Russian language is the richest language in the world. The richest language in the world

At one of the symposia, four linguists met: an Englishman, a German, an Italian and a Russian. The conversation turned to languages. They began to argue, whose language is more beautiful, better, richer, and to which language does the future belong?

The Englishman said: “England is a country of great conquerors, sailors and travelers who spread the glory of its language to all corners of the world. English language- the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron - undoubtedly best language in the world".

“Nothing like that,” said the German, “Our language is the language of science and physics, medicine and technology. The language of Kant and Hegel, the language in which it is written best work world poetry - “Faust” by Goethe.”

“You are both wrong,” the Italian entered into the argument, “Think, the whole world, all of humanity loves music, songs, romances, operas! What language are the best love romances and brilliant operas in? In the language of sunny Italy!

The Russian was silent for a long time, listened modestly and finally said: “Of course, I could also say, like each of you, that the Russian language - the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov - is superior to all the languages of the world. But I won't follow your path. Tell me, could you compose in your languages short story with a plot, with a consistent development of the plot, so that all the words in the story begin with the same letter?”

This greatly puzzled the interlocutors and all three said: “No, this is impossible in our languages.” Then the Russian replies: “But in our language this is quite possible, and I will now prove it to you. Name any letter." The German replied: “It doesn’t matter. The letter "P", for example." “Great, here’s a story for you with this letter,” answered the Russian.

Pyotr Petrovich Petukhov, lieutenant of the fifty-fifth Podolsk Infantry Regiment, received a letter by mail full of pleasant wishes. “Come,” wrote the lovely Polina Pavlovna Perepelkina, “let’s talk, dream, dance, take a walk, visit a half-forgotten, half-overgrown pond, go fishing. Come, Pyotr Petrovich, to stay as soon as possible.”

Petukhov liked the proposal. I figured: I’ll come. I grabbed a half-worn field cloak and thought: this will come in handy.

The train arrived after noon. Pyotr Petrovich was received by Polina Pavlovna’s most respected father, Pavel Panteleimonovich. “Please, Pyotr Petrovich, sit down more comfortably,” said dad. A bald nephew came up and introduced himself: “Porfiry Platonovich Polikarpov. Please, please."

The lovely Polina appeared. A transparent Persian scarf covered her full shoulders. We talked, joked, and invited us to lunch. They served dumplings, pilaf, pickles, liver, pate, pies, cake, half a liter of orange juice. We had a hearty lunch. Pyotr Petrovich felt pleasantly satiated.

After eating, after a hearty snack, Polina Pavlovna invited Pyotr Petrovich to take a walk in the park. In front of the park stretched a half-forgotten, half-overgrown pond. We went sailing. After swimming in the pond we went for a walk in the park.

“Let’s sit down,” suggested Polina Pavlovna. Sit down. Polina Pavlovna moved closer. We sat and were silent. The first kiss sounded. Pyotr Petrovich got tired, offered to lie down, laid out his half-worn field raincoat, and thought: it would come in handy. We lay down, rolled around, fell in love. “Pyotr Petrovich is a prankster, a scoundrel,” Polina Pavlovna said habitually.

“Let’s get married, let’s get married!” whispered the bald nephew. “Let’s get married, let’s get married,” the father approached in a deep voice. Pyotr Petrovich turned pale, staggered, then ran away. As I ran, I thought: “Polina Petrovna is a wonderful match, I’m really excited.”

The prospect of receiving a beautiful estate flashed before Pyotr Petrovich. I hastened to send an offer. Polina Pavlovna accepted the proposal and later got married. Friends came to congratulate us and brought gifts. Handing over the package, they said: “Wonderful couple.”

The interlocutors, linguists, having heard the story, were forced to admit that the Russian language is the best and richest language in the world.

The greatest and richest language in the world

How can you prove that the Russian language is the greatest and richest language in the world?

The Englishman said: “England is a country of great conquerors, sailors and travelers who spread the glory of its language to all corners of the world. The English language – the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron – is undoubtedly the best language in the world.”

“Nothing like that,” said the German, “Our language is the language of science and physics, medicine and technology. The language of Kant and Hegel, the language in which the best work of world poetry is written – Goethe’s Faust.”

