Russian alphabet with serial numbers of letters. From A to Z! Or who invented the Russian alphabet

Known to every bearer of Slavic culture as the creators of the alphabet. Of course, they are at the origins of Slavic books, but do we owe the alphabet that we still use to this day?

The creation of Slavic writing was caused by the need Christian preaching among the Slavs. In 862 - 863 Prince of Moravia (one of the largest Slavic states at that time) Rostislav sent an embassy to Byzantium with a request to send missionaries to conduct worship in the Slavic language. The choice of Emperor Michael III and Patriarch Photius fell on the famous apologist of Eastern Christianity Constantine (who later took the name Cyril during monastic tonsure) and his brother Methodius.

They worked in Moravia for about three years: they translated the Bible and liturgical texts from Greek, trained scribes from among the Slavs, then went to Rome. In Rome, the brothers and their disciples were solemnly welcomed, they were allowed to serve the Liturgy in Slavonic. Constantine-Cyril was destined to die in Rome (in 869), Methodius returned to Moravia, where he continued to translate.

To fully appreciate the feat of the “Slovenian teachers”, you need to imagine what it meant to translate into a language that had no written language. Scripture and liturgical books. To do this, it is enough to remember what topics and how we communicate in everyday life, and compare this with the content of the biblical text, the text of the service. In everyday life, we rarely talk about complex cultural, philosophical, ethical, and religious concepts.

Spoken language by itself is not able to develop means of expressing such complex meanings. Today, when discussing abstract topics, we use what has been created for centuries in the philosophical, religious, literary tradition, i.e. tradition is purely bookish. The Slavic language of the 9th century did not possess this wealth.

The unwritten language of the Slavs of the 9th century had practically no means of expressing abstract concepts, much less theological concepts; complex grammatical and syntactic structures were poorly developed in it. To make worship understandable to the Slavs, the language needed the most subtle processing. It was necessary either to find in the Slavic language itself, or to unobtrusively import from another (this language became Greek) everything necessary for this language to become capable of conveying the Gospel to people, revealing the beauty and meaning of the Orthodox service. Slavic teachers masterfully coped with this task.

Having translated the Bible and liturgical texts into the Slavic language, revealing the Gospel to the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius at the same time gave the Slavs book, linguistic, literary, and theological culture. They gave the language of the Slavs the right and opportunity to become the language of communication between man and God, the language of the Church, and then the language of great culture and literature. The significance of the brothers’ feat for the entire Orthodox Slavic world truly cannot be overestimated. But it is also worth remembering the activities of the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, without whom the mission of the First Teachers could not have been completed, but who, unfortunately, remain in the shadow of their great teachers.

The mission of Cyril and Methodius met resistance. Methodius had to endure about two years of imprisonment in prison, and after his death, opponents of Eastern Christianity expelled the disciples of Cyril and Methodius from Moravia. Slavic books began to be burned, services in the Slavic language were prohibited. Some of the expelled students went to the territory of what is now Croatia, and some to Bulgaria.

Among those who went to Bulgaria was one of the outstanding students of Methodius, Clement of Ohrid. It was he, according to most modern scientists, who was the creator of the alphabet that we (albeit with minor changes) use to this day.

The point is that Slavic alphabet There are two known: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Glagolitic letters are very complex, elaborate, and bear little resemblance to the letters of any other alphabet. Apparently, the author of the Glagolitic alphabet used elements various systems letters, including oriental ones, and some symbols he invented himself. The person capable of doing such complex philological work was Konstantin-Kirill.

The Cyrillic alphabet was created on the basis of the Greek letter, and its creator worked hard to adapt the Greek letter to the Slavic phonetic system. Based on painstaking work with the manuscripts, studying their linguistic features, territory of distribution, paleographic characteristics, the researchers came to the conclusion that the Glagolitic alphabet was created earlier than the Cyrillic alphabet, the Glagolitic alphabet was apparently created by Cyril, and the Cyrillic alphabet was created by the most talented student of Methodius, Clement of Ohrid.

