Interesting facts about the history of the Russian alphabet. Interesting facts, riddles and even jokes from the history of letters, which we did not even know about
Learning at school begins with the alphabet - but it turns out that we don't know a lot about it. Here is a selection of some interesting facts.
Most words with the letter "F" in Russian are borrowed. Pushkin was proud that in "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" there was only one word with the letter "f" - the fleet.
There are only 74 words in Russian that begin with the letter Y. But most of us remember only “iodine, yogi” and the city of “Yoshkar-Ola”. In Russian, there are words for "Y". These are the names of Russian cities and rivers: Ygyatta, Ylymakh, Ynakhsyt, Ynykchansky, Ytyk-kyul. The only words in Russian with three letters "e" in a row are long-necked (and others on the neck, for example, crooked, short-) and "zmeeeed".
In Russian there is a word with a unique prefix for the language ko- - zakuulok.
The only word in the Russian language that does not have a root is take out. It is believed that in this word the so-called zero root, which is in alternation with the root -im- (take out-im-at). Previously, until about the 17th century, this verb looked like to take out, and it had a material root, the same as in remove, hug, understand (cf. shoot, hug, understand), but subsequently the root -nya- was rethought as a suffix - well- (as in poke, puff). The only one-syllable adjective in Russian is evil.
In Russian, there are words with prefixes unique for the language i-, - total and total and a- - maybe (outdated and eight “and eight will not be lucky”), formed from unions and and a.
The words bull and bee are the same root. In the works of ancient Russian literature, the word bee was written as "b'chela". The alternation of vowels ъ / ы is explained by the origin of both sounds from the same Indo-European sound U. If we recall the dialect verb to roar, buzz, buzz and is etymologically related to the words bee, insect and bull, it becomes clear what was the common meaning of these words.
Until the 14th century in Rus', all indecent words were called "absurd verbs."
In the 1993 Guinness Book of Records, the longest word in the Russian language is called “roentgenoelectrocardiographic”, in the 2003 edition “highly contemplating”. In the Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language A.A. Zaliznyak of the 2003 edition, the longest (in letters) common noun in the dictionary form is the adjective "private entrepreneurial". Consists of 25 letters.
The longest verbs are “re-examine”, “substantialize” and “internationalize” (all - 24 letters; word forms - and - having 25 letters each); The longest nouns are “misanthropy” and “high excellency” (24 letters each; word forms -ami - 26 letters each, however, “misanthropy” is practically not used in plural);
The longest animated nouns are “eleven-grader” and “clerk” (21 letters each, word forms -ami - 23 letters each);
The longest adverb recorded by the dictionary is “unsatisfactory” (19 letters); however, it should be taken into account that from the vast majority of quality adjectives on -th / -th adverbs are formed on -о / -е, which are far from always recorded in the dictionary;
The longest interjection included in the Grammar Dictionary is "physical education hello" (15 or 14 letters depending on the status of the hyphen);
The word "respectively" is the longest preposition and the longest conjunction at the same time. It consists of 14 letters. The longest particle "exclusively" is one letter shorter.
Insufficient verbs. Sometimes the verb does not have any form, and this is due to the laws of euphony. For example: "win". He wins, you win, I... win? will I run? win? Philologists suggest using replacement constructions “I will win” or “I will become a winner”. Since there is no first person singular form, the verb is deficient.
Russian is one of the languages of international communication, especially in the post-Soviet space.
He is poeticized by many writers and has many fans among foreigners who, only at the behest of their hearts, and not because it is necessary, want to study it.
Literate people, of course, know the basic rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation, but few are familiar with them.
But in vain, because it really is much more exciting and interesting than cramming the rules from a textbook.
“The Russian language is an interesting fact in itself”
This is exactly what my teacher of Russian language and literature claimed.
I have never met a teacher more in love with his subject in my entire academic life.
She not only taught us how to write and speak Russian, she literally reveled in its sound.
And her lessons were incredibly exciting and interesting, because she taught them in a non-trivial way, actively used visual aids and constantly told something so interesting that you can’t read in a textbook.
Russian is one of the East Slavic languages.
It is state in the Russian Federation, as well as official in some countries of the former USSR, for example, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, etc.