The Russian was silent for a long time, listened modestly and finally said: “Of course, I could also say, like each of you, that the Russian language - the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov - is superior to all the languages of the world. But I won't follow your path. Tell me, could you compose a short story in your languages with a plot, with a consistent development of the plot, so that all the words in the story begin with the same letter?”

“Great, here’s a story for you with this letter,” answered the Russian.

Petukhov liked the proposal. I figured: I’ll come. I grabbed a half-worn field cloak and thought: this will come in handy.

The interlocutors, linguists, having heard the story, were forced to admit that the Russian language is the best and richest language in the world.

October 24, 2013

Many people are interested in linguistics. They are reading interesting books L. Uspensky and are looking for an answer to the question, what is the richest language on our planet? You should try to answer their question.

For a long time, philologists have been struggling with the question: which language of the world is the most lexically rich? In what language could a person most accurately and elegantly express what is in his soul? It is difficult to answer this question right away, because everyone will consider it native language the richest. In English there are a lot of proverbs related to rain, in German you can express abstract concepts very accurately, French helps to accurately express even the most ornate epithets. The Japanese language is traditionally divided into two parallel dialects - feminine and masculine, Norwegian - into Bokmål and modern Norwegian, and what can we say about the Russian language - it has thousands of dialects.

Unfortunately, the Guinness Book of Records chose Greek and not Russian as the leader in the number of words. Using a special program, it was possible to calculate that Greek there are more than 5 million words (for comparison, there are about 1.3 million words in English).

However, as one popular saying goes, “Russians don’t give up.” NKR linguists created a special program that was able to most objectively calculate the number of words in our language. It turned out that the Russian language is eight times richer than the Greek language. More than 40 million words (40 megawords) were counted in the national corpus of the Russian language. But this is not the limit: in connection with the development of our language, scientists are already planning the creation of a dictionary of 200 megawords, which would include absolutely all words, both modern and ancient, and dialectal, and fictitious, and even obscene.

Sometimes, when discussing the Russian language as one of the richest, one remembers an anecdote about how representatives of four European nationalities, including Russian, met. And he proposed to his friends a bet that only in the Russian language can one compose a story from words starting with the same letter. And he succeeded: Pyotr Petrovich Petukhov, lieutenant of the Podolsk Fifty-fifth Infantry Regiment, received a letter by mail full of wishes, and pleasant ones at that. Petukhov liked Praskovya Petrovna Perepelkina’s invitation...” and so on.

However, many see Chinese as the richest language in the world. There was even a competition “The Richest Language”, which was held in 2003 in the USA, and where the winner was the Chinese language. However, professional linguists believe that this is not so. Chinese differs, rather, rich grammatical basis, rather than lexical.

Many scientists consider the richest languages to be the little-known dialects of the Indians, as well as various African tribes. The Chippewa Indian dialect numbers more than 6,000 verb forms, and the Haida Indian language has more than 70 prefixes. The Eskimo language is also distinguished by its grammatical richness - it has more than 60 present tense forms! That is why the Eskimo language is difficult to teach to a European person who is accustomed to a maximum of 16 forms of different tenses.

Another rich language is Tabasaran, which has more than forty-eight noun cases. If we judge the richness of a language by the number of letters in the alphabet, then the Khmer language is in the lead, with 73 letters in its alphabet. The Ubykh language has the most consonant sounds - 85; among the ready-made ones there are 8 variations of the sound “g”.

But to us Russians, of course, our native language will seem richer than others. The Russian language does not have a colossal number of letters, consonants and vowels, or intricate grammatical forms. But there is an incredible lexical wealth that allows you to most accurately express every thought and put it in a beautiful form. This is precisely what helped many famous Russian classics create their works - an inexhaustible vocabulary fund of the Russian language. And in order for this wealth to increase every year, one should treat the language with care, preserve old and little-used words, draw new ones from other languages and create neologisms.

Without linguistic expertise, it is difficult to answer the question of which language is the richest. In fact, for every native speaker, his native language is the most beautiful and rich, and this is completely natural.

