Living and dead languages of the world. About the status of various classifications

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 problems of 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 to everyday communication. This phenomenon is called great-power chauvinism (for example, the dominance of the German language, which existed in the “patchwork” national composition of Austria-Hungary; the Turkization of the Balkan peoples; the 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 insurgent peoples (the struggle for national languages against the hegemony of the German language in Italy, the Czech Republic, and 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, 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. “Pidgin English” is based on English vocabulary, but distorted (for example, pidgin – “deed” from business; nusi-papa – “letter”, “book” from news-paper); meanings can also change: mary – “in general” woman" (in English - given 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 higher spheres of international communication this type of mixed speech is not used.

In international diplomacy, different languages are used in different eras - in the medieval era: in Europe - Latin, in the countries of the East - mainly Arabic; V new history The French language played a big 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, Latin (and in the countries of the East - Arabic) remained for a very long time as a common language, enriched by the experience of the Renaissance and supported by the authority of Descartes, Leibniz, Bacon and others. Back in the first half of the 19th century. There are often cases when scientific works and dissertations were written in Latin (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 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 rapid growth English colonial expansion and the importance of English politics on a global scale were put forward 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 dates back to the end of the 19th century, 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; not only textbooks about Esperanto appeared in Esperanto, but also a variety of literature, including 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 (Ajuwanto, 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 the full sense of the 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 different stages of historical development due to the different social conditions in which the speakers of these languages find themselves.

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(approach different languages, which can form a linguistic union, or form a single, mutual 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 the phonetic structure and grammatical structures, A 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- 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, proficiency and alternate 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: one language is known by 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 significance of an educational tool and a subject of scientific research: 1) classical languages, preserved only in written monuments and reaching us as a subject of education; 2) decipherable languages, preserved in written monuments, the texts of which were forgotten, like the languages themselves; 3) reconstructed languages, pre-literate oral languages that have not survived, restored in their 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 of 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 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, greatly diverged, 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).

The Russian language, the language of international communication between nations and nationalities, played an important role for the peoples of the former USSR.

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, supposedly 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 peoples (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 Okrug) 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 revision of the Constitutions of the union republics in terms of the 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 the national subjects of the Russian Federation began 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, a law on languages was either 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?

According to one of the stories in the Bible, people on Earth once spoke the same language. However, God punished them for their pride, and during the construction of the famous Tower of Babel, a language barrier arose between people - they ceased to understand each other, and the construction remained unfinished, and the builders themselves scattered all over the world.

This is how peoples and nations speaking different languages were formed. This is a legend. But, be that as it may, there are a great many languages that people now speak, and many of them may seem not only complex, but even strange and funny to representatives of other nationalities. What can I say, often the population of two nearby villages (as, for example, in Africa) are not able to understand each other. And the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea alone speak 500 languages! The reason for such “linguistic” abundance among the Guineans is the mountainous landscape, because it is the mountains that separate one valley from another, and their populations rarely contact each other.

Alphabets also have global differences. For example, our native Russian language has 33 letters, the Khmer alphabet has 72 letters, Hawaiian has 12, and the inhabitants of the island of Bougainville get by with 11 letters.

There are differences between languages in terms of difficulty. For example, the Tabasaran language (Dagestan) is considered the most difficult. Anyone who decides to study it will have to learn 48 cases, and this is not counting other difficulties. But the easiest language to learn is the one spoken by the population of the Hawaiian Islands. It contains only 7 consonants and 5 vowels, and the Hawaiian aborigines did not have an alphabet as such at all, and it had to be compiled by missionaries who came to educate the local natives. The smallest lexicon in the Taki language (French Guinea), it has only 340 words.

Sometimes the transfer of information can be done in a far from “traditional” way, for example, using drums. This type of “communication” is practiced in Central and South America, in Asia and Africa. It is convenient because the signals transmitted by the drums play the role of a kind of “telephone”, allowing people to transmit news from village to village.

Hunters who track animals at night have to be extremely careful so as not to scare away their prey with excessive noise. Therefore, the Pygmies and the Vedas of Ceylon use a special monotonous whispering language when hunting. In its sound, this “whispering” is similar to the noise produced by the joint breathing of a pack of dogs.