It is widely distributed in the world (ranks eighth in terms of the number of people who consider it their own).
It is spoken by over 250 million people worldwide.
There are powerful Russian-speaking communities not only in most of the republics of the former USSR, but also in countries that are geographically distant from the Russian Federation: the USA, Turkey, Israel and others.
It is also considered one of the 6 working languages of the United Nations.
In general, there are plenty of reasons to be fluent in Russian (whether it is your native language or not is not so important).
But, alas, it is not easy for foreigners, especially those whose native language is not included in the Slavic group, to master Russian.
It has an interesting alphabet with unique letters, for example, "ъ", words that are spelled and sound completely different, changeable endings, distribution of words by gender, type and case, many rules and exceptions to these rules.
And what distinguishes the Russian language from others is that many interesting facts can be cited about it.
Interesting facts about the letters of the Russian language
Well, it would seem that there is nothing so interesting in the letters, especially in the letters of the Russian language, especially for the countries neighboring the Russian Federation, for whose inhabitants Russian, although not native, is familiar and understandable.But as it turned out, there are many interesting facts about the letters of the Russian language:
The letter “f”, familiar and understandable to us today, turns out to have its own peculiarity: most of the words with it are borrowed from others.
A.S. knew this very well. Pushkin also tried in his "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" to use such words less.
In addition to the word “fleet”, you will not find another in the “Fairy Tale”.
How many words can you remember that begin with the letter "y"?
Well, let the strength of 5-6.
But it turns out that there are more than 70 such words in the Russian language.
Do you know words that start with the letter "y"?
Personally, I don't.
It turns out that there are such words, although all of them are hard-to-pronounce geographical names, for example, Ynykhsyt or Ytyk-kuel.
It seems incredible that there can be a word that contains three identical letters in a row.
But the Russian language distinguished itself here too, because it can boast of the word “long-necked”.
The letters "i" and "a" can serve as prefixes.
Do you want examples?
Please: “total”, “maybe”.
Interesting facts about the words of the Russian language
“If so many interesting facts are known about letters, then there must be an unmeasured amount of them about the words of this wonderful language,” I thought, and turned out to be absolutely right.Here are some interesting things about the words of the Russian language:
- There are quite a lot of words in Russian that have 10 or more letters, and words that have more than 20 letters will not surprise us too much.
Monosyllabic words are not uncommon in Russian, but for some reason most adjectives contain two or more syllables.
The only exception to this rule is "evil".
You would never have guessed (at least I certainly would not have guessed) that two such different words as “bull” and “bee” have the same root.
Do you know why?
Because earlier they said “bchela” to a honey insect, and the sounds that both bulls and bees made were called “bellowing”.
Ah, that dreaded word "win" that cannot be used in the first person.
How many people were forced to blush, mumbling indistinctly “I will win ...”, “I will run ...”, trying to find a way out of the bad situation into which they themselves have driven.
By the way, this is not the only “insufficient verb” (one that cannot be used in the first person) in Russian.
If someone wants to correct you, they say, the word "coffee" is masculine, you can safely say to him:
"Your information is outdated."
In 2009, the Ministry of Education itself recognized that coffee is of the middle kind.
Pundits apologized for the mistake that crept in: “coffee” is a derivative of “coffee”, which is actually a masculine gender.
Are you not enough given interesting facts about the Russian language?
So grab a few more:
- The alphabet of the Russian language is the Cyrillic alphabet, which was subject to civil modification (I don’t know what this means, but Wikipedia says so☺).
- God alone knows why, but until the 14th century, linguists, writers and other literate Russians called all words with a not too decent meaning "ridiculous verbs", even if they were not verbs at all.
We can be proud that in 2003 an interesting fact about the Russian language was included in the Guinness Book of Records.
The people fixing the records were amazed that we have a word consisting of 35 letters: “highly contemplating”.
In the Russian Federation, 99.4% of the inhabitants are fluent in Russian.
True, I think that no one has interviewed labor migrants, of whom there are so many now, but, oh well, this figure is still impressive.
The Russian language is gradually losing its position as the "official language" in many former Soviet republics due to the fact that it is being replaced by the state language of these countries.
