Drivers and their cars

The publication "Interesting Moscow" hit. In the comments on the news they are called “ illiterate youngsters”, “arrears from the regions”, who “do not teach literacy in their manual (sic!)”, “ Balbies boasting of illiteracy ” and a lot, much more. In short, a typical parade for the purity of the tongue. This can now begin in social networks, it seems, about any change and any variability:

- This is a glass!

- God, where did you get out of? Everyone knows that such a cup is called a mug!

This time, anger caused the heading of the news: "The first female manist appeared in Moscow trains ."

Only a few were upset and the really excess noun woman with a feminite is a machine operator . The majority rushed and threw about the word driver himself, who can not mean a female driver in any way.

After all, this word has already been used! Everything, it is busy forever. As long as there is a Russian language, it is doomed to designate a woman who quickly hit the dictation of the boss on the keys of the things standing on the table. A sheet of paper is inserted into the piece and a coloring tape is seasoned.

“Pobedonosikov. What did we stop at?

Machine Wonderton. On “So, comrades ...” ”

By the way, the angry commentators now and then mistakenly called this thing the “printing machine”. It is clear why. The phrase is the typewriter - that’s what it was called - it has almost sailed in a linguistic summer. The thing has ceased to be the right - the name ceased to be used; Now it is naturally forgotten, confused with another phrase - a printing machine (printing equipment). That is, a woman who is beating on the keys, she is the only possible driver , according to thousands of commentators, is a character herself from the past, who remained only in literature and memoirs.

Let's see the idea of ​​"calling a female driver is illiterate, the driver prints on a typewriter."

More precisely, two ideas.

The first idea: is illiterate, for ... for in official documents there are not so.

“ There can be no driver on the train. Look at the classifier of professions before writing such articles. You can’t let you in a cannon shot to the media. ”

The opinion that literacy is drawn in official documents, as strange as it is rooted. For six decades, such a seemingly popular book by Chukovsky “Living as Life” has not been able to scatter it in any way. Everyone learned the word chancellery invented by Chukovsky (i.e., a speech focusing on the language of documents: “ You will go out for the gate a little, now the green massif! ”), But to no avail.

How is this opinion propagated? One of the sources of the chancellery, it seems, we are faced at seven years old. In the early days of September, I saw a photo of the cover of the notebook, which someone brought a second-grade daughter from school. This terribly unofficial word school was crossed out with a red pen and red letters MBOU secondary school No. ...; The crossed out word of the student trampled the word student. And when studying feminity, I have more than once in the retelling of " there is no word teacher, there is a word teacher ."

In the educational documentation there is no place for the School and Student , in the work book there is no place for the word teacher, in the contract of sale there is no word buyer -well, no and no, bureaucrats and lawyers know better, perhaps this makes the language of documents more convenient and definitely. But the language of documentation - almost an algorithm, almost formulas - is extremely far from all other “Russian languages” 1 that we use when we write articles, books, posts in social networks, speak to the audience, talk with friends, etc. In the work book, contract, act, law, classifier of products or professions there is no word teacher (and now, as we can, in the documents there are no schools, there are no schools, there are no schools, there are no schools, there are no schools and there are no schools And the student with the student ), but there are no words in them , wonderful, sadness , kindergarten. In the documents there is generally no absolute majority of Russian vocabulary.

And the press, of course, is not just a school, but you need to call a school , and a student is a student , if in a particular case the official name is not required (these words must also be returned to the notebook). The press is quite friendly to traditional feminivians. I score the word teacher in “Yandex.NOSTRY” - and I see three hundred thousand materials of the regional and central media, where it is mainly in headlines. In the media, a common thing is a description of the emotions of the interlocutor, the hero of the material or the author himself. And so on.

Among other things, the specifics of the media forces the same hero or object in different ways-there is such a stylistic requirement. Therefore, the journalist, unlike the personnel, even has to use any synonyms, options and metaphors - say, the name of the profession, up to the " Lord of the Winged Machine ". So in the short news of the “interesting Moscow”, the heroine is called a driver, a girl, a driver and, finally, officially - the control composition of the CPPK .

So do not let yourself be confused by classifiers, if we are not talking about a diploma, contract, etc.

And here we meet idea number two. About that only possible driver. "It is illiterate, for it is already busy." One commentator wrote beautifully: “You cannot fill up such “ freed ”words with a new meaning as an old empty winesk - new wine.”

Let us, instead of an answer, is crawling into the history of this, as well as other words, in order to once again make sure that the language is only engaged in the pouring of new wine in old bugs.

Actually, even the act of education of the word driver in the second half of the 19th century was to some extent such a pouring. After that, by that time there were more than one and a half centuries in the Russian language, the word driver, from the German Maschinist. And it - once again about new wine and old furs - was associated with a variety of machines. The word is borrowed in the Peter's era as a synonym for a borrowed and remotely related mechanic .

Then the driver was called the theater employee, the controller of the theater machine - the mechanism of movement of the scenery. And then a steam locomotive appeared, but first - under the name of the steam machine. And the one who controlled them was again called the driver. The expression of the steam engine gave way to the word steam locomotive , invented by the writer and linguist Nikolai Greek, and after many decades and the steam locomotives themselves gave way to electric locomotives - but the word driver was fixed behind the driver of the train. True, in the same classifier of professions there are driver who control, again, by various machines, such as an excavator.

All this did not prevent the tongue from calling the driver a new phenomenon - women who make a living ... no, not printing on a typewriter, but sewing on a sewing machine (first a sewing machine ). Here in the folio published in 1875, entitled “The distribution of residents of St. Petersburg by crafts, classes and other kinds of means of existence” scolders for the negligence: “ Stegler”, “Clobber”, “ The Machinery ” without additional resources: at the tailor, in the Belarm , etc. ”. But soon the writing machine is already entering life. The very first is “Remington No. 1”. Yes, yes, also a car, not a machine .

““ Sit in the stuffy room , ”I said , “ to rewrite , to compete with a writing machine for a man of my years is ashamed and insulting ”[A. P. Chekhov. My life (1896)].

And from this new car , almost immediately, already in the 90s of the century before last, a new engineer, “Machian-2”, is formed. How about old furs and new wine? By the way, this invention became the most important step towards emancipation: there was a labor niche for all educated girls - graduates of gymnasiums, for example. Unmarried women were able to live modestly, but on their own.

And the appearance in the 21st century is already “ engineers-3 ”, after the cancellation of the ban on the work of women with electric trains and their arrival in the subway and suburban trains, it looks a logical continuation against this background.

A drop of entertaining word formation: only “ engineer-3 ” is a standard pair feminitic from a noun male with a suffix- ka. And the engineer of the “ seamstress” and the driver of the printed man, in fact, the feminity are unpaired and formed directly from the noun machine, it turns out, with a complex suffix derivative - hype.

... The story with the word driver , and the driver , is not unique. Words are collected again from the same pieces, others - repeatedly. In the XVII century, the burning is the one who burns himself, not wanting to obey Nikonovsky “demonic” church reforms, and now - the forest after the fire. The ass in the Russian Middle Ages is an inheritance, and now - not at all ...

So, of course, it is a pity that the engineer, masterfully scribbling at Eric (Erica Trinka takes four copies ... ), seems to be divided by the fate of the old theater driver, but it is really difficult to keep the old meaning if he does not support his life. True, you can store them in memory ... or a special dictionary.

Irina Fufaeva

1 That is, styles-“varieties of the language used in any typical social situation-in everyday life, in the family, in the official business sphere, etc.”