One of the most interesting languages is silbo-gomero. This is a whistle that is still used by the people of the Canary Islands to this day. According to legend, this is how runaway African slaves communicated with each other. Silbo-gomero is important for the islanders because this whistle can be used to communicate over long distances. And although telephones on the island are no longer a curiosity, communication in some places is still unavailable, so you have to transmit information to neighbors using a whistle. By the way, the information transmitted in this way is quite detailed. The Canarians cherish their heritage, and therefore silbo-gomero is included in the list of subjects required to be studied in primary schools.

Another type of communication method is sign language, which is used by people with hearing impairments. However, even within it there is such a variety of forms that we had to resort to creating a kind of “gestural Esperanto” in which people of different nationalities can communicate. In a number of countries, which include Spain, Iceland and the Czech Republic, sign language is recognized by the constitution.

Many languages have a number of features due to external environment. For example, the Eskimos do not have general concept“snow”, but they have more than 20 words denoting the same phenomenon, but in more detail. For example, an Eskimo will say “blizzard”, “drifting snow”, “groats” depending on the type of snow precipitation. In the same way, an Australian will not understand if he is asked to count how many trees, animals and birds he sees; he will specifically name the type of animal or species of tree. For example, if an Australian sees five cockatoos and three ostriches, he will not say “eight birds,” for the Australian aborigines this is too abstract a concept.

Representatives of the Pirkhan tribe do not have specific names for numbers in their language. They can say “a little (one)”, “a little more” and there is also a definition for a group of objects of more than three objects. And it's all. Once upon a time, the Pirkhans had no need for numerals, but nowadays, because of this, they have to face difficulties when communicating with other tribes. However, the attempts of a couple of Europeans, who lived for a long time in the Pirkhan tribe, to teach them numbers and the simplest arithmetic operations did not bring success.

As you can see, there are a great many languages around the globe, and some of them are quite original. However, despite such abundance, only six languages have received official UN recognition: English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, English and Arabic.

What does Academician I. Meshchaninov talk about?

Around the 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. The Hero of Socialist Labor, Academician Ivan Ivanovich Meshchaninov, works very hard and fruitfully in the field of studying language problems.

The specialty I had chosen, 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 on English language. As is known, three languages are now accepted for diplomatic communication: English, Russian and French.

Gradually I mastered Italian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Polish, Turkish so much 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-forgotten languages, such as the Chaldian 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. Before the revolution, some nationalities did not even have their own written language. 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 changes and a series of sequential simple sentences is gradually replaced by a developed structure 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 the introduction of 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. To be able to compare languages various 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. It is very important for people learning a new language to practice speaking and reading literature frequently. 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 the Slavic countries - a large number of people are mastering it.

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

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

Along with living languages that people use as spoken language, 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. Their cultural and scientific significance is very great.

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

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intertextual units as the most difficult to transfer into another language. In his translations, Bromfield increasingly resorts to the method of adaptation and literal translation. In our opinion, the variability of translation techniques needs to be expanded by adding sociolinguistic and translation commentary. Only an optimal combination of such techniques can guarantee successful text comprehension.

1. Akunin B. State Councilor. Moscow: Zakharov, 2012. P. 351.

2. Kusovskaya S.F. "Russian proverbs and sayings with equivalents in English" Minsk. Higher school. 1992. - 253 p.

3. Left I. The art of translation. M.: Progress, 1974. 399 p.

4. Lotman Yu. M. Conversations about Russian culture. Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII - early XIX centuries). St. Petersburg: Art, 1994. 399 p.

5. Obolenskaya Yu. L. Literary translation and intercultural communication. M.: Librocom, 2010. 264 p.

6. Akunin B. The state counsellor. An Erast Fandorin mystery. Translated by Andrew Bromfield. London: Phoenix, 2008. 300 p.

E.N. Skvortsova

student of the Faculty of Agronomy, Nizhny Novgorod State Agricultural Academy, Nizhny Novgorod, Russian Federation

DEAD LIVING LANGUAGE: DIALECTICS OF EXISTENCE

annotation

The article is devoted to the study of the specifics of dead languages and the peculiarities of their functioning.

Keywords

Language, Latin, dead language.

