Russian language: Vladimir Dal’s birthday may become the All-Russian holiday – Day of Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

The session of the Society of the Russian Philology Lovers was organized by the Faculty of Journalism of the Lomonosov Moscow State University jointly with the cultural and educational program “Dictionaries of XXI century”. It was dedicated to the birthday anniversary of Vladimir Ivanovich Dal’, the author of the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian Language”.  

The participants of the conference turned to the State Duma of the Russian Federation with the idea to proclaim the birthday of V. I. Dal’, which is celebrated on November, 22 – the All-Russian holiday -  the Day of Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. This public initiative set the tone for the whole conference. All the reports, united by one idea, had a special focus on the vital role of dictionaries as the platform of peoples’ literacy.

The prominent Russian philologists participated in the discussion of the wide range of problems related to the language culture of the contemporary society and the norms of the contemporary literary language. All the speakers emphasized the important role of popularization of the Russian language and increasing the prestige of the correct speech as the primary goals aimed at preservation of the single cultural area of the country.

During the discussion of the dictionaries of the Russian language the participants stressed the necessity of creating the universal dictionary, which would meet the requirements of each person, who turned to it when facing difficulties. It should be the “dictionary of exemplary usage”. It is supposed to unite the types of spelling, grammar, syntactical, explanatory, pronouncing and stylistic dictionaries and prevent the reader from misleading by the variants of language norms. The Institute of the Russian language of the Russian Academy of sciences is working under such kind of dictionary. It will be based on the revised 4-vol. edition of the Small Academy Dictionary. Both dictionaries will be published in the nearest future in the framework of the “Dictionaries of XXI century” program.

According to the speakers it is necessary to distinguish the dictionaries and reference books of the norms of the contemporary literary language, which provide only one variant of the word usage from the dictionaries of the general use variants. The first type is meant for the journalists, editors, proofreaders in the professional sphere, in other words, for those who are the translators of the exemplary Russian language, whereas the second type is aimed at the wide readership.