Church Slavonic Language Article Index for
Church 		Website Links For
Church Slavonic 		 

Information About

Church Slavonic Language
  CATEGORIES ABOUT CHURCH SLAVONIC LANGUAGE
   
slavic languages
   
SHOPPER'S DELIGHT
 
Shop For:  
Department
Price Minimum:
Price Maximum:
      



The Church Slavonic language ( language of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church , Macedonian Orthodox Church , Russian Orthodox Church , Serbian Orthodox Church and other Slavic Orthodox Churches. Historically, this language is derived from the Old Church Slavonic Language by adapting pronunciation and orthography and replacing some old and obscure words and expressions by their Vernacular counterparts (for example from the Old Russian Language ).

Before the 18th Century , the Church Slavonic language was in wide use as a general Literary Language in Russia . Although it was never spoken ''per se'' outside church services, members of the priesthood, poets, and the educated tended to slip its expressions into their speech. During the 17th and 18th centuries it was gradually replaced by the Russian Language in secular literature and retained its use only in church. Although as late as the 1760's Lomonosov argued that Church Slavonic was the so-called "high style" of Russian, within Russia itself this point of view largely vanished in the course of the nineteenth century. Elements of its style may have survived longest in speech among the Old Believers after the late-seventeenth century schism in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Church Slavonic (in various modifications) was also used as a liturgical and literary language in other Orthodox countries — Belarus , Ukraine , Romania , Serbia , Bulgaria and Macedonia — until it was replaced by national languages (but the liturgical use may continue).

Many words have been borrowed from Church Slavonic into ''), горячий / горящий (''goryačiy / goryaščiy''), рожать / рождать (''rožat / roždat''). Several of the Church-Slavonic words are also the contemporary words in Bulgarian like злато (zlato, gold), град (grad, town) since the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is the oldest Slavic Orthodox Church in the world and many of these words in Russian used in the church were borrowed from Bulgarian.

The Church Slavonic language is written with Cyrillic Alphabet while using a lot of otherwise archaic letters and Diacritical Signs . Currently the computer support for this language is very poor, so people have to use some ''ad hoc'' solutions.


PRONUNCIATION

In most cases, the Church Slavonic language is pronounced like the modern vernaculars; consequently, its pronunciation today differs considerably between the different Slavic nations. In Russia, the Church Slavonic language is pronounced in the same way as Russian , with some exceptions:

  • There is no vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. That is, о and е in unstressed positions are always read as IPA and respectively (like in Northern Russian dialects), whereas in standard Russian pronunciation they then become and .


  • There should be no devoicing of final consonants, although in practice there often is.


  • The letter е is never read as ё (the letter ё does not exist in Church Slavonic writing at all). This is also reflected in borrowings from Church Slavonic into Russian: in the following pairs the first word is Church Slavonic in origin, and the second is purely Russian: небо / нёбо (''nyebo / nyobo''), одежда / одёжа (''odyežda / odyoža''), надежда / надёжный (''nadyežda / nadyožniy'').


  • The letter Γ is read as voiced fricative velar sound (just as in Southern Russian dialects), not as occlusive in standard Russian pronunciation. When unvoiced, it becomes ; this has influenced the Russian pronunciation of Бог (''Bog'') as Бох (''Bokh''). In modern Russian Church Slavonic occlusive {Link without Title} is also used and considered acceptable; however Бог ( Nominative ) is pronounced ''"Bokh"'' as in Russian.


  • The adjective ending -его () is pronounced as written, whereas in Russian it is pronounced –ево ().



GRAMMAR AND STYLE

Although the various recensions of Church Slavonic differ in minor points, they share the tendency of approximating the original Old Church Slavonic Language to the local Slavic speech.

Inflexion tends to follow the ancient patterns with few simplifications. The original six verbal tenses, seven nominal cases, and three numbers are intact.

The fall of the Yer s is fully reflected, more or less to the Russia n pattern, although the terminal ъ continues to be written. The Yus es are often replaced or altered in usage to the sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Russian pattern. The Yat continues to be applied with greater attention to the ancient etymology than it was in nineteenth-century Russian. The letters ksi, psi, omega, ot, and izhitsa are kept, as are the letter-based denotation of numerical values, the use of stress accents, and the abbreviations or ''titla'' for words that would otherwise be capitalised.

The syntax, whether in scripture, liturgy, or church missives, is generally somewhat modernised in an attempt to increase comprehension. In particular, some of the ancient pronouns have been eliminated from the scripture (such as ''етеръ'' "a certain (person, etc)" > ''нкій'' in the Russian recension). Many, but not all, occurrences of the imperfect tense have been replaced with the perfect.

Miscellaneous other modernisations of classical formulae have taken place from time to time. For example, the opening of the Gospel Of John , by tradition the first words written down by Saints Cyril And Methodius , ''искони баше слово'' "In the beginning was the Word", were set down as ''въ начал б слово'' in the Elizabethan Bible of 1755.


EXTERNAL LINKS