Barbarism refers to a non-standard word, expression or pronunciation in a language,[1] particularly an error of morphology, while a solecism is an error of syntax.[2] The term is used prescriptively in writing. With no accepted technical meaning in formal linguistics the term is little used by descriptive scientists.
The word barbarism was originally used by the Greeks for foreign terms used in their language. ("Barbarism" is related to the word "barbarian"; the ideophone "bar-bar-bar" was the Ancient Greek equivalent of modern English "blah-blah-blah", meant to sound like gibberish —hence the negative connotation of both barbarian and barbarism).[3] As such, Anglicisms in other languages, or Gallicisms (such as using the verb to assist to mean to be present at, cf. the French assister), Germanisms, Hispanisms, Americanisms and so forth in English can also be construed as examples of barbarisms.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Russian language of noble classes was severely "barbarized" by French language.[4][5] During this period, speaking in French had become not only fashionable, it had become a distinction of a properly groomed person. One may see a prominent example of this in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. While the cream of the high society could afford themselves a genuine French gouvernante (teacher), the provincial "upper class" had problems with this. Still, the desire to show off their education produced what Griboyedov in his Woe from Wit termed "the mixture of the tongues: French with Nizhegorodian" (смешенье языков: французского с нижегородским). The French-Nizhegorodian was often used for comical effect in literature and theatre.
|
|
Wikis
Search
