"Parachute" or "parachute"?

Passion for domestic spelling, 2001–2021. Kim Smirnov. From a personal diary

January 12, 2001 Friday

The State Duma - and not only she - calls for the legislative confrontation of the external danger that hung over the domestic language - the unceremonious pressure of the English -speaking, Styobova, thieves, non -normative vocabulary on it. This is not a far -fetched danger that, for example, the French who have approved a list of 3,500 Americanisms prohibited for use in official documents, in advertising, and in the press are well understood.

But the danger, it turns out, threatens our language and from the inside. “We must pound the doors of the Academy of Sciences where these morons are sitting!” - cites the words of Tatyana Tolstoy newspaper "Alphabet". And comments: “What caused the anger of a famous writer? It turns out that RAS developed a new “Code of Rules of Russian Spelling”: the spelling commission of the Academy believes that the previous rules are outdated and are also too complicated for assimilation. In order not to suffer, we will write, almost as we hear, to endure the words, how it pleases, and we will no longer think about exceptions: the parachute will become a “parachut”, the double “H” will disappear as a tribute to ridiculous Soviet traditions, and there are too many commas. The reformers are distinguished by the desire for simplicity. Right, she is "worse than theft."

It turns out that after robbing the people (including academicians), the danger of abduction from him, now other reformers (from among the robbed academics), his “golden rune”, his tongue, is coming to the danger of his reformers.

But before you join the alarm, the following from the student years of the acquired advice of a doctor of medicine, again the Frenchman, Francois Rabley: “Drink from the source!” I go to where the cheese brow is from,-to the spelling commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to its chairman, a famous scientist working at the V.V. Vinogradov, editor of the latest and most complete normative “Russian spelling dictionary”.

My interlocutor is Vladimir Lopatin.

- Vladimir Vladimirovich! What kind of reform did you start?

Vladimir Lopatin

Academician RAS, philologist, linguist

- There is no question of any reforming the Russian language. It is only about putting in the order of his “clothing”, about the streamlining of our spelling in accordance with the modern practice of writing. After all, from the time of the spelling vault, adopted in 1956, nothing has changed in the rules. According to those in a large extent ideologized rules, for example, in the names of the highest party and Soviet institutions, all words must be written with a capital, and, let's say, Christmas or Easter - with a line. In a real letter, no one does this anymore.

- But the new spelling reaches the point of absurdity. I once cited a quote from Mayakovsky: “The mother’s soul is in my grandmother and in God”, believing that in the household context, the capital letter in the word “God” is inappropriate. The corrector corrected: “God” and “Mother”. I ask: "Well, why the mother?" Answers: "This is the Mother of God!"

- You were right. But after all, to determine in which cases “God” is written and in which “God”, the rules must. And they are not today. And they write as God (in this case with a lowercase) put on the soul.

- Didn’t you, scientists, recommended writing “God”, not “God”? Someone gave the team!

- There was no team on our part. Maybe somewhere in the then still existing ideological apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee there were officials who have fixed changes in the paragraphs of the instructions. But these "revolutionaries" were not us. We are rather "conservatives."

When suddenly the former union republics, becoming independent states, began to dictate to us how to write their geographical names in Russian, the scientific council of the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences recalled that Russia is also an independent state, and insisted that the standards in the Russian language and the letter remain Russians.

Let the Tallinn write in Estonia. In our Russian -speaking publications, we should write Tallinn. Like "Paris", not "bet".

- And in official documents?

- This is another conversation. In this case, I am talking about absurd spelling situations associated with excessive politicization of the current retreat converters and with the ideological prohibitions of the recent past. Well, is it not the absurdity when, according to the rules of the 56th year, we should write the Hungarian Republic, but the “French Republic”? Therefore, it turns out that the “republic” should be written with the capital, only when it comes to the Union republics and about the countries of the social camp. Neither one nor the other is no longer. But no one has yet to correct this rule.

In principle, we are talking about adjustment. We are not going to change the basics. The proposed changes relate to a very small part of words and rules. At the same time, we proceed from three positions.

• First. The rules are the same, but with a greater detail, because we are faced with discrepancies that arose as a reaction to the lack of completeness in the normative code of 1956. Much in it is not negotiated, not explained to the end. And this required additional decoding, often born in various scientific groups and even departments. The applicant, say, writes an introductory essay using one reference book, and a university teacher reduces him an assessment in accordance with a completely different leadership.

