Talk:History of the Russian language

Old talk
Note. Many Russian historians of the East Slavic region equate Russia with an earlier political state called Rus' (Русь). Other scholars consider Russia to have developed later from Slavic settlements amidst the Finno-Ugric areas of the northeastern hinterlands of Rus'. Ghirlandajo 22:53, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This statement on the lamentable state of scholarship of the history of Russia and the Russian language is true. However this blatantly false equation of Russia with Rus' is a late invention. It became current in the politically Mongolian and ethnically heavily Finno-Ugric and linguistically heavily Old Slavonic newly-formed nation called "Moscow" only in the 15th century, to justify the claims of its rulers to the aristocratic title to "all of Rus'", which was, at the time, a wish, not a reality! Genyo 01:13, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

NPOV before the Moscovite period. Lacunae afterwards.
Unfortunately, this article has degenerated into reverts based on the national feelings of Russian and Ukrainian patriots.

Indeed, the history is not, and never was, very well done at all (I can say this with a very clear conscience because much of the text is, or was, mine).

Here are the points that, on reflection, deserve mentioning. Note that I try to concentrate on the modern political territory of Russia; the rest, if there can be any agreement, should properly be mentioned in the articles on the Ukr./Belar., or in East Slavic language.


 * Pre-950 (+/-)

There are conflicting interpretations on whether or not Slavs spread to the territory or were autochthones. In any case, that they were by the end of this period established in much of modern central/northern Russia can be deduced from the presence of Slavic borrowing in the Finno-Ugric languages with -n- interpolated after a (reconstructed) Common Slavonic yus. As is well known, nasal vowels are not consistently indicated in any of the E.Sl. languages/dialects going back to the beginning of the historical records.

There are hints and suppositions about a pre-Cyrillic writing system, but nothing is unequivocally accepted, nor is the geographic extent of such a writing system properly determined.


 * 950-1100

Political centre shifts from Novgorod to Kiev (thus the modern recriminations). Simultaneously extant Cyrillic inscriptions appear. The earliest unequivocal find is the Gnezdovo amphora (one word!). There are already dialectal differences. Interesting tidbit that the second/third palatalizations seem to be incomplete around Novgorod, a feature of the vernacular rather than the OCS-influenced chronicles, etc.

The language is fairly close to OCS in terms of its flexions. Full-voicing more prevalent than in the standard Russian today.

Reconstructed phonology (yers, yat: regions of differentiation and merging with other phonemes).


 * 1100-1400

The modern phonological system is established. The development of то as a kind of postpositional article, though it plays no part in the modern literary language.

The decline of some ancient forms (dual, imperfect) in the non-liturgical language.


 * 1400-1700

Centre at Moscow. Strong dialectal diffentiation; incipient modern national languages. Literature, etc, etc. Grammar takes more or less its modern form


 * 1700-1830

A search for a common modern literary language, arguments about and attempts at various styles.


 * 1830-1917

"Classical" Russian.

I've left out a pile of points: it's very late at my longitude. :) But in any case, let's drop the politics and the exclamation points.  Really, it's more than tedious.  :) A. Shetsen 07:46, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

reading of "Winter evening"
First attempt at reading Pushkin aloud on wiki. Do let me know if I fouled it up or not. - karmosin 00:51, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

ˈjus.fəlʲ.nɨj is bad
юсфульный - фу, какая мерзость, похуже "креативности" или "таунхаузов".... Maybe we should put "креативность" instead, as it seems to be used more than the one in the article (can't use that terrible "useful" word again). With respect, Ko Soi IX 10:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I've never heard this word living in Russia for all my life. So i think it should be changed to something more appropriate or deleted altogether. Regards, Dr rus (talk) 22:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Как жаль, что я ни чего здесь не понимаю :(88.200.243.27 (talk) 20:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Avvakum's autobiography
"...We dragged [her] by cart, and by water, and in a sleigh half of the way." And a comment: "Note the way of transport to exile." It is not correct translation, for the original says: "три тысящи верст недель с тринадцеть волокли телегами и водою и саньми половину пути." In the Russian phrase, the grammatical subject is absent, so it can be read "we dragged" as well as "horses dragged" (perhaps the horses were actually used). --V1adis1av (talk) 22:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