In the video below you will find 12 more interesting facts about the Russian language:
What facts about the Russian language seem interesting to foreigners?
And here are some facts about the Russian language that seem most interesting to foreigners:
Why are there two letters in the alphabet at all, which do not represent sounds: “b” and “b”.
“Some kind of absurdity,” many foreigners think.
Well, how can it be that such a good word as "be" could not exist in the present tense?
But it feels great in the past and future.
Well, is it really so difficult to come up with a word for address?
"Comrade" and "citizen" went out of fashion, "mister", "madam" did not take root.
And "man" and "woman" sound rude.
What remains? "Hey you"?
On the one hand, the order of words in sentences is arbitrary, but on the other hand, you cannot rearrange them as you please.
For example, rearrange the words in a short sentence "I'm going home" and each time you will have a new semantic load.
To turn an affirmative sentence into an interrogative one, just a question mark at the end and the appropriate intonation is enough.
No special words or constructions.
Of course, this is not all interesting facts about the Russian language.
There are so many of them that you can’t remember everything, and it’s quite difficult to tell about everything within one article.
What fact do you find most interesting?
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At the end of 862, the prince of Great Moravia (the state of the Western Slavs) Rostislav turned to the Byzantine emperor Michael with a request to send preachers to Moravia who could spread Christianity in the Slavic language (sermons in those parts were read in Latin, unfamiliar and incomprehensible to the people).
Emperor Michael sent the Greeks to Moravia - the scientist Constantine the Philosopher (the name Cyril Constantine received when he became a monk in 869, and with this name he went down in history) and his older brother Methodius.
The choice was not random. The brothers Constantine and Methodius were born in Thessalonica (in Greek, Thessaloniki) in the family of a military commander, received a good education. Cyril studied in Constantinople at the court of the Byzantine emperor Michael III, knew Greek, Slavic, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic languages well, taught philosophy, for which he received the nickname Philosopher. Methodius was in military service, then for several years he ruled one of the regions inhabited by the Slavs; subsequently retired to a monastery.
In 860, the brothers had already made a trip to the Khazars for missionary and diplomatic purposes.
In order to be able to preach Christianity in the Slavic language, it was necessary to make a translation of the Holy Scripture into the Slavic language; however, the alphabet capable of conveying Slavic speech did not exist at that moment.
Constantine set about creating the Slavic alphabet. Methodius, who also knew the Slavic language well, helped him in his work, since a lot of Slavs lived in Thessalonica (the city was considered half-Greek, half-Slavic). In 863, the Slavic alphabet was created (the Slavic alphabet existed in two versions: the Glagolitic alphabet - from the verb - “speech” and the Cyrillic alphabet; scientists still do not have a consensus which of these two options was created by Cyril). With the help of Methodius, a number of liturgical books were translated from Greek into Slavonic. The Slavs got the opportunity to read and write in their own language. The Slavs not only had their own, Slavic, alphabet, but also the first Slavic literary language was born, many of whose words still live in Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian and other Slavic languages.
The mystery of the Slavic alphabet
The Old Slavonic alphabet got its name from a combination of two letters “az” and “beeches”, which denoted the first letters of the alphabet A and B. An interesting fact is that the Old Slavonic alphabet was graffiti, i.e. graffiti scrawled on the walls. The first Old Slavonic letters appeared on the walls of churches in Pereslavl around the 9th century. And by the 11th century, ancient graffiti appeared in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. It was on these walls that the letters of the alphabet were indicated in several styles, and below was the interpretation of the letter-word.
In 1574, an important event took place, which contributed to a new round in the development of Slavic writing. The first printed ABC appeared in Lvov, which was seen by Ivan Fedorov, the man who printed it.
ABC structure
If you look back, you will see that Cyril and Methodius created not just an alphabet, they opened a new path for the Slavic people, leading to the perfection of man on earth and the triumph of a new faith. If you look at historical events, the difference between which is only 125 years, you will understand that in fact the path of establishing Christianity in our land is directly related to the creation of the Slavic alphabet. Indeed, literally in one century, the Slavic people eradicated archaic cults and adopted a new faith. The connection between the creation of the Cyrillic alphabet and the adoption of Christianity today is beyond doubt. The Cyrillic alphabet was created in 863, and already in 988, Prince Vladimir officially announced the introduction of Christianity and the overthrow of primitive cults.