The richness of the Russian language is expressed primarily in its vocabulary or, as philologists say, in the wealth of vocabulary. How many words are there in our language? Fifty thousand? One hundred thousand? Or maybe several hundred thousand? There are more than one hundred thousand words in the large academic dictionary. But these are not all words of the Russian language. His vocabulary is surprisingly polysemantic. It includes synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, words in figurative meaning, epithets and many, many other linguistic semantic means. How many words are borrowed from other languages?! Thus, from the languages of the peoples of the Caucasus, the words “saklya”, “shashka”, “narzan” entered the Russian language, from Japanese language- “kimono”, “judo” and many others. Borrowings enrich the Russian language, making it more figurative, expressive and diverse. Russian language is one of the most widespread on the globe. Our Russian words have entered many languages of the world: “advice”, “sputnik”, “subbotnik”, “lunokhod”... and in many countries ignorance of the Russian language is considered a sign of illiteracy and lack of culture. “Studying the Russian language is a great benefit for all Caucasians, as it makes it possible to become familiar with the rich Russian literature and feel at home in the vast expanses of their fatherland, which occupies a sixth of the entire earth.” These words belong to a Georgian teacher of the 19th century. Jacob Gogebashvili. The great Kazakh educator Abai Kunanbayev wrote: “Remember that the main thing is to learn Russian science... In order to avoid vices and achieve goodness, you need to know the Russian language and Russian culture.” Many other foreign writers, poets, and thinkers have also spoken about the importance of the Russian language in the life of every person. F. Engels wrote that the Russian language “deserves study in itself, as one of the strongest and richest living languages.” For centuries people have been creating this flexible, expressive, melodious and beautiful language. The Russian language is the history of our people. In each word one hears the peculiarity of Russian nature - the babbling of a stream, the rustling of leaves, the blowing of the wind, the singing of a nightingale, and the peculiarity of the national character - each word is colored with its own unique emotional coloring and conveys different moods: joy or irritation, friendliness or hostility, delight or disappointment. Such a huge variety of shades can only be expressed in Russian. “In it is the whole singing Russian soul, the echo of the world and human groans, and the mirror of divine visions” (I. A. Ilyin, 3rd Russian philosopher of the 20th century). Without knowledge of your native language, without the ability to speak competently and use rich vocabulary, you cannot be cultured person, you can't be a patriot. After all true love to Russia is impossible without love for the native language, without pride in the immeasurable richness of its shades and sounds. “A man indifferent to his language is a savage. His indifference is explained complete indifference to the past, present and future of their people” (K. Paustovsky). Perhaps the most interesting thing about our language is that each specific style of presentation corresponds specific selection linguistic forms. If you use a bookish style, then using colloquial expressions will look ridiculous, and vice versa. And such an abundance of lexical, morphological, phonetic, grammatical and syntactic forms is not found in any other language in the world. The Russian language is beautiful, rich, polysemantic and capable of modification. This statement is accepted without objection. But can we consider that its potential is inexhaustible? Unfortunately, the state of the modern Russian language is causing more and more concern every day. The decline in the level of speech culture is obvious. The decline of morality, moral principles in society, the loss of national traits - all this affects our native language. Increasingly wider in modern vocabulary jargon, slang, foreign words. Where is our national pride? Is our native language worse than others? “Our language is expressive not only for high eloquence. For loud, picturesque poetry, but also for tender simplicity, for the sounds of the heart and sensitivity.” (N. M. Karamzin) Preserving the language, caring for its dissemination and enrichment is a guarantee of preserving the national culture. Love the Russian language and protect it from distortion, remember that this mighty tongue was given to a great people.

The Russian was silent for a long time, listened modestly and finally said: “Of course, I could also say, like each of you, that the Russian language - the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov - is superior to all the languages of the world. But I won't follow your path. Tell me, could you compose a short story in your languages with a plot, with a consistent development of the plot, so that all the words in the story begin with the same letter?”

“Great, here’s a story for you with this letter,” answered the Russian.

Petukhov liked the proposal. I figured: I’ll come. I grabbed a half-worn field cloak and thought: this will come in handy.

“Let’s sit down,” suggested Polina Pavlovna. Sit down. Polina Pavlovna moved closer. We sat and were silent. The first kiss sounded. Pyotr Petrovich got tired, offered to lie down, laid out his half-washed field cloak, and thought: this would come in handy. We lay down, rolled around, fell in love. “Pyotr Petrovich is a prankster, a scoundrel,” Polina Pavlovna said habitually.

The interlocutors, linguists, having heard the story, were forced to admit that the Russian language is the best and richest language in the world.

Russian language is the richest language in the world. The richest language in the world

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