Less than 400 Russians who took part in the international grammar test Total Dictation succeeded in getting top marks for their dictation. The worldwide dictation event was held on April 6. The number of participants more than doubled from the previous year and exceeded 32,000 people in 180 cities and 35 countries. More than 2500 people tested their Russian language skills at testing sites outside Russia and this year the Russkiy Mir Foundation was a partner of the event.
According to the organizers, the most commonly misspelled words were communism (kommunizm – many forgot the second “m”), confidant (napersnik – many mistakenly added a “t”, excessive (chereschur – many people wrote a “z” instead of an “s”) and existential (ekzistentsialniy). Russians also often misspelled such phrases as “Ancient Greece” and “heavenly pastures”.
According to Natalya Koshkareva, chairman of the expert commission of the project, the mistakes indicate that many of the test takers, largely the young ones, have lost certain important cultural and historical strata.
This year the text for the dictation was composed by prominent Russian-Israeli writer Dina Rubina, the winner of six literary prizes, a member of the USSR Union of Writers and the international PEN-club, who emigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union but, nonetheless, enjoys highly popularity among Russian readers. She chose the topic “Whether the Internet is good or evil.”
“For me, the Internet is the third watershed in human history, after the emergence of language and the invention of book printing,” she wrote. “Eventually, a new humankind hierarchy, a new humane civilization is to spring into existence. But so far… so far, the Internet is dominated by the downside of this cosmic breakthrough invention, its disruptiveness. No wonder the Worldwide Web is a tool in the hands of terrorists, hackers and ultras of all shades.”
Russkiy Mir Foundation Information Service
