What does graphics mean in Russian. Graphics and spelling

The writing system includes a historically established set of descriptive signs, the rules for their use, therefore, two sections are distinguished in the science of writing - graphics and spelling.

Graphic arts- describes the composition of the signs used in this letter, their origin, style and possible variants. In modern writing, graphemes of different nature and purpose are used, which were created over thousands of years.

The main descriptive characters in phonographic writing are letters. The set of letters arranged in a certain order, used to convey a given language in writing, is called the alphabet. Letters are signs of phonemes. Along with letters, syllabograms are often used - signs of syllables. Such, for example, are the Russian graphemes e, e, u, i after a vowel, after dividing b, b. In syllabographic writing (Indian, Ethiopian, Japanese), such graphemes are the main ones.

Sometimes we also use morphemograms - signs of morphemes. For example:%, №, §.

Modern writing cannot do without the widespread use of logograms (ideograms). Such, for example, are numbers and various scientific signs and symbols.

Sometimes we also resort to pictography (i.e. a pictogram). These include, for example, drawings on the signboards of ateliers, shops, workshops, and some road signs.

A special group is punctuation marks. For a long time, letters are gradually being used to denote large and small phrases. In the VIII - IX centuries, other punctuation marks also appear. Only from the XII century, the point is fixed in modern meaning. The emergence of typography gave rise to an urgent need to streamline the system of punctuation marks.

Nowadays, in the Latinized and Russified (Cyrillic) writing system, ten punctuation marks are used: six of them reflect the articulation of speech and highlight the elements of the statement (period, comma, ;, :, -, brackets), four characters (?, !, "", ...) reflect the articulation and the emotional and semantic nature of the statement. Spaces, paragraphs, capital letters (as an indicator of the beginning of a sentence) adjoin these signs.

For complete mastery of the literary language, it is necessary to know and observe the language norms; observe spelling rules; pronunciation, lexical and grammatical norms.

Spelling is a historically established system of rules for practical writing. It establishes the uniformity of the ways of transmitting speech and its basic units in writing.

Spelling is the costume that language is in, and it can be comfortable or uncomfortable.

Russian spelling, as a system of rules, is divided into five sections:

  1. The rule for the transmission of sounds (phonemes) by letters as part of words and morphemes.
  2. The rule about fused, semi-fused (hyphenated) and separate spellings of words.
  3. The rule for the use of uppercase (large) and lowercase (small) letters.
  4. The rule of transferring words from one line to another.
  5. Rule of graphic abbreviation of words.

Each of these sections is a system of rules that have certain principles.


There are several principles of spelling:

  1. The phonetic principle requires that all actually pronounced sounds be reflected in the letter. In its pure form, phonetic writing (transcription) is used only in highly specialized linguistic fields.

However, the phonetic principle can play an important role. So, in the Serbo-Croatian language and writing, phonetic spellings are the main ones. For example: vrabats - sparrow pl. wraps, bodybeats, sign. In Belarusian writing, this principle is maintained when writing vowels: house - ladies, forest - lyasy, sister - syastry.

In our spelling, according to the phonetic principle, for example, prefixes with “z” are written: comfortable, free, break, drink.

  1. According to the phonetic principle, the same phoneme is transmitted by the same letter in any position, regardless of the specific sound embodiment: bob - bobok, forest - forester - arborist, hour - hour - watchmaker. This is the basic principle of Russian spelling.

The morphological principle proceeds from the fact that each morpheme should be written the same in all positions. At first glance, it may seem that this principle is the leading one in Russian spelling; morphological spelling coincides with phonetic: house - house - brownie, garden - garden - gardener. In fact, many morphemes in different signs are written far differently: go - go - you will go, knead - mnu - mnesh, etc.

39Main differences between Russian and English.

Phonetics- This is a branch of the science of language, in which sounds and their alternations are studied, as well as stress, intonation, syllable division.

Graphic arts- This is a branch of the science of language, in which the outlines of the letters of the alphabet and their relationship with the sounds of speech are studied.

Modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters, 10 of which are intended to denote vowels and are respectively called vowels. 21 consonants are used to designate consonants. In addition, in modern Russian there are two letters that are not sounds do not mean: b(hard sign) b(soft sign).

Vowels and consonants

All sounds of the Russian language are divided into vowels and consonants.

1. Vowel sounds are the sounds that are formed with the participation of the voice. There are six of them in Russian: [a], [e], [i], [o], [y], [s].

