Russian language

Vocabulary

See History of Russian language for an account of the successive foreign influences on the Russian language.

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The total number of words in Russian is difficult to reckon because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold compounds, diminutives, etc. (see Word Formation under Russian grammar).

Related Topics:
Word Formation - Russian grammar

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The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the last two centuries, and the total vocabulary of Pushkin, are as follows:

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Philologists have estimated that the language today may contain as many as 350,000 to 500,000 words.

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(As a historical aside, Dahl was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective ???????, which was at that time applied uniformly to all the Orthodox Eastern Slavic subjects of the Empire, as well as to its one official language, be spelled ?????? with one s, in accordance with ancient tradition and what he termed the "spirit of the language". He was contradicted by the philologist Grot, who distinctly heard the s lengthened or doubled.)

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The language of abuse and invective

Main article: Mat (language)

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Apparently, the ability to curse effectively has always been recognized as a form of art not only in certain quarters of society, but even by the more conservative-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (????????????? ?????? {{IPA|/?r.tʲɪ.ˈsʲtʲi.tʲʆ?.sk?.j? ˈru.g?nʲ/}}) keeps coming out of the sailors' mouths, though it is never spelled out.

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The ability to agglutinate has produced the so-called "three-decker curse" (??????????? ??? {{IPA|/ˈtrʲo.xɛˈta.ʒn?j ˈmat/}}).

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It is interesting that the modern obscenities appear to have taken on their meaning in the eighteenth century, as euphemisms for words since lost. For example, the word ????? {{IPA|/blʲatʲ/}} ("whore"), is today considered extraordinarily offensive. It anciently meant "error, sin", as a concept in the high style, occurs in scripture in that sense, and may perhaps be heard during the liturgy.

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Proverbs and sayings

Main article: Russian proverbs, Russian sayings

Related Topics:
Russian proverbs - Russian sayings

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Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (????????? {{IPA|/pʌ.'slo.vʲi.ʦ?/}}) and sayings (????????a {{IPA|/p?.gʌ.'vo.rk?/}}). These were already tabulated by the seventeenth century, and collected and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth, with the folk-tales being an especially fertile source.

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