Razgovornaja rečˈ ‘colloquial speech’ is the term used in Russian linguistics to refer to spontaneous, everyday speech of native speakers of Russian with higher education who are capable of producing texts in the normative kodificirovannyj literaturnyj jazyk (KLJa) ‘codified standard language’ in formal settings. Razgovornaja rečˈ does not fully correspond to ‘vernacular’ since it does not cover prostorečie ‘simple speech’, differing both from it and from the standardized formal language. In this way, native Russian speakers can be divided between tho…