Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky from two to five. Children say from Korney Chukovsky's book "from two to five"
Chukovsky Korney
From two to five
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky
Chapter first. Children's language
I. I listen
II. Imitation and creativity
III. "Folk etymology"
IV. Effectiveness
V. The Conquest of Grammar
VI. Analysis of the linguistic heritage of adults
VII. Exposing cliches
VIII. Masking Ignorance
IX. Misinterpretation of words
X. Children's speech and people
XI. Speech education
Chapter two. Tireless explorer
I. Search for patterns
II. Half-belief
III. "One Hundred Thousand Why"
IV. Children about birth
V. Hatred of the beginning
VI. Children about death
VII. New era and children
VIII. Tears and tricks
IX. I keep listening
Chapter three. Fight for a fairy tale
I. Conversation about Munchausen. 1929
II. "There are no sharks!"
III. It's time to wise up! 1934
IV. And again about Munchausen. 1936
V. Philistine methods of criticism. 1956
VI. "It is unnatural that..." 1960
Chapter Four. Stupid absurdities
II. Timoshka on a cat
III. Child's attraction to changelings
IV. Pedagogical value of shifters
V. The Ancestors of Their Enemies and Persecutors
Chapter Five. How children compose poems
I. Attraction to rhyme
II. Verse pick-ups
III. Pa and Ma
IV. First poems
V. About poetry education
VI. Ekikiki and non-ekikiki
VII. More about poetry education
VIII. Before and now
Chapter six. Commandments for children's poets
I. Learn from the people. - Learn from children
II. Imagery and effectiveness
III. Music
IV. Rhymes. - Poetry structure
V. Refusal of epithets. - Rhythmics
VI. Game verses
VII. The Last Commandments
Notes
Great-granddaughter Mashenka
It was a long time ago. I lived in a dacha near the sea. In front of my windows, on the hot sand of Sestroretsk beach, a countless number of small children were swarming under the supervision of grandmothers and nannies. I had just recovered from a long illness and, according to doctor's orders, was doomed to idleness. Wandering around the wonderful beach from morning to evening, I soon became close to all the kids, and they also got used to me. We built impregnable fortresses out of sand and launched paper fleets.
Around me, without stopping for a moment, I could hear the sonorous speech of children. At first it simply amused me, but little by little I came to the conviction that, beautiful in itself, it has high scientific value, since by studying it we thereby reveal the bizarre patterns of children's thinking, the child's psyche.
Forty years have passed since then - even more. During this entire long period, I was never separated from my children: first I had the opportunity to observe the spiritual development of my own young children, and then of my grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
And yet I could not write this book if not for the friendly help of readers. For many years now, from week to week, from month to month, postmen have brought me many letters, where grandmothers, mothers, grandfathers, fathers of children report their observations of them, their actions, games, conversations, songs. They are written by housewives, pensioners, athletes, workers, disabled people, military personnel, actors, diplomats, artists, engineers, livestock specialists, kindergarten teachers - and you can imagine with what interest (and with what gratitude!) I read these precious letters . If I could make public all the material I have, collected over forty-odd years, it would amount to at least ten to twelve volumes.
Like any folklorist-collector interested in the scientific reliability of his material, I consider myself obliged to document every child’s word, every child’s phrase communicated to me in these letters, and I very much regret that lack of space does not allow me to name all my friends by name. books sharing with me their observations, thoughts, information.
But I carefully preserve all the letters, so that almost every speech of the children that I give on these pages has a passport...
The broad masses of readers reacted to my book with warm sympathy. Suffice it to say that in 1958 alone the book was published in two different publishing houses in the amount of 400,000 copies and within a few days it was all sold out: so greedily do Soviet people strive to study and comprehend the still little-studied psyche of their Igors, Volodya, Natasha and Svetlana.
This puts a lot of responsibility on me. Therefore, for each new edition of the book, I re-read the entire text again and again, correcting and adding to it each time.
Chapter first
CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE
But all the beautiful miracles on earth
The first word of a child is more wonderful.
Peter Semynin
I. LISTEN
When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly:
Would you like to be my daughter?
She answered him majestically:
I'm my mother's and more of a warrior.
One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance.
Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately.
Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. I listened with great pleasure to the following dialogue:
Dad himself told me...
My mother herself told me...
But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same.
It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel.
And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep:
Mom, cover my back leg!
And I was very amused by such, for example, children's sayings and exclamations, overheard at different times:
Dad, look how your pants are frowning!
Grandmother! You are my best lover!
Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have!
Our grandmother slaughtered geese in the winter so that they would not catch a cold.
Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses.
Grandma, are you going to die?
Will they bury you in a hole?
They'll bury it.
Deep?
Deep.
That's when I'll turn your sewing machine!
Georges cut the earthworm in half with a spatula.
Why did you do that?
The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun.
The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended.
It was necessary to use cogs! - the grandson sympathized.
The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns.
How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little?
A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.”
“Here is a stupid old man,” she was indignant, “begging the fish for a new house, then a new trough. I would immediately ask for a new old woman.
How dare you fight?
Oh, mommy, what should I do if a fight just keeps coming out of me!
Nanny, what kind of heaven is this?
And this is where the apples, pears, oranges, cherries are...
I understand: heaven is compote.
Aunt, would you eat a dead cat for a thousand rubles?
The woman washes her face with soap!
A woman doesn't have a muzzle, a woman has a face.
I went and looked again.
No, still a little snout.
Mom, I'm such a slut!
And she showed the rope that she managed to untangle.
Once upon a time there was a shepherd, his name was Makar. And he had a daughter, Macarona.
Oh, mom, what a lovely thing!
Well, Nyura, that’s enough, don’t cry!
I’m not crying to you, but to Aunt Sima.
Will you water the cone too?
To make the little ones grow?
When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly:
- Would you like to be my daughter?
She answered him majestically:
- I’m my mother’s and more of a warrior.
One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance.
- Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately.
Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. I listened with great pleasure to the following dialogue:
- Dad himself told me...
“My mother herself told me...
- But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same.
It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel.
And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep:
- Mom, cover my back leg!
And I was very amused by such, for example, children's sayings and exclamations, overheard at different times:
- Dad, look how your pants are frowning!
- Grandmother! You are my best lover!
- Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have!
“Our granny slaughtered geese in the winter so that they wouldn’t catch a cold.”
“Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses.”
- Grandma, are you going to die?
- I'll die.
- Will they bury you in a hole?
- They'll bury it.
- Deep?
- Deep.
- That's when I'll turn your sewing machine!
Georges cut the earthworm in half with a spatula.
- Why did you do that?
- The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun.
The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended.
- We should have used screws! - the grandson sympathized.
The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns.
- How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little?
A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.”
“Here is a stupid old man,” she was indignant, “he asked the fish for a new house, then a new trough.” I would immediately ask for a new old woman.
- How dare you fight?
- Oh, mommy, what should I do if a fight just keeps coming out of me!
- Nanny, what kind of paradise is this?
- And this is where the apples, pears, oranges, cherries...
“I understand: heaven is compote.”
- Aunt, would you eat a dead cat for a thousand rubles?
Bass:
- Grandma washes her face with soap!
“A woman doesn’t have a muzzle, a woman has a face.”
I went and looked again.
- No, still a little snout.
- Mom, I'm such a slut!
And she showed the rope that she managed to untangle.
— Once upon a time there was a shepherd, his name was Makar. And he had a daughter, Macarona.
- Oh, mom, what a lovely thing!
- Well, Nyura, that’s enough, don’t cry!
“I’m not paying to you, but to Aunt Sima.”
- Will you water the cone too?
- Yes.
- So that the little ones grow up?
We, adults, assign the ending “yata” only to living creatures: lambs, piglets, etc. But since for children even nonliving things are alive, they use this ending more often than we do, and you can always hear from them:
- Dad, look how cute these cars are!
Seryozha, two and a half years old, first saw a fire spitting with bright sparks, clapped his hands and shouted:
- Fire and Ogonyata! Fire and Ogonyata!
I saw a painting of the Madonna:
- Madonna and Child.
- Oh, grandpa, the pussy sneezed!
- Why didn’t you, Lenochka, tell the cat: good health?
- Who will thank me?
Philosophy of art:
“I sing so much that the room becomes big and beautiful...
