Dictionaries are a kind of "representatives" of the language, showing people its richness, diversity and beauty. Without dictionaries, it was problematic to learn languages of other nations, correctly understand the meanings of words and understand terminologies.
The list of dictionaries of the Russian language and their authors is the story of both people who love and understand it, and its development and change.
The meaning of dictionaries nowadays
At all times, compilers of dictionaries lived and worked. Without them, literate writing is unlikely to ever come. Today, scientists studying ancient languages are faced with a problem such as a lack of vocabulary. Fortunately, this does not threaten our descendants.
Although a modern person receives more information per day than people of antiquity in their entire lives, they still need dictionaries, and there are reasons for this. Today it is simply indecent to speak and write illiterate, as ignoramuses do not succeed in their careers, do not become popular and rich. The vocabulary of a person and the ability to use it correctly is the key to achieving any desires, since it is precisely speech that helps to attract attention and success.
As a rule, all literate people know how to use dictionaries. Knowing the list of dictionaries of the Russian language and their authors, you can easily find the meaning of the word, and its synonym.
Types of Dictionaries
If the first dictionaries of the Russian language were extremely explanatory, then with the spread of literacy in the country, a need arose for spelling. Later, with the advent of new professions, books with narrowly focused terms began to be issued, for example, dictionaries for sailors, medical, technical and others.
The most popular today are:
- spelling dictionaries;
- sensible;
- reference books of synonyms;
- dictionaries of foreign words;
- phraseological;
- word matching reference books.
All of them reveal to the person the word and its concept, and no matter how long the list of dictionaries of the Russian language may be, their authors are those selfless people who devoted their life to compiling them.
Explanatory Dictionaries
The study of the meaning of words begins in people from early childhood and continues until death. This suggests that the Russian language is a constantly changing living "organism" in which old cells (words) die off, and new ones appear all the time.
The first explanatory dictionary of the Russian language was published in 1860 thanks to the fifty-year work of the ethnographer and collector Vladimir Dal. Being the son of Russified Germans and Danes, he was fond of obscure words, and for the first time he began to engage in collecting and studying them at the age of fifteen.
Traveling around the country a lot, Dahl talked with people from different cities and villages, with competent laymen and illiterate peasants, recording everything in his diaries. Thanks to such work, the World Explained Dictionary of the Russian Language of Dahl, which has no equal until now, saw the light of day. It has been reprinted several times, since many words have already gone out of use, and new concepts have replaced them.
No less famous is the Ozhegov Dictionary, written on the basis of Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary, edited by Ushakov. As a Soviet linguist, Ozhegov made the work of his colleague more modern and complemented. If in the first edition of the author there were a little more than 50,000 words, then in subsequent issues their number was constantly growing. The latest edition of his Dictionary of the Russian Language was published in 1992 and already totaled 70,000 words.
Spelling dictionaries
The task of the spelling dictionary is to show a person how to spell a word in various cases or declensions with an example of its use in speech.
Literate written speech in our time is a kind of "visiting card" of a person talking with friends or doing business on the Internet. Functions such as SMS, chats and messages on social networks “force” people to write a lot and often.
The spelling dictionary of the Russian language should be a reference book for both every student and just a literate person. As a rule, works like this are compiled by learned linguists, such as, for example, Dmitry Nikolayevich Ushakov (1873-1942).
The most famous since school days is Ushakov’s Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Language, which, like Dahl’s Explanatory Dictionary, has been repeatedly reprinted and edited by the next generation of linguists.
Synonym dictionary
As time shows, the list of dictionaries of the Russian language and their authors is constantly updated. For example, a reference book, such as a phraseological dictionary, helps people understand the speed of speech that our distant ancestors used in conversations. Without it, the concepts of many expressions would have long been lost.
The dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language was caused by the need for people to diversify their speech. Today, as never before, there are many cliches in speech turnovers, to avoid this, competent people are looking for a replacement for them. For this, for example, the Dictionary of Synonyms, edited by Babenko, is needed.
Russian dictionaries today
There are active languages on the planet that have not changed for thousands of years, but, as a rule, most of them undergo reforms from time to time. I did not escape this "fate" and the Russian language.
As mentioned above, it is in continuous development, so dictionaries will appear until it stops. It is unlikely that this can be expected in the near future, since every year scientific discoveries take place in the world, new words and professions appear that need to be interpreted and correctly written.
Modern linguists monitor changes in the vocabulary constantly, so it should not surprise anyone that every 5-10 years new dictionaries of the Russian language are published.