Revolt of the Yers
Linguist Svetlana Guryanova's Russian-language channel on word origins and the history of Russian: etymology, medieval graffiti, feminine job titles and quizzes.
What it is
"Vosstanie redutsirovannykh", roughly "Revolt of the Reduced Vowels", is a Russian-language Telegram channel run by Svetlana Guryanova, author of a popular book on word origins called "In the Beginning Was Coffee". According to the channel bio, the book made the long list of the Prosvetitel science-writing prize and won a readers' award in 2024. The name is a linguist's joke: the reduced vowels, or yers, were ultra-short sounds in Old Russian whose loss reshaped the language.
Why we picked it
Guryanova writes about language in a way that works for non-specialists. Her series on graffiti scratched into the walls of St Sophia's Cathedral in Novgorod is the best example. There is a little man drawn as a big letter Д in an 11th-century monogram, a self-portrait signed by someone called Mutizhir, where one letter becomes a priest with a triangular beard, and an explanation of why clergy of the time happily wrote on church walls. When someone asked why people "drew so badly back then", she followed up to explain these were scratched, not painted.
There are quizzes too, like one on the Bashkir word "babailyk", which turns out to be a calque of the Russian word for army hazing, built on the Turkic "babai", meaning grandfather. There is a careful breakdown of an old Russian expression that brought her a pile of corrections. Now and then she announces her talks, on feminine job titles or the languages of Russia's peoples, and recommends education projects.
Where to start
- Read the series on the Novgorod graffiti; it is a mini-course in itself.
- Try the "babailyk" quiz before you peek at the answer.
- Look for the breakdown of the expression "moya khudost".
- If you like her style, look up her book.
Who it's for
Anyone who asks "why do we say it like that?". Russian teachers, philology students, fans of medieval Rus and people planning a trip to Veliky Novgorod. It is written in Russian, and the wordplay loses a lot in machine translation.
Quick answers
Who runs it? Svetlana Guryanova, author of a popular-science book on word origins.
Is it about grammar rules? Not really. It is about the history of words and the language, without lecturing.
Are there ads or announcements? Sometimes: mostly her own lectures and education projects.