— It’s hot in Anapa, like sitting on a primus stove.
“You see: I’m all barefoot!”
“I’ll get up so early that it’ll be too late.”
- Don’t put out the fire, otherwise you won’t be able to sleep!
Murka:
- Listen, dad, a fantasy story: once upon a time there was a horse, its name was Kicking... But then it was renamed because it didn’t kick anyone...
He draws flowers, and there are three dozen dots around.
- What is this? Flies?
- No, the smell is from flowers.
-What did you scratch yourself on?
- About the cat.
At night he wakes up a tired mother:
- Mom, mom, if a kind lion meets a giraffe he knows, will he eat her or not?
- What a terrible sponge you are! So that it gets up now!
Lyalechka was sprayed with perfume:
I'm so smelly
I'm all so stuffy.
And spins around the mirror.
- I, mommy, am beautiful!
- When will you play with me? Dad got home from work and got to the book now. And my mother is such a lady! — I started washing right away.
The whole family was waiting for the postman. And then he appeared at the very gate. Varya, two and a half years old, was the first to notice him.
- Postman, postman is coming! - she announced joyfully.
They boast while sitting next to each other on chairs:
“My grandmother keeps swearing: damn, damn, damn, damn.”
- And my grandmother keeps swearing: goshpodi, goshpodi, goshpodi, goshpodi!
Yura proudly thought that he had the fattest nanny. Suddenly, while walking in the park, he met an even fatter woman.
“This aunt is behind you,” he said reproachfully to his nanny.
I once heard a wonderful child’s word at a dacha near St. Petersburg on one cloudy May day. I lit a fire for the children. From a distance, a two-year-old neighbor girl crawled up impressively:
- Is this all fire?
- Everyone, everyone! Come, don't be afraid!
The word seemed so expressive to me that at the first minute, I remember, I was ready to regret why it did not become “everyone”, did not enter into “everyone’s” use and did not supplant our “adult” word “universal”.
I see a street poster:
THE WHOLE WORK ON THE WHOLE EARTH
IN THE NAME OF ALL HAPPINESS!
The expressiveness of a child’s word “angry” is also great. Three-year-old Tanya, seeing the wrinkles on her father’s forehead, pointed her finger at them and said:
“I don’t want you to be angry!”
And what could be more expressive than the excellent children's word laughter, meaning repeated and prolonged laughter.
“I felt sour in my mouth from self-indulgence, from laughing.”
Three-year-old Nata:
- Sing me, mom, a song!
“Lullaby song” (from the verb “to lull”) is an excellent, sonorous word, more understandable to children than “lullaby song,” since in modern life cradles have long become a rarity.
I repeat: at first these children’s sayings seemed simply funny to me, but little by little, thanks to them, many high qualities of the child’s mind became clear to me.
Chukovsky Korney
From two to five
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky
Chapter first. Children's language
I. I listen
II. Imitation and creativity
III. "Folk etymology"
IV. Effectiveness
V. The Conquest of Grammar
VI. Analysis of the linguistic heritage of adults
VII. Exposing cliches
VIII. Masking Ignorance
IX. Misinterpretation of words
X. Children's speech and people
XI. Speech education
Chapter two. Tireless explorer
I. Search for patterns
II. Half-belief
III. "One Hundred Thousand Why"
IV. Children about birth
V. Hatred of the beginning
VI. Children about death
VII. New era and children
VIII. Tears and tricks
IX. I keep listening
Chapter three. Fight for a fairy tale
I. Conversation about Munchausen. 1929
II. "There are no sharks!"
III. It's time to wise up! 1934
IV. And again about Munchausen. 1936
V. Philistine methods of criticism. 1956
VI. "It is unnatural that..." 1960
Chapter Four. Stupid absurdities
II. Timoshka on a cat
III. Child's attraction to changelings
IV. Pedagogical value of shifters
V. The Ancestors of Their Enemies and Persecutors
Chapter Five. How children compose poems
I. Attraction to rhyme
II. Verse pick-ups
III. Pa and Ma
IV. First poems
V. About poetry education
VI. Ekikiki and non-ekikiki
VII. More about poetry education
VIII. Before and now
Chapter six. Commandments for children's poets
I. Learn from the people. - Learn from children
II. Imagery and effectiveness
III. Music
IV. Rhymes. - Poetry structure
V. Refusal of epithets. - Rhythmics
VI. Game verses
VII. The Last Commandments
Notes
Great-granddaughter Mashenka
It was a long time ago. I lived in a dacha near the sea. In front of my windows, on the hot sand of Sestroretsk beach, a countless number of small children were swarming under the supervision of grandmothers and nannies. I had just recovered from a long illness and, according to doctor's orders, was doomed to idleness. Wandering around the wonderful beach from morning to evening, I soon became close to all the kids, and they also got used to me. We built impregnable fortresses out of sand and launched paper fleets.
Around me, without stopping for a moment, I could hear the sonorous speech of children. At first it simply amused me, but little by little I came to the conviction that, beautiful in itself, it has high scientific value, since by studying it we thereby reveal the bizarre patterns of children's thinking, the child's psyche.
Forty years have passed since then - even more. During this entire long period, I was never separated from my children: first I had the opportunity to observe the spiritual development of my own young children, and then of my grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
And yet I could not write this book if not for the friendly help of readers. For many years now, from week to week, from month to month, postmen have brought me many letters, where grandmothers, mothers, grandfathers, fathers of children report their observations of them, their actions, games, conversations, songs. They are written by housewives, pensioners, athletes, workers, disabled people, military personnel, actors, diplomats, artists, engineers, livestock specialists, kindergarten teachers - and you can imagine with what interest (and with what gratitude!) I read these precious letters . If I could make public all the material I have, collected over forty-odd years, it would amount to at least ten to twelve volumes.
Like any folklorist-collector interested in the scientific reliability of his material, I consider myself obliged to document every child’s word, every child’s phrase communicated to me in these letters, and I very much regret that lack of space does not allow me to name all my friends by name. books sharing with me their observations, thoughts, information.
But I carefully preserve all the letters, so that almost every speech of the children that I give on these pages has a passport...
The broad masses of readers reacted to my book with warm sympathy. Suffice it to say that in 1958 alone the book was published in two different publishing houses in the amount of 400,000 copies and within a few days it was all sold out: so greedily do Soviet people strive to study and comprehend the still little-studied psyche of their Igors, Volodya, Natasha and Svetlana.
This puts a lot of responsibility on me. Therefore, for each new edition of the book, I re-read the entire text again and again, correcting and adding to it each time.
Chapter first
CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE
But all the beautiful miracles on earth
The first word of a child is more wonderful.
Peter Semynin
I. LISTEN
When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly:
Would you like to be my daughter?
She answered him majestically:
I'm my mother's and more of a warrior.
One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance.
Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately.
Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. I listened with great pleasure to the following dialogue:
Dad himself told me...
My mother herself told me...
But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same.
It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel.
And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep:
Mom, cover my back leg!
And I was very amused by such, for example, children's sayings and exclamations, overheard at different times:
Dad, look how your pants are frowning!
Grandmother! You are my best lover!
Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have!
Our grandmother slaughtered geese in the winter so that they would not catch a cold.
Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses.
Grandma, are you going to die?
Will they bury you in a hole?
They'll bury it.
Deep?
Deep.
That's when I'll turn your sewing machine!
Georges cut the earthworm in half with a spatula.
Why did you do that?
The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun.
The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended.
It was necessary to use cogs! - the grandson sympathized.
The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns.
How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little?
A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.”