• The second position. Many new phenomena in the language, in particular new words and types of words, terms, foreign borrowings, are waiting for its reflection in spelling legislation.

• The third. With an unchanged basis, Russian spelling requires less rigidity, greater variability today.

By the way, the 1956 rules became a bibliographic rarity, turned into some kind of phantom. Instead, numerous reference books and spelling manuals appeared, which actually replaced the text of the rules. Yes, they are more detailed. But they also contain contradictions, discrepancies that have long been necessary to eliminate.

“But why did you remember this only now?” Indication from above about the new millennium?

- We began to work on this arch about ten years ago. Even then it was clear that the 1956 rules needed to be updated.

- The Swift Gulliver during one of his travels meets the Linguists of the Lagado Academy, who - to save light, vocal cords and generally health - create a project of simplified communication: instead of pronouncing the word show the object that it denotes. At the same time, the minimum vocabulary can be worn in a shoulder bag. Of course, this is a simplification of the problem to the point of absurdity. But among your opponents there are many people who are seriously afraid: are you doing business to simplify spelling, to surrender before the pressure of triumphant market primitivism?

- No and not again. In the small part of the rules where changes are made, in some cases, it is possible to see simplification, in others - complication, and sometimes you can not see either one or the other.

Here, for example, the transition and printing, and ordinary writing to computer technology dictates simplifying the rules of transfer. Of course, in the rigidity of the old rules there is its own logic: they accustom to linguistic culture, to a sense of structurality of the word. But the fact that today practically no newspaper is able - for technological reasons - to comply with these rules, there is also its own logic. Therefore, we make some concessions here, speaking of desirable and possible transfer. Although the main prohibitions remain.

In some cases, the variability of punctuation marks is proposed. The mandatory collection of the colon in real punctuation practice is increasingly replaced by a dash sign. It is proposed to legalize this option. But this does not mean at all how one of the newspapers wrote that we generally replace the colon on the dash everywhere.

Another example. How to write words starting with the "floor"? Through a hyphen, if a vowel or capital letters, as well as “l” go further. Partly-if consonant: half an apelsin, half a lemon, but half a mandar; Half-one century, but half past rooms. And it turns out that the tangerine in reality is much less different from an orange or lemon than in writing.

From our point of view, this is excessive complication. And we always offer to write a hyphen after the “floor”.

We do not set the task to simplify or complicate spelling. We streamline it.

- Where, then, where such an intensity of passions, is such a tension around your project?

- First of all, the painful overexcitation of society is to blame. It would seem that it is easier to agree with the ironic remark of your colleague: they say, I don’t care how they will write a “parachute”, if only he was revealed. So not. With what fury, with what overexposures, intolerance, growing from ignorance, they are pounced on a project that has yet to go through the path of discussions in professional audiences! At the same time, for some reason, all the time, analogies are drawn with the “Bolshevik” reform of 1918, to which our proposals have nothing to do.

- Maybe this is not ignorance, but simply fashionable bastard nihilism of the semi -knowledge? Here the authoritative publication writes that “the Bolsheviks quickly sent the notorious Yati and Yera and era” and “when it turned out that the publishers were printing books and newspapers according to the old rules, revolutionary sailors appeared in the printing house and wandered out of the set -up cash desks with repressed letters.” But, as far as I know, the 1918 reform was developed before the Bolsheviks?

- Yes, this reform is mainly about the composition of letters, schedule - about 20 years, from the beginning of the 20th century, scientists were developed by A. Shakhmatov, F. Fortunatov, I. Baudouin de Kurtena and other world names that were part of the spelling commission of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. In 1917, their ideas formed the basis of the circulator of the Provisional Government on the transition to new spelling. So the Bolsheviks only stamped the Council of People's Commissars by the proposals of scientists concentrated in this document.

Spelling anti -historicalism today, with the frequent “excursions” in history, is amazing.

So the film “Siberian Barber” was released, and there, in the initial credits, supposedly pre -revolutionary spelling was used. A solid sign at the end of the noun, of course, was set (now it is so fashionable!). But what then and until 1956 the word “barber” was written through “s”, no one knew.

