“Reference place of the Russian word” as a source of 19th century norms: spelling with double consonants

Considered in historical perspective, the dictionary “Reference place of the Russian word” (1843), the first dictionary of difficulties of the Russian language, reflects the formation of such a direction as the culture of speech in the Russian language since the beginning of the 40s, and outlines the paths of work of normalizers of Russian speech. The aim of the study is to analyze the recommendations for spelling double consonants in borrowed words against the background of real use in texts mainly from the first half of the 19th century, as well as in dictionaries and reference publications published after the “Reference place of the Russian word”. This method allows us to determine the time limits of learning the orthography of a borrowed word, to confirm or refute the vitality of one or another choice of orthographic variant. The set goal also determines the main research methods: descriptive, comparative, lexicographic. The information in the article is presented in three sections: recommendations for spelling with one consonant, coinciding with modern spelling, recommendations for spelling with a double consonant, coinciding with modern spelling, and recommendations that contradict modern spelling. The analysis showed that in the history of this fragment of Russian orthography, two processes are taking place in parallel: the rejection of doubling consonants even in those words where the etymon, i.e. the source word, has doubled consonants, and the opposite: the consolidation of doubled consonants as a result of the influence of orthoepy. The competition of spelling variants is sometimes difficult to explain; several aspects should be taken into account at once: the influence of tradition, the authority of standardizers, and the frequency of usage.