What does Academician I. Meshchaninov talk about?

On globe people speak almost two thousand different languages. The science of languages ​​- linguistics - is given great importance in our country. Its problems are being developed in five research institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The works of Soviet linguists occupy a leading place among the works of scientists from other countries. Works very hard and fruitfully in the field of studying language problems Hero socialist labor Academician Ivan Ivanovich Meshchaninov.

The specialty I chose, naturally, confronted me with the need to know a large number of languages,” says Academician I. I. Meshchaninov. - My acquaintance with languages ​​began in early childhood. In addition to my native Russian language, my family taught me to speak German. Later, at school and at university, I studied English and French. These languages ​​are usually required by everyone who decides to devote himself research activities about any field of science. Without them, it is impossible to keep up with the scientific literature emerging in other countries. One or two of the most common foreign languages needed by people of different professions. Sailors, for example, absolutely need knowledge of the English language, because international maritime radio communications are carried out in English. As is known, three languages ​​are now accepted for diplomatic communication: English, Russian and French.

Gradually I mastered Italian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Polish, Turkish languages so much so that I could read scientific literature. Already at the beginning of my scientific work I became convinced of what a fascinating and useful activity it is to study even such ancient, long ago forgotten languages, such as the Chaldish language, which was widespread in the territory of Armenia in the 6th - 7th centuries BC. Reading the ancient Khaldic inscriptions discovered by archaeologists brings back to us the history of Transcaucasia.

A special task confronted me when studying the national languages ​​of the peoples of the Soviet Union. The population of our country speaks almost 160 languages. Many of them have been little studied and are of great interest to researchers. Some nationalities did not even have their own written language before the revolution. Soviet linguistics helps the development of national languages ​​and enriches them. Here is an example of how, with the introduction of writing, the entire structure of syntax and the series of sequential simple sentences gradually replaced by a developed system of complex composition and subordination. Let’s take the literal translation of the Khanty (Ostyak) fairy tale: “It is summer. One day has come. I took my nets. I went fishing. I installed my networks. I got the fish. He went ashore. I started cooking food. The fire was lit. I hung up the boiler." With introduction literary language this tale sounds different: “One day he took his nets and went fishing. Having set the nets, he caught the fish and went ashore. He began to prepare food, lit a fire and hung up the cauldron.” Our scientists, studying national languages, develop scientific grammars for them and compile new dictionaries.

Of the languages ​​spoken by the peoples of the Soviet Union, I first studied Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kazan-Tatar and Gilyak. The latter is not written, and I had to memorize it directly by ear. In order to be able to compare the languages ​​of different systems, I became acquainted with a group of North Caucasian languages: Adyghe, Kabardian, Avar, Lezgin, Lak. Of exceptional interest are the languages ​​of the peoples of the North that I have studied: Nenets, Selkup (Ostyak-Samoyed), Yukaghir, Aleut, Yuit (Eskimo), as well as the languages ​​of the African Bantu tribe. By comparing the structure of different languages, we find out the basic principles of the construction of sentences and the design of words, which is very important for clarifying the question of their origin.

I am sometimes asked: how can one retain in memory a large number of languages ​​that are so little similar to each other? I believe that this is achieved by systematic memory training and in the same professional manner as, say, accountants’ memory for numbers. People who assimilate new language, it is very important to frequently practice speaking and reading literature. Quite often, language acquisition occurs without any particular difficulties. I remember a conversation with a young Armenian who worked in citrus plantations. It was ten years ago, in the Armenian village of Esheri, in Abkhazia. It seemed strange to the young man that I could speak fluently four Western European languages. But it immediately became clear that he himself, in addition to his native Armenian language, knows Abkhazian, which is spoken by the local population, in addition, he is fluent in Greek, since Greeks live nearby, Russian, which is familiar to almost the entire urban population of Abkhazia, and, finally, can explain in Turkish, because I met Turks more than once in the bazaars. Knowing so many different languages ​​came naturally to him because he was driven to it by the need to communicate with his environment.

Studying the diversity and richness of human speech, scientists made an interesting calculation of the number of people who speak a particular language. Our Russian language, for example, is widespread in Europe, Asia, and America. It is spoken by up to 200 million people in total, while 90 million people have a native language.

The growing international importance of the USSR aroused extraordinary interest in the Russian language in all countries. Our youth hardly know that for foreigners learning languages, Russian is the most difficult. And yet abroad - in America, England, France and especially in Slavic countries- it is mastered by a large number of people.

Widely distributed around the globe English language, spoken by at least 250 million people, including 106 million Americans and 47 million native English speakers. French is spoken by 107 million people, of which 45 million speak French as their native language.

In the East, Chinese is the most widely spoken language. It is spoken by over 500 million people.

Along with the living languages ​​that people use as colloquial speech, there are many dead languages. Their number, according to scientists, exceeds the number of living ones. We usually call those languages ​​that are no longer spoken dead. Many of them, however, have a rich literature. An example is Latin, the language of the ancient Romans. Cultural and scientific significance there are very many of them.

Gain international relations between Soviet Union and other countries has awakened in our youth an understandable desire to learn foreign languages. People who really want to know a language, with systematic study, master it within two to three years.

Lecture on the topic

"DIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD"

Earth population 7 billion people

Number of languages ​​2.5-5 thousand (up to 6-7 thousand)

One day, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published the data at its disposal: there are 2,796 languages ​​in the world. Typically, linguists prefer to give approximate numbers. The reasons for the discrepancies are as follows.

1) The difficulty of distinguishing between language and dialect.