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My points

 * Addressing paople - Gospodin, Tovarishch, ?
 * Mat - obscene words, recidivist prison inmates dialect
 * Standardization (a common denominator)? What about Surzhyk?
 * Russification of Belarus language. Xx236 (talk) 06:50, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Wrong information about Ukrainian in "2.1.7 The yo vowel"
"This sound change also occurred in Belarusian, but not in Ukrainian, as seen in the word for "flax": Belarusian and Russian лён /ˈlʲon/ but Ukrainian лен /ˈlʲen/. " "Flax" in Ukrainian is also Льон, and would never be pronounced /ˈlʲen/ anyway because "е" doesn't palatalise in Ukrainian. I removed the sentence, since it contains false (and unsourced) information and the reality is a bit more complex (since Ukrainian also had a change "e" to "jo", albeit a different one). Twilliver Ongenbone (talk) 13:26, 26 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I have reverted your change to the article's content. Agreed that the statement should perhaps be removed, but this is said with a big 'however' appended: I agree on merit of its not being sourced for either Ukrainian or Belarusian. Query: why did you entitle this new section as being specifically about Ukrainian (omitting the Belarusian component)? I would have no qualms in accepting your change, but WP:BOLD is a guideline, not a policy. I would ask that you follow the bold - revert -discuss protocol before simply deleting the information. I certainly welcome input from other editors who know their Russian (more precisely, their Eastern European Slavic) linguistics. Iryna Harpy (talk) 07:28, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Were to look at the recent edit history, she could notice that  is already online.  revert Iryna’s edit boldly as adding nothing but confusion.  Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:18, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I deleted the entire sentence, because (besides being unsourced) the half-sentence about Ukrainian contained not less than 2 mistakes, one of which can be avoided by consulting a dictionary and one which (the pronunciation one) should never occur to someone who has studied Ukrainian for more than an hour. I deleted the Belarusian part with it because it was unsourced and the part about Ukrainian made me lose trust in it. I didn't remove the re-edited sentence since it's almost certainly correct, but I don't speak Belarusian. Twilliver Ongenbone (talk) 18:15, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Btw, I agree, that the part about Ukrainian should be added back, just with a proper example. Twilliver Ongenbone (talk) 18:26, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I think I added the paragraph originally. At least the bit about Belarusian sharing the sound change has the benefit of being observable in many cases (for instance, see Russian and Belarusian in the descendants of Proto-Slavic ). But it needs a source, like many other parts of this article. I would probably have been more cautious about adding the paragraph today. — Eru·tuon 18:58, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Firstly, Incnis Mrsi, you have enough experience to know that you should assume good faith, and be civil in communications with other editors. Being bold is a guideline, not policy: the other two links are to policy. You know that bold - revert - discuss exists, and the being BOLD must always be approached with caution... Have you actually read the policy? As you see by Erutuon's response, there is no reliable source for this content but, per Twilliver Ongenbone's response, it is probably correct (that doesn't cut the mustard). I'm more lenient on the majority of content regarding the history of languages, but I think we always need to be cautious of 'probably correct' content. In this instance, I'm reticently okay with going for page consensus. If I were to !vote on the matter, I'd say 'delete' simply because it is original research. It doesn't have to remain as default consensus per WP:CCC. Note that I'm still approaching this in good faith, although  (talk) 01:00, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Typo
There's a typo in the section Consonants/Consonant cluster simplification:

"се́рдце (sérdce) [ˈsʲert͡sə] "heart" (d not pronounced; but not genitive plural серде́ц (sérdec) [sʲɪrˈdʲet͡s])"

not should obviously be note, as in the next example. I tried to fix this, but user Incnis Mrsi keeps reverting my edits for some reason. So someone else please fix this. {{unsigned|Hnifur9‎|17:32, 21 October 2019]}
 * ✅ — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]  17:42, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The wording defended by and  is clumsy.  propose:
 * се́рдце (sérdce) "heart" (d not pronounced), but d is pronounced in the genitive plural серде́ц (sérdec) )
 * со́лнце (solnce) "sun" (l not pronounced), but l is pronounced in adjectival со́лнечный (sólnečnyj) "solar" and diminutive со́лнышко (sólnyško) "small sun, sweetheart"
 * instead. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:45, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I like that better as well. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 18:06, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

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