Church Slavonic language

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The Church Slavonic language (ru: церковнославя́нский язы́к, tserkovnoslavyánskiy yazík) is the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox Church. 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. However, it was never spoken except by a small educated élite. During the 18th century it was gradually replaced by the Russian language and retained its use only in 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 Russian. However, as both languages are Slavic, the borrowings are usually thought of as variants of Russian words, e.g. (the first word in each pair is Russian, the second Church Slavonic): золото / злато (zoloto / zlato), город / град (gorod / grad), горячий / горящий (goryačiy / goryaščiy), рожать / рождать (rožat / roždat).

The Church Slavonic language is written with Cyrillic alphabet while using a lot of diacritical signs. Currently the computer support for this language is very poor, so people have to use some ad hoc solutions.

Pronunciation

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 [o] and [je] respectively (like in Northern Russian dialects), whereas in standard Russian pronunciation they then become [a] and [i].

• The letter е [je] is never read as ё [jo] (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 "g" is read as voiced fricative velar sound [ɣ] (just as in Southern Russian dialects), not as occlusive [ɡ] in standard Russian pronunciation. When unvoiced, it becomes [x]; this has influenced the Russian pronunciation of Бог (Bog) as Бох (Bokh).

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

External links

• Bible in Church Slavonic language (PDF)
• Problems of computer implementation (in Russian)

bg:Старобългарски език cs:Staroslověnština de:Altkirchenslawisch ja:古代教会スラヴ語 nl:Oud-Kerkslavisch pl:Język staro-cerkiewno-słowiański ru:Церковнославянский язык