2) Insufficient knowledge of languages. We live in a world where, it would seem, everything is already open and mapped. However, from time to time it becomes known from newspapers or television programs that somewhere in the jungles of the Amazonian lowlands or New Guinea, modern travelers managed to discover a tiny lost tribe, alienated from contact with other people and speaking a language not known to any of the specialists.

3) N Finally, languages ​​can die. In Russia, for example, the Kerek language in Kamchatka has literally died out before our eyes, and the languages ​​of such peoples as the Itelmens, Yukaghirs, and Tofalars are disappearing. These are tiny peoples, only a few hundred people each, many of whom, especially young people, no longer know their language... Only in the 20th century, dozens of languages ​​disappeared from the face of the earth.With the development of communications, the number living languages contracts from average speed 1 language per two weeks.

So it is very difficult, if not impossible, to establish the exact number of languages ​​in the world.

Most common languages ​​(by number of speakers):

Chinese

As of January 2012 1349718000 people, Mandarin is spoken by more than 885 million people.

English, Spanish, Hindi (fighting for second place)

English is the national language not only of the British and Americans, but also of Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders... It is one of the official languages ​​of India and 15 African states (former British colonies); it is also spoken in other countries.

English is an international language. One and a half billion people around the world speak this language. It is native to 400-500 million people in 12 countries, and over a billion people use English as a second language.

English is the language of business and politics. It is one of the working languages ​​of the United Nations. World information technology also based on English. More than 90% of all information in the world is also stored in English. This language is defined as the main language of the Internet. Television and radio broadcasts of the world's largest companies (CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC, CBC), covering an audience of 500 million people, are also performed in English. More than 70% are published in English scientific publications. They sing in this language songs and films.

Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, French, etc.

Language card peace (toart of world languages)

this is a map of families and groups of languages, as well as their individual representatives. The distribution area of ​​languages ​​is indicated by a certain color.

Less common languages

CurrentlyThere are just over 400 languages ​​that are considered endangered.They are spoken by a very small number of mostly elderly people and, apparently, these languages ​​will disappear forever from the face of the Earth with the death of these “last of the Mohicans.” Here are some examples:

Russia: Kerek (2 people) and Udege (100 people) languages;

Africa: languages ​​Bikia (1 person), Elmolo (8 people), Goundo (30 people), Kambap (30 people);

Australia: Alaua language (about 20 people);

North America: languages ​​Chinook (12 people), Kansa (19 people), Kaguila (35 people);

South America: Tehulche languages ​​(about 30 people), Itonama (about 100 people).

In 1996, a man named Red Thundercloud died in the United States... He was the last person who knew the Catawba language of the Sioux Indian tribe. True, before his death he managed to record speech patterns and ritual songs of his language for the Smithsonian Institution, which rendered a great service to science. Unfortunately, this rarely happens; more often than not, a language dies quietly and imperceptibly along with its last speakers...

Every two weeks, somewhere in the world, a language dies along with its last speaker, and with it a picture of the hopes, beliefs and views of an entire ethnic group. The loss of each language, therefore, always means the loss of the culture of its native people. These languages ​​cannot leave behind even exhibits for a museum, since most of them do not have written traditions. So with the death of their last speaker, the language disappears without a trace and forever.Languages ​​die along with the last speaker, and therefore danger threatens, first of all, nations that do not use writing.

According to scientists, in 50-100 years half of the existing languages ​​will disappear. In order for a language to be preserved, about 100 thousand of its speakers are required.

In 2009 UNESCO has recognized 136 languages ​​in Russia as endangered.

Languages ​​always die. As a result of wars, natural disasters, epidemics, the enslavement of one people by another, but never before has extinction proceeded at such a rapid pace. It is estimated that over the past 500 years, humanity has lost approximately half of all the languages ​​it spoke, and half of all remaining languages ​​will disappear before the end of this century. There are many reasons leading to the death of a language, but the main ones that play present moment The determining role can probably be called economic and political factors: globalization, modernization, industrialization and urbanization, entailing the transformation of the world, once consisting of a motley collection of relatively self-sufficient individual peoples, into one “global village”.

As a rule, “strong” languages, such as, say, English, Russian, French, Arabic or Chinese, all without exception with a large number of speakers and a developed written tradition, have been studied quite well by linguists. This is opposed by thousands of practically unstudied and rapidly disappearing languages, which puts the question of their study and description among the most pressing and pressing problems of modern linguistics.

Many languages ​​are disappearing due to the fact that their speakers come into contact with a stronger linguistic environment, so the languages ​​of small nationalities and the languages ​​of peoples without statehood are primarily at risk of extinction. If less than 70% of children learn a language, it is considered endangered. According to the Atlas of the World's Endangered Languages UNESCO , currently in Europe About 50 languages ​​are threatened with extinction.

Scientists and politicians have long sounded the alarm. The UN declared 1994-2004 the decade of the world's indigenous peoples, and UNESCO and the Council of Europe tasked scientists with creating the Red Book, a global database and atlases of endangered languages.

So, languages ​​are divided into

1) alive;

2) dead, for example:

Latin (the language of the Roman Empire - the political basis of Western European civilization, the language catholic church, the main language of scientific terminology of mankind);

from Taroslavian ( literary, religious and political language of the Slavs and their neighbors (Lithuanians, Moldavians, Finno-Ugric peoples) from the Adriatic and Baltic to the Urals);

Sanskrit ( divine living and developing language of Indian culture and one of the languages ​​of Buddhist culture).