2. Consonants- these are sounds that are formed with the participation of voice and noise or only noise.

A) The consonants are divided into hard and soft. Most hard and soft consonants form pairs by hardness-softness: [b] - [b′], [c] - [c′], [g] - [g′], [d] - [d′], [h] - [h′], [k] - [k′], [l] - [l′], [m] - [m′], [n] - [n′], [p] - [p′], [r] - [p′], [s] - [s′], [t] - [t′], [f] - [f′], [x] - [x′] (the apostrophe at the top right denotes softness consonant sound). For example, bow - [bow] and hatch - [l′uk].

b) Some consonants do not have correlative pairs of hardness-softness, that is, there are unpaired hard consonants[g], [w], [c] (i.e. they are always only solid) and unpaired soft consonants[sh ′], [th], [h] (i.e. they are always only soft).

Notes:

  • for sounds [th], [h], it is not customary to denote softness with an apostrophe, although in some textbooks it is indicated;
  • the sound [w ′] is indicated on the letter by the letter sch;
  • overline means double (long) sound. For example, cheek - [sh ′ika], thicket - [cup ′a], bath - [van a], cash desk - [cas a]. In some textbooks, long consonants so: [van: a] - bath.

V) Consonants formed with the participation of voice and noise are called voiced(for example, [d], [d′], [h], [h′], etc.); if only noise is involved in the formation of sounds, then such sounds are called deaf consonants (for example, [t], [t′], [s], [s′], etc.). Most voiced and voiceless consonants in Russian form voiced-deafness pairs: [b] - [p], [b′] - [p′], [c] - [f], [c′] - [f′], [g] - [k], [g′] - [k′], [d] - [t], [d′] - [t′], [h] - [s], [h′] - [s′], [g] - [w]. Wed: beat - drink, year - cat, live - sew.

G) The sounds [th], [l], [l′], [m], |m′], [n], [n′], [p], [p′] do not form a correlative pair with deaf consonants, therefore, they are unpaired voiced(unpaired voiced consonants are also called sonorous, these are sounds in the formation of which both voice and noise participate). Conversely, voiceless consonants that do not pair with voiced ones are unpaired deaf. These are the sounds [h], [c], [x], [x′].

3. In the flow of speech, the sound of one sound can be likened to the sound of another sound. Such a phenomenon is called assimilation. So, in the word life there is a sound [h], standing next to with soft [n ′], also softens, and we get the sound [h ′]. So the pronunciation of the word life is written like this: [zhyz′n′]. Rapprochement of sounding is also possible for sounds paired in sonority-deafness. So, voiced consonants in a position before deafs and at the end of a word sound closer to paired deafs. Therefore, it happens stun consonants. For example, a boat is a lo [t] ka, a fairy tale is a fairy tale [s] ka, a cart is in [s]. The reverse phenomenon is also possible, when deaf consonants in a position in front of voiced ones also become voiced, that is voiced. For example, mowing - ko [z ′] ba, request - about [z ′] ba.

The designation of the softness of consonants in writing

In Russian, the softness of consonants is indicated in the following ways:

1. Using a letterb(soft sign) at the end of a word and in the middle between consonants: benefit - [pol′za], elk - [los′], etc.

Note. The soft sign does not indicate the softness of consonants in the following cases:

a) if it serves to separate consonants, the second of which th(yot): leaves - fox [t′ya], be-lye - be [l′yo];

b) to distinguish between grammatical categories: rye (3 cl., f.r.) - knife (2 cl., m.r.);

c) to distinguish word forms (after hissing): read (2 lit., singular), cut (form of the imperative mood), help (indefinite form of the verb), as well as adverbs: jump, back.

2. Through lettersAnd,e, yo, yu, i, indicating the softness of the preceding consonant and conveying vowels [i], [e], [o], [y], [a]: forest - [l'es], honey - [m'ot], lil - [l'il], hatch - [l'uk], crumpled - [m'al].

3. With the help of subsequent soft consonants: cog - [in′t′ik], plum - [s′l′iva].

The sound meaning of the letters e, e, u, i

1. The letters e, e, u, i can denotetwo sounds: [ye], [yo], [yu], [ya]. This happens in the following cases:

  • at the beginning of a word: for example, spruce - [ye] l, hedgehog - [yo] zh, yula - [yu] la, yama - [ya] ma;
  • after a vowel sound: washes - mo [ye] t, sings - po [yo] t, give - yes [yu] t, bark - la [ya] t;
  • after dividing b, b: eat - eat [ye] m, drink - drink [yo] t, pour - l [yu] t, zealous - ry [ya] ny.

In addition, after the separation b two sounds will be denoted by a letter And: nightingales - nightingale [yi].

2. The letters e, e, u, i indicate the softness of the preceding consonant in a position after consonants, paired in hardness-softness: fur - [m′eh], carried - [n′os], hatch - [l′uk], crumpled - [m′al].

