Each person who speaks Russian can easily recognize words such as “speak,” “food,” “blizzard,” and can not only give them a definition, but also use them in the correct form in context. It is these words that are called public, or nationwide vocabulary. But not everyone will be able to explain what "bayon", "brilliantly", "vyalitsa" is, only a small circle of people knows such words. However, the majority of people do not use such non-literary speech in conversation.
Dialect word: definition
It is the well-known, used in the literature and in the speech of people, regardless of their place of residence and profession, that the words form the basis of the Russian language, yet the rest of the expressions are not publicly-used only in certain circles of the population. These include slang, special, and dialect words. In Russian, they are also called vocabulary of limited use. Such words are divided into groups, each of which has its own characteristic.
Lexical groups
Certain masses of the population, carriers of non-public vocabulary, consist of a huge number of groups scattered throughout the expanses of the country and even beyond its borders. Each of them in everyday life has its own special words, and each is divided according to a certain attribute: occupation, place of residence and social stratum. So what words are called dialects? It is those that are used in a particular area. For example, in the Pskov region there is such a thing as a north, in Baikal the same phenomenon is called barguzin, and on the Danube - white lake. The literary synonym for these words is wind.
A dialect word is part of its group at the location, and words relating only to the occupation of a person make up a professional group. But slang speech refers to certain sections of society.
Where does dialect vocabulary meet
Each area has its own specific words, used only in this area. So, for example, in the south of the country one can meet such interesting words: a square, which means bushes; a goat, which corresponds to the word earth. In the northern cities you can also find interesting examples of dialect speech: warmth, which means a bonfire; lava - bridge and roe deer - plow.
Dialect Expression Classification
In literary and book speech, you can find the so-called dialectisms - words that are essentially dialectic, but have their word-formation, grammatical and phonetic features and relate to one or another dialect. Dialectisms are divided into 4 groups:
- Semantic dialectisms are a group of words that are used in a certain dialect in an uncommon meaning. For example: a cloud is a thunderstorm, an order is a forest, an impudent one is sudden.
- Ethnographic dialectisms call an object or phenomenon that is characteristic of a particular population and unknown in another locality. As a rule, such a dialect word has no synonyms in conventional speech, and it can be defined only descriptively. For example: buttermilk - a skirt from a piece of fabric, a mule - a cotton jacket, end - a thin pancake from unleavened dough.
- Phraseological dialectisms are immutable phrases that have a certain meaning only in a specific area. For example: to get bored - to fall into boredom, waggle - as if I sat in salt, something heavy and difficult - death without death.
Where are the dialect words used?
Examples of the use of such expressions can be found not only in conversation, but also in literary works. Although, of course, the question arises of how, and most importantly, to what extent such vocabulary can be applied for artistic purposes. It is the theme of the work and the goals set by the author that determine which dialect word can be used in a particular case. Here, many factors can be taken into account - these are aesthetic ideals, and craftsmanship, and, of course, the described object. After all, sometimes, using only generally accepted speech, it is impossible to convey all the colors and character. For example, Leo Tolstoy often uses dialect words to describe the peasants in his works. Examples of their use in the literature can also be found in I. S. Turgenev: he used them as inclusions and quotes, which stand out quite clearly in the main text. Moreover, such inclusions in their composition have comments that fully reveal their meaning, but without them the literary context would not have such brightness.
Dialectisms today
Now authors in their works on villages also use dialect words, but usually do not indicate their meaning, even if they are words of narrow application. Similar expressions can be found in newspaper essays, where a hero is characterized, his manner of speaking and the characteristic features of his life, determined by the area in which he lives.
Considering the fact that newspaper editions should carry exclusively literary speech to the masses, the use of dialectisms should be justified as much as possible. For example: "It was not in vain that I left Basil a little to get away from those present." It is also worth noting that each of such unacceptable words should be explained to the reader, because not a single person, reading a book, has a dictionary of dialect words at hand.
Dialectisms as part of the vocabulary of the Russian language
If we talk about dictionaries, then the first mention of dialectisms can be found in the Explanatory Dictionary of the Great Russian Language by V. I. Dahl. In this edition you can find 150 articles devoted to this particular topic. Today, great attention is also paid to the study of dialectisms, because they, along with archaisms, neologisms, borrowed words and phraseological units, make up a significant part of the vocabulary of the powerful Russian language. And although most of them are not used in everyday spoken and written speech, but only a passive part, without them it would be impossible to build vivid statements or a colorful description of an object or character. That is why great writers so often resorted to dialecticism to brighten the text. Returning to vocabulary, it should be noted that for the study of dialect words there is a whole science called dialectology.
This linguistic discipline studies the phonetic, grammatical, syntactic features of a unit of language, which is fixed geographically. Also, special attention is paid here to the study of dialectisms in fiction. Linguistics shares the understanding of such words:
- a broad approach, which is characterized by the inclusion of ordinary colloquial dialectisms in literary speech;
- a narrow approach, where all stable phrases and words are used in fiction and journalistic publications.
To summarize
Going deep into the lexical structure of the Russian language, you understand how correct the phrase “great and mighty” is. After all, dialect words with their classification and structure are just a small part of a huge system for which their own science has been created. Moreover, the supply of these same words does not have constancy, it is replenished and updated. And this applies not only to dialectisms, because the number of generally accepted and commonly used words is also constantly increasing, which only emphasizes the power of the Russian language.