Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic (also called Old Church Slavic or Old Bulgarian, incorrectly Old Slavic ) is the first literary Slavic language, developed from the Slavic dialect of Solun (Thessaloniki) by 9th century Byzantine missionaries, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. It was used by them for translation of the Bible and other texts from Greek and for some of their own writings. It played a great role in the history of Slavic languages and evolved into Church Slavonic, which is still used as a liturgical language by some Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches of the Slavic peoples.

Old Church Slavonic (словѣньскъ)
Status:	Extinct
Genetic classification:	Indo-European  Slavic   South    Eastern     Old Church Slavonic
Language codes
ISO 639-1	cu
ISO 639-2	chu
SIL	SLN

History

The language was standardized for the mission of the two apostles to Great Moravia in 863 (see Glagolitic alphabet for details). For that purpose, Cyril and his brother. Methodius, first codified Old Church Slavonic from the Southern Slavic dialect spoken in the neighbourhood of their city, Solun (Thessaloniki), in the Byzantine Empire.

As part of the preparation for the mission, in 862/863, the Glagolitic alphabet was created and the most important prayers and liturgical books, including the Aprakos Evangeliar (an Evangeliar containing only feast-day and Sunday readings), the Psalter, and Acts of the Apostles, were translated. The language and the alphabet were taught at the Great Moravian Academy (Veľkomoravské učilište) and were used for government and religious documents and books between 863 and 885. The texts written during this phase contain characteristics of the Slavic vernaculars in Great Moravia.

Students of the two apostles, who were expelled from Great Moravia in 886, brought the Glagolic alphabet and the Old Church Slavonic language to the Bulgarian Empire. It was taught at two Bulgarian academies - in Preslav (in Eastern Bulgaria) and Ohrid (in present-day Republic of Macedonia). The Cyrilic alphabet developed shortly afterwards around the Preslav Literary School and substituted the Glagolitic one. The texts written during this era contain characteristics of the vernacular of Bulgaria. There are some linguistic differences between texts written in the two academies.

Thereupon the language spread to other South-Eastern and Eastern European Slavic territories, most notably to Croatia, Serbia, Bohemia, Lesser Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The texts written in each country contain characteristics of the local Slavonic vernacular.

Much later, local redactions of Old Church Slavonic were created for ecclesiastical and administrative use, and are collectively known as Church Slavonic (Russian: церковнославя́нский язы́к, tserkovnoslavyánskiy yazík), but these terms are often confused. Church Slavonic maintained a prestige status, particularly in Russia, for many centuries — among Slavs in the East it had a status analogous to that of the Latin language in western Europe, but had the advantage of being less divergent from the vernacular tongues of average parishioners. Some Orthodox churches, such as the Russian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian Orthodox Church and Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as several Greek Catholic churches, still use Church Slavonic in their services and chants.

Script

Initially Old Church Slavonic was written with the Glagolitic alphabet, but later it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. Only in Croatia the local variant of Glagolitic alphabet was preserved.

Local influences

Because the manuscripts written in the language of Cyril and Methodius were transmitted by speakers of other Slavonic languages, different local redactions were created based on their geographical origin. Today some more significant variants are: Slovenian, Moravian, Croatian, Serbian, Russian.

Moravian redaction

• confusion between the letters big yus and uk occurs once in the Kiev Folia, when the expected form въсѹдъ is spelled въсѫдъ
• use of c for the Proto-Slavonic tj, use of dz for the Proto-Slavonic dj, use of šč for the Proto-Slavonic skj, use of –ъmь in the Instrumentalis sg. mask. etc.
• the Glagolithic alphabet contains the letter Dzelo (no. 8), whose sound /dz/ did not exist in the Balkans and was only used by Great Moravians at that time
• use of the words voplatь, mьša, cirky etc

Authors

The history of Old Church Slavonic writing includes a northern tradition begun by the mission to Great Moravia, including a short mission in the Balaton principality, and a Bulgarian tradition begun by some of the missionaries who relocated to Bulgaria after the expulsion from Great Moravia.