Studying the Old Slavonic alphabet, many scientists come to the conclusion that in fact the first "ABC" is a cryptography that has a deep religious and philosophical meaning, and most importantly, that it is built in such a way that it is a complex logical and mathematical organism. In addition, comparing many finds, the researchers came to the conclusion that the first Slavic alphabet was created as a holistic invention, and not as a creation that was created in parts by adding new letter forms. It is also interesting that most of the letters of the Old Slavonic alphabet are letters-numbers. Moreover, if you look at the entire alphabet, you will see that it can be conditionally divided into two parts, which are fundamentally different from each other. In this case, we will conditionally call the first half of the alphabet the “higher” part, and the second “lower”. The upper part includes letters from A to F, i.e. from “az” to “fert” and is a list of letter-words that carry a meaning understandable to the Slav. The lower part of the alphabet begins with the letter "sha" and ends with "izhitsa". The letters of the lower part of the Old Slavonic alphabet do not have a numerical value, unlike the letters of the higher part, and carry a negative connotation.
In order to understand the secret writing of the Slavic alphabet, it is necessary not only to skim through it, but to read each letter-word. After all, each letter-word contains a semantic core that Konstantin put into it.
Literal truth, the highest part of the alphabet
Az- this is the initial letter of the Slavic alphabet, which denotes the pronoun I. However, its root meaning is the word “originally”, “begin” or “beginning”, although in everyday life the Slavs most often used Az in the context of the pronoun. Nevertheless, in some Old Slavonic writings one can find Az, which meant “one”, for example, “I will go to Vladimir”. Or, “starting from the basics” meant “starting from the beginning.” Thus, with the beginning of the alphabet, the Slavs denoted the entire philosophical meaning of being, where without beginning there is no end, without darkness there is no light, and without good there is no evil. At the same time, the main emphasis in this is placed on the duality of the dispensation of the world. Actually, the alphabet itself is built on the principle of duality, where it is conditionally divided into two parts: the highest and the lowest, positive and negative, the part located at the beginning and the part that is at the end. In addition, do not forget that Az has a numerical value, which is expressed by the number 1. Among the ancient Slavs, the number 1 was the beginning of everything beautiful. Today, studying Slavic numerology, we can say that the Slavs, like other peoples, divided all numbers into even and odd. At the same time, odd numbers were the embodiment of everything positive, kind and bright. In turn, even numbers represented darkness and evil. At the same time, the unit was considered the beginning of all beginnings and was very revered by the Slavic tribes. From the point of view of erotic numerology, it is believed that 1 is a phallic symbol, from which procreation begins. This number has several synonyms: 1 is one, 1 is one, 1 is times.
Beeches(Beeches) - the second letter-word in the alphabet. It has no digital meaning, but it has no less deep philosophical meaning than Az. Beeches - means "to be", "will be" was most often used in turnovers in the future form. For example, “bodie” means “let it be”, and “bowdo”, as you probably already guessed, means “future, upcoming”. In this word, our ancestors expressed the future as an inevitability that could be both good and rosy, or gloomy and terrible. It is still not known for certain why Bukam Constantine did not give a numerical value, but many scholars suggest that this is due to the duality of this letter. Indeed, by and large, it denotes the future, which each person imagines for himself in a rainbow light, but on the other hand, this word also denotes the inevitability of punishment for committed low deeds.