Clement (c. 840 - 916), who fled from persecution from Moravia, was sent by the Bulgarian Tsar Boris to preach in Ohrid. Here he created the largest school of Slavic writing, one of the most important centers of Slavic culture. Here translations were carried out and original Slavic works of spiritual content (songs, hymns, lives) were compiled. Kliment Ohridski can rightfully be called one of the first Slavic writers. Clement’s work in teaching adults and children to read and write was also unusually extensive: according to the most conservative estimates, he introduced about 3,500 people to Slavic writing. In 893, Clement was appointed bishop of Dremvica and Wielica. He became one of the first Slavic church hierarchs, the first Bulgarian hierarch to serve, preach and write in the Slavic language. According to most modern scientists, it was he who created the alphabet, which the Orthodox Slavic peoples are still in use today.

Clement of Ohrid is glorified among the saints equal to the apostles. His memory is celebrated on July 27 (Cathedral of Bulgarian Enlighteners) and November 25.

The basics of knowledge seem so familiar to people that we lose sight of dozens of interesting facts. This happened with the Russian alphabet. How many interesting stories does he hide?

The answer about the number of letters of the Russian alphabet lies on the surface. There are 33 letters in total in the Russian alphabet. They are divided into two groups: consonants and vowels.

There are 10 vowel letters in the modern Russian alphabet: a, i, u, o, ы, e, ё, e, yu, ya. There are more consonants - 21. Where did the other 2 letters out of 33 go? There are two letters that indicate only the hardness or softness of a sound. This pair is called today - hard and soft signs. And yet, initially they had other “names”.

What does the history of the letters b and b hide?

The letter “Ъ” was a vowel before the 1917 revolution. It sounded like “er” in the alphabet. It was used to write words with consonants at the end, for example, “trud”. In this letter one can hear the unvoiced o, e, s depending on the situation. It is also called “muted” or reduced.

Her sister, the vowel “b” (“er”) often replaced the letter “e” in more “voiceless” versions.

These letters were used where there was a cluster of consonants and a full-sounding vowel letter could not be “compromised.”

What letters of the Russian alphabet still have an interesting fate?

The letter “Y”: caused a lot of controversy about its necessity even when it appeared. Princess Dashkova suggested using the letter.

The current defenders of the letter even erected a monument to her in Ulyanovsk in the mid-2000s. It seems their efforts were crowned with success. The letter was recognized as a full member of the alphabet, and in “gratitude” it glorified the city once again.

Consigned to oblivion: letters that remain only in history

Tsarist Russia had a much more extensive alphabet than it does now. So, the students of that time hated one letter and even called it “monster.” The vowel “yat” became it. Sometimes it replaced the letter “e”, and the sound was the same, which is why the rules for writing it were so difficult to remember. Poems and lists with this letter even gave birth to a new aphorism: “To know in yat.” This means that a person is not literate in spelling. After the revolution of the twentieth century in Russia, the letter became a thing of the past.

"Fert" and "fita"

Two letters that make one sound also “bad farewell” to the Russian people after the overthrow of the Russian monarchy. However, people did not like to use them before; they caused confusion. And the “pose” of the letters was ambiguous. “Walking around” still means “to sit back and put on airs in vain.”

"Izhitsa"

The modern Russian letter “I” has three ancestors. It took a lot of effort to remember the rules for using them. One of these three letters - “Izhitsa” - was used least often, but when depicted it resembled a whip and thus went down in history. Instead of the word “flog”, the phrase “Prescribe Izhitsa” was often used. The predecessor letters “I” were abolished by Peter the Great.

Video on the topic

Before starting to learn the Russian language, any student must know its basis - the alphabet. You need to learn it in the very first lesson and you need to master this knowledge properly.

Any word in the Russian language consists of sounds, which are the basis of the shell of any word. Each word consists of a different sound design. Huge value has a combination of letters in a word, as well as stress.

