About Speech

13 hrs. 2 min.

Popular Science

Language Russian

Author Irina Levontina

Narrator Nadezhda Vinokurova

Description

Irina Levontina is a well-known linguist-scientist, leading researcher at the V.V. Vinogradov Institute of the Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences; author of dictionaries and brilliant articles; popularizer of linguistics; specialist in forensic linguistic expertise. Author of the book “Russian with a Dictionary,” which in 2011 became a finalist of the “Просветитель” (“Enlightener”) award; columnist for the newspaper “Троицкий вариант — Наука” (“Troitsky Variant — Science”).

“What Is the Subject?” is a continuation of “Russian with a Dictionary.” This is also a collection of fun and vivid essays about the life of the Russian language—about the changes happening to it right before our eyes. And, as the author says, her book is about “how language is inseparable from life—so much so that sometimes it is almost impossible even to talk about it: you write about words, and readers furiously object about life. Our lives are soaked in language—and we ourselves dissolve in it.”