Lead- the most interesting letter of the Old Slavonic alphabet, which has a numerical value of 2. This letter has several meanings: to know, to know and to own. When Constantine put this meaning into Vedi, he meant secret knowledge, knowledge as the highest divine gift. If you add Az, Buki and Vedi into one phrase, you will get a phrase that means "I will know!". Thus, Constantine showed that a person who discovered the alphabet created by him would subsequently have some kind of knowledge. No less important is the numerical load of this letter. After all, 2 - two, two, a couple were not just numbers among the Slavs, they took an active part in magical rituals and in general were symbols of the duality of everything earthly and heavenly. The number 2 among the Slavs meant the unity of heaven and earth, the duality of human nature, good and evil, etc. In a word, the deuce was a symbol of the confrontation between the two sides, heavenly and earthly balance. Moreover, it is worth noting that the Slavs considered the two to be a devilish number and attributed to it a lot of negative properties, believing that it was the two that opened the number series of negative numbers that brought death to a person. That is why the birth of twins in Old Slavic families was considered a bad sign, which brought illness and misfortune to the family. In addition, among the Slavs, it was considered a bad sign to rock the cradle together, two people to dry themselves with one towel and generally perform any action together. Despite such a negative attitude towards the number 2, the Slavs recognized its magical power. So, for example, many rituals of exorcism were carried out with the help of two identical objects or with the participation of twins.
Having considered the upper part of the alphabet, one can state the fact that it is a secret message of Constantine to the descendants. "Where is it seen?" - you ask. And now you try to read all the letters, knowing their true meaning. If you take several subsequent letters, then phrases-edifications are added:
Lead + The verb means "lead the teaching";
Rtsy + Word + Firmly can be understood as the phrase "speak the true word";
Firmly + Ouk can be interpreted as "strengthen the law."
If you look closely at other letters, you can also find the secret script that Constantine the Philosopher left behind.
Have you ever wondered why the letters in the alphabet are in this order, and not some other? The order of the "higher" part of the Cyrillic letters can be considered from two positions.
Firstly, the fact that each letter-word is formed into a meaningful phrase with the next one may mean a non-random pattern that was invented to quickly memorize the alphabet.
Secondly, the Old Slavonic alphabet can be considered from the point of view of numbering. That is, each letter is also a number. Moreover, all letters-numbers are arranged in ascending order. So, the letter A - “az” corresponds to one, B - 2, G - 3, D - 4, E - 5, and so on up to ten. The letter K begins with tens, which are listed here in the same way as units: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 70, 80 and 100.
In addition, many scientists have noticed that the outlines of the letters of the "higher" part of the alphabet are graphically simple, beautiful and convenient. They perfectly suited cursive writing, and the person did not experience any difficulties in depicting these letters. And many philosophers see in the numerical arrangement of the alphabet the principle of the triad and spiritual harmony, which a person achieves, striving for goodness, light and truth.
Having studied the alphabet from the very beginning, we can come to the conclusion that Constantine left his descendants the main value - a creation that encourages us to strive for self-improvement, learning, wisdom and love, remembering the dark paths of malice, envy and enmity.
Learning at school begins with the alphabet - but it turns out that we don't know a lot about it. Here is a selection of some interesting facts.
Most words with the letter "F" in Russian- borrowed. Pushkin was proud that in "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" there was only one word with the letter "f" - the fleet.
There are only 74 words in Russian beginning with the letter "Y". But most of us remember only “iodine, yogi” and the city of “Yoshkar-Ola”. In Russian, there are words for "Y". These are the names of Russian cities and rivers: Ygyatta, Ylymakh, Ynakhsyt, Ynykchansky, Ytyk-kyul. The only words in Russian with three letters "e" in a row are long-necked (and others on the neck, for example, crooked, short-) and "zmeeeed".
In Russian there is a word with a unique prefix for the language ko- - zakuulok.
The only word Russian language, which has no root - take it out. It is believed that in this word the so-called zero root, which is in alternation with the root -im- (take out-im-at). Previously, until about the 17th century, this verb looked like to take out, and it had a material root, the same as in remove, hug, understand (cf. shoot, hug, understand), but subsequently the root -nya- was rethought as a suffix - well- (as in poke, puff). The only one-syllable adjective in Russian is evil.
There are words in Russian with prefixes unique for the language and-, - total and total and a- - maybe (outdated and eight “and eight are not lucky”), formed from unions and and a.
The words bull and bee are the same root. In the works of ancient Russian literature, the word bee was written as "b'chela". The alternation of vowels ъ / ы is explained by the origin of both sounds from the same Indo-European sound U. If we recall the dialect verb to roar, buzz, buzz and is etymologically related to the words bee, insect and bull, it becomes clear what was the common meaning of these words.
Until the 14th century in Rus', all indecent words were called "absurd verbs."