Another interesting example Ubykh language. The original zone of distribution of the Ubykh language Black Sea coast Caucasus , currently the region Lazarevsky, Central and Khostinsky district city ​​of Sochi . In the 1860s after graduationCaucasian WarThe Ubykhs were evicted by the Russian government in Turkey , the remaining part mixed with the local population, as a result of which the language lost its natural distribution area. The last known speaker of the Ubykh language Tevfik Esenç died in 1992 in Turkey . The Ubykh language is known for its unique phonetics - it has 84 consonant sounds (of which four were used only in borrowed words) and only two vowels (“a” long and “a” short).

Languages ​​are also divided into

1) natural in linguistics and philosophy of language language and used for communication between people (as opposed to formal languages and other types of sign systems , also called languages ​​in semiotics ) and not artificially created (unlikeartificial languages).

2) artificial -special languages, which, unlike natural , are purposefully designed.Diversity of languages ​​has always prevented peoples from communicating with each other, so people dreamed of a language understandable to everyone.

The following types of artificial languages ​​are distinguished:

• Programming languages And computer languageslanguages ​​for automatic information processing using COMPUTER.
• Information languageslanguages ​​used in various information processing systems.
• Formalized languages science languages ​​intended for symbolic notation scientific facts and theories of mathematics, logic, chemistry and other sciences.
• Languages ​​of non-existent peoples created infictionalor entertainment purposes, for example: Elvish language, invented by J. Tolkien, Klingon language, created by Marc Okrand for a fantasy series"Star Trek" (see Fictional languages), Na'vi language , created for the film " Avatar."
• International auxiliary languageslanguages ​​created from elements of natural languages ​​and offered as an auxiliary means of interethnic communication.

Esperanto the most famous and widespread of artificially created languages. This language was created by Warsaw physician and linguist Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887. The word “Esperanto” (“esperanto” hopeful) was originally the pseudonym under which Zamenhof published his works.

Esperanto is based on international words borrowed from Latin and Greek language, and 16 grammatical rules that have no exceptions. This language has no grammatical gender, it has only two cases - nominative and accusative, and the meanings of the rest are conveyed using prepositions. The alphabet is based on Latin, and all parts of speech have fixed endings: -o for nouns, -a for adjectives, etc. All this makes Esperanto such a simple language that an untrained person can become fluent enough to speak it in a few months of regular practice. In order to learn at the same level any of the naturallanguages, it takes at least several years.

Currently, Esperanto is actively used, according to various estimates, from several tens of thousands to several million people. It is believed that for ~ 500-1000 people given language native, that is, studied from the moment of birth. Usually these are children from marriages where the parents belong to different nations and use Esperanto for intra-family communication.

World congresses are held in Esperanto, newspapers and magazines are published, and radio stations broadcast their programs. Esperanto is one of the most widely spoken languages ​​on the Internet.

Among the artificial languages, the most famous are also Basic English, Volapuk, Interlingua etc. There are also languages ​​that were specifically designed to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence, For example, linkos.

Languages:

1. Monofunctional

2) Multifunctional

Today there are seven languages ​​that are "world languages". These are English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, French, German, Portuguese. Each of these languages ​​is widespread in the territories of several states, which has its own historical reasons. For these reasons, a fairly large number of people speak these languages. Languages ​​such as Chinese , Hindi and Urdu are also included most important languages world, but are less popular in the international arena.

6 official languagesUnited Nations:

English, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic (“memo” AFRICA).

All major UN documents, including resolutions, are published in official languages.

Polyglot (from Greek. πολυ-, “many” and γλώττα, “language”) a person who speaks many languages

The greatest polyglots in history are the Italian cardinals.Giuseppe Mezzofanti(1774-1849), who spoke 27 (according to other sources 38) languages, as well as a Danish professor Rask (1787-1832), Englishman John Bowring (1792-1872) and Dr Harold Williams from New Zealand (1876-1928), who spoke 28 languages ​​each.

In our time, the most outstanding polyglot is recognized George Schmidt , worked at the UN. The bibliographic reference book of this organization noted that Schmidt spoke “only” 19 languages ​​and, due to lack of time, could not activate another 12 languages.

1.Languages ​​living and dead. Artificial languages.

2.Prospects for the linguistic development of mankind. Language contacts.

3. The concept of bilingualism and diglossia.

4.The concept of language policy. Current issues language policy at the present stage.

Internal language issues become more complicated in those countries where there are national minorities, and in those multinational states where a number of nations unite.

In multinational states, the dominant nation imposes a language on national minorities through the press, school and administrative measures, limiting the scope of use of other national languages ​​only everyday communication. This phenomenon is called great-power chauvinism (for example, the dominance of the German language, which was in the “patchwork” national composition Austria-Hungary; Turkization of the Balkan peoples; forced Russification of small nationalities in Tsarist Russia etc.). National liberation movements in the era of capitalism are always associated with the restoration of the rights and powers of the national languages ​​of the rebel nationalities (the struggle for national languages ​​against the hegemony of the German language in Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovenia in the 19th century).

In the colonies, as a rule, the colonialists introduced their language as the state language, reducing native languages ​​to colloquial speech (English in South Africa, in India, not to mention Canada, Australia, New Zealand; French in West and North-West Africa and Indochina, etc.).

However, often linguistic relations between the colonizers and the natives develop differently, which is caused by the practical needs of communication. Already the first great journeys of the 15th–16th centuries. introduced Europeans to many new peoples and languages ​​of Asia, Africa, America and Australia. These languages ​​became the subject of study and collection in dictionaries (these are the famous “language catalogs” of the 18th century).