For some reason, many ardent defenders of the virginity of domestic spelling were especially outraged by our proposal to write not a “parachute”, but a “parachute”. This word is included in the famous trinity of exceptions: jury, brochure, parachute that came to us from French. Their spelling with "Yu" is determined by the softness of the previous consonant in French. But we have a “brochure” and “parachute” for a long time Russell. Nobody pronounces the soft "w" in them. Which is proposed to legalize in spelling. But by the word “jury” this does not apply, and let it be written in the old way.

We are often attributed to intentions that were more likely to have a spelling reform project, released in 1964. Then the simplification of spelling was really programmed. Such a task was set.

It was proposed, for example, to write: night, mouse, Zayets, Ogurzi. Leonid Leonov, on this occasion, remarked: "I will not eat such cucumber."

- You say that a spelling project will still have serious testing. However, many are afraid that, as often happens now, it will be very quickly outlined in the law that is mandatory for execution, and the point of view of the public will remain aside.

- I am against popular plebiscites about how to write the word "parachute." The fate of the spelling arch should be decided by experts.

First of all, linguists, methodologists, and generally employees of the field of education. There will be an opportunity to consult with writers.

The project that we offer is the fruit of many years of work. But I can’t say that this is a fruit of unanimity. Even the commission itself has a criticism of the project both on the left and on the right. And I cannot be sure that the accelerated “pushing” of it in the rank of law will remain in its final version, ignoring the opinions of specialists are simply impossible.

- And your word as a chairman is not decisive? Are you not a dictator?

- Where is there! Not every proposal passes through. If we have a dictatorship in our commission, then this is rather a dictatorship of democracy.

- By the way, there is such a point of view: it is not the time to engage in spelling wisdom - there are too many more painful problems among the people, the country ...

- approximately the same thought was expressed by Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn in a recent letter to the department of literature and the language of the Russian Academy of Sciences. I think differently. It is one thing to present a similar account to such things as the statement of gossimvoliki. It is completely different - the normative stability of the native language and its written design.

Spelling is one of the most important components of national culture. The set of generally accepted, corresponding to the current state of the language, quite complete, officially approved rules - a sign of the cultural health of society. Or, in any case, a sign of treatment, the path to recovery. In addition, spelling is by no means the result of normalization efforts, it is a self -developing system that requires regular, about once every 30 years, adjustments. The French, for example, do so, although their spelling is quite conservative. Since the time of the grotto, which in the 19th century for the first time systematized Russian spelling, such adjustments occurred infrequently and irregularly. The next long time ago. And even crossed out.

*I have no luxurious chambers

In Nice Il on the London Compound,

There are no beauties of yachts in the azure sea,

But I'm still fabulously rich.*

*The language of native gems -

Here is my wealth on earth.

Winter dawn are incorruptible

With a candle burning on the table,*

*After long prohibitive blizzards,

That they sang impassable in the night;

With an irrefutable word "friend"

And with living water in a river font,*

*Ice, Epiphany. My people

He will not die until the word is immortal,

From ruins, from the ashes again, again

Rising to the holy heights,*

*Where, calling on a short road,

The dark oak is still noisy

And the desert of the world heeds God,

And the star with a star says.*

November 11, 2021 Thursday

The 21st year passed 21 years, and a message appeared in the media: the Ministry of Education on the Government Portal announced the draft Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation “On the approval of Russian spelling rules”.

November 28, 2021 Sunday

The spelling commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences at an emergency meeting decided to contact the Ministry of Education of Russia with a proposal to withdraw this project. Here's what the commission itself believes (I give the presentation of the Rossiy newspaper):

• to recommend withdrawing the draft rules of Russian spelling prepared by the Ministry of Education;

• Consider the issue of recognition of not abbreviated and distorted, but the full text of the “Rules of Russian spelling and punctuation. A complete academic reference book ”(including the“ punctuation ”section) with the most authoritative set of spelling rules, on the basis of which simplified editorial offices (for example, for the needs of education) can be drawn up;

• To provide a mechanism for updating the rules (including those contained in the full academic reference book), according to which the rules of Russian spelling and punctuation and all clarifications, amendments and changes made in them, as well as on the basis of the full set of its reduced and simplified options, must certainly receive an expert approval of the spelling commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The same “Rossiy newspaper” gives the opinion of a member of the spelling commission, who signed the letter to the Ministry of Education, professor of the Russian State Humanitarian University and the Higher School of Economics, Maxim Krongauz : “The main thing is that it is upset: it is not clear who is the author of this text. The ministry does not have enough specialists who could do such a job. Text without authors? "

(Ending follows)