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Each generation has its own vocabulary associated with specific everyday and social realities. There are also many cases when words remain in the active vocabulary of young people, but change their meaning. For example, previously the word “nishtyak” had a completely different meaning. Elena Borisova, Doctor of Philology, Professor at the Moscow City Pedagogical University, spoke about this in an interview with RT. She noted that even many “smiles,” or emoticons, that appeared in the era of Internet correspondence have become outdated in recent years. The philologist also said that not only the vocabulary, but also the grammar of the Russian language is changing.
— It is known that each generation has its own vocabulary, sometimes poorly understood by older or younger people. How is it formed?
— Our speech characteristics are formed in our youth, when we actively master the language from books, newspapers, television, the Internet and communication with other people. As a result, peers whose socialization occurred at the same time have a similar vocabulary and speech traditions. Of course, much also depends on the environment, the area in which a person grew up, his level of education and culture.
Nevertheless, the change of eras is always accompanied by changes in language. For example, words fall out of use along with some household items. So, now the expression “like a washboard” has practically disappeared in relation to something uneven and lumpy. Because these hand washing devices are no longer used, they have been replaced by washing machines.
Language also changes on a structural level, not just lexically. For example, now there is a tendency towards analyticism – when a word is not conjugated according to cases, but is used with a preposition. Instead of “he is concerned about productivity growth,” modern people might say “he is concerned about productivity growth.” Of course, this is wrong, it demonstrates a low culture of speech. But if such constructions become commonly used, they may become a variant of the norm. It is difficult to say why today prepositions are used more actively than before. A similar trend is observed in the German language, not only in Russian. Perhaps the reason is that the preposition conveys an additional meaning that the case does not.
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Let me give you another example: our generation was taught that the right thing to do is to “take action,” but to “take steps.” Today, the expression “take measures” is found everywhere, and it is no longer clear: is this a mistake or a new norm? Most likely, in another one or two generations, such use will cease to surprise anyone.
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— Still, representatives of all generations are in the same realities, the same information environment. How active is the exchange of vocabulary between them?
— Of course, exchange occurs, this is the main condition for maintaining the unity of the language. Often the differences come down to the fact that we choose different synonyms to denote the same phenomenon. For example, there is a whole group of words with one meaning – “brave”, “courageous”, “brave”, “courageous”, as well as similar in meaning “daring”, “dashing”. So, research shows that all these words are gradually disappearing from the vocabulary of modern Russians. Although everyone knows their meaning, they are used less often. But such a replacement occurs very slowly, since modern language is both the language of literature of the 19th century, partly even of the 18th century, and the language of politicians and public figures of the 20th century. Our speech is largely shaped by written sources, classics of literature and journalism.
— Are there any studies on the extent to which generational differences manifest themselves in online correspondence? Previously, the media wrote a lot about the fact that the “language of emoticons” among zoomers has changed a lot and they do not understand the meaning of many familiar boomers And millennials icons What is this connected with?
— Language is a sign system, and accordingly, emoticons that convey some meaning can be considered a kind of language. And it is also subject to changes, including generational ones. Emoticons emerged alongside the advent of email in the early 1990s. Even then we used such signs, collected faces from punctuation marks – now such emoticons are already outdated. When people of our generation use such parentheses, young people are surprised. As the language of emoticons develops, it is replenished with new icons with new meanings, its stock of signs is expanded and updated.
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— Is the emergence of new slang words accelerating today? Some terms appear almost within a few months – for example, the word “skuf” quickly became viral, etc. What determines the speed of formation and consolidation of such vocabulary?
— Youth slang is a very interesting phenomenon, the roots of which go back to the Middle Ages, when the first universities and, accordingly, student communities appeared. Subsequently, the tradition of student, Bursat slang continued in Europe, including in Russian universities. Although, of course, both teachers and parents of young people were very unhappy with this, since such words distorted the Russian literary language. Then schoolchildren picked up these words – this is how terms like “cheat sheet”, “cramming”, etc. appeared in our language. Now they are not even perceived as slang, but as ordinary vocabulary.
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And around the 1950s, youth jargon itself appeared in the USSR, not associated with universities and schools. We can get acquainted with him, for example, on the pages of Vasily Aksenov’s novel “Star Ticket”. These are words like “cool”, “dude”, etc.
An important quality of youth slang is that it must be constantly updated, that’s why it’s youthful. For example, in the 2000s words such as “scrap”, “tin”, etc. appeared. Some new words always appear that will distinguish the speech of 15-year-olds from the speech of 25-year-olds, etc.
Today, for example, an interesting slang classification of men by age and lifestyle has appeared – “skufs”, “ankas”, “masiks”… In this case, I wonder why schoolchildren were so interested in people of a different age that they created such a variety of speech labels for them?
— What differences do the vocabulary of older generations have?
— The language of older people is heterogeneous. Within the so-called Silver Age there is a division into generations, and each has its own linguistic characteristics. In the vocabulary of people 70 years of age and older, words have been preserved that denote memories of such concepts as boogie-woogie dancing, dudes, and semolina boots, although they have only partially seen these phenomena. And even something that is completely unfamiliar to young people is “for the blazeru.” I heard this expression from my grandmother. It means “for appearance's sake.” Grandmother talked about her husband, who raised a glass of wine to his lips only for blezir, that is, he pretended, and did not drink.
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“Hipsters” of the 60s of the USSR.
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© Nikolay Vinokurov
The vocabulary of the generation of 60-70 year olds has its own differences; it contains many words related to everyday life: “transistor”, “kopeck piece”, “combined shirt”, “tights”, and also with the pioneer organization. When I said to my granddaughter, who was playing with her friends in the yard: “You have a real link here,” meaning a group of guys from the pioneer detachment, she clarified: “The weak link?” Or a student described in an essay Yablonskaya’s painting “Morning”: “A school dress and a red scarf are hanging on the back” – the person may have known that this was a pioneer tie, but could not use the word that was in his passive stock.
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The generation under 60 years old are people who experienced the USSR in its youth. They carry speech features that appeared during their youth, but use words and expressions that appeared much later. For example, “gadgets”, “plasma” meaning “TV”, etc.
— Can words change their meaning over time, be perceived by new generations differently than their grandparents?
– Certainly. This happens with both literary vocabulary and slang. This happened with the word “nishtyak” – previously it was a synonym for the word “nothing”. And now it has come to mean some advantages, pluses.
Or the expression “promote”. Previously, the word “promote” was used to refer to a person who was promoted to a higher position, but today “promotion” has become synonymous with advertising. The word “blat” is also leaving the modern lexicon. Instead, “nepotism” has already come.
The word “partner” was not previously used in the meaning of “marital”. Rather, such a person could be called delicately – “common law husband.” Such a word as “banter” is not very actively used now, although irony has by no means disappeared from the speech of modern youth.
Differences between sociolects of different generations are noted not only in vocabulary, but also in the evaluative component. For example, in modern language you can find quite positive, at least neutral, use of the words “bitch” and “selfish” – for older people these words remain abusive. And the word “propaganda,” on the contrary, is perceived by young people exclusively in a negative connotation, in the meaning of “lie.” And it’s as if such concepts as “promoting a healthy lifestyle” or “promoting reading” are being taken out of the equation. In any case, the ever-changing language of different generations requires study.
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