For more productive exploitation of the colonies and the colonial population, it was necessary to communicate with the natives and influence them through missionaries and commission agents. Therefore, along with the study of exotic languages ​​and the compilation of grammars for them, it is necessary to find some kind of language common to Europeans and natives. Sometimes such a language is the most developed local language, especially if some kind of writing is adapted to it. This is, for example, the Hausa language in Equatorial Africa, or this was once the Kumyk language in Dagestan. Sometimes this is a mixture of native and European vocabulary, such as “petit negre” in the French colonies in Africa or “broken English” in Sierra Leone

(Gulf of Guinea in Africa). Pacific port slang is beach-la-mar in Polynesia and pidgin English in Chinese ports. In "Pidgin English" at the core English vocabulary, but distorted (for example, pidgin - “deed” from business; nusi-papa - “letter”, “book” from news-paper); meanings can also change: mary - “generally a woman” (in English - proper name “Mary” "), pigeon - "generally a bird" (in English "dove") - and Chinese grammar.

The same type of speech in the border Russian-Chinese regions is “mine according to yours,” that is, broken Russian in the way the Chinese speak Russian.

Sabir, used in Mediterranean ports, belongs to the same type of “international languages” - a mixture of French, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Arabic.

However, in more high spheres In international communication of this type, mixed speech is not used.

In international diplomacy in different eras are used different languages- in the medieval era: in Europe - Latin, in the countries of the East - mainly Arabic; V new history The French language played a major role. Recently, this issue is no longer resolved unambiguously, since five languages ​​are officially accepted at the UN: Russian, English, French, Spanish and Chinese.

The preference for certain languages ​​in these cases is associated with the prestige of the language, which arises not from its linguistic qualities, but from its historical and cultural fate.

Finally, international jargons are caused by the even more real needs of communication between multilingual people in border areas or in places where a multinational population gathers, for example in seaports. Here, as we have seen, elements of any two languages ​​most often interact (French and African, English and Chinese, Russian and Norwegian, etc.), although there is also a more complex mixture (“sabir”).

IN scientific practice For a very long time, Latin (and in the countries of the East - Arabic), enriched by the experience of the Renaissance and supported by the authority of Descartes, Leibniz, Bacon and others, remained as the common language. Back in the first half of the 19th century. there are often cases when scientific works and dissertations were written in Latin (such as, for example, the first work on Slavic studies by the Czech Joseph Dobrovsky “Institutiones linguae slavicae dialecti veteris” - “Fundamentals of the Slavic language of the ancient dialect”, 1822; the famous dissertation on non-Euclidean geometry by the Russian mathematician Lobachevsky was also written in Latin Latin; Latin nomenclature in botany, zoology, medicine and pharmacology is still international and is used in the practice of all European nations).

In the practice of diplomacy and politics since the end of the 18th century. The French language prevailed, which in the first half of the 19th century. played the role of a world language, however, the rapid growth of English colonial expansion and the importance of English politics on a global scale came to light in the second half of the 19th century. English comes first. In the 20th century also applied for this role German through the commercial and technical achievements of Germany.

Along with this, the ideal of an international language has long been ripening in the minds of scientists and inventors.

The first to speak out in favor of creating a rational artificial language that would be able to express the provisions of any modern scientific or philosophical system were back in the 17th century. Descartes and Leibniz.

However, the implementation of these plans already applies to end of the 19th century c., when artificial languages ​​were invented: Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, etc.

In 1880, the German Catholic Father Schleyer published a draft of the Volapuk language (vol-a - “world-a” and puk - “language”, i.e. “world language”).

In 1887, a draft of the Esperanto language appeared in Warsaw, compiled by the doctor L. Zamenhof. Esperanto means “hoping” (participle of the verb esperi).

Very quickly Esperanto gained success in many countries, firstly, among collectors (especially philatelists), athletes, even businessmen, as well as among some philologists and philosophers; Esperanto appeared not only teaching aids about Esperanto, but also a variety of literature, including fiction, both translated and original; this latter is hardly worth supporting, since with all the success Esperanto and similar languages ​​always remain secondary and “business”, that is, existing outside of stylistics. Esperanto has always been used as an auxiliary, secondary, experimental “language” in a relatively narrow environment. Therefore, its sphere is purely practical; this is precisely an “auxiliary language”, an “intermediary language”, and even then in the conditions of Western languages, which is alien to Eastern languages. Other auxiliary international languages ​​(Ajuvanto, Ido) were not at all successful.

All such “laboratory inventions” can only be successful in a certain practical area, without pretending to be a language in in every sense this word. Such “auxiliary means of communication” are deprived of the main qualities of a real language: a nationwide basis and living development, which cannot be replaced by an orientation towards international terminology and the convenience of word formation and sentence construction.

A true international language can only be formed historically on the basis of real national languages.

As has already been said, the languages ​​of the world are currently experiencing various stages historical development due to different social conditions, in which there are speakers of these languages.

Along with the tribal languages ​​of small nationalities (Africa, Polynesia), there are languages ​​of nationalities that are in the position of national minorities (Welsh and Scottish in England, Breton and Provençal in France).

In the development of languages, two opposing processes are observed - divergence(the breakdown of a single language into two or more related languages ​​that differ from each other) and convergence(bringing together different languages, which can form a linguistic union, or form a single, common language).

Language Union - uh then a historically (and not genetically) established community of languages. Most typical examples- Western European and Balkan language unions, as well as the Volga language union.

The development of languages ​​is influenced by internal and external linguistic factors. TO internal factors include simplification of phonetic structure and grammatical structures, and external factors associated with the influence of other languages.

