Criticism and bibliography. Reviews

Elista: Kalmyk State University Press, 2003, 536 p., ill.

For the first time in Russia, a multilingual phrasebook and dictionary designed for small peoples, in particular for the Kalmyks, has been published.

The Kalmyks are a people of Mongolian origin who have existed as part of the Mongol tribes for more than a millennium. The ancestors of the Kalmyks were the Oirats, who are mentioned in the "Hidden Legend of the Mongols" (XIII century), in "Altan Tobchi" (XVII-XVIII centuries) and in other Mongolian literary sources.

Currently, the majority of Kalmyks live in Russia, in the Republic of Kalmykia (146 thousand), in Western Mongolia (150 thousand), in Kyrgyzstan, in the area of Lake Baikal. Issyk-Kul (approx. 5 thousand), in China, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (160 thousand). These are the largest ethnic formations of the Kalmyks. Kalmyks live in small groups in Germany, France, and the Czech Republic. They settled in small diasporas in the United States, Australia, and Canada.

Kalmyks have their own colorful national culture. So, in the XVII century. Zaya-Pandita Namkhayzhamtso, a scholar and educator of the Oirat-Kalmyk people, an outstanding translator who introduced Buddhism to the Kalmyk soil, created the Kalmyk script "Clear Writing"on the basis of the Mongolian and Manchu alphabets. In the XIX century, the world was discovered remarkable Kalmyk epic storytellers, creators of the heroic epic "Jangar", Buddhist poets. Among them, we can mention the rhapsod Eelyan Ovl, a singer of the Kalmyk heroic epic "Dzhangar", whose work is now recognized as the pinnacle of folk literature, or, for example, the satirical poet B. Bovaev. The Soviet era brought up a whole galaxy of representatives of Kalmyk culture and science. I would especially like to mention the outstanding Soviet poet D. N. Kugultinov, whose work was included in the golden fund of not only Kalmyk, but also all-Russian culture. Thus, the Kalmyk language has created a rich and original fiction, national theater and art.

In recent years, international relations of the Republic of Kalmykia have expanded both at the government level and at the level of contacts between enterprises, educational institutions, and private communities. Therefore, the role of phrasebooks and dictionaries increases significantly. English

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and Russian, as macro-mediating languages, as a means of international communication, is intensively used by all peoples, including the Kalmyks.

The reviewed phrasebook consists of three parts: 37 thematic sections, a short trilingual dictionary and texts of Kalmyk folk legends and legends. The linguistic material consists of phrases that are typical of colloquial speech used in everyday communication.

The text material is given in three columns: in English, Kalmyk and Russian. The proposed phrases can be used in a variety of situations, which allows the reader to see, compare and pronounce words and expressions simultaneously in three languages. The phrasebook includes the most common words of modern Kalmyk, English and Russian languages. Although these languages are diverse, the lexical fields of polysemantics do not fully reflect the situational dialogues of speakers, A. N. Bitkeeva managed to align the phrasal meanings of words and word forms, to bring them into a single stream of speech.

The section of folk legends and legends reflects the historical dramas of the past of the Oirat Kalmyks. Some short oral stories are etiological fairy tales, not devoid of humor, expressing age-old folk wisdom. The book is provided with expressive drawings, screensavers, and a Kalmyk folk calendar.

This reference publication aims to integrate the Oirat Kalmyks living in the Old and New World, who use English as a means of communication, Russian in Russia and the CIS, and Kalmyk in Mongolia and China, into a single globalizing world. The compilation of such dictionaries for native speakers of small peoples ' cultures using macro-mediating languages is not only instructive, but also relevant in the future.

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