poetry.
I can’t understand Lenin, who became internationalized (29) to the point that he gave up part of Russia to the Germans for money “for the revolution.”
I feel sorry for Ivan Matveyevich, under the influence of cognac, who became convinced (31) that behind him, the father of Russian democracy, there are some influential forces “from there.” Then, out of nowhere, the security officers came and led him out under the arms of the whites.
But it’s no longer easy to come up with words longer than 31-32 letters, and I’m looking forward to the reader’s discoveries, or rather, inventions.
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Article M. Epstein and Language 2006-2007:
Russian language in the light of creative philology . "Znamya", 1, 2006, 192-207.
The language of existence by Andrei Platonov. "Questions of Literature", 2, 2006.
Love names. Introduction to erotonymy. "October", 7, 2006.
Anaphrase: a linguistic phenomenon and literary device . "Questions of Literature", 5, 2006.
Projective dictionary of the Russian language. Neology of time, in kn. Semiotics and the avant-garde. Anthology . Ed.-Assoc. U.S. Stepanov, N.A. Fateeva, V.V. Feshchenko, N.S. Sirotkin. Под общ. ed. U.S. Stepanova. M.: Academic Project; Culture, 2006, pp. 1031-1076.
Personal code: the experience of self-description. // Humanities today: conference materials / edited by Yu.S. Stepanov. - M. - Kaluga: IP Koshelev A.B. (Eidos Publishing House), 2006. - pp. 238-257.
Types of new words: Experience of classification . "Topos", 5 Dec. 2006; Portal Gramma.ru , Dec. 2006.
Word of the year, century, millennium "Nezavisimaya Gazeta". March 2, 2007.
" Pushkina, Dostoevskogo i Tolstogo nashim pravnukam pridetsa chitat na latinitse
Magazine "New Time", #5, March 12, 2007
About the creative potential of the Russian language. Transitivity Grammar and Transitive Society . "Banner", 3, 2007.
Good and evil in the mirror of the Russian language . Continent, 132, 2007 (July)
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The network project “The Gift of Words” has been published since April 2000. Every week, several new words are sent to subscribers, with definitions and examples of use. These words are not in any dictionary, and yet they denote significant phenomena and concepts for which there has not yet been a place in the public consciousness. "Dar" also conducts discussions about the Russian language, discusses letters and suggestions from readers. Modern Russian (and any) language is only one slice of the linguistic continuum, which extends into the past and future, and it virtually contains thousands of words that have not yet been identified, not pronounced, but are called into speech as the historical consciousness of the people expands , and in turn expanding it. “The Gift of Speech” can serve as a guide to word creation, an introduction to the linguistic and conceptual sphere of the 21st century. All previous issues.
Subscribe your friends to “Dar” (you need to insert into this form ) your email address
PreDictionary - a collection of English neologisms by M. Epstein.
Association of Word and Term Finders ( AIST ) is a linguistic community on LiveJournal. An open platform for discussing new words and ideas.
The future of the humanities is the community in LiveJournal.
Gramma. ru is a Runet language portal dedicated to the culture of written speech.