Substrate- a language that has been supplanted by another language, but traces

the repressed language is preserved in the alien language. Superstrat- layering of alien features of another language or an alien language onto the original basis of the local language. Adstrat- mastering some features of another language, subject to territorial proximity. Interstrat- interaction of neighboring languages. Koine- a common language based on a mixture of related languages ​​or dialects. Lingua franca- an oral means of interethnic communication that does not displace other languages ​​from everyday life, but coexists with them on the same territory. Pidgin- an auxiliary trade language in former colonial countries. Pidgin is a lingua franca that is not native to anyone. It is a means of communication between the natives. Creole languages- these are pidgins that became the first native languages ​​for a certain nationality.

Bilingualism - bilingualism, possession and alternating use by the same person or group of two different languages or different dialects of the same language. Mass bilingualism arises historically as a result of conquests, peaceful migrations of peoples and contacts between neighboring multilingual groups. Types of bilingualism: subordinate (subordination: knows one language more people than the other); coordinated (same language proficiency); individual; national; active; passive. Diglossia- the simultaneous existence in society of two languages ​​or two forms of one language, but unlike bilingualism, one of these languages ​​or forms is considered more prestigious.

TO dead languages include languages ​​that have only the meaning of an educational tool and subject scientific research: 1) classical languages, preserved only in written monuments and which have come down to us as a subject of study; 2) decipherable languages, preserved in written monuments, the texts of which were forgotten, like the languages ​​themselves; 3) reconstructed languages, not preserved pre-literate ones oral languages, restored in the main parts by linguistic science. TO living languages include native languages, i.e. mastered in the family before school and accepted by a given ethnic group as a characteristic of its current state, and foreign, i.e. languages ​​studied in preschool institution both at school and accepted as family by another ethnic group.

International languages serve as a means of communication between peoples different states. There are two types of international languages: for natural languages ​​the function of the international language is secondary, for artificial languages ​​it is primary.

In ancient times and the Middle Ages, international languages ​​had limits of distribution: 1. Specific region(in the Middle East - Sumerian, Akkadian, Aramaic, in the Hellenistic states - ancient Greek); 2. Specific social group(priests and priests used international languages ​​for religious purposes (Arabic in Islamic countries, Latin and Greek in Christian countries); 3. Specific function(on Far East The Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese had Whale as their written international language. language in hieroglyphic form).

Artificial international languages are divided into a priori and a posteriori. A priori artificial language - the vocabulary and grammar of which are not borrowed from natural languages, but are constructed according to their own rules. A posteriori artificial language - words are borrowed from natural languages, and the grammar is modeled after natural languages, for example, Basic English. A mixed artificial language combines the properties of a priori and a posteriori languages. In Volapuk and Esperanto, the modified vocabulary is from natural languages, and the grammar is a priori. There are also specialized artificial languages ​​of mathematics, chemistry, logic, and programming. The latter include, for example, languages ​​such as FORTRAN, ALGOL, BASIC.

Since language is the most important feature of a nation, then, naturally, national policy primarily concerns languages ​​and their development. The development of language is associated with the establishment of a literary language, which is associated with the creation of writing. During the existence of the USSR, about 60 languages ​​received written language, and thus the opportunity to study at school in their native language.

On the way to establishing and normalizing the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, many difficulties were encountered, the main one being the choice of the dialect on the basis of which the literary language should be fixed. There are cases when two dialects, which have diverged greatly, have equal rights and then two parallel literary languages ​​arise (for example, Erzya-Mordovian and Moksha-Mordovian). A significant difficulty is the striped population, when a nationality with a small number of speakers is scattered over a large territory interspersed with the population of other nationalities (for example, the Khanty in Western Siberia or the Evenki in Eastern Siberia). Favorable conditions to stabilize the literary language, it represents the presence of some kind of writing in the past, even if it was not of a national character (for example, the Arabic writing of the Tatars, Uzbeks, Tajiks).

An important role for peoples former USSR played the Russian language - the language of international communication of nations and nationalities.

The Russian language remains the main source of enriching the vocabulary of most national languages, especially in the field of political, scientific and technical terminology.

At the same time, in the language policy of the central party and state bodies, starting from the 30s, the tendency towards Russification of the entire geopolitical space of the USSR became increasingly stronger - in full accordance with the strengthening of its economic centralization. In light of this trend, positive developments in the spread of writing acquired a negative connotation due to the almost forced introduction of an alphabet on a Russian basis; the Russian language was given clear preference everywhere.

Orientation domestic policy on the formation of an ethnically impersonal, ostensibly united " Soviet people"had two important consequences for the linguistic life of the country.

Firstly, such a policy accelerated the process of degradation of the languages ​​of many small nations (the so-called “minority languages”). This process is global in nature and has objective reasons, among which the language policy of the state is not the least important. In sociolinguistics, there is the concept of “sick languages” - these are languages ​​that are losing their significance as a means of communication. Preserved only by the older representatives of a given people, they gradually move into the category of endangered languages. The number of speakers of such languages ​​amounts to hundreds, or even dozens of people, and, for example, in the Kerek language (Chukchi autonomous region) in 1991 only three people spoke.

Secondly, the centralization policy gave rise to an increasingly stronger cultural-national confrontation between the republics and the center, and during the years of perestroika this resulted in a massive and rapid process of revising the Constitutions of the union republics in terms of state language. Beginning in 1988 in the Lithuanian SSR, this process during 1989 and the first half of the 1990s. covered the entire USSR, and after its collapse a new wave of clarification of the Constitutions of national subjects began Russian Federation by introducing an article on state languages, which recognized national languages ​​along with Russian. By the end of 1995, in all national republics within the Russian Federation, the law on languages ​​has either been adopted or submitted for discussion.

