Spelling and pronunciation of words with a foreign part ex-

УДК 811.161.2,06,373
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/2520-6397.2021.2.02

Dyka L. V., PhD., Associate Professor,
National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv

Spelling and pronunciation of words with a foreign part ex- (pdf)

The article on the material of online publications considers a new rule of Ukrainian spelling on writing words with the prefixoid ex-. The material of the research showed that the mass media welcomed the introduction of a new rule on writing common names with ex-, as evidenced by a large number of innovations. Neologisms with the ex- component most often appear in the headlines of news items. Their number is constantly increasing. Obviously, the productivity of this type of word-formation comes from the need to save “newspaper space” in order to convey the content of the message as compactly and concisely as possible. The analysis of more than 100 units allowed us to conclude that many innovations do not correspond to the nature of the Ukrainian language, its melodiousness, the structure of phonemic chains, the rules of composition, accentuation, etc. The absence of a hyphen in the new words, which used to be a kind of marker between the prefixoid and the root, leads to the unrecognizability of a word, misreading and, consequently, unwanted homonymy (експрессекретар, експре- саташе). Due to the spelling of common names with ex- without a hyphen, the number of words with the accumulation of consonants and their uncharacteristic for the Ukrainian language combination increased. This makes them difficult to pronounce. From the point of view of the structure of the Ukrainian language, its melodiousness words like ексчленкиня, ексміськголова, екстопменеджер are unacceptable. All this gives grounds to conclude that the rule of writing common names with extogether needs to be revised. Moreover, there are exceptions to this rule, which envisage writing ex- with proper names and abbreviations with a hyphen. Returning to the old norm will uniformize the spelling of all words with ex- and reduce the number of exceptions in spelling.

Keywords: spelling, language of mass media, language practice, prefixoid, neologism.