Transcript
1 Korney Chukovsky From two to five
2 Contents From the author Chapter one. Children's language I. Listening II. Imitation and creativity III. "Folk etymology" IV. Effectiveness V. Conquering grammar VI. Analysis of the linguistic heritage of adults VII. Exposing cliches VIII. Masking Ignorance IX. False interpretation of words X. Children's speech and the people XI. Speech education Chapter two. Tireless researcher I. Search for patterns II. Half-belief III. "One hundred thousand why" IV. Children about birth V. Hatred of the beginning VI. Children about death VII. New era and children VIII. Tears and tricks IX. I continue to listen Chapter Three. The struggle for a fairy tale I. Conversation about Munchausen II. "There are no sharks!" III. It's time to wise up! 1934 IV. And again about Munchausen V. Philistine methods of criticism VI. "It is unnatural that..." 1960 Chapter Four. Silly absurdities I. Letter
3 II. Timoshka on a cat III. Child's attraction to changelings IV. Pedagogical value of shifters V. Ancestors of their enemies and persecutors Chapter Five. How children compose poetry I. Attraction to rhyme II. Verse pickups III. Pa and Ma IV. First verses V. About poetry education VI. Ekikiki and non-ekikiki VII. More about poetry education VIII. Before and Now Chapter Six. Commandments for children's poets I. Learn from the people. - Learn from children II. Imagery and effectiveness III. Music IV. Rhymes. - Structure of verses V. Refusal of epithets. - Rhythmics VI. Game verses VII. The Last Commandments Notes TO THE GREAT-GRAND-GRANDCHUKE MASHENKA A LOVING GREAT-GRANDFATHER.
4 FROM THE AUTHOR It was a long time ago. I lived in a dacha near the sea. In front of my windows, on the hot sand of Sestroretsk beach, a countless number of small children were swarming under the supervision of grandmothers and nannies. I had just recovered from a long illness and, according to doctor's orders, was doomed to idleness. Wandering around the wonderful beach from morning to evening, I soon became close to all the kids, and they also got used to me. We built impregnable fortresses out of sand and launched paper fleets. Around me, without stopping for a moment, I could hear the sonorous speech of children. At first it simply amused me, but little by little I came to the conviction that, beautiful in itself, it has high scientific value, since by studying it we thereby reveal the bizarre patterns of children's thinking, the child's psyche. Forty years have passed since then - even more. During this entire long period, I was never separated from my children: first I had the opportunity to observe the spiritual development of my own young children, and then of my grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren. And yet I could not write this book if not for the friendly help of readers. For many years now, from week to week, from month to month, postmen have brought me many letters, where grandmothers, mothers, grandfathers, fathers of children report their observations of them, their actions, games, conversations, songs. They are written by housewives, pensioners, athletes, workers, disabled people, military personnel, actors, diplomats, artists, engineers, livestock specialists, kindergarten teachers - and you can imagine with what interest (and with what gratitude!) I read these precious letters . If I could make public all the material I have, collected over forty-odd years, it would amount to at least ten to twelve volumes. Like any folklorist-collector interested in the scientific reliability of his material, I consider myself obliged to document every child’s word, every child’s phrase communicated to me in these letters, and I very much regret that the lack of space does not
5 gives me the opportunity to name by name all the friends of my book who share their observations, thoughts, and information with me. But I carefully preserve all the letters, so that almost every speech of the children that I give on these pages has a passport... The broad masses of readers reacted to my book with warm sympathy. Suffice it to say that in 1958 alone, the book was published in two different publishing houses in a number of copies and within a few days it was sold out without a trace: so greedily do Soviet people strive to study and comprehend the still little-studied psyche of their Igors, Volodya, Natasha and Svetlana. This puts a lot of responsibility on me. Therefore, for each new edition of the book, I re-read the entire text again and again, correcting and adding to it each time.
6 Chapter One CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE...But of all the beautiful miracles on earth, More wonderful is the first word of a child. Peter Semynin I. LISTENING When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly: “Would you like to be my daughter?” She answered him majestically: “I am my mother’s and no longer a warrior’s.” One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance. - Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately. Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. With great pleasure I overheard the following dialogue: - Dad himself told me... - Mom herself told me... - But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same. It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel. And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep: “Mom, close my back leg!” And I was very amused by, for example, children’s sayings and exclamations, overheard at different times: “Dad, look how your trousers are frowning!” - Grandmother! You are my best lover! - Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have! - Our grandmother slaughtered geese in winter so that they would not catch a cold. - Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses. - Grandma, are you going to die?
7 - I will die. - Will they bury you in a hole? - They'll bury it. - Deep? - Deep. - That's when I'll turn your sewing machine! Georges cut the earthworm in half with a spatula. - Why did you do that? - The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun. The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended. - It was necessary to use cogs! - the grandson sympathized. The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns. - How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little? A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.” “Here is a stupid old man,” she was indignant, “he asked the fish for a new house, then a new trough.” I would immediately ask for a new old woman. - How dare you fight? - Oh, mommy, what should I do if a fight just keeps coming out of me! - Nanny, what kind of paradise is this? - And this is where the apples, pears, oranges, cherries... - I understand: heaven is compote. - Aunt, would you eat a dead cat for a thousand rubles? Bass: - Baba washes her face with soap! - A woman doesn’t have a muzzle, a woman has a face. I went and looked again. - No, still a little snout. - Mom, I'm such a slut! And she showed the rope that she managed to untangle. - Once upon a time there was a shepherd, his name was Makar. And he had a daughter, Macarona. - Oh, mom, what a lovely thing!
8 - Well, Nyura, that’s enough, don’t cry! - I’m not paying to you, but to Aunt Sima. - Will you water the cone too? - Yes. - So that the little ones grow up? We, adults, assign the ending “yata” only to living creatures: lambs, piglets, etc. But since for children even non-living things are alive, they use this ending more often than we do, and you can always hear from them: - Dad, look how cute the cars are! Seryozha, two and a half years old, first saw a fire spitting with bright sparks, clapped his hands and shouted: “Fire and fire!” Fire and Ogonyata! I saw a painting depicting the Madonna: - Madonna and Child. - Oh, grandpa, the pussy sneezed! - Why didn’t you, Lenochka, tell the cat: good luck? - Who will thank me? Philosophy of art: - I sing so much that the room becomes big and beautiful... - It’s hot in Anapa, like sitting on a primus stove. - You see: I’m all barefoot! - I'll get up so early that it will be too late. - Don’t put out the fire, otherwise you won’t be able to sleep! Murka: - Listen, dad, a fantasy story: there once was a horse, its name was kicking... But then it was renamed because it didn’t kick anyone... He draws flowers, and there are three dozen dots around. - What is this? Flies? - No, the smell is from flowers. - What did you scratch yourself on? - About the cat.
9 At night he wakes up a tired mother: - Mom, mom, if a kind lion meets a giraffe he knows, will he eat her or not? - What a terrible sponge you are! So that it gets up now! Lyalechka was sprayed with perfume: I’m all so smelly, I’m all so smelly. And spins around the mirror. - I, mommy, am beautiful! - When will you play with me? Dad got home from work and got to the book now. And my mother is such a lady! - I started washing right away. The whole family was waiting for the postman. And then he appeared at the very gate. Varya, two and a half years old, was the first to notice him. - Postman, postman is coming! - she announced joyfully. They boast, sitting next to each other on chairs: - My grandmother keeps swearing: damn, damn, damn, damn. - And my grandmother keeps swearing: goshpodi, goshpodi, goshpodi, goshpodi! Yura proudly thought that he had the fattest nanny. Suddenly, while walking in the park, he met an even fatter woman. “This aunt is behind you,” he said reproachfully to his nanny. I once heard a wonderful child’s word at a dacha near St. Petersburg on one cloudy May day. I lit a fire for the children. From a distance, a two-year-old neighbor girl crawled up solidly: “Is this the fire of all?” - Everyone, everyone! Come, don't be afraid! The word seemed so expressive to me that at the first minute, I remember, I was ready to regret why it did not become “everyone”, did not enter into “everyone’s” use and did not supplant our “adult” word “universal”. As I see a street poster: ALL WORK ON THE ENTIRE EARTH IN THE NAME OF ALL HAPPINESS! The expressiveness of a child’s word “angry” is also great. Three year old
10 Tanya, seeing the wrinkles on her father’s forehead, pointed her finger at them and said: “I don’t want you to be angry!” And what could be more expressive than the excellent children's word laughter, meaning repeated and prolonged laughter. “I felt sour in my mouth from self-indulgence, from laughing.” Three-year-old Nata: - Sing me a song, Mom! “Lullaby song” (from the verb “to lull”) is an excellent, sonorous word, more understandable to children than “lullaby song,” since in modern life cradles have long become a rarity. I repeat: at first these children’s sayings seemed simply funny to me, but little by little, thanks to them, many high qualities of the child’s mind became clear to me. II. IMITATION AND CREATIVITY CHILDREN'S SENSE OF LANGUAGE If we needed the most visual, intelligible proof for everyone that every young child is the greatest mental worker on our planet, it would be enough to look as closely as possible at the complex system of those methods with the help of which he succeeds in such an amazingly short time master your native language, all the shades of its bizarre forms, all the subtleties of its suffixes, prefixes and inflections. Although this mastery of speech occurs under the direct influence of adults, it still seems to me one of the greatest miracles of children's mental life. First of all, it is necessary to note that two-year-old and three-year-old children have such a strong sense of language that the words they create do not at all seem like cripples or speech freaks, but, on the contrary, are very accurate, elegant, natural: “angry”, and “dull”, and “pretty” and “everyone”. It often happens that a child invents words that are already in the language, but unknown to him or to those around him. Before my eyes, one three-year-old in Crimea, in Koktebel, invented the word
11 bullet and shot from his tiny gun from morning to night, not even suspecting that this word has existed for centuries on the Don, in the Voronezh and Yaroslavl regions *. In L. Panteleev’s famous story “Lenka Panteleev,” a Yaroslavl resident says several times: “That’s how they shoot, that’s how they shoot!” * V.I. Dal, Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, vol. III, M. 1955, pp. A.V. Mirtov, Don Dictionary, 1929, pp. Another child (three and a half years old) himself came up with the word worthless. The third, of unknown age to me, invented the words obutki and odetki (this was in the Black Sea steppe near Odessa), completely unaware that these two words in exactly the same combination existed for centuries in the north, in the Olonets region. After all, he had not read the ethnographic collections of Rybnikov, who wrote down a certain folk tale, which, by the way, contained the following words: “I receive food, shoes and clothes as promised.”* * Songs collected by P.N. Rybnikov, vol. III, M. 1910, pp This very two-part formula “shoes and clothes” was independently created by the child on the basis of the linguistic prerequisites given to him by adults. - Oh, dragonfly! - the mother said to her three-year-old Irina. - I'm not a dragonfly, but I'm a people! At first the mother did not understand this “people,” but then she accidentally discovered that a thousand kilometers away, in the Urals, a person has long been called a “people.” There they say: “What kind of people are you?” * * Dahl cites this word as an ancient one (Explanatory Dictionary, vol. II, M. 1955, p. 284). Thus, the child sometimes independently comes to those forms that were created by the people over many centuries.
