Irina Levontina is the author of books on the Russian language, in which she explains in an accessible way why his changes are quite normal. Language is a living organism, and if a new word has taken root in it, one should not perceive it as loss and final collapse. Life is changing and it’s completely normal that there are changes in the language, and you should not react to them painfully.
A bit about the author
Irina Borisovna was born in Moscow on April 22, 1963. After Moscow State University, she began working at the Institute of the Russian Language and is a leading researcher. Levontina is the author of works on ethnolinguistics, lexical semantics, and lexicography.
It all started with the transfer of “Gramoteyka” to the Mayak radio station, where Irina Borisovna Levontina led the section “Work on mistakes”. Then she led the columns “Grunts about the language” in the “Wall newspaper” and in the newspaper “Troitsky Variant”. From these sections about the quirks of the language, the books “Russian with a Dictionary” and “What is It About” came out.
“Russian with a dictionary”
In 2010, Irina Levontina’s book, Russian with a Dictionary, was published. Although its author is a specialist and a linguist, the book is not a dictionary or textbook and, nevertheless, it is intended for those who speak and write Russian from an early age and suddenly find in the language “surprises” like “not our format”, “Finally not a topic”, “glamorous”.
Irina Borisovna does not scourge or stigmatize words whose use “cuts the ear”. On the contrary, she says that many are now interested in the language, they want to be fluent in it and this desire takes on the “right-wrong” format. People get used to it and, despite the fact that the language has changed over the years, they evaluate it only from their point of view, and everything new causes bewilderment: “what horror”, “what illiteracy”. This is fundamentally wrong. This is what Irina Levontina talks about in her book “Russian with a Dictionary”, which contains small essays on new phenomena in the language.
Living language
The continuation of the book “Russian with a Dictionary” was a collection of bright and fun notes “What is it about,” published in 2016. This work of Irina Levontina was also awarded the “Enlightener” prize. Here, the author talks about the life of the Russian language, because "the language is inseparable from life" and it is "saturated with language - and itself dissolved in it."
Language is constantly changing, adapting to life's realities. New words appear, and people are already sounding the alarm that we are not saving the language. If any word has entered the language and has become entrenched in it, this is normal. Most likely, it was necessary, and it introduced some new meaning.
It may be unsuccessful and unpleasant by ear, but at that time it was necessary, and now it’s even hard to imagine what we would do without this word. And if a person understands how everything around is changing, he will not be shocked by language innovations. Therefore, it is not necessary to convict, but it is necessary to understand that many common, slang, borrowed words also have a right to exist.
Reviews
In their reviews, readers write that the wonderful books of Irina Levontina will be interesting not only to lovers of the Russian language, but also to everyone who speaks it. In addition, the author’s observations impress with accuracy and depth - honed and elegant thoughts, nothing more. Books are written in excellent language, reading them is a pleasure.