Russian Parliament passes new law protecting Russian language from foreign words

The State Duma (the Russian Parliament) adopted a law to protect the Russian language from the excessive use of borrowings from foreign languages.

According to the new law, normative dictionaries, grammars and reference books will appear to describe the norms of the modern Russian literary language. 

In addition, draft regulations will now have to undergo mandatory linguistic examinations for compliance with the norms of the Russian language.

“It is not allowed to use words and expressions that do not comply with the norms of the modern Russian literary language (including obscene language), with the exception of foreign words that do not have commonly used analogues in the Russian language, the list of which is contained in standard dictionaries,” the text of the bill says. 

The new law was given second and third readings.

The Russian government submitted a draft law to the State Duma on the protection of the Russian language from the excessive use of foreign words on October 26, 2022. In September, it became known that 151 new words were added to the spelling dictionary of the Vinogradov Institute of the Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, including “shawarma” and “reshala”. In addition, the list of new words includes such entries as "antivaxer," "boomers", "pogooglit" and "pokerface."