Often, when speaking of a native home, we mention the word "homeland." By it we mean the house in which they were born, the cherry blossoming by the window, the school yard where they chased the ball, a quiet square reminiscent of first love and careless youth. The fatherland is a part of our life and soul, a place for which it is not a pity to give the most precious thing: freedom and life.
Origin
There are several versions of where the word came from in our culture and way of life. The first says that the fatherland is a transformation of "father". Therefore, it is interpreted as “the land of the fathers”, “chosen by the father”. Adherents of this theory believe that the word has Old Slavonic roots, it was used back in the days of Kievan Rus, in the 9th – 10th centuries. The second version indicates that it was not our ancestors who invented it, but the neighboring Polish people. They have the word ojczyzna, formed from ojciec - father. Some historians say that the Russians began to use it in the 16th century, when the Commonwealth was a large and influential state in the international arena.
As you can see, the motherland is a semantic derivative of the father and father - the male ancestors. It seems to be hinting: at that time it was representatives of the stronger sex who ruled in society. Politics, economics, culture and other areas of society depended on their decisions. The real patriarchy was the foundation of the state, so they began to call it the motherland. The homeland was identified with a victorious warrior, strong and powerful, which protects his people and protects them.
Value
If you look into Russian dictionaries, you can read everywhere that the homeland is the place where a person was born. His ancestors lived on this earth: father and mother, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Many people think that you can safely call yourself an indigenous person if you were born in a particular territory in the third generation. In another case, you are still considered an immigrant or an immigrant.
The homeland is a land whose customs and traditions have long become a part of everyday life. For example, only a real Russian person celebrates Old New Year or Polar Explorer Day with pleasure - holidays that are unfamiliar to residents of other countries. Homeland is a concept that can be used in a wider and narrower sense. In the first case, this is the state of which you are a citizen, in the second - your home, street, district or region. The word is also often used in figurative meaning. For us, the fatherland is not only the earth and the sky above it, it is also all the attributes of the Russian people: nested dolls, dumplings, brown bears, vests and kokoshnik.
Use
The word homeland is one of the most popular in the works of the classics of Russian literature. They treated him with some trepidation, because in those days, the homeland was a holy land, protecting which, without fear and doubt, they went to death. Lermontov often used the word in poems: "I love my homeland, but with a strange love." Pushkin also adorned them with his world-famous rhymed lines: "For the shores of a distant homeland, you left a strange land."
Nowadays, we also often use the word. True, in ordinary speech it is not so common. Similar to archaism, it is more suitable for solemn occasions, ceremonial events. For example, February 23 is called
Defender of the Fatherland Day, which sounds more festive than in the case of the Motherland. It, for example, sounds more harmoniously in everyday dialogues. If the Motherland is associated with something soft and domestic, then the motherland is associated with strong-willed and severe. This word makes us proudly raise my head and say: “I am Russian and proud of it!”