The language reform ongoing in the Russian Federation does not end with the adoption of laws on languages. It is necessary to provide for the entire range of measures for cultural and linguistic construction and ensure the preservation of those peoples and languages ​​that can still be preserved. And one of the primary tasks of Russian linguists is to record endangered languages ​​for posterity in the form of dictionaries, texts, grammatical essays, tape recordings of live speech and folklore, because every language, even the smallest one, is a unique phenomenon of the multinational culture of Russia.

Questions for self-control:

1. What internal and external linguistic factors influence the development of languages?

2. What is language policy?

3. Define language community.

4. Define the “language situation”.

5. What is "pidgin"?

6. Define bilingualism. What type is it?

7. What languages ​​are called “dead”? What dead languages ​​do you know? What does studying them give?

8. What is the function of international languages? What two types of international languages ​​exist?

POSSIBLE CLASSIFICATIONS OF LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

Linguistic diversity of the world

Principles of language classification

About the status of various classifications

Linguistic diversity of the world

The language arose before such major events in the history of mankind, as art (decorated wooden and bone objects are more than 25 thousand years old, rock art- about 14 thousand), as the domestication of animals and the cultivation of plants (this happened 10 - 6 thousand years ago). About 6 thousand years ago, pictography and hieroglyphics appeared, 5 thousand years ago - sound writing. Apparently, the original language of man existed as one (single) language. About 30 thousand years ago, people settled throughout Western Eurasia. Between the 20th and 10th millennia BC, human language split into several language macrofamilies (such as the Nostratic family of languages), from which the language families that exist today later evolved. Total number languages ​​in modern world determined in the range from 2.5 to 5-6 thousand. Such huge differences in estimates (more than 100%) are due to the difficulty of distinguishing between language and dialect, especially for the unliterate state. Language researchers in certain regions of the Earth cite figures that in total significantly exceed 5 - 6 thousand languages. Thus, in sub-Saharan Africa there are approximately 2000 languages. IN South America at least 3,000 native languages; in three countries of Oceania - Papua- New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the Republic of Vanuatu - more than 900 languages: in Indonesia - 660. The number of Australian languages ​​is sometimes estimated at 500 - 600; Austronesian languages ​​- about 800. In India, the most multi-ethnic and multilingual country in the world, there are 1652 languages ​​4; in Nigeria, the most multi-ethnic country in Africa, there are about 300. In modern Russia- about 150 languages.

The structural diversity of the world's languages ​​is amazing. There are languages ​​in which neither names nor verbs change, but there are languages ​​where, on the contrary, there are about 40 cases. There are languages ​​(for example, Slavic), where nouns are divided into three grammatical classes (genders), in the language nasioi(New Guinea) there are over 40 nominal classes, and in many languages ​​there are no nominal classes at all. In some Turkic languages There are 12 moods, but there are languages ​​not only without moods, but also without grammatical number, without verb tense. There are languages ​​in which there are only 10 phonemes, and in others there are more than 80 phonemes. A language with only one vowel is possible (and three such languages ​​are known), and in some Caucasian languages ​​there are 24 vowels. There are languages ​​with very rare and therefore strange sounds, - similar to clicks, to the sound of “putting out a candle,” to “clearing the throat.” But the sounds [t], [p], [j] or [s] will not seem strange to anyone - they exist in any language. There are almost no languages ​​without nasal consonants ([n] or [m]), while nasal vowels are very rare. The apparent diversity of languages ​​has also long led to questions about the causes and consequences of differences between languages. What is the perfection of language? To what extent can different languages ​​be a catalyst or, on the contrary, a brake in the history of knowledge and culture? What do languages ​​determine in differences between peoples? Do they influence the destinies of nations? What determines the fate of the languages ​​themselves? These types of questions are sought to be answered social typology of languages, philosophy of language, philosophy of history.

The diversity of the destinies of languages, the differences in their communicative roles, functions, social statuses, legal ranks - all this is an important part of the reality in which the linguistic existence of humanity takes place. Without a sociolinguistic panorama, our knowledge of man and society would be incomplete. The relationships between individual languages, on the one hand, and some other social parameters of man and humanity, on the other, are extremely diverse. Among such basic parameters (“dimensions”), after language, they usually name ethnicity (nationality), citizenship (nationality), and religion. It is easy to see the cardinal disproportions between the main dimensions of humanity: if there are 5-6 thousand languages ​​on Earth, then there are approximately 1300 ethnic groups; states - about 220, including UN member states - about 200; the number of individual faiths, if we include the countless cults and beliefs in the countries of the Third World, is indefinitely large. These digital "spreads" indicate that on the world map geographical boundaries languages, ethnic groups, states and religions are by no means the same. Nevertheless, the configurations of the four geographical maps of the world - linguistic, ethnic, political and religious - are interdependent and correlated, especially in historical explanations. The map of languages ​​and the map of the peoples of the world are closest to each other, since both of them are based on the genealogical classification of languages.

