Old Church Slavonic

Spoken in

  • Indo-European languages Slavic Languages South Slavic Languages

Cu

Chu

Chu

As Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( proper name словѣньскъ ѩзыкъ, slověnьskъ transliterated językъ, " Slavic language " ) refers to the oldest Slavic literary language, which was developed and has been detained since 860 and have emerged from the different end of the 11th century varieties of Church Slavonic.

The term Old Church Slavonic is due to the almost exclusive use as a sacred language. Previously, the language was also known as Old Bulgarian ( Bulgarian старобългарски / starobălgarski ), as most monuments have preserved Old Church Slavonic Bulgarian trains. In most Slavic countries, however, the term Old Slavonic (Russian старославянский язык / staroslawjanski jasyk, Czech staroslověnština etc. ) is preferred. In Bulgaria, the term is used Old Bulgarian on. It must not be confused with Proto Bulgarian, because that's the Turkic language of the Proto-Bulgarians, after which the country is named today, but migrated to the Balkans after the Slavs.

History

On request of the Moravian Knjazen Rastislav to Byzantium and the Eastern Church to send clerics to spread the Christian faith, the brothers Constantine were (later called Cyril ) and Methodios the Patriarch Photios I with the missionary commissioned and went in 863 to Mährerreich. Constantine had already parts of the Gospels and the Psalter during the mission, as well as other Christian books in the translated him familiar Slavic language of Salonika and fixed in writing by means of which he designed Glagolitic alphabet.

With the expulsion of the missionaries and their students in 886, the written language also spread to the south, the Bulgarian Empire. The Glagolitic alphabet, which continued to be used despite the expulsion in Mährerreich now spread to large parts of the Balkans from where developed two font variants: the square western in what is now Croatia and the round eastern variant of the Glagolitic alphabet in today's Bulgarian- Macedonian- Serbian room that was replaced before the end of the 9th century by the Cyrillic script. In Alpine Slavic southwest, ie in the territory of Slovenia and north of it, was occasionally also used the Latin alphabet. While the Old Church Slavonic language first was only the Slavic liturgy, it was 893 from the state language of the Bulgarian Empire.

The Christianization was effected by the Moravian Mission and the expulsion of the Apostle to the south meant the biggest cultural change in Southern and Eastern Europe until the time of reformation. Among various rulers emerged smaller centers where further developed into Old Church Slavonic also a literary language with a high level and its heyday in the 10th century found in Preslav and Ohrid, the former capitals of the Bulgarian Empire. From there began the language in the following period, to influence the East Slavs.

Despite their South Slavic dialect, the two preachers were from their Slavic brothers in the North, who spoke the Moravian- Slovak- Pannonian dialects, to be easily understood, since the regional dialects were still very similar. Today, relatively large differences go back to about the time of the 11th century, when different variants of the Old Church Slavonic language formed out which are summarized Church Slavonic today under the generic term. These include the Bulgarian Church Slavonic (also called center- Bulