Surzhyk: language pathology or the norm of Ukrainian society?

Abstract

The article deals with concept of Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism, one of the consequences of which is mixed Ukrainian-Russian speech - a specific linguistic phenomenon called «surzhyk». It has been outlined the reasons for the appearance of surzhyk. The main manifestations of surzhyk and examples of the use of twisting words are highlighted. This phenomenon has become widely used among the Ukrainian population, especially young people, pupils, students, which especially gives the Ukrainian language the status of unprestigious (even more - hopeless) in terms of development, and is also of great concern. The large explanatory dictionary of the modern Ukrainian language interprets the concept of «surzhyk» as follows: 1) a mixture of wheat and rye, rye and barley, barley and oats, etc.; flour from such a mixture; 2) elements of two or more languages, combined artificially, without observance of the norms of literary language; unclean language is an impoverished language, devoid of national color and expressiveness.

Among the reasons for the appearance of surzhyk is the lack of six language skills: 1) the amount of vocabulary; 2) correctness of language; 3) subconscious operation of language (automatism); 4) language creation (ability to create neologisms); 5) functional language skills (emotional); 6) imagery of language. The main manifestations of surzhyk are: the use of russisms instead of normative Ukrainian equivalents; ukrainianized forms of Russian numerals; ukrainianized forms of Russian verbs; mixing Ukrainian and Russian forms of indefinite pronouns; formation of the highest degree comparison of adjectives and adverbs on the model of the Russian language; words and expressions copied from Russian; softened and soft pronunciation of consonants before «e» and «y» in originally Ukrainian and loanwords; non-normative use of grammatical forms of Ukrainian language.