12 The child’s mind wonderfully masters the methods, techniques, and forms of folk word creation. Even those children's words that are not in the language seem almost to exist: they could exist, and it is only by chance that they do not exist. You meet them like old acquaintances, as if you’ve already heard them before. One can easily imagine one of the Slavic languages, where angry, nikovoiny, and vsehny exist as full-fledged words. Or, for example, the word diving. The child created it only because he did not know our adult word “diving”. While bathing in the bath, he said to his mother: “Mom, give the command: “Get ready for diving!” Nyrba is an excellent word, energetic, sonorous; I would not be surprised if one of the Slavic tribes found the word diving in everyday use, and who would say that this word is alien to the linguistic consciousness of the people who created the word walking from the word walk, from the word mowing - mowing, from the word shoot - shooting, etc. I was informed about a boy who told his mother. - Give me a thread, I’ll string the beads. This is how he interpreted the words “string on a thread.” Having heard from some boy that a horse had hoofed him, at the first opportunity I inserted these words into a conversation with my little daughter. The girl not only immediately understood them, but did not even realize that they were not in the language. These words seemed completely normal to her. Yes, they are like that - sometimes even more “normal” than ours. Why, in fact, do they tell a child about a horse - a horse? After all, a horse is huge for a child. Can he call her by her diminutive name? Feeling all the falseness of this diminutive, he makes a horse out of a horse, thereby emphasizing its enormity. And this happens not only with his horse: for him, a pillow is often a podukha, a cup is a chakha, a dandelion is a dandelion, a comb is a comb. - Mom, look, the rooster is without a comb. - Wow, what a raw food we found!
13 - There’s such a toy in the window on Liteiny! The son of Professor A.N. Gvozdev called a large spoon - loga, a large mouse - mouse: - Give me another loga! - What a mouse! He called the gun - pukha, the balalaika - balalaya*. * A.N. Gvozdev, Issues in the study of children's speech (chapter "Formation of the grammatical structure of the Russian language in a child"), M. 1961, pp. 312 and 327. Natasha Shurchilova calls mother's sandals: barefoot. In all these cases, the child acts in exactly the same way as Mayakovsky did, forming the form puppy from the word puppy: With all his puppy strength, the beggar puppy began to cry. UNCONSCIOUS MASTERY By reinterpreting our words, the child most often does not notice his word creation and remains confident that he is correctly repeating what he heard. This first struck me when a four-year-old boy I met on a train began persistently asking me to let him turn the brake. He had just heard the word brake - and, thinking that he was repeating it, he attached the ending silt to it. This was a revelation for me: such a tiny boy, but how subtly he felt that the suffix “l” was needed here, showing the tool, instrumentality of the object. The boy seemed to say to himself: if what you use to sew is called an awl, and what you use to wash is called soap, and what you use to dig is called a snout, and what you use to thresh is called threshing, then what you use to slow things down is slow. This one word testified that in the child’s mind such a clear classification of suffixes into categories and headings was made, which would have presented considerable difficulties even for a warmed mind. And this classification seemed all the more wonderful to me because I myself
14 the child doesn’t even know about it. Such unconscious verbal creativity is one of the most amazing phenomena of childhood. Even those mistakes that a child often happens to make during this creative assimilation of speech testify to the enormous amount of work his brain does to coordinate knowledge. Although the child could not answer why he calls the postman a postman, this reconstruction of the word indicates that for him the role of the Old Russian suffix nik, which characterizes a person mainly by his professional work: fireman, sportsman, shoemaker, collective farmer, stove maker, is almost completely noticeable. By calling the postman a postman, the child included his neologism in the category of these words and did quite correctly, because if the one who works in the garden is a gardener, then the one who works at the post office is indeed a postman. Let the adults laugh at the postman. It is not the child’s fault that strict logic is not followed in grammar. If our words were created according to one straightforward principle, children's sayings would not seem so funny to us; they are often “more correct” than grammar and “correct” it. Of course, in order to perceive our language, a child copies adults in his word creation. It would be wild to think that he in any way creates our language, changes its grammatical structure, its vocabulary. Without suspecting it, he directs all his efforts to, through analogies, assimilate the linguistic wealth created by many generations of adults. But he applies these analogies with such skill, with such sensitivity to the meaning and significance of those elements from which a word is composed, that one cannot help but admire the remarkable power of his intelligence, attention and memory, manifested in this difficult everyday work. The slightest shade of each grammatical form is guessed by the child on the fly, and when he needs to create (or recreate in his memory) this or that word, he uses exactly that suffix,
15 is precisely the ending that, according to the hidden laws of the native language, is necessary for a given shade of thought and image. When three-year-old Nina first saw a worm in the garden, she whispered in fear: “Mom, mom, what a creeper!” And with this ending, uk perfectly expressed her panicked attitude towards the monster. Not a creeper, not a creeper, not a creeper, not a creeper, but certainly a creeper! Of course, this crawler was not invented by a child. There is imitation of such words as beetle and spider. But it is still remarkable that for a given root, a small child instantly found in his arsenal of various morphemes exactly the one that is most suitable in this case. Two-year-old Dzhanochka, bathing in the bath and forcing her doll to dive, said: “It sank, and then it drowned!” Only the deaf and dumb will not notice the exquisite plasticity and subtle meaning of these two words. Drowning is not something like drowning, it is drowning for a while in order to eventually emerge. And three-year-old Yura, helping his mother outfit little Valya for a walk, pulled out boots, galoshes, stockings and gaiters from under Valina’s bed and, handing them over, said: “That’s all Valina has put on!” With this one general word “shoes” he immediately designated all four objects that were related to shoes. Just as expressively is the magnificent word splash, composed by a five-year-old boy: “We swam well.” They made such a splash! The same sense of language was demonstrated by that village child of five and a half years old, who, having heard that adults called the primer a textbook, and imagining that he was exactly reproducing their term, called this book “uchilo”: obviously, uchilo (as in “sharpening machine”, “ threshed, chisel, etc.) is a teaching tool for him. And the suffix nickname eluded the child, since there is no analogy with “washbasin”, “bush”, “teapot”
I couldn’t find 16 in the word “textbook”. Another child, who called the salt shaker a salt shaker, was also more than right: if the container for tea is a teapot, and the container for sugar is a sugar bowl, then the container for salt is not a salt shaker, but a salt bowl. Here, again, the child’s speech coincides with the folk one, for, it turns out, the word solnitsa is as widespread in the villages as bullet, potato, beard and other words that I saw independently created by three-year-old children, brought up far from the influences of the “common people.” speech. By the way, I note that such words created by a child as “dandelion”, “syroega”, “laughter” exist in some places among the people*. * V.I. Dal, Explanatory Dictionary, vol. II, M. 1955, p. 574 and vol. IV, pp. 242, 376. In general, it seems to me that starting from the age of two, every child becomes for a short time a brilliant linguist, and then, by the age of five-six, this genius is lost. In eight-year-old children there is no trace of it anymore, since the need for it has passed: by this age the child has already completely mastered the basic riches of his native language. If such a flair for verbal forms did not leave the child as he mastered them, by the age of ten he would have eclipsed any of us in the flexibility and brightness of his speech. No wonder Leo Tolstoy, addressing adults, wrote: “[A child] understands the laws of word formation better than you, because no one invents new words as often as children.”* * L.N. Tolstoy, Complete. collection cit., vol. VIII, M. 1936, p. 70. Take, for example, the word “still,” which belongs to the category of unchangeable words. In addition to the verb “to tickle,” which we will talk about later, the child managed to produce a noun from the word “more,” which he subordinated to the laws of declension of names. Two-year-old Sasha was asked: “Where are you going?” - Behind the sand.