Old Church Slavonic's first writings, translations of Christian liturgy and Biblical texts, were produced by Byzantine missionaries Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, mostly during their mission to Great Moravia.

The most important authors in Old Church Slavonic after the death of Methodius and the dissolution of the Great Moravian academy were Clement of Ohrid (active also in Great Moravia), Konstantin Preslavski, Chernorizetz Hrabar and Joan Ekzarh, all of whom worked in medieval Bulgaria at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century.

Nomenclature

The original name of the language in the Old Church Slavonic texts was simply "Slavonic" (словѣньскъ), therefore the present-day Slavic names of the language are derived from the old or new word for Slavs. The intuitive pronunciation of the old word for Slavs can be given as appr. slovaeneh [ae stands for a very open e] or sloveneh at that time.

The language is sometimes called "Old Slavic", but that term is undesirable as it may be confused with the distinct Proto-Slavonic language.

The designation Old Bulgarian was especially popular in 19th and early 20th-century linguistics, but is by some considered incorrect, as it implies that Old Church Slavonic was the ancestor exclusively of Bulgarian. "Old Church Slavonic" and "Old Church Slavic" are the only terms commonly accepted in English-language scholarship, although "Old Bulgarian" is still used in a number of sources.

Here are some of the modern names in alphabetic order:

• Bulgarian Старобългарски (starobəlgarski)
• Czech staroslověnština
• Polish staro-cerkiewno-słowiański, starobułgarski
• Russian старославя́нский язы́к (staroslavyánskiy yazík); древнеболгарский (drevnebolgarskiy)
• Serbian староцрквенословенски (starocrkvenoslovenski)
• Slovak staroslovienčina
• Slovene starocerkvenoslovanščina
• Ukrainian старослов’янська (staroslovians'ka)

The term 'Old Bulgarian'

Some linguists, including all Bulgarian ones, call the Old Church Slavonic language Old Bulgarian as they regard it as based on the 9th century spoken Bulgarian and as the oldest written form of modern Bulgarian language. The term Old Bulgarian (German Altbulgarisch) was introduced by reputable linguists as August Schleicher, Martin Hatala and Leopold Geitler who notice that the linguistic features of the first Slavic literary works are the same as those of the Bulgarian language. For similar reasons Russian linguist Aleksandr Vostokov used the term Slav-Bulgarian.

According to all Bulgarian and some Russian scholars, the term Old Church Slavonic is incorrect, as it was not only the language of the Church, but also a vernacular, as spoken in medieval Bulgaria. There, in the 12th century, it suffered important changes and developed into what is today called Middle Bulgarian. In other Slavic lands Old Church Slavonic was used only as a liturgical, literary and/or administrative language and was gradually replaced by the local speech.

Modern Bulgarian inherited certain linguistic features from Old Bulgarian, that are absent or not typical for any other Slavic languages:

• phonetic - very wide articulation of the Yat vowel (File:Yat.jpg) and also development of the following phonemes:

Proto-Slavic	OCS	Bulgarian	Czech	Macedonian	Polish	Slovak	Slovenian	Russian	Serbian
*dj	zhd	zhd	-	gj	dz	dz	j	zh	dzh
*tj	sht	sht	c	kj	c	c	c	ch	ch
*gt/kt	sht	sht	?	kj	?	?	?	ch	ch

• syntactic - use of the dative possessive case in personal pronouns and nouns: рѫка ти; отъпоуштенье грѣхомъ; descriptive future tense using the verb хотѣти; use of the comparative form мьнии (smaller) to mean younger.
• use of suffixed demonastrative pronouns (тъ, та, то) which developed into modern Bulgarian suffixed definite articles
• lexical - use of words with proto-Bulgaric (Turko-Iranic) origin, such as кумиръ, капище, чрьтогъ, блъванъ, etc.

External links

• Old Church Slavonic Online, a comprehensive tutorial at the A. Richard Diebold Center for Indo-European Language and Culture, Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas at Austin