In any language, including Russian, transcription is used to distinguish letters in words. It is transcription that helps to understand how a word sounds, giving it a generally accepted written form. The transcription will show the softness of the consonants, which syllables are in the word, as well as where the stress is located and which letters fall under it.

The letters of the alphabet can be divided into groups such as vowels and consonants. In addition, vowels can be stressed; this is only six letters. Shocked vowels are those vowels that, when pronouncing a sound, do not encounter an obstacle in the oral cavity. You can put your hand to your throat and feel how the ligaments vibrate. Any vowel can be shouted and sung. It is vowels that are the basis of any word, but stressed syllables sound distinctly, while unstressed syllables are more colorless.

Consonant sounds usually encounter an obstacle in their path during pronunciation. Usually such sounds are quite difficult to pronounce if they are in a row. The Russian language does not have words that consist only of consonants. Consonants can also be divided into voiced and voiceless, as well as paired and unpaired sounds.

Capital letters

When studying the alphabet, you must also study the writing of letters, as well as punctuation marks. Large capital letters will be very important and needed in all further education of children. To develop handwriting, you will need to show your child different fonts that are used to write a particular capital letter.

For correct design letters while writing, you can make reminders for children. You just need to take sheets of paper that are in A4 format, on which to print suitable and various stencils with capital letters. Use a wide variety of fonts so that children can best remember how to write one or another letter of the Russian language. Such pictures can be colored, you can draw small elements of decoration on them, but in such a way that they do not distract from the information that the stencils contain.

You can use classic combed fonts, original writing, floral and festive designs, the main thing is to show your imagination and involve children in creating such an alphabet; they will be interested in decorating and coloring capital letters on paper that is in A4 format.

Lowercase letters

Learning the rules of how to write lowercase letters is just as important as uppercase letters. Therefore, in order to learn the entire alphabet this way, it would also be a good idea to use similar stencils and different fonts that can be printed on paper that is in A4 format.

Then lowercase letters will be learned much easier by children, and if printed pictures are hung up as an example, then children will better remember the Russian alphabet and learn to write different fonts using printed stencils as an example. It is the stencils that will become the basis for children to quickly memorize certain lowercase letters.

Russian alphabet

If possible, it means the softness of the consonants, being after them, and the sound [o]; in all other cases it sounds like .
In native Russian words (in addition to words with the prefixes three- and four-), it is always under stress. Cases of unstressed use are rare, mainly these are borrowed words - for example, Königsberg surfers, complex words - loess-like or words with three- and four-prefixes - for example, four-part. Here the letter is phonetically equivalent to the unstressed “e”, “i”, “ya” or has a side stress, but can also reflect the characteristic features of writing in the source language.

In the Russian language (i.e., in Russian writing), the letter “е” stands, first of all, where the sound [(j)o] comes from [(j)e], this explains the form derived from “e” letters (borrowed from Western scripts). In Russian writing, unlike Belarusian, according to the rules for using letters, placing dots above the “е” is optional.

In other Slavic Cyrillic alphabet there is no letter “ё”. To indicate the corresponding sounds in writing in the Ukrainian and Bulgarian languages, after consonants they write “yo” and in other cases - “yo”. Serbian writing (and the Macedonian one based on it) generally does not have special letters for iotated vowels and/or softening the preceding consonant, since to distinguish syllables with a hard and soft consonant they use different consonants, and not different vowel letters, and iot is always written a separate letter.

In the Church and Old Church Slavonic alphabets there is no letter equivalent to “е”, since there are no such combinations of sounds; Russian “yokanye” is a common mistake when reading Church Slavonic texts.

Superscript element and its name

There is no generally accepted official term for the extension element present in the letter “e”. In traditional linguistics and pedagogy, the word “colon” ​​was used, but most often in a hundred recent years used a less formal expression - “two dots”, or generally tried to avoid mentioning this element separately.

It is considered incorrect to use foreign language terms (dialytics, diaresis, trema or umlaut) in this situation, since they relate to diacritics and denote, first of all, a specific phonetic function.