Reminder:

  • Sounds [th], [l], [m], [n], [p] - voiced (do not have a pair of voiced-deafness)
  • Sounds [x], [c], [h], [w ′] are deaf (they do not have a pair in terms of hardness-softness)
  • Sounds [w], [w], [c] are always solid.
  • Sounds [th], [h], [sh ′] are always soft.

Phonetic analysis of the word (sound-letter analysis of the word) is an analysis of the word, which consists in characterizing syllabic structure And sound composition of the word; phonetic parsing of a word involves elements of graphical analysis. The word for phonetic analysis in school textbooks is indicated by the number 1: for example, earth 1 .

When conducting a phonetic analysis of a word, it is imperative to pronounce the word aloud. It is impossible to automatically translate a letter entry into an audio one, this leads to errors. It must be remembered that it is not the letters that are characterized, but the sounds of the word.

Phonetic order(sound-letter) word parsing (according to school tradition):

1. Write down the given word, divide it into syllables, orally indicate the number of syllables.

2. Put the stress on the word.

3. Write down the phonetic transcription of the word (we write the word in letters in a column, opposite each letter we write the sound in square brackets).

4. Describe the sounds (put a dash in front of each sound and write its characteristics, separating them with commas):

  • characteristics of a vowel sound: indicate that the sound is a vowel; percussion or non-impact;
  • characteristics of the consonant sound: indicate that the sound is consonant; hard or soft, voiced or deaf. You can also specify paired or unpaired in terms of hardness-softness, sonority-deafness.

5. Specify the number of sounds and letters.

Phonetic patterns(sound-letter) word parsing(a basic level of)

Earth - earth-le
z [z ′] - consonant, soft, sonorous
e [i] - vowel, unstressed
m [m] - consonant, solid, voiced
l [l′] - consonant, soft, sonorous
e [e] - vowel, stressed
__________
5 letters, 5 sounds

Blacken - black-né-yut
h [h] - consonant, soft, deaf
e [i] - vowel, unstressed
r [r] - consonant, hard, voiced
n [n ′] - consonant, soft, sonorous
e [e] - vowel, stressed
yu [th] - consonant, soft, sonorous
[y] - vowel, unstressed
t[t] - consonant, hard, deaf.
___________
7 letters, 8 sounds

Graphic arts is the character set for writing text. Our alphabet, Cyrillic, is the most common graphic system of the Russian language, but far from the only one. Remember, you probably received (and wrote yourself) emails in Latin: Privet, kak dela? :-)

In general, mankind has come up with many ways to record and transmit text: Morse code, a set of marine flag signals, the alphabet of the deaf and dumb ... Some of them can hardly be called "graphics", although, in principle, all these signs can be depicted on paper, so they have one essence.

Spelling is a set of rules that determine which of the spellings allowed by graphics is the only correct one.

Spelling rules resemble political laws in that they are human-made and have a similar tendency to jump around. In contrast, the laws of morphology and syntax develop spontaneously and rather resemble the laws of nature in that they cannot simply be taken and canceled, while it is relatively easy to replace any spelling rule. Let us want, for example, that words with zhi - shi would write through zhy - shy (live, tailor, wide ...). It's not that hard to do. To do this, you just have to republish all dictionaries, atlases, introduce a new rule into the school curriculum, correct some signs ... In general, all this is quite within human power. But to change the laws of morphology or syntax is beyond the limits of human strength. It is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to convince all Russian speakers, for example, to use the instrumental instead of the genitive and vice versa.

Spelling of vowels after hissing and c

Spelling oh - yo after hissing

  • in the roots yo :bouffant, offset, bee, acorn, silk; excl. word roots burn, zhor, gooseberry, seam, rustle, prim, clink glasses, devil(outdated) , as well as borrowed : show, ramrod, driver, joker, dude, lecho, anchovy and many others;
  • at the beginning of suffixes and endings ( -ok, -onok, -ov, -oh and etc.) O : engine, pot, thicket, rattle, spinning top, silence, shoulder

Spelling s - and after c

  • in the roots And : circus, cistern; excl. word roots gypsy, chicken
  • ;
  • at the beginning of suffixes and endings s : Ptitsyn, ends

b after hissing

A soft sign after words hissing at the end is written in the following cases (and only in them):

  • In I.ed. 3rd declension nouns: mouse, oven.
  • In the indefinite form of verbs with stem on h: cut, save.
  • At the end of 2 l. unit present verbs: write, sing, sleep.
  • In adverbs: wide open, wide open. But: already, married, unbearable.

