О крокодилах в России. Очерки из истории заимствований и экзотизмов

Novelties in culture bring with them new words to name them which not only extend our lexicon but also change our ideas about the society we live in and about ourselves. This book is about relations between values of traditions on one hand, and linguistic and cultural "imports" on the other. The author analyzes these relations in the old and recent past of Russian literacy and explains why the Russian tsar propagated Latin in Russia, nobility discussed "narodnost" as adoption of foreign culture, academician Boris Rybakov sought and found crocodiles in Slavic paganism, etc. This collection analyzes the history of many adopted foreign words and exotic concepts in Russian. Word index.