Historical aspects

Introduction of Yo into use

For a long time, the sound combination (and after soft consonants - [o]), which appeared in Russian pronunciation, was not expressed in writing in any way. From the middle of the 18th century. they were designated by the letters IO, located under a common cap. But such a designation was cumbersome and was rarely used. The following variants were used: the signs o, iô, ьо, іо, ió.

In 1783, instead of the existing options, they proposed the letter “e”, borrowing from French, where it has a different meaning. However, it was first used in print only 12 years later (in 1795). The influence of the Swedish alphabet was also assumed.

In 1783, on November 29 (according to the old style - November 18) at the home of the head of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Princess E. R. Dashkova, one of the 1st meetings of the newly formed Russian Academy, where Fonvizin D.I., Knyazhnin Ya.B., Derzhavin G.R., Lepyokhin I.I., Metropolitan Gabriel and others were present. They discussed the draft full version explanatory dictionary(Slavic-Russian), subsequently - the famous 6-volume Dictionary of the Russian Academy.

The academicians were about to go home, like E.R. Dashkova asked if any of them could write the word “Christmas tree.” The learned men thought that the princess was joking, but she wrote the word “yolk”, which she had pronounced, and asked the question: “Is it legal to represent one sound with two letters?” She also noted: “These reprimands have already been introduced by custom, which, when it does not contradict common sense, should be followed in every possible way.” Ekaterina Dashkova suggested using the “newborn” letter “e” “to express words and reprimands, with this consent, beginning as matiory, iolka, iozh, iol.”

She turned out to be convincing in her arguments, and Gabriel, Metropolitan of Novgorod and St. Petersburg, who is a member of the Academy of Sciences, was asked to evaluate the rationality of introducing a new letter. So, in 1784, on November 18, the official recognition of the letter “e” took place.

The princess's innovative idea was supported by a number of leading cultural figures of that period, incl. and Derzhavin, who was the first to use “ё” for personal correspondence. And the first printed publication in which the appearance of the letter “е” was noticed was in 1795 the book “And My Trinkets” by I. Dmitriev, published by the Moscow University Printing House of H. A. Claudia and H. Riediger (in this printing house since 1788 published the newspaper “Moskovskie Vedomosti”, and it was located on the site of the present building of the Central Telegraph).

The first word printed with the letter “е” became “everything”, then “vasilyochik”, “stump”, “light”, “immortal”. For the first time, a surname with this letter (“Potemkin”) was printed by G. R. Derzhavin in 1798.

The letter “e” became famous thanks to N.M. Karamzin, so until recently he was considered its author, until the story outlined above received wide publicity. In 1796, in the first book of the almanac of poems “Aonids”, published by Karamzin, who came out of the same university printing house, the words “dawn”, “moth”, “eagle”, “tears” were printed with the letter “e”. ”, and the 1st verb is “flowed”.

It’s just not clear it was personal idea Karamzin or the initiative of some employee of the publishing house. It should be noted that Karamzin scientific works(for example, in the famous “History of the Russian State” (1816 - 1829)) did not use the letter “ё”.

Distribution issues

Although the letter “е” was proposed to be introduced in 1783, and was used in print in 1795, for a long time it was not considered a separate letter and was not officially introduced into the alphabet. This is very typical for newly introduced letters: the status of the symbol “th” was the same; it (in comparison with “e”) became mandatory for use back in 1735. In his “Russian Spelling”, Academician J. K. Grot noted, that both of these letters “should also occupy a place in the alphabet,” but this is also long time remained only a good wish.

In the XVIII-XIX centuries. An obstacle to the spread of the letter “ё” was the then attitude towards such a “yocking” pronunciation as petty-bourgeois speech, the dialect of the “vile rabble”, while the “yokking” “church” pronunciation was considered more noble, intelligent and cultural (with a “yocking” "Fought, for example, V.K. Trediakovsky and A.P. Sumarokov).