Display on the letter sound [th]

The display of the sound [th] on the letter depends on its position:

  • Between a vowel and a consonant, as well as at the end of words, the sound [й] is indicated by the letter th:
    Examples: l ethTo A, P Othl O, harvest Ath .
  • Between a consonant and a vowel, the sound [th] is indicated by dividing hard or soft signs. At the same time, b is written only after prefixes (with the exception of some borrowed words: adjutant, conjuncture, object etc.), and b - in all other cases:
    b : O bbe kt, O bbI phenomenon, ra hbyo m,
    b : inte Rbe R, both hbI on, Pbyo T, VbYu ha.
  • Between two vowels and at the beginning of words, the sound [th] does not have a letter designation.
    Compare: b AthTo a - b ae To, b Othc a - b oh c, st Ath- st and I .
    And: V her r, lecture and I, yo and, Yu G.
    Exceptions are words of foreign origin, where the sound [th] is denoted by the letter th: th od, th oh, ra th he, ma th op.
  • There is no [th] sound between two consonants.

An interesting special case is the display of the combination [yy] in writing. For example, words maya, conveyor, foyer etc. can be pronounced with tense (“double”) [th]. However, this “doubling” is more likely due to their unusual notation than to objective linguistic laws: after all, in the source language, many of these words have a completely “ordinary” [th].


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GRAPHICS AND SPELLING(from the Greek orthos "correct" and grafo "I write"). Graphics - a set of signs used in a given writing system, along with rules that establish a correspondence between signs (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes); spelling is a system of rules that prescribe the choice of one of the spelling options provided by the graphics of a given language, as well as a branch of the science of language that deals with spelling norms. The term "graphics" is close in meaning to the term "writing" (but differs somewhat in use). On the other hand, the term "spelling" is sometimes used in an extended sense to include graphics, such as when talking about spelling reforms. In the same broad sense, the term "writing" can be used.

Writing is a way of fixing the language with descriptive signs for the purpose of communication between people in case of impossibility of their direct communication. With the advent of writing, the language had two forms of existence - oral speech (sounding, accessible to hearing) and written speech (available to sight). It is impossible to imagine our world without writing. Newspapers, magazines, books that we read; the letters we write are all our writing and our life. It is hard to imagine that once there was no written language and people could only communicate through direct contact. If they were far from each other, then communication ceased. In R. Kipling's fairy tale How was the first letter written? a little girl (the action takes place in prehistoric times) suddenly realized how good it would be if she could tell her mother, who was very far away from her, that her father had broken a spear and he needed another one, the very one that was in their cave. She tried to express all this in a picture scrawled on the bark. It was the first letter, although it was very imperfect: the mother did not understand the girl at all, and because of this, a lot of trouble came out.

It was the need for communication at a distance that led to the emergence of writing, the appearance of which significantly expanded the circle of our communication, because writing unites people not only in space, but also in time. 21st century man can learn about how people lived in ancient Egypt; thanks to the finds of birch bark letters, we got acquainted with the concerns of the Novgorodians who lived in the 11th-15th centuries. The cultural and historical role of writing is enormous. Without writing, it was extremely difficult for people to pass on their experience, their thoughts and feelings to other generations, develop science, and create fiction. The advent of writing is the most important moment in the history and culture of any nation.

Our writing, like all European writing systems, is sound-letter. It is called so because its main units - letters - correspond with the units of the sound (phonetic) system of the language, and not directly with words or their significant parts (morphemes), as is the case in hieroglyphic writing. For example, the word for “sun” is transmitted in Russian with six letter characters, and in Chinese with one hieroglyph.

To understand the structure of our writing, we must first understand its relationship with the units of the sound system of the language. What sound units are transmitted by letters in Russian writing? The first answer that suggests itself is sounds. And this assumption is confirmed by the following examples: ball, throne, waves, fight, culture, tornado, top, fog. However, other examples cast doubt on this answer. How to deal with words b e gu, pl I sat, sa d , lo and ka, mid astier, pos d But? After all, we are actually talking b And gu, pl And sat, sa T , lo sh ka, sch A camping tie, By h n A . Maybe the letter conveys no sound at all? It is clear, at least, that the sound is not always denoted by a letter in Russian letters. The clue must be sought in sound system Russian language.

The sound system of the Russian language.

How many sounds are there in Russian? This question cannot be answered precisely. The better a person's hearing, the more different shades of sound he will hear. And if you use instruments, it is clear that the more accurate the instrument, the more different sounds he will discover. However, one can say for sure how many basic, independent sounds are in the language, i.e. which can be used to distinguish between words. Linguists call such semantic sounds phonemes.

Russian has five vowel phonemes ( A, O, uh, And, at) and 34 consonants. How were they counted? It's very simple: if there are words that differ only in two sounds, then these sounds are semantic distinguishers, phonemes. For example, words catfish And myself differ only in vowels O And A. They are different phonemes. Words there And myself differ in consonant phonemes With And T etc.

