As noted by experts whose duties include tracking the penetration of foreign words into the Russian language and maintaining its purity, the use of foreign words has noticeably intensified recently. Indeed, even a person ignorant of these issues is obvious that the speech of our people is increasingly beginning to resemble English, and the older generation sometimes ceases to understand Russian speech saturated with Americanisms.
Judg about the positive or negative impact of borrowed words on the Russian language, let's leave it to specialists involved in protecting the purity of the Russian language, and we ourselves will try to figure out where the word "a priori" entered our lexicon. And how not to make a mistake, using it everyday in your native speech.
According to the academic dictionary, this is a philosophical term originating from the Latin word "a priori", which literally means "from the antecedent" (knowledge acquired by consciousness without any experience). Without going into complex philosophical terminology, let's try to understand what "a priori" means in the language of modern people.
How and when is it appropriate to use this term? To date, there are no special rules governing the appropriateness of the usethe word "a priori". What does it mean, you can apply it when the events or facts described by you do not require any evidence, as they are the truth that does not need to be proven or unprovable. So, you can often hear how, when proving something in conversations, people say that everyone knows it a priori.
Therefore, you can use this word in any cases where it is important to emphasize the absence of evidence, facts or the possibility of preliminary clarification. For example: "In our area, every stranger is a priori considered a rogue and a scoundrel." Or: "How is it possible - a priori to record people as scammers!"
Let's look at a few more examples to help you better understand what "a priori" means.
“Suddenly, people who had never visited it before, who a priori believed that listening to Mozart, Vivaldi and Chopin were very boring, became frequent at the Philharmonic.” (Before the experience, people thought that classical music was boring, that is, they accepted the truth regardless of the experience, without having it).
"You can not a priori consider a person a criminal." (Without evidence and without relying on facts, one person cannot call another a criminal.)
Knowing what "a priori" means, using this word correctly, the speaker always puts himself in a favorable light in the eyes of his interlocutors, emphasizing his excellent erudition and broad outlook. But do not forget that there are people who are very annoyed when others make speech errors related to the wrongunderstanding of this or that word.
Therefore, a person who does not fully understand what "a priori" means, but uses this word everywhere, without a clue about what meaning it should be used in, risks not only being accused of illiteracy and being branded as an uneducated person, but and incur the just wrath of people who stand up for the purity of the Russian language and the absence of obvious errors, both in spoken and written speech.