17 - But you already brought it. - I'm going for more. Of course, when we talk about the creative power of a child, about his sensitivity, about his verbal genius, although we do not consider these expressions to be hyperboles, we should not forget that (as mentioned above) the common basis of all these qualities is imitation, since every new word created by a child is created by him in accordance with the norms given to him by adults. But he does not copy adults as easily (and not as obediently) as it seems to other observers. Below, in the section “Analysis of the linguistic heritage of adults”, a sufficient number of facts will be presented to prove that a child already from the age of two brings critical assessment, analysis, and control into his perception of speech. A child acquires his language and thinking skills only through communication with other people. Only this communication makes him a person, that is, a speaking and thinking being. But if communication with other people had not for a short time developed in him a special, increased sensitivity to the speech material that adults give him, he would have remained until the end of his days in the field of his native language as a foreigner, soullessly repeating the dead cliches of textbooks. In the old days, I happened to meet with children who, for various reasons (mainly at the whim of rich parents), were forced from infancy to have the vocabulary and structure of a foreign language, most often French. These unfortunate children, from the very beginning cut off from the elements of their native speech, did not speak either their own or someone else’s language. Their speech in both cases was equally anemic, bloodless, lifeless - precisely because, from the ages of two to five, they were deprived of the opportunity to master it creatively. Anyone who in early childhood, on the way to mastering their native speech, did not create such words as “creep”, “sink”, “sink”, “slowed down”, etc., will never become a complete master of their language. Of course, many neologisms of a child often indicate only
18 his inability to master at first certain deviations from the norms of grammar characteristic of generally accepted speech. Another speech “created” by the child, which seems so original to us, arose, in essence, only because the child too straightforwardly applies these norms to words, without realizing any exceptions. This is all true. And, however, the child’s enormous speech talent is undeniable for me. It lies not only in the classification of endings, prefixes and suffixes, which he, imperceptibly for himself, produces in his two-year-old mind, but also in the guesswork with which, when creating a new word, he selects the model he needs to imitate. Imitation itself is a creative act here. K.D. Ushinsky also wrote: “You can’t help but be surprised at the instinct with which he [the child. - K.Ch.] noticed an unusually subtle difference between two words, apparently very similar... could it have been if the child, learning his native language, did not acquire a particle of the creative power that gave the people the opportunity to create a language? Look how difficult it is for a foreigner to acquire this instinct of a foreign language; and is it ever possible for a German to live in Russia for twenty years and not even acquire it? the knowledge of language that a three-year-old child has!” * * K.D. Ushinsky, Native Word, Collection. cit., vol. II, M. 1948, pp THE GREATEST WORKER It’s scary to think what a huge variety of grammatical forms pours into a poor child’s head, and the child, as if nothing had happened, navigates all this chaos, constantly classifying the disordered elements of the words he hears into categories and at the same time not even noticing his colossal work. An adult's skull would burst if he had to master in such a short time the multitude of grammatical forms that a two-year-old linguist so easily and fluently masters. And if the work he performs at this time is amazing, even more amazing is the unprecedented ease with which he performs this work.
19 Truly, a child is the greatest mental worker on our planet, who, fortunately, does not even know it. I just said that, according to my observations, by the age of eight, such a sophisticated sense of language becomes dull in a child. But it does not follow from this that his speech development suffers damage in any way. On the contrary: having lost his recent ability to create those unique verbal forms that we talked about, he compensates for the loss a hundredfold with new valuable qualities of his linguistic development. “At this time,” says Professor A.N. Gvozdev, “the child already masters to such an extent the entire complex system of grammar, including the most subtle patterns of syntactic and morphological order operating in the Russian language, as well as the firm and unmistakable use of many isolated singular phenomena that the acquired Russian language becomes truly native to him. And the child receives in it a perfect tool for communication and thinking"*. * A.N. Gvozdev, Issues in the study of children's speech, M. 1961, pp. Of course, this is so. There is no doubt about this. The child's linguistic work is now moving onto new tracks. Using the results obtained in the previous period, the child equips himself for more complex and varied verbal communication. This is obvious to anyone who, for example, studies with sufficient attention the mental skills of schoolchildren who have recently left preschool age. The period of word creation is left behind them, but knowledge of their native language has already been firmly conquered by them. Now, on the threshold of school, they are faced with a new task: to realize and comprehend theoretically what, from the ages of two to five, they instinctively learned in practice. They cope with this most difficult task excellently, which could not have happened if in the eighth year of life their speech talent had died out completely. This is true, but only partly. The fact remains unshakable that the process of mastering speech occurs at the fastest pace
20 is precisely between the ages of two and five. It is during this period that the child’s brain undergoes the most intensive development of generalization of grammatical relations. The mechanism of this development is so expedient and wise that you can’t help but call that little kid whose mind systematizes so many grammatical schemes in such a short time a “genius linguist.” It has long been established that at the age of about a year, a child’s vocabulary is counted in units; by the end of the second year it reaches two hundred and fifty three hundred words, and by the end of the third year it reaches a thousand, that is, immediately, in just one year, the child triples his vocabulary, after which the accumulation of words occurs more slowly*. The same applies to the grammatical forms that the child masters at that time. I once tried to make an approximate count of these shapes. I got at least seventy of them. And all these “generalizers” that form in the child’s brain once and for all, for the rest of his life, appear in greatest numbers between the ages of three and four, when the child’s linguistic talent manifests itself with particular force. * I borrow these figures from the article by A.P. Semenova “Psychological analysis of the understanding of allegories, metaphors and comparisons.” "Scientific notes of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute named after A.I. Herzen", vol. 35, page III. "FOLK ETYMOLOGY" I once happened to overhear several wonderful children's sayings, which clearly showed the method by which a child, imperceptibly for himself, comprehends our "adult" speech. Three-year-old Mura ran up to me and said: “Mom is asking for mazeline!” - What mazeline? It turned out that she was sent to bring Vaseline. But Vaseline is a dead word for her, and on the way from room to room she imperceptibly revived it and made sense of it, since that is what it means to her.