But in the composition of words, sounds undergo changes. What does it mean? What are they compared to? In a word pain pronounced sound under stress O. Without stress in the same root, the sound is just as clearly pronounced A: b A fly. The phonetic position has changed: the stressed syllable became unstressed - and instead of one sound, another sound appeared, instead of OA. And such a change, such an alternation of sounds always happens, no matter what word we take ( With O ehWith A pour, st O lst A la, V O lV A la). After soft consonants, stressed sounds A, O, uh in an unstressed position alternate with And (etc I mo - pr And mine, m I co - m And sleep, l yo gky - l And gko, l yo g - l And gla, t yo many - t And crumple, with e m - with And shit etc.). Due to this change of sounds, four sound units that differ under stress ( A, O, uh, And), without stress cease to differ, coincide in one sound And.

The alternation of sounds under the influence of position also occurs with consonants. It is also subject to strict phonetic laws. For example, at the end of a word and before voiceless consonants, paired voiced consonants change to voiceless: lo b ik-lo P, moro h s - moro With; layer V a - slo f, how h it - how much With co, table b ik - table P tsy... Under the influence of the position in the word - in the position before the sound c- sound T changes to c: O T ec - about c tsy, and in some positions - to zero sound: sad T it - sad.

Phonetic positions, in which sounds cease to be distinguished, are called weak positions, in contrast to strong positions, in which sounds are distinguished. For vowels, the strong position is under stress. Weak position for vowels A, O, uh, And- no accent. Such different, dissimilar sounds O, A, And. But the change of these sounds is caused by a phonetic position, and not by the need to distinguish between meanings, which means that in its function it is one and the same unit - a phoneme.

Russian graphics.

How does our writing convey the sound composition of words? How many letters are necessary and at the same time sufficient to convey all the subtleties of the language? This number is different in every language. Previously, it was thought that it was ideal for one letter to correspond to one sound, moreover, always the same letter. The Russian linguist N.F. Yakovlev proved that there should not be more letters in a language than there are basic, independent sounds.

In Russian, as we have seen, there are five vowel phonemes and 34 consonants. In total, there are 39 distinguishing sounds. And there are 33 letters in the alphabet. What explains this “shortage”? It turns out that you can "save" the number of letters. Yakovlev calculated the formula for constructing the most economical alphabet in terms of the number of letters. He showed that if there are pairs of consonants in a language that differ in the same feature (for example, hardness - softness), then each pair can be denoted by the same letter, and an additional feature can be transmitted using the adjacent, next letter. The Russian alphabet prompted him to this idea. In Russian writing, consonants paired in hardness-softness are transmitted by the same letter: for [ With] And [ With"] - one letter - With , For [ m] And [ m"] - one letter m etc. In total, there are 12 such pairs, differing only in hardness-softness, in the Russian language. Therefore, instead of 24 letters, our letter uses 12 letters to convey these consonants.

But how do we distinguish a hard consonant from a soft one? Why, when reading, do we not confuse when to pronounce soft and when hard? Because the next letter indicates the hardness-softness of the consonant - the neighbor on the right. Letter pairs serve as such indicators of softness-hardness of the preceding consonant. A I , O yo , at Yu , uh e , s And (cf. small-crumpled, they say-chalk, onion-Luke, sir-ser, bald-fox). What if there is no vowel after the consonant? Then the “softening” role is played by the letter soft sign ( b ), which itself does not denote any sound, but conveys the softness of the preceding consonant. So, it took 12 consonants less (12 letters were saved), but we had to introduce a soft sign plus five more letters for vowels, so that they denote not only the vowel phoneme, but also the softness of the preceding consonant.

This principle of designation of hard-soft consonants is conditionally called syllabic.

The syllabic principle also determines the transfer of the phoneme j("iot"). How are the two words different? wolves And Christmas trees- not literally, but sounds? This can be seen from the transcription: [wolf "and],. These words differ in distinguishing sounds (phonemes) V And j. Phoneme j has its own letter th , but this letter is used to convey j only after word-final vowels and before consonants ( lei, watering can), and before vowels the letter th not used: we do not write apple, southern, jozhik etc., but we write apple, southern, hedgehog). So the letters I , Yu , yo , e not only vowels are transmitted + the softness of the preceding consonant: “in combination” they do one more job - they convey combinations j+ A, j+at, j+ O, j+ uh. In this case, one letter corresponds to a combination of sounds.

The syllabic principle is a striking feature of Russian graphics. It developed spontaneously, in the process of the development of the Russian language, and turned out to be very convenient. It not only allows you to get by with fewer letters, but also saves paper. After all, if there were no double set of letters for vowels, and the softness of consonants would always be indicated by a soft sign (for example, thiotya, lublue- instead of aunt, love), then the words would be much longer in writing.