The communicative and functional diversity of languages ​​is no less striking than their structural diversity. There are no two identical linguistic situations on Earth, no two languages ​​with the same amount of communication, with the same history and with the same future. There are languages ​​spoken and written by millions of people in different countries on all continents, and there are languages ​​native to just a few hundred people in a single village. There are languages ​​whose written history goes back thousands of years - these are Vedic language And Sanskrit(varieties of the ancient Indian language, the beginning of the literary tradition - the 15th century BC), Hebrew(the time of the composition of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, was the 13th century BC), wenyan(literary ancient Chinese language, the beginning of hieroglyphic writing - 9th century BC). And there are languages ​​that arose in the 19th - 20th centuries. in a matter of years, and arose in the usual way for languages ​​- by themselves, spontaneously (not “in the office”), as a result of long-term contacts of multilingual people and the mixing of their languages. This pidgins And Creole languages, and about 100 of them are known. Of the 5 - 6 thousand languages ​​on Earth, only about 600 languages ​​have writing systems, but only about 300 of them are actually used in written communication. There are languages ​​that, although they had a written language and a literary tradition, however, lost the community of their original speakers, and therefore became dead languages. These are ancient egyptian language (it preserves the earliest hieroglyphic records in human history, dating back to the 4th millennium BC), Avestan language(texts from the 10th century BC), Latin(actually Latin writing - from the 4th century BC), Old Church Slavonic language (the first monuments - 863). And there is a revived language, after two and a half thousand years it has again become a means of living communication between the people - this is what happened with the Hebrew language ( Hebrew). There are languages ​​in which literary (“correct”) speech is still almost indistinguishable from dialectal speech. But in the Icelandic language this opposition is absent for another reason: it simply does not have dialects. There are known literary languages ​​that are not used in informal, private, friendly and familiar communication - for example, literary Arabic. Each language has a unique social and cultural history, its place in its society, and its prospects for the future. However, the uniqueness of the fate of a particular language does not mean that there are no general patterns, typical lines of development, or typologically similar fates. That is why for social linguistics a list of individual striking cases is not enough: typological coverage of the entire diversity of languages ​​is required. This constitutes the content of the social (functional, or sociolinguistic) typology of languages.

The variety of languages ​​of the world and their classifications. Functional (social) typology of languages

Russian language teacher

Faizrakhmanova I.V.

Language classifications

V.I. Kodukhov

Genealogical

A.A. Reformatsky

• genealogical
• typological

Typological

T.I.Vendina

Functional

Areal

• genealogical
• typological
• geographical
• functional
• cultural-historical

Genealogical classification

• Target – determine the place of a particular language in the circle of related languages, establish its genetic connections.
• Main research method – comparative-historical.
• – family, branch, group of languages.

Basic principles of genealogical classification

"family tree"

Each family of languages ​​comes from divergent dialects of a parent language;

"Wave Theory"

• proto-language – the language that is the basis of the historical community of related languages;
• within one family of languages, “branches of languages” are distinguished;
• branches of languages ​​are divided into smaller groups.

• the importance of geographic contiguity of languages;
• each new phenomenon has its own source and spreads in damped waves;
• we should not talk about intermediate proto-languages, but about a continuous network of transitions from one language to another.

General picture of genealogical classification languages, which continues to be refined, is as follows:

• Indo-European family of languages . Includes more than ten groups (“branches”) of languages, including both living and dead languages:

• Hittite-Luwian or Anatolian group;

• Indian or Indo-Aryan group;
• Iranian group;
• Tocharian group;
• Illyrian group;
• Greek group;
• Italian group;
• Celtic group;
• German troupe;
• Baltic group;
• Slavic group.

• Uralic family of languages . Includes two groups:

• Finno-Ugric:

a) Baltic-Finnish languages: Finnish, Izhorian, Karelian, Vepsian, forming the northern group, and Estonian, Livonian, Votic languages, forming the southern group;

b) Volga languages: Mari and Mordovian languages ​​(Erzya and Moksha);

c) Permian: Udmurt, Komi-Zyryan, Komi-Permyak languages

d) Ugric: Hungarian, Khanty, Mansi languages;

e) Sami;

2) Samoyedic group: Nenets, Enets, Nganasan and the almost extinct Selkup (south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory) languages;

• Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asian) family :

1) Semitic languages:

A) north-eastern, where does the dead Akkadian language belong?

b) northwestern, which includes dead Ugaritic, Eblaitic, Amorite, Hebrew (or Canaanite), Phoenician-Punic and Aramaic, as well as living Hebrew and Assyrian;

V) central, which includes Arabic with many dialects and Maltese;

G) southern, including the unwritten languages ​​Mehri, Shahri and Soqotri, as well as Jibbali, Tigrayan, Amharic, Harari and the dead languages ​​Minaan, Sabaean, Qataban, Ethiopian, Gafat;

2) Egyptian languages: dead since the 5th century. Ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Arabic.

3) Berber-Libyan (numerous languages ​​and dialects of the Berber peoples North Africa and Sahara);

4) Chadian (the largest of them is Hausa);

5) Cushitic: Somali and Oromo;

• Caucasian languages , uniting three families of languages:

1) Western Caucasian family: Abkhazian, Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardino-Circassian and Ubykh languages;

2) the East Caucasian family, which falls into five groups:

a) Nakh (Chechen, Ingush and Batsbi languages ​​in Georgia);

b) Avar (Avar, Andean, Tsez);

c) Lak (Lak language in Dagestan);

d) Dargin ( Dargin language in Dagestan);

e) Lezgin (Lezgin and Tabasaran languages);

3) South Caucasian (Kartvelian) family: Georgian, Zan with Chan and Mingrelian dialects, Laz, Svan languages.

• Dravidian family of languages . It includes languages ​​Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malaya Lam, etc.
• Yukagir-Chuvan family of languages. The only representative of this family of languages ​​is the Yukaghir language in the Kolyma and Alazeya river basins. The Kolyma and Tundra dialects have also been preserved.
• Altai family - a macrofamily of languages, uniting on the basis of presumed genetic belonging:

1) Turkic group: Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Kumyk, Karachay-Balkar, Crimean Tatar, Karaite, Nogai, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Yakut, Dolgan, Altai, Khakass, Tuvan, Tofalar, Shor, Chulym, Kamasin , Uyghur, Turkmen, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Gagauz, as well as dead Bugar, Pecheneg, Polovtsian, Khazar, etc.;

2) Mongolian group: Mongolian, Buryat, Kalmyk, Dagur, Mogolian, Duneyan and other languages;

3) Tungus-Manchu group: Evenki, Udege, Nanai, Manchu, etc.