21 creatures of Vaseline, that it is an ointment that can be applied. Another child called lipstick lipstick for the same reason. My friend Kirill, two and a half years old, just as successfully revived and interpreted an incomprehensible word. When he was sick, he kept repeating: “Put cold moress on my head!” He vaguely heard the incomprehensible word “compress” and, thinking that he was repeating it, not at all wanting to innovate, he created a new one, quite consistent with his understanding. He seemed to say to himself: this is a wet rag, why isn’t it wet? After all, the baby does not know the Latin word “compression” (compression), from which “compress” comes. One four-year-old girl, instead of the word “thermometer,” said either heat meter or thermometer, unconsciously translating this word into Russian and at the same time maintaining its former appearance. The other, instead of “loop,” spoke catchily, being in the firm belief that she was repeating what she had heard, and not creating something new. A chain is much more expressive: something with which you cling to a hook. The same understanding of an incomprehensible word was made by the child to whom I showed mercury running on a saucer: “Uncle Chukosha brought us vertutia!” Everyone laughed, but someone said: “Why are you laughing?” After all, it’s spinning. So, vertutia. - Mom, I saw a car with a rising belly. (An excellent interpretation of the word “body”.) Busya (of unknown age to me) aptly called the dentist’s drill a big machine, and it is curious that the children from the orphanage, who had to visit the dentist, gave the drill the same nickname. Here is the same - invisible to children - polemic with our inexpressive (for children's understanding) word, the desire for its highest expressiveness. The charming word kusarik is characteristic in this regard. This is what Lelya called the cracker, which for a child is not remarkable for its dryness, but precisely for the fact that it can be bitten. What kind of cracker is he?
22 He is a bitch. And four-year-old Tanya Ivanova said: “Take me, mom, to the cowherd.” - To the hairdresser? It was not without difficulty that the mother guessed that the hairdresser was the hairdresser who cut her hair. Indeed, why mark in the language such activities of our barbers, which are now unusual for most of them? Wigs went out of use in the 18th century, and “wig makers” are now preserved mainly in theaters and clubs, while the rest have turned into cowlickers, whose purpose is to trim our curls. In most cases, children only strive to copy their elders as accurately as possible. But, trying to reproduce our “adult” speech in all accuracy, they unconsciously correct it, and, I repeat, the virtuosity with which, changing only the sound in a word they hear, they force this word to obey their logic, their sense of things, is amazing. - Mom’s heart hurt, and she drank Bolerian. In a word, if a child does not notice the direct correspondence between the function of an object and its name, he corrects the name, emphasizing in this word the only function of the object that for the time being he managed to discern. Thus, we are convinced again and again that the development of a child’s speech is a unity of imitation and creativity. As soon as two-year-old Taraska learned the word “hammer,” he made a mallet out of it. I touched only one “letter” in it, and as a result the whole word broke away from its former root and, as if nothing had happened, began to grow on another. What is a hammer for a child? Random combination of sounds. The child unconsciously demands that the sound has meaning, that the word has a living, tangible image; and if this is not the case, the child himself will give the unknown word the desired image and meaning. Its fan is a vertilator. A web is a spider's web.
23 Spring - mug. A policeman is a street policeman. A gimlet is a hole maker. An excavator is a sand excavator (because it scoops out sand). The recipe is a trailer (because it is attached to a medicine bottle). Everywhere there is the same method of comprehending the words heard by unintentionally substituting a minimum number of sounds. Having heard two verses from "Moidodyr": And now the brushes, brushes Crackled like rattles... my three-year-old daughter, who had never heard the word "ratchet", tried to comprehend it with the help of such a transformation: And now the brushes, brushes Crackled like three aunts. Four-year-old Natasha acted even funnier in a similar case. She heard a neighbor's song: Whether you're a matchmaker or not, I still love you... and she sang it the next day to her doll: Whether you're with cotton wool or without cotton wool, I still love you. COMPREHENSION OF SPEECH WITH NONSENSE It happens that the pursuit of meaning leads a child to pure nonsense. Having heard, for example, a song that began with the words: King of the trembling creation, the child reproduced it like this: King, trembling from the jam. This wild phrase was much more meaningful for the child than the one he heard from adults. In one Persian fairy tale, the princess says to the groom: “Lord of my soul.” Three-year-old Ira heard this tale and retold the princess’s exclamation in her own way:
24 - Plasticine of my soul. The mother is combing four-year-old Luda's hair and accidentally tugs at her hair with a comb. Luda whines, ready to cry. The mother says in consolation: “Be patient, Cossack, you will become an ataman!” In the evening, Lyuda plays with the doll, combs her hair and repeats: “Be patient, goat, otherwise you’ll be a mother!” The same attraction to meaning, to visual words and things, was reflected in the magnificent nonsense that one four-year-old Muscovite recently created. Hearing the poems from the adults: Dashing horse, you carried the master out of the battle like an arrow, But the evil Ossetian bullet caught up with You in the darkness... he immediately memorized them, and the last couplet was formatted like this: But the evil sturgeon fish caught up with You in the darkness . And here, again, this nonsense is much more saturated with meaning for him than the completely meaningful combination of words that was given to him by adults. Four-year-old Galochka, having heard the famous song “My beloved city is melting in a blue haze,” reproduced these words in this way: “My favorite city, the blue smoke of China.” And she called Don Quixote “Thin Cat”. When my older sister was memorizing Pushkin’s poem out loud: How the prophetic Oleg is now packing, I, a five-year-old boy, understood this line in my own way: How Oleg is now packing his things. Batyushkov has this line: Make noise, make noise with the waves, Rona! The famous linguist D.N. Ushakov said at a lecture to students that in childhood he perceived this line as follows:
25 Noise, noise, Miron’s wave!* * D.N. Ushakov, A Brief Introduction to the Science of Language, M. 1925, pp. No matter how wrong a child is in interpreting some words and concepts, this cannot discredit the most expedient method by which he comes to a final understanding of our speech. Exactly the same verbal creativity can be observed in the speech of the people. In linguistics, this false interpretation of words is called “folk (or semi-folk) etymology.” Nikolaev soldiers adapted the foreign word “gospital” to their understanding, giving it the malicious nickname “voshpital” (that is, a lice nursery). The popular name for the plaster is klastyr, the boulevard is gulvar. A polyclinic is popularly called a semi-clinic, in contrast to a clinic, that is, a hospital. The German word Profoss (this was once the name of a military police officer who performed the duties of a warden and executioner) has changed in common parlance into a scoundrel*. * V.V. Vinogradov, Essays on the history of the Russian literary language of the 17th-19th centuries, M. 1938, p. 52. Let us remember Nekrasov’s: - How not to understand! Rogues hang around with the bears a lot of them even now. Those ancient Egyptian sphinxes that stand over the Neva in Leningrad in front of the Academy of Arts were colloquially called sphinks (that is, simply pigs), as noted in one of Nekrasov’s early poems: I walked past the sphinxes *. * N.A. Nekrasov, Full. collection Op. and letters, vol. I, M. 1948, p. 365.
26 And in one of Dahl’s stories: “...about an embankment on which two huge pigs lie”*. * V.I.Dal, Stories. Stories. Essays. Fairy tales, M.-L. 1961, pp. 56 and 448. The inhabitants have always treated this folk art with contempt and disdain. In Dostoevsky’s “Bad Anecdote,” two officials express this disdain as follows: “The Russian people, out of stupidity, sometimes change letters, sir, and sometimes pronounce it in their own way, sir. For example, they say disabled, but they should say disabled, sir. - Well, yes... disabled, he-he-he! But, of course, this is what every living and healthy people does. The Russian person, the master of his language, will not tolerate the sound of inanimate words in this language, the root of which he cannot understand and feel. He needs the sound itself to have meaning. He subordinates each word to his own logic, and, striving to understand the word, he thereby Russifies it. The greatest expert and lover of folk etymology was, as you know, Leskov. His heroes kept saying: klevoton (feuilleton), melkoskop (microscope), dolbitsa (multiplication table), etc. Their barometer turned into a storm watcher, their desabilia into bezbilie. They derived the French word “morality” from the Russian word “to defile”: “They let the defilement on the girl, - they sullied her good name.” Compare with Ostrovsky in “Late Love”: “To get involved with a woman, as I understand it, is dirty.” And from Gleb Uspensky in “Budka”: “He’s giving us the creeps.” In Kuprin's "The Duel", the soldiers turned the French surname Duvernois into the Russian Dovergne-Noga. It is known that the foreigner Kos van Dalen became Kozodavlev in Russia. In "War and Peace" the Cossacks changed the name of the young Frenchman Vincent into Vesenny, and the men and soldiers into Visenya. In both versions this
27 the reminder of spring coincided with the idea of youth: - Hey, Visenya! Visenya! Spring! The child does the same, turning a fan into a twirler, a shovel into a digger, and a hammer into a hammer. Through a minimal change in the sound structure of an incomprehensible word, the child, imperceptibly for himself, comprehends it, and in this new edition the most essential (from the child’s point of view) qualities of the object that is designated by this word are brought forward. So, Adik Pavlov called Serafima Mikhailovna Sakharina Mikhailovna, and little Ira, noticing that cufflinks are the exclusive property of dad, renamed them paponki: - Daddy, show me your daddies! Saliva, for example, in children turns into spit: - Because we do not spit, but spit. They call the tongue lizyk, and they tell me about Nina Gulyaeva, who reached the age of seven, and still could not come to terms with our adult “distortion” of the form of lyzyk: - How can that be! Lick - and suddenly it’s not a lick, but a tongue! In Ukrainian, the language of oxen and cows is called lizen. A child cannot even imagine that adults would create a word whose sound does not describe the functions of the object designated by this word. The poplar should stomp, the eagle should scream, and the rainbow should delight: - Why is it a rainbow? Because she's happy, right? Until now, to my knowledge, these language processes have only been observed by researchers in adults. But it turns out that they do not occupy the last place in the speech of children, because there is no significant difference between a vertilator and a small scope, between a vertutia and a sphinc. IV. EFFECTIVENESS And notice how effective these childish words are. In most cases, they depict objects exclusively from the side of their action. A planer is something you use to plan, a Kopatka is something you use to dig with.