So far, we have been talking about the use of letters, regardless of what words they are part of, when the choice of a letter is determined only by the environment of the transmitted sounds, the sound context. Such rules are called graphic rules as opposed to spelling rules in the narrow sense of the word. About them and will be discussed further.

Russian spelling.

Now let's move on to the rules of another type, designed to convey sounds in writing in weak positions, i.e. in those in which two or more phonemes coincide in one sound. In order to correctly convey such a sound, you must first of all “free” it from the influence of the position, and for this, correlate it with the sound in a strong position (in the same significant part of the word), and then select the desired letter. This is exactly what we did at school when we tested "dubious sounds."

The secret of Russian spelling turns out to be simple: the letter does not convey the changes in sounds that occur under the influence of the position. Sounds in weak positions are indicated in the same way as if they were in a strong position. This is not a whim, but the principle of our spelling. Our spelling is reasonable, it refuses to convey random, due to phonetic position.

It turns out that our spelling is not a heap of many different rules. There is one general rule, applicable in a variety of cases at first glance: we write letters according to the same rule O And sh in a word l O woo sh ka(we check both letters by the position of distinguishing sounds: l O vit, fishing sh ek). By the same rule, we write the letter With in place of the sound h] at the beginning of a word With quit(examination: With tear), and the letter d to denote [ c] in the word molo d ca (check: molo d ec), and the letter d in place of the position of the sound in the word that “missed” on demand poses d But(examination: opoz d at).

But it is necessary to check - correlate with a strong position - not only the sounds “injured” from the position, but also those sounds of weak positions that have not changed in their sound: the unstressed vowel needs to be checked A in a word tr A wa(not to write a letter O ), consonant f in a word scale f (not to write a letter at the end of a word V ).

So, in the spelling rules, the choice of a letter for a sound in a weak position is determined by what sound it alternates with in a strong position.

And what is this unit that we convey with a letter? Now we know that the sounds whose change is caused by a phonetic position form one and the same sound unit - a phoneme. We convey it in writing, no matter what sound it is presented in a weak position. We always designate a phoneme by its strong position. Therefore, the main principle of our orthography - the principle of ignoring positional alternations of sounds in writing - is called phonemic, or phonemic. This is a very handy principle. It works when writing both vowels and consonants, and in all parts of the word - not only in roots, but also in suffixes and endings. It provides a uniform transmission of morphemes (the smallest meaningful units of a language), and this helps us to easily recognize words when reading.

Why do we still often find it difficult what letter to write? There are several reasons. First of all, the language does not always have a word in which the sound being tested would correspond to a sound in a strong position. Then you have to remember which letter to write, for example, in words O laziness, To A empty, vit I sz, uh tazh, se With tra, ve h de. In addition, in our spelling there are deviations from the main principle. For example, at the root - height/growth- occurs only under stress O, and without stress we write the letter O (R O if, hydrogen O if), That A : R A style, exp A whelping, prod A become. Same with the root zor/zar-: write h A rya, h A rnitsa, although under stress O: h O ri, h O rka. And at the root - melt- on the contrary, it is written under stress only Apl A vat, without stress - O : swimmer. Such spellings, which contradict the main principle of our spelling, are called conditional or traditional; as a rule, they reflect the facts of the history of the Russian language.

We examined the basic principles of the rules for the literal transmission of the sound composition of words. In addition to these rules, spelling in the broad sense of the word includes the rules for continuous and hyphenated spelling, as well as the rules for using uppercase and lowercase letters. A collection of rules for the use of punctuation marks is called punctuation. These rules have their own laws and their own scope - not a word, but a sentence and a text. The name itself - "punctuation marks" - suggests that our writing takes care of "stammers" in the perception and pronunciation of the text. "Stuttering" when reading about punctuation marks, our eye gives a signal to the voice to make stops - pauses, to highlight some parts of the sentence with intonation. And this helps the listener to understand what we read aloud. Punctuation separates and highlights certain syntactic units in the text.

From the history of Russian graphics and spelling.

Modern Russian writing is based on the Cyrillic alphabet - an alphabet compiled in 863 (this year is considered the date of birth of Slavic writing) by the Greek philosopher and the first Slavic educator Cyril (Konstantin) to translate Greek liturgical books into Slavonic. Thus, the history of writing in Rus' is inextricably linked with the history of Christianity, the millennium of which was celebrated in 1988. The Cyrillic alphabet was based on the Greek alphabet in its “ceremonial” form (the so-called charter), which was supplemented with missing letters to convey phonemes that are absent in Greek; including the letters

Books written on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet came to Rus' at the end of the 10th century, i.e. almost one hundred and fifty years after the first translations of Cyril and his brother Methodius. These books, brought from Bulgaria, were written not in Old Russian, but in Old Slavonic, which was understandable in that era throughout the Slavic world.

