Russian vocabulary is dying

[ybelov.livejournal.com]

At the beginning of the 20th century dictionaries of Russian and English languages contained approximately same amount of words: 200 thousand. In the 1930s English dictionaries had already 600 thousand, while Russian contracted to 88 thousand…

The Russian vocabulary of the 19th century had 153 words with the root LUB (love); now there are only 41 such words. “Love” has shrunk by three fourths...

This data has been collected by philosopher and linguist Mikhail Epstein.

Complete article (in Russian):
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/075/22.html

Comments

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your input. However, I would like to remind that the working language in this community is English, so that the learners of Russian, on whatever stage of their study they may find themselves, can still comprehend your thoughts.