In the Guinness Book of Records In 1993, the longest word in the Russian language was named "roentgenoelectrocardiographic", in the 2003 edition "very highly contemplating". In the Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language A.A. Zaliznyak of the 2003 edition, the longest (in letters) common noun in the dictionary form is the adjective "private entrepreneurial". Consists of 25 letters.
The longest verbs- “to be re-examined”, “substantialized” and “internationalized” (all - 24 letters; word forms - and - having 25 letters each); The longest nouns are “misanthropy” and “high excellency” (24 letters each; word forms -ami - 26 letters each, however, “misanthropy” is practically not used in plural);
Most long animated nouns - “eleventh grader” and “clerk” (21 letters each, word forms -ami - 23 letters each);
Most a long adverb recorded by the dictionary - "unsatisfactory" (19 letters); however, it should be taken into account that from the vast majority of quality adjectives on -th / -th adverbs are formed on -о / -е, which are far from always recorded in the dictionary;
Most a long interjection included in the Grammar Dictionary - "physical education hello" (15 or 14 letters depending on the status of the hyphen);
Word"respectively" is the longest preposition and the longest conjunction at the same time. It consists of 14 letters. The longest particle "exclusively" is one letter shorter.
Insufficient verbs. Sometimes the verb does not have any form, and this is due to the laws of euphony. For example: "win". He wins, you win, I... win? will I run? win? Philologists suggest using replacement constructions “I will win” or “I will become a winner”. Since there is no first person singular form, the verb is deficient.
There are currently 65 different alphabets in use around the world. The richest of them is Khmer, it has 72 letters, and the most economical is the alphabet of one of the languages of Papua New Guinea, which needs 11 letters.
The Phoenicians invented the alphabet already in the 15th century BC. e. The Phoenicians had an alphabet consisting of 22 letters) , and the Greeks came up with the idea of introducing vowels into it. The last major improvement to the alphabet was made by Roman scribes in the 4th century AD: they separated uppercase and lowercase letters.
The oldest letter is "O". It was still in the Phoenician alphabet about 3300 years ago and has not changed at all since then.
The most common vowel sound in the languages of the world is "A". There is no language that does not have such a sound. It exists even in Abkhazian, where there are only two vowels - “a” and “e”, and in Ubykh, where “a” is the only vowel.
I am afraid that you will not find truly Russian words that would end with the sound "E": muffler and pince-nez are French words.
In Russian, the letter "Y" is never at the beginning of a word. But the Turks just adore her. Our word for "cupboard" in Turkey is "yshkaf". Iraq is called "Yrak" in Turkey.
Also, oddly enough, the Russian language almost does not tolerate words that begin with a sound and the letter "a". Take the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language": there are quite a few words starting with "a", but almost every one indicates that this word came to us (often along with the subject it denotes) from another language.
We notice the same thing, however, in other languages. So, for example, in French there are almost no own words that would begin with the letters "x, y, z".
Linguists will tell you that in Russian there was a vowel sound, something between “e” and “i”, to designate it in writing there was the letter “Yat”. However, in the 19th century, not a single Russian could, with all his will, notice such a subtle difference by ear, and spelling turned into a nightmare for schoolchildren. In the end, "yat" was abolished.
Open the volume of Pushkin: in most of his poems you will not find the letter “F”, in “The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda” you will not find a single letter “f”, no matter how much you search, and among the 30,000 letters of “Poltava” there is only three "f". Looking through any good dictionary of the Russian language, you will find in it literally a dozen or two words with "f", which are found only in Russian speech. Moreover, these will be the words "snort", "fuk", "falya" , "fufaney" and "figli-migli".
The letter "solid sign", or as it used to be called "er", now behaves quietly and meekly. But until recently, schoolchildren who were learning to read and write suffered terrible misfortunes from this letter. Until 1917, in the phrase “Then they wrote about a firm sign with anger and indignation ..” 4 “era” would have to be put. In the 1897 edition of War and Peace, there are 54-55 solid characters per page. That's 70+ useless pages! If you count all the books, it turns out that in Tsarist Russia about eight and a half million pages were printed annually, covered from top to bottom only with hard signs.
