The key facts
- Elena Yampolskaya believes that 'vozdukhan' and 'prime-era' will not become part of the literary norm
- Russia has 12 normative dictionaries defined by law; there are no dictionaries of jargon or slang among them
- 'Vozdukhan' is one of the contenders for word of 2026 according to the Gramota.ru portal
Slang will remain outside the norm
Elena Yampolskaya, adviser to the President of Russia and chair of the Council on the Implementation of State Policy in the Field of Support for the Russian Language and the Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation, said that, in her view, popular youth expressions, including 'vozdukhan' and 'prime-era', will not become an accepted norm of the literary language. This was reported by Life.ru citing a briefing whose materials were provided by RIA Novosti.
What Yampolskaya said
According to Yampolskaya, long usage of a word and its popularity do not in themselves mean that it should be included in normative dictionaries. At the same time, in everyday communication people may use such expressions if they consider them appropriate. 'I am confident that these words will not become an accepted norm or part of the Russian literary language, the modern one. And in colloquial speech, in interpersonal communication, they can of course be used. That is not a problem,' she said.
How the normative framework is structured
Answering a question about the criteria for including new words in dictionaries, Yampolskaya recalled that Russia has 12 normative dictionaries defined by law, and there are no dictionaries of jargon or slang among them. Therefore, even the wide spread of expressions such as 'dofaminovy', 'nishevy', 'trevolzhnik', 'iishka', 'AI agent' and 'generit' does not guarantee them a place in the literary norm. The words 'prime-era' and 'vozdukhan' were among the contenders for word of the year 2026 according to the Gramota.ru portal; Yampolskaya admitted that 'vozdukhan' is personally closer to her than the other options, but, in her words, she 'doubts that any of them could make it into the dictionaries of the normative language'.
What 'vozdukhan' means
Earlier, Life.ru wrote that young people increasingly use the word 'vozdukhan' to describe people who like to boast and make empty promises. Doctor of Philological Sciences Natalia Kozlovskaya explained that the expression reflects the habit of creating an image of a successful person around oneself without backing words with real actions. In her view, the word has prospects of entering dictionaries of youth slang, but it is unlikely to take hold in academic Russian.