“A language is like a temple that preserves the souls of those who speak it” (Oliver Holmes). But it may collapse as soon as people stop using it. The appearance of the metaphor “living and dead languages” is far from accidental. A people disappears, followed by its culture, traditions and values. When all this does not exist, a dead language appears, which is stored only in written sources.

The disappearance of languages has been observed at all times, but this has begun to happen most actively in recent centuries. Many of them are unwritten and they are disappearing. The main reasons are as follows:

1. The people who speak this language are disappearing. This fate affected the residents of Tasmania, who were expelled from their native land.

2. People learn new languages, while forgetting old ones. This process can be explained as people switching to another culture. They are divided into 3 categories: a) the generation knows only its own native language; b) they use their native language at home, but speak the main language on the street; c) do not know their native language, but have an excellent command of the basic language.

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL “INNOVATIVE SCIENCE” No. 10/2015 ISSN 2410-6070

Let's reveal the meaning of the term. A dead language is a language that does not exist in living use and, as a rule, is known only from written monuments, or is in artificial, regulated use. This usually occurs when one language is completely replaced in use by another, as when Coptic was replaced by Arabic and many native American languages were replaced by English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. When a language becomes extinct, last stages of its existence, it becomes characteristic only of certain age (and social) groups. Dead languages are often called archaic forms of living, actively used languages.

Written languages that, over time, have lost their meaning and ceased to be used in practice, leaving behind only a trace in history.

Latin and Ancient Greek remain the main international sources for artificial creation new medical terms in modern languages. Names of diseases, their symptoms, anatomical nomenclature, names medicines etc. - these are all words of Latin and Greek origin. For more than one and a half thousand years, Latin was for Europe the language of culture and science, in particular medicine. In Europe, over the almost thousand-year period of the history of the Middle Ages, extensive literature was created in Latin. This includes numerous historical chronicles, novels, poems, scientific, philosophical and theological treatises. Along with this, from a mixture of spoken Latin and local dialects, independent national languages known as Romance languages were formed.

Medical education impossible without knowledge of the basics of Latin. Learning Latin has great importance in the training of a mid-level medical specialist, since it helps to consciously assimilate and understand medical terms of Latin-Greek origin. Physicians have known this Latin proverb since ancient times: Invia est in medicina via sine lingua Latina - An impassable path in medicine without the Latin language. This statement is also true in our time.

We can say that Latin is not a dead language, but to some extent a living one. At least a million people on our planet know it, although no one speaks it as a native language.

There is an example when a dead language became alive again - this happened with Hebrew, Cornish and Manx. Hebrew is the most popular example of how a dead language became alive again. After the Great Patriotic War Jews united in Israel and contributed to the revival of their language. Thanks to the people who used it as a cult, and the efforts of scientists, Hebrew came to life again. It was this example that became the basis and impetus for the revival of such dead languages as Gascony (France) and Manx (Britain).

There are many different languages in the world, some of them are dead, but not forgotten. Such languages always have a chance of revival. But only under a certain socio-political situation.

List of used literature:

1. Voskresensky M.L. Dead languages // BES. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1968. T. 19.

2. Ivanov Vyach.Vs. Dead languages // Linguistic encyclopedic Dictionary/ Chief editor V.N. Yartseva. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990. 683 p.

3. Kochnova K.A. Culturology: Tutorial. Nizhny Novgorod: National State Agricultural Academy, 2014. 196 p.

4. Kochnova K.A. Russian language and speech culture: Textbook. N. Novgorod: NGSHA, 2013. 202 p.

5. Kochnova K.A. Language of culture: conceptual analysis of language // Trends in the development of media language: current problems. Tambov, 2010. pp. 179-182.

6. Reformatsky A.A. Introduction to linguistics. M.: Aspect Press, 1996.

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

Teacher of Russian language

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 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 almost extinct Selkup (southern 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 of North Africa and the 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 (spoken by the indigenous population of Chukotka and Kamchatka), combining Chukchi, 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 system.
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 , in the grammatical structure of 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.

There is no internal inflection in them;

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 an 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, the 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 multi-ethnic societies. They often host local radio and television programs. In primary schools, the local language is sometimes used as an auxiliary language necessary for the transition of students to the language of instruction in that 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.