It is no coincidence that the outstanding Russian and Polish linguist I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay called the Russian letter "a dress from someone else's shoulder." Naturally, this dress had to be customized, sutured in some places.

Some letters of the Old Slavonic script turned out to be superfluous for the Old Russian language. So, the Old Russian language has already lost the nasal vowels transmitted by the so-called yus - big and small, since the nasal vowels coincided in pronunciation with the sounds indicated in the letter by letters at, Yu, I, the letters large and small yus turned out to be unnecessary, and they gradually ceased to be written. Some letters of the Old Slavonic language were useful to Old Russian, although over time they changed their function. So, the letter "er" ( b) at the end of words after solid consonants conveyed a very short vowel (sounding average between [a] and [s]). Since about the 13th century. this vowel sound at the end of words ceased to be pronounced, but the letter b traditionally continued to write.

Some endings were written differently, for example, was in, But went to the floor e , became, But morning. Should have known what was written , , But before e ,vsu e ,extremely e .

What tricks were not resorted to in order to memorize where to write: they remembered that after the letter b the letter is written in four roots, after V - at fifteen, after d - in three, etc. For better memorization, they came up with stories, rhymes consisting of words with, for example:, etc.

The letters Izhitsa were very rarely used in pre-revolutionary writing. It was written, moreover, very loosely, only in some Greek words:, , ; in practice, it has already been excluded from Russian writing. There were two more letters denoting the sound And: And And i . The first of these letters is And - was called "and octal", and the letter i called "and decimal". Where do these names come from? The fact is that a thousand years ago, borrowing the Greek alphabet, our ancestors also borrowed the designation of numbers by letters characteristic of Greek writing: the letter A stood for 1, letter V – 2, G – 3, d -4 etc. (Letter V corresponds to the 2nd letter of the Greek alphabet b"beta", which in the Middle Ages was pronounced as "in"; letters corresponding to b , was not in the Greek alphabet, it was “invented” for the Old Slavonic language and therefore had no digital meaning.) So, the letter And denoted the number 8, i - the number 10 (hence their names), but there were no differences in sound between these two letters. Letter i written before vowels and before th (For example spelling, ,July,biologist,influence, friend, history, dislike, biography, library, neighbor); in all other cases it was necessary to write And Moreover, the difference And i used to distinguish between two words in writing that sound the same, but mean different concepts, cf .: peace in the meaning of "universe" and peace meaning "absence of war". Therefore, the title of the novel by L.N. Tolstoy was written War and Peace, and the poems of V.V. Mayakovsky - War and Peace.

F(fert) and (fita). Both of these letters conveyed the same sound: it was written only in words of Greek origin containing this letter:,

The commission met on April 12, 1904 under the chairmanship of the President of the Academy of Sciences, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov. The outstanding Russian linguist Filipp Fedorovich Fortunatov was elected his comrade (deputy, as we would say now). The commission included linguists, writers, journalists, teachers of higher, secondary and primary educational institutions - a total of 50 people. The Commission was in favor of the desirability of simplifying spelling.

Already in May 1904, preliminary reports were published in which, in addition to the abolition of superfluous letters, it was proposed to abandon the hard sign after consonants at the end of words (before the reform, they wrote son, husband, reeds; counter-admiral), from distinguishing the endings of masculine-neuter and feminine adjectives ( good boys, But kind girls And kind children); from writing in the endings of adjectives -ago/-yago(instead of good, third was asked to write good, third); Some other changes have also been proposed. The point of these changes was to free the Russian spelling from conditional spellings that were not based on actual pronunciation.

But the work of the commission ran into fierce resistance. The reform was supported by teachers, the entire democratically minded public. But society as a whole was opposed to her. The desire for stability, the protection of the familiar is natural for a person. The tradition of writing in culture (and writing is an important component of culture) really has a special meaning. Of course, for literate people, the reform meant breaking the existing mechanism of reading and writing, and this inevitably had to be perceived negatively. At the same time, the rejection of any changes in spelling was largely due to a misunderstanding of the relationship between language and writing, often simply the identification of language and writing: people thought that changes in the spelling of words would damage the language and harm the culture. This is a common misconception.

The onslaught of opponents of the writing reform was so great that the linguists F.F. Fortunatov and A.A. to give the reform in a truncated form, we decided to postpone its discussion for a while. These were years filled with dramatic events in the life of Russia: the war with Japan, the revolution of 1905, cholera. And yet the issue of simplification of spelling was so relevant that it was constantly returned to.

