Chernoe kofe. A.D. Shmelev's angle

[Olga Meerson]

Apart from Dr. Krysin's point of dictionaries merely
fixing in writing the already existing practices,
there are other reasons for changing the norm:
namely, a retrieval of an even earlier practice.
YougUrt, for example, was the original pronunciation
(from Romanian?) when the product appeared on the
international market, not as a local exotic drink (I
first found it in Israel, way before Russia). But
here, I believe, comparatively little is
linguistically at stake. As concerns kofe in neuter,
however, this "new" norm is far from historically
arbitrary. The masculine norm itself is
comparatively new (certainly post-revolutionary but
even later), as originally what was masculine was
kofij, not kofe, and kofij declined like any RUSSIAN
word. As Gogol's Ivan Iakovlevich says,
"Сегодня я, Прасковья
Осиповна, не буду пить кофию
(gen. partitive, normally, "natively" declined), —
сказал Иван Яковлевич, — а
вместо того хочется мне
съесть горячего хлебца с
луком". If anyone can find a counter example,
with the undeclinable masculine for kofe, I would be
very glad. I doubt they would. For neuter, perhaps,
they may, but I am not even sure of that. So the new
norm, in this case, takes into account not only the
new practice but the old, historically prior one, as
well as its logic, which seems to me pretty sound. I
have also heard similar arguments concerning such
practices as "уплочено" etc., from Dr.
Alexei D. Shmelev, who is not merely a respected
linguist but a person raised in a family of
uninterrupted Moscow linguistic practice. Today he
speaks the language of his parents and grandparents
naturally, and it is "our", later developments
currnetly common, that he studies independently of
what is natural to him, not these, "historical" or
seemingly obsolete forms. He assesses these
"parvenu" words with acceptance and a natural
openness and curiosity of a linguist but without the
fascination typical of a linguistic dilettamte of
what is currenly pronounced correct. This detached
fascination is certainly what helps him to be
tolerant and professionally up-to-date (he writes on
phenomena as diverse and modern as Yiddishisms and
various slangs), without ever compromising the
beauty of the somewhat outdated old Moscow Russian
he personally speaks. On the other hand, his appeal
to Moscow (and even Petersburg!) linguists partly
stems from the fact that he too, on his own part,
humbly succumbs to the role of a linguistic
informant to them, when it comes to the older norms
of the Moscow version of Russian! I suspect that is
something he inherited from his father as well. It
takes a lot of humility and self-irony to restrain
yourself from imposing your own linguistic norms on
other periods, be that as we study those that seem
to be outdated or those that are more modern and
"crass" than ours. The latter case is rarer and
particularly charming, as well as professionally
fascinating. I personally don't know anyone
representing it besides A.D.Shmelev. Alexei
Dmitrievich can easily speak today's version or
Russian, as he knows and studies it with excellent
results -- but he doesn't. On behalf of his Moscow
colleagues, I would go so far as even to quote
Pasternak's "ты из семьи таких
основ -- твой смысл как
воздух бескорыстен". Именно
бескорыстен: this is the rarest case of
studying modern, current, normatively "corrupt"
modern Russian, with total disinterest. Hah.
Interestingly, this post did not start as a
panegyric to A.D. Shmelev but became one the moment
I realized how rare and enlightening his attitude to
language norms is!
Olga Meerson