12/23/1917 (01/05/1918) a decree was published (undated) signed by the Soviet People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky, who introduced reformed spelling as mandatory; it said, among other things: “To recognize the use of the letter “е” as desirable, but not mandatory. "

Thus, the letters “е” and “й” formally entered the alphabet (having received serial numbers) only in Soviet times(if you do not take into account the “New ABC” (1875) by Leo Tolstoy, where there was the letter “ё” between “e” and yat, in 31st place).

On December 24, 1942, the use of the letter “e” by order of the People’s Commissar of Education of the RSFSR was introduced into compulsory school practice, and since then (sometimes, however, they remember 1943 and even 1956, when spelling normative rules were first published) it is considered officially included in the Russian alphabet .

For the next 10 years, scientific and fiction literature was published almost exclusively using the letter “е,” and then publishers returned to the old practice: using the letter only when absolutely necessary.

There is a legend that Joseph Stalin influenced the popularization of the letter “ё”. It says that in 1942, on December 6, I.V. An order was brought to Stalin for signature, where the names of a number of generals were printed not with the letter “ё”, but with “e”. Stalin was angry, and the next day all the articles in the Pravda newspaper suddenly appeared with the letter “e”.

On July 9, 2007, Russian Minister of Culture A. S. Sokolov, giving an interview to the Mayak radio station, expressed the opinion that it is necessary to use the letter “e” in written speech.

Basic rules for using the letter “ё” /Legislative acts

On December 24, 1942, the People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR V.P. Potemkin, by order No. 1825, introduced the letter “Ё,ё” into mandatory practice. Shortly before the order was issued, an incident occurred when Stalin treated rudely the manager of the Council of People's Commissars, Ya. Chadayev, because on December 6 (or 5), 1942, he brought him a decree for signature, where the names of a number of generals were printed without the letter “e”.

Chadayev informed the editor of Pravda that the leader wanted to see “ё” in print. Thus, already on December 7, 1942, the newspaper issue suddenly came out with this letter in all articles.

Federal Law No. 53-FZ “On state language Russian Federation» dated 06/01/2005 in part 3 of Art. 1 states that when using Russian modern literary language as the state language, the Government of the Russian Federation determines the procedure for approving the rules and norms of Russian punctuation and spelling.

The Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation “On the procedure for approving the norms of the modern Russian literary language when used as the state language of the Russian Federation, the rules of Russian spelling and punctuation” dated November 23, 2006 No. 714 establishes that, based on the recommendations given by the Interdepartmental Commission on the Russian Language, a list reference books, grammars and dictionaries, which contain the norms of the modern Russian literary language, when it is used in the Russian Federation as the state language, as well as the rules of Russian punctuation and spelling, are approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.

Letter No. AF-159/03 dated 05/03/2007 “On the decisions of the Interdepartmental Commission on the Russian Language” of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation prescribes writing the letter “e” necessarily if there is a possibility of misreading words, for example, in proper names, since in In this case, ignoring the letter “е” violates the requirements of the Federal Law “On the State Language of the Russian Federation.”

According to the current rules of Russian punctuation and spelling, the letter ё is used selectively in texts during normal printing. But, at the request of the editor or author, any book can be printed using the letter e sequentially.

The sound of "Yo"

The letter "ё" is used:

To convey the stressed vowel [o] and at the same time indicate the softness of the previous consonant: youth, comb, crawl, oats, lying, during the day, honey, dog, everything, trudged, Fedor, aunt (after g, k, x this is only used for borrowing : Höglund, Goethe, liqueur, Cologne, exception - the only proper Russian word tkesh, tkem, weave, weave with derivatives, and formed in Russian from the borrowed word panicer);

To convey the accent [o] after hissing words: silk, burn, click, damn (in this position, the conditions for choosing between writing with “o” or with “e” are set by a rather complex system of lists of exception words and rules);

To convey the combination of [j] and the percussive sound [o]:

At the beginning of the words: container, hedgehog, Christmas tree;

After consonants (a separating sign is used): volume, viet, linen.

After the vowel letters: her, loan, striker, tip, spit, forges;

In native Russian words, only the stressed sound “ё” is possible (even if the stress is collateral: loess-like, four-story, three-seater); if, during word formation or inflection, the stress moves to another syllable, then “е” will be replaced with “e” (takes - will choose, honey - honey - on honey, about what - nothing (but: about nothing )).

Along with the letter “е” in borrowings, the same sound meaning can be conveyed after consonants - the combination ё and in other cases - yo. Also in borrowings “ё” can be an unstressed vowel.

Yo and E

§ 10 of the “Rules of Russian Spelling and Punctuation”, officially in force since 1956, defines the cases when “ё” is used in writing:

"1. When it is necessary to prevent incorrect reading and understanding of a word, for example: we recognize as opposed to learn; everything is different from everything; bucket as opposed to bucket; perfect (participle) as opposed to perfect (adjective), etc.

2. When you need to indicate the pronunciation of a little-known word, for example: Olekma river.

3. In special texts: primers, school textbooks of the Russian language, spelling textbooks, etc., as well as in dictionaries to indicate the place of stress and correct pronunciation
Note. IN foreign words at the beginning of words and after vowels, yo is written instead of the letter ё, for example; iodine, district, major."

Section 5 regulates these issues in more detail. new edition of these rules (published in 2006 and approved by the Orthographic Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences):

“The use of the letter ё can be consistent and selective.
Consistent use of the letter ё is mandatory in the following types of printed texts:

a) in texts with sequentially placed accent marks;

b) in books addressed to young children;

c) in educational texts for primary schoolchildren and foreigners studying the Russian language.

Note 1. The sequential use of ё is adopted for the illustrative part of these rules.

Note 3. In dictionaries, words with the letter e are placed in the general alphabet with the letter e, for example: barely, unctuous, fir-tree, spruce, elozit, fir-tree, fir-tree, spruce; to have fun, to have fun, gaiety, cheerful, fun.

In ordinary printed texts, the letter е is used selectively. It is recommended to use it in the following cases.

1. To prevent misidentification of a word, for example: everything, sky, summer, perfect (in contrast to the words everything, sky, summer, perfect), including to indicate the place of stress in the word, for example: bucket, we recognize (unlike a bucket, let's find out).

2. To indicate the correct pronunciation of a word - either rare, not well known, or having a common incorrect pronunciation, e.g.: gyozy, surfing, fleur, harder, lye, including to indicate the correct stress, e.g.: fable, brought, carried away , convicted, newborn, spy.

3. In proper names - surnames, geographical names, for example: Konenkov, Neyolova, Catherine Deneuve, Schrödinger, Dezhnev, Koshelev, Chebyshev, Veshenskaya, Olekma.”

“Yo”, “yo” and “yo” in borrowed words and the transfer of foreign proper names

The letter “е” is often used to convey the sounds [ø] and [œ] (for example, denoted by the letter “ö”) in foreign names and words.

In borrowed words, the letter combinations “jo” or “yo” are usually used to record combinations of phonemes such as /jo/:

After consonants, at the same time softening them ("broth", "battalion", "mignon", "guillotine", "senor", "champignon", "pavilion", "fjord", "companion", etc.) - in Romance languages usually in places after palatalized [n] and [l] “о” is written.

At the beginning of words ("iota", "iodine", "yogurt", "yoga", "York", etc.) or after vowels ("district", "coyote", "meiosis", "major", etc.) spelled “yo”;

However, in recent decades, “ё” has been increasingly used in these cases. It has already become a normative element in the systems of transferring titles and names (transliteration sense) from a number of Asian languages ​​(for example, the Kontsevich system for the Korean language and the Polivanov system for the Japanese language): Yoshihito, Shogun, Kim Yongnam.