Only in 1912 did the final draft of the Commission come out. At the same time, some of the previously proposed changes, which seemed too revolutionary, had to be abandoned. For example, the sentence did not pass after all hissing write only O (shol, acorn, black), as well as a proposal to abandon the soft sign where it does not indicate softness (write mouse, rye, go). But even in a truncated form, the project caused a new explosion of fierce persecution. And again the case was adjourned. May 17, 1917 The Ministry of Public Education of the Provisional Government issues a circular on the introduction of a new spelling (in accordance with the draft 1912) without delay, from the beginning of the new academic year. This transition began to be carried out, but gradually, slowly, overcoming the fierce resistance of opponents. The reform was carried out only in 1917-1918, and by decrees Soviet power It was not the 1904 project, developed with the participation of F.F. Fortunatov, that was adopted, but a more cautious, stripped-down version, adopted in May 1917.

After the reform.

Further history of Russian writing in the 20th century. is a history of attempts to further improve it. In the 1930s, the development of a universally binding set of rules for Russian spelling became an urgent task. Diversity reigns in the press: each publishing house has its own rules, its own spelling. Here are some examples from the press prior to the adoption of the 1956 rules: on the alert And on the lookout for something like this And like this, under a row And row, prehistoric And prehistoric And , tirelessly And tirelessly, the day after tomorrow And the day after tomorrow, damn And damn, shit And lattice etc. 11 drafts of the code were prepared before the final version was adopted in 1956 - Rules of Russian spelling and punctuation operating up to the present.

However, seven years after the release Rules, in 1963 the Spelling Commission was created, before which the task of streamlining Russian spelling was again set. The fact is that in 1956 only partial regulation of Russian spelling was carried out, and in spelling there were still a lot of exceptions, hard to explain and illogical rules. This commission included prominent linguists, such as V.V. Vinogradov (chairman), R.I. Avanesov, A.A. Reformatsky, S.I. Ozhegov, M.V. Panov, as well as methodologists, psychologists, school teachers, university specialists, writers (for example, K.I. Chukovsky). The commission proceeded from the fact that Russian writing does not need a revolutionary transformation, it is only necessary to rid it of everything contradictory, ambiguous, obsolete, unnecessarily burdening the memory of the writer. The main goal is to facilitate the assimilation of spelling by students.

As in the project of the beginning of the century, instead of the unreasonably difficult spelling rule O/yo under stress after hissing (we write silk, But rustle, crap, But clink glasses) a simple and clear rule was proposed: after all hissing under stress, write O , without stress - e : acorn, But acorns, silk, But silky. This is the rule that now applies to writing O /e after the letter c . It was also proposed (as in previous projects) to write mouse, rye, remember, eat, bake, cut your hair, wide open no soft sign. In all these cases, the soft sign is superfluous - it does not indicate the softness of the preceding consonant. A great relief for the writer (primarily for the student of writing) would be the consistent writing proposed by the commission after c letters And : circus, gypsy, lisitsin, chicks.

But this project was not implemented either, and, as in the early 20th century, teachers of the Russian language welcomed the changes, but society as a whole did not support the project and very emotionally expressed its protest in letters and articles. Someone wrote that he refuses to eat cucumbers written through And , as in its time - at the beginning of the 20th century. - didn't want to eat bread, written not in yat: it is supposedly not so fragrant and tasty. Especially sharp was the reaction of writers - people for whom the graphics of the word, its style has an independent aesthetic value.

20th century ended, as it began, with the work of the Spelling Commission, whose task is to consider and approve the draft of a new edition of the set of rules for Russian spelling, prepared at the Institute of the Russian Language. VV Vinogradov of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This time, the authors of the project were tasked with taking into account the changes that had taken place in the language: the rules approved in 1956 were being prepared back in the 1930s and, naturally, needed to be clarified and supplemented. First of all, it was important to correct the rules regularly violated by spelling practice. Such a situation of disobedience to the rules has developed, for example, in the continuous-hyphenated spelling of complex adjectives. Thus, on the agenda is not a reform of writing, and even less a reform of the language, as opponents of any changes in spelling fear, but only editing and streamlining the existing rules.

Literature:

Baudouin de Courtenay I.A. On the relation of Russian writing to the Russian language. St. Petersburg, 1912
Panov M.V. And yet she is good. A story about Russian spelling, its advantages and disadvantages. M., 1964
Overview of proposals for improving Russian spelling (XVIII–XX centuries). M., 1965
Kuzmina S.M. Theory of Russian spelling. Orthography in its relation to phonetics and phonology. M., 1981
Panov M.V. Entertaining spelling. M., 1984
Ivanova V.F. Modern Russian orthography. M., 1991