• Chukchi-Kamchatka family of languages (which is spoken by indigenous people Chukotka and Kamchatka), uniting Chukotka, Koryak, Alyutor, Itelmen and other languages.
• Yenisei family of languages (distributed along the banks of the Yenisei and its tributaries), including the living Ket and Sym languages, as well as the dead Kott, Aryan, and Assan languages.
• Sino-Tibetan family of languages Traditionally, there are two branches:

1) eastern, combining Chinese and Dungan languages; sometimes the Karen languages ​​spoken on the border of Thailand and Burma are included in this group;

2) Western (Tibeto-Burman languages: Tibetan, Newari, Tripuri, Manipuri, Nizo, Kachin, Burmese).

• Austroasiatic family , in which eight language groups are distinguished, each of which is represented by numerous dialects. On the Andaman Islands, linguists have recorded a genetically isolated Andamanese language, the genealogical roots of which are being studied.
• Austronesian family of Indian and Indian languages Pacific Oceans , which includes four groups of languages:

1) Indonesian (including more than three hundred languages, including Indonesian, Filipino, Tagalog, Malagasy, Malay-Javanese languages, etc.);

2) Polynesian (Tongan, Maori, Samoan, Tahitian, Hawaiian and Nuclear Polynesian languages);

3) Melanesian (uniting more than four hundred languages: the languages ​​of Fiji, Rotuma, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia);

4) Micronesian (languages ​​Nauru, Kiribati, Ponape, Marshallese, etc.).

• Papuan family , uniting about a thousand numerous and genealogically heterogeneous languages ​​of New Guinea and the nearby islands of the Pacific Ocean.

Typological classification

• Target – group languages ​​into large classes based on the similarity of their grammatical structure, determine the place of a particular language, taking into account the formal organization of its linguistic structure.
• Main research method – comparative and comparative.
• Main classification categories – type, class of languages.

The most famous of the typological classifications is the morphological classification of languages. According to this classification, the languages ​​of the world are divided into three main types:

1) isolating (or amorphous) languages :

Absence of inflectional forms and, accordingly, formative affixes;

The word in them is “equal to the root,” which is why such languages ​​are sometimes called root languages;

The connection between words is less grammatical, but the order of words and their semantics are grammatically significant;

Words devoid of affixal morphemes are, as it were, isolated from each other as part of a statement, which is why these languages ​​are called isolating;

In the syntactic sentence structure of such languages, word order is extremely important;

2) affixing languages

• 2) affixing languages , V grammatical structure in which affixes play an important role.

In affixing languages ​​there are:

A) inflected languages are languages ​​that are characterized by

Polyfunctionality of affix morphemes;

The presence of a fusion phenomenon, i.e. interpenetration of morphemes, in which drawing a boundary between root and affix becomes impossible;

- “internal inflection”, indicating the grammatical form of the word;

A large number of phonetically and semantically unmotivated types of declension and conjugation.

b) agglutinative languages - these are languages ​​that are a kind of antipode to inflectional languages.

They have no internal inflection;

There is no fusion, so morphemes are easily identified within words;

Formatives convey one grammatical meaning at a time;

In each part of speech there is only one type of inflection;

A system of inflectional and word-formative affixation has been developed;

Single type of declension and conjugation.

3) incorporating (or polysynthetic) languages :

Incompleteness of the morphological structure of the word;

The word “acquires structure” only as part of a sentence, i.e. here there is a special relationship between word and sentence: outside the sentence there is no word in our understanding, sentences constitute the basic unit of speech, into which words are “included”;

Functional (social) classification.

In a sociolinguistic “questionnaire” of languages, it is advisable to take into account the following features:

1) communicative rank of language, corresponding to the volume and functional diversity of communication in a particular language;

2) the presence of a written tradition;

3) the degree of standardization (normalization) of the language; presence and nature of codification; type of standardized (literary) language; its relationship with non-standardized forms of language existence (dialects, vernacular, etc.);

4) the legal status of the language (“state”, “official”, “constitutional”, “titular”, etc.) and its actual position in multilingual conditions;

5) confessional status of the language;

6) educational and pedagogical status of the language: language as academic subject; as a language of teaching; as a “foreign” or “classical” language, etc.

Communicative ranks of languages .

World languages.

These are the languages ​​of interethnic and interstate communication that have the status of official and working languages ​​of the UN: English, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, French.

International languages .

These languages ​​are widely used in international and interethnic communication and, as a rule, have the legal status of a state or official language in a number of states. For example, Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian, Vietnamese, etc.

State (national) languages .

They have the legal status of a state or official language or actually serve as the main language in one country. In a non-monolingual society, this is usually the language of the majority of the population; This is partly why it is used as a language of interethnic communication. For example, Hindi and closely related Urdu in India.

Regional languages.

These are languages ​​of interethnic communication, usually written, but not having the status of an official or state language. For example, Tibetan language in the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China (over 4 million speakers, the language of intertribal communication and office work).

Local languages .

As a rule, these are unwritten languages. There are many hundreds of such languages. They are used in oral informal communication only within ethnic groups in multiethnic societies. They often host local radio and television programs. IN elementary school the local language is sometimes used as an auxiliary language necessary for the transition of students to the language of instruction in a given school.

AREAL (GEOGRAPHICAL) CLASSIFICATION

• Target- determine the area of ​​the language (or dialect) taking into account the boundaries of its linguistic features.
• Main research method– linguogeographical.
• Main classification category- area or zone.