In European borrowings, the sound is conveyed by the letter “е” very rarely; it is most often found in words from the languages ​​of Scandinavia (Jörmungand, Jötun), but, as a rule, it exists along with the usual transmission through “yo” (for example, Jörmungand) and is often considered non-normative.

“Ё” in borrowed words is often unstressed and in this position its pronunciation is indistinguishable from the letters “I”, “i” or “e” (Erdős, shogunate, etc.), i.e., its original clarity is lost and it sometimes turns into just an indication of a certain pronunciation in the source language.

Consequences of not using the letter “ё”

The slowness of the entry of the letter “е” into the practice of writing (which, by the way, never fully took place) is explained by its inconvenient form for cursive writing, which contradicts its main principle - the unity (without tearing the pen from the sheet of paper) of the style, as well as the technical difficulties of technology publishing houses of pre-computer times.

In addition, people with last names with the letter “е” often have difficulties, sometimes insurmountable, when preparing various documents, since some employees are irresponsible when writing this letter. This problem became especially acute after the introduction of the Unified State Examination system, when there is a danger of differences in the spelling of the name in the passport and in the Certificate of Unified State Examination results.

The habitual optionality of use led to the erroneous reading of a number of words, which gradually became generally accepted. This process affected everything: both a huge number of personal names and numerous common nouns.

Stable ambiguity is caused by words written without the letter e such as: piece of iron, everything, flax, let's take a break, blowjob (will fly by without hitting you), perfect, planted, in summer, recognize, palate, tapeworm, admits, etc. are increasingly used erroneous pronunciation (without ё) and shifting stress in the words beet, newborn, etc.

"e" turns into "e"

The ambiguity contributed to the fact that sometimes the letter “е” began to be used in writing (and, naturally, read [`o]) in those words where it should not be. For example, instead of the word “grenadier” - “grenadier”, and instead of the word “scam” - “scam”, also instead of the word “guardianship” - “guardianship”, and instead of the word “being” - “being”, etc. Sometimes such incorrect pronunciation and spelling become common.

Thus, the famous chess player Alexander Alekhine, world champion, was, in fact, Alekhine and was very indignant if his last name was pronounced and spelled incorrectly. His surname belongs to the noble family of Alekhins and is not derived from the familiar variable “Alyokha” from the name Alexey.

In those positions where it is necessary to be not ё, but е, it is recommended to place an accent in order to prevent incorrect recognition of words (everyone, takes) or erroneous pronunciation (grenadier, scam, Croesus, stout, Olesha).

Due to the spelling of words without e in the 20-30s. XX century many mistakes arose in the pronunciation of those words that people learned from newspapers and books, and not from colloquial speech: musketeer, youth, driver (these words said “e” instead of “e”).

Orthoepy: the emergence of new variants

Due to the optional use of the letter “е”, words have appeared in the Russian language that allow the possibility of being written with both the letter “e” and “е”, and the corresponding pronunciation. For example, faded and faded, maneuver and maneuver, whitish and whitish, bile and bile, etc.

Such variants constantly appear in the language due to the action of contradictory analogies. For example, the word nadsekshiy has variants of pronunciation with e/e due to the double motivation: notch/notch. The use or non-use of the letter “ё” does not matter here. But, developing naturally, literary language, as a rule, strives to eliminate the options: either one of them will become unliterary, incorrect (golo[l`o]ditsa, iz[d`e]vka), or different meanings will acquire pronunciation options (is[t`o]kshiy - is[t`e]kshiy).

It is preferably pronounced not “glider”, but “glider” (stressed 1st syllable), since the following trends exist in the Russian language: in the names of mechanisms, machines, and various devices, stress is preferable on the 1st syllable, or more precisely, on the penultimate one , i.e., glider, trireme, glider, tanker, and on the last one - when indicating the character: combine operator, driver, watchman.

Inconsistency in the use of the letter “е” is an artificial rather than a natural factor. And it helps to slow down the natural development of the language, giving rise to and maintaining pronunciation options that are not determined by intralingual reasons.