28 A hammer is something that is used to beat. A chain is something that is used to cling to. Vertutia is something that spins. Lizyk is something that licks. Mazelin is something you smear with. Kusarik is something that bites. There is not a single word here that is not associated with movement, with dynamics. Everywhere the effective function of the object is put in first place. A three-year-old child is sure that almost every thing exists for one or another precisely defined action and cannot be understood outside of this action. In a noun, the child feels the hidden energy of the verb. Just look at the intense attention with which a one-year-old baby looks at cars, motorcycles, trams, watching their continuous movement. Almost all the corrections a child makes to our “adult” speech consist precisely in the fact that he puts dynamics in the first place. In the “folk etymology” of adults, this does not happen so often, because adults notice other features in words. Russian peasants made krylos (from the word “wing”) from the choir, they turned Hamilton into Khomutov, that is, they also operated on nouns, and the “folk etymology” of children almost always reveals a verb in the name of objects. But, of course, children also sometimes happen to put forward in the name of an object not a verb, but a noun or - very rarely - an adjective. They tell me about five-year-old Gavryusha, who called botany tsvetnik (his father was the director of the botanical garden), and cheesecake - tvorushka (from the word "cottage cheese"); and I know Musya, who called naphthalene muffthalene, because she was sure that mothballs existed specifically for her mother’s muff. However, there are not many such word formations. Most children's words included in the area of "folk etymology" are associated with verbal
29 shapes. Children's attraction to verbs is so great that they literally lack the verbs that exist in the “adult” language. You have to create your own. There seems to be no noun that a child would not turn into a verb: - The clock is ticking. - The whole tree is lit up! The whole tree is lit up! Three-year-old Nina's brother plays the balalaika. Nina frowns painfully: “Don’t talk, please!” The child creates dozens of such verbs - much more often than we do. Having caught his hand in the door, the child shouts: “Ay, I closed my hand!” And even though the parents are offended by this bold production of the verb, the child considers it completely normal. - Shell the egg for me. - Grind this clove. - The paper came off. - I tickled my caramel! - Wow, how they clap their hands! - Oh, nettles have given me nettles! - I got dirty. - I'm already getting drunk. And even: - We drank coffee. Sometimes even an adverb is verbated. - Expand!.. Expand! - a four-year-old girl shouted to her guests, demanding that they make way. Even the word “yet” turns into a verb: - Push me on the swing, but I won’t get off, but will still rock and rock*.
30 * By the way, I note that the word “tickle” in its structure fully corresponds to the “adult” verb “encore”, derived from the Latin “encore” (bis). Even the interjection hello can become a verb: - Dad is screaming on the phone. Seryozha clung to his mother, she hugged him. - I'm all pissed off! - he boasts. This leads to an economy of speech. Instead of brushing off annoying flies, Arkashka prefers to brush it off: - I sit and brush it away. I sit and sigh. There are no words that a child would not turn into verbs: - Let's go to rest with dad and mom. Even his muff takes on a verbal form: “Oh, mom, why did you muff me like that?” In a word, at every step it turns out that our verbs are not enough for children. They need more than we can give them, although we can give a lot in general, since our language is extremely rich in verbs derived from nouns. From the word gypsy, Russian people derived the verb gypsy, from the word Kuzma - to undercut, from the word Yegor - to burn, from the word devil - to swear, to become sick of. And here are other similar verbs that come from nouns: to be dumbfounded - from the word pillar, to monkey - from the word monkey, to rob - from the word robber, to land - from the word earth, to lunar - from the word moon. And from adjectives: to grow rich - from the word rich, to become prettier - from the word good. And from interjections: giggle, crow, meow*. * Wed. V.V. Vinogradov, Russian language (chapter "Verbal system
31 word formations"), M.-L. 1947, pp. So here too the child acts in full accordance with the original norms of his native language. The most daring and bizarre of the child’s new formations, in this case, do not go beyond the framework of national linguistic traditions. It is remarkable that children's verbs like otskolupat, namakaronitsya are created according to the same scheme in which our great writers, artists of words, tried in their time to create new forms of verbs Derzhavin composed the verb to ruchit (from the word “stream”), Zhukovsky to obezmyat, Koltsov to pilate, Gogol. - to become commonplace, to become more crowded, to be indifferent, Goncharov - to be Byronic, Shchedrin - to be heartbreaking, to be ridiculous. Sometimes such neologisms were created to express irony, when the author himself was aware of all the deliberate absurdity of the composed word. Such, for example, is the couplet that was attributed to Pushkin: I am in love, I am. fascinated, In a word, I am fascinated. These are almost all the new verbs that Dostoevsky introduced into his speech: afonit (from the name of Mount Athos), fonzonit (from the surname Fonzon), orange, lemon, ambitious, white-handed, detailed, etc. Everything - except for two: to play a gentleman and to shy away. These are the only two that remain in our language. Most of them flashed by and were forgotten, like, for example, Herzen’s verb to magdalinize. - The young man is becoming Magdalene. (On behalf of the repentant sinner Magdalene.) These are the same from Chekhov: to cockroach, to be etiquette, to get too dogged, to play tricks, to get wet, to get wet. In Kony’s “Memoirs”: “He was drunk - it’s our patronal feast, so he feasted.”
32 Sensing these laws of language, the four-year-old linguist says: “The hen has hatched!” All these are impromptu words, fly-by-night words that have no claim to be introduced into the language, to enter into general speech use, or to become universally suitable. Created for this occasion, they were most often cultivated in home conversations, in private letters, in comic poems and died immediately after their birth. There have been periods in the history of language when this process of forming verbs (mainly from nouns) seemed to calm down for many years, but then suddenly became unusually active and acquired a very wide scope. This happened, for example, during the period when Mayakovsky was working, generously introducing into his poetry such words as deprive, million, whirl, bore, july, mandalin, frend, sad... Of course, this was not his personal arbitrariness: such literary innovations were a reflection of what happened in everyday life, because in that era colloquial speech was replete with such words: - Oh, how I got into trouble! - He falsified the paper... - Shame on you for bagging! - The young man has become a commissioner! It is not for nothing that, shortly before this, Khlebnikov used such words as Chinggis Khan, Mozart, and Igor Severyanin introduced into his poems such verbs derived from nouns as conjure, okoloshit, proborot, dress up, become ethereal, tune in, etc., and so on, and etc. In tuxedos, chicly disheveled, high-society boobies swayed in the prince's drawing room, their faces dumbfounded. Readers then readily accepted such verbal innovations, because these innovations were in the spirit of the era: in everyday, colloquial speech, the same process of intensive verbalization of names took place then
33 nouns. Then the following song was created: She drank tea, ate bagels, made samovar. Then (around the mid-30s) this process died out, although even now my friend heard with his own ears on the train: “The conductor is vacuuming.” There is no such periodization in a child’s speech. Each new generation of children always creates a great variety of similar verbs again and again, without noticing their linguistic innovation. The activity of verbalizing nouns in them decreases only as they leave preschool age. How closely the verb forms they create are related to those forms that were created and are being created by the people can be seen, for example, from the word dispossession. I first heard this word half a century ago - even earlier. Guy, the grandson of I.E. Repin, tightly clenched his fist and said: “Come on, break my fingers!” In those days, such a word did not yet exist among the people, since dispossession (in the current meaning of this term) had not yet become a historical fact. In order for a child to be able to construct in advance - so to speak, in advance - the very word that was created by the masses twenty years later, it is necessary that he be fluent in the same techniques for constructing words that the people have developed over thousands of years. V. CONQUERING GRAMMAR FOR-YOU-ON-RAS-OB - Look how it rained! - Oh, what a bubble I made! - Let me unpack the bags. - You have a poker on you, poke it. - The dog opened its mouth, and then gaped. - Oh, how snowy the street is! - You see how well I have adjusted myself.
34 - Wait, I haven’t woken up yet. - Mom is angry, but quickly gets better. - The whole bridge was shaking. -What are you staring at so much? In these verbs, I especially admire the prefixes, which masterfully give each word exactly the shade of expression that the people give them. They show how wonderfully a child feels the purpose of these little ones for, you, at, on, races, about, etc. Look at it, bubble it up, unpack it, close it up, snuff it up, get comfortable, get snowed in - here a child will never go wrong. Already at two and a half years old, he has an excellent command of all prefixes. When Yurik B. didn’t like that his mother salted an egg at dinner, he shouted: “Salt it back!” And another boy, who had been poring over some paper product for a long time, suddenly said, triumphantly: “I worked, I worked, and I worked hard for the steamboat!” There are a lot of such examples: - I just can’t figure out what is drawn in this picture. - I remembered, I remembered, and then I remembered. - Mom, get my hand dirty! - Got infected, and then reflected (recovered). - Dad, it’s already clearing up! - the five-year-old daughter shouted to her father when the guests who came to her mother began to disperse little by little. It's clearing up! With this one bold, suddenly created verb, she revealed such a brilliant flair for language that Gogol could have envied. All these prefixes give Russian speech so many rich shades. Its wonderful expressiveness largely depends on them. Light up, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke break - this variety of prefixes conceals a variety of meanings.
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It was a long time ago. I lived in a dacha near the sea. In front of my windows, on the hot sand of Sestroretsk beach, a countless number of small children were swarming under the supervision of grandmothers and nannies. I had just recovered from a long illness and, according to doctor's orders, was doomed to idleness. Wandering around the wonderful beach from morning to evening, I soon became close to all the kids, and they also got used to me. We built impregnable fortresses out of sand and launched paper fleets.
Around me, without stopping for a moment, I could hear the sonorous speech of children. At first it simply amused me, but little by little I came to the conviction that, beautiful in itself, it has high scientific value, since by studying it we thereby reveal the bizarre patterns of children's thinking, the child's psyche.
Forty years have passed since then - even more. During this entire long period, I was never separated from my children: first I had the opportunity to observe the spiritual development of my own young children, and then of my grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.
And yet I could not write this book if not for the friendly help of readers. For many years now, from week to week, from month to month, postmen have brought me many letters, where grandmothers, mothers, grandfathers, fathers of children report their observations of them, their actions, games, conversations, songs. They are written by housewives, pensioners, athletes, workers, disabled people, military personnel, actors, diplomats, artists, engineers, livestock specialists, kindergarten teachers - and you can imagine with what interest (and with what gratitude!) I read these precious letters . If I could make public all the material I have, collected over forty-odd years, it would amount to at least ten to twelve volumes.
Like any folklorist-collector interested in the scientific reliability of his material, I consider myself obliged to document every child’s word, every child’s phrase communicated to me in these letters, and I very much regret that lack of space does not allow me to name all my friends by name. books sharing with me their observations, thoughts, information.
But I carefully preserve all the letters, so that almost every speech of the children that I give on these pages has a passport...
The broad masses of readers reacted to my book with warm sympathy. Suffice it to say that in 1958 alone the book was published in two different publishing houses in the amount of 400,000 copies and within a few days it was all sold out: so greedily do Soviet people strive to study and comprehend the still little-studied psyche of their Igors, Volodya, Natasha and Svetlana.
This puts a lot of responsibility on me. Therefore, for each new edition of the book, I re-read the entire text again and again, correcting and adding to it each time.
Chapter first
CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE
But all the beautiful miracles on earth
The first word of a child is more wonderful.
Peter Semynin
I. LISTEN
When Lyalya was two and a half years old, some stranger asked her jokingly:
Would you like to be my daughter?
She answered him majestically:
I'm my mother's and more of a warrior.
One day we were walking along the seaside with her, and for the first time in her life she saw a steamer in the distance.
Mom, mom, the locomotive is swimming! - she screamed passionately.
Sweet baby talk! I will never tire of enjoying her. I listened with great pleasure to the following dialogue:
Dad himself told me...
My mother herself told me...
But dad is the same as mom... Dad is much the same.
It was nice to learn from the children that the bald man's head was barefoot, that the mints made a draft in his mouth, that the woman janitor was a mongrel.
And it was fun for me to hear how a three-year-old sleeping girl suddenly muttered in her sleep:
Mom, cover my back leg!
And I was very amused by such, for example, children's sayings and exclamations, overheard at different times:
Dad, look how your pants are frowning!
Grandmother! You are my best lover!
Oh, mom, what fat-bellied legs you have!
Our grandmother slaughtered geese in the winter so that they would not catch a cold.
Mom, how I feel sorry for the horses that they can’t pick their noses.
Grandma, are you going to die?
Will they bury you in a hole?
They'll bury it.
Deep?
Deep.
That's when I'll turn your sewing machine!
Georges cut the earthworm in half with a spatula.
Why did you do that?
The worm was bored. Now there are two of them. They felt more fun.
The old woman told her four-year-old grandson about the suffering of Jesus Christ: they nailed the little god to the cross, and, despite the nails, the little god was resurrected and ascended.
It was necessary to use cogs! - the grandson sympathized.
The grandfather admitted that he does not know how to swaddle newborns.
How did you swaddle your grandmother when she was little?
A girl of four and a half years old was read “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.”
“Here is a stupid old man,” she was indignant, “begging the fish for a new house, then a new trough. I would immediately ask for a new old woman.
How dare you fight?
Oh, mommy, what should I do if a fight just keeps coming out of me!
Nanny, what kind of heaven is this?
And this is where the apples, pears, oranges, cherries are...
I understand: heaven is compote.
Aunt, would you eat a dead cat for a thousand rubles?
The woman washes her face with soap!
A woman doesn't have a muzzle, a woman has a face.
I went and looked again.
No, still a little snout.
Mom, I'm such a slut!
And she showed the rope that she managed to untangle.
Once upon a time there was a shepherd, his name was Makar. And he had a daughter, Macarona.
Oh, mom, what a lovely thing!
Well, Nyura, that’s enough, don’t cry!
I’m not crying to you, but to Aunt Sima.
Will you water the cone too?
To make the little ones grow?
We, adults, assign the ending “yata” only to living creatures: lambs, piglets, etc. But since for children even nonliving things are alive, they use this ending more often than we do, and you can always hear from them:
Dad, look how cute these cars are!
Seryozha, two and a half years old, first saw a fire spitting with bright sparks, clapped his hands and shouted:
Fire and Ogonyata! Fire and Ogonyata!
I saw a painting of the Madonna:
Madonna and Child.
Oh, grandpa, the pussy sneezed!
Why didn’t you, Lenochka, tell the cat: good luck?
And who will thank me?
Philosophy of art:
I sing so much that the room becomes big and beautiful...
It's hot in Anapa, like sitting on a primus stove.
You see: I’m all barefoot!
I'll get up so early that it will be too late.
Don't put out the fire, otherwise you won't be able to sleep!
Listen, dad, a fantasy story: once upon a time there was a horse, its name was Kicking... But then it was renamed because it didn’t kick anyone...
He draws flowers, and there are three dozen dots around.
What is this? Flies?
No, the smell is from flowers.
What did you scratch yourself on?
About the cat.
At night he wakes up a tired mother:
Mom, mom, if a kind lion meets a giraffe he knows, will he eat her or not?
What a terrible sponge you are! So that it gets up now!
Lyalechka was sprayed with perfume:
I'm so smelly
I'm all so stuffy.
And spins around the mirror.
I, mommy, am beautiful!
When will you play with me? Dad got home from work and got to the book now. And my mother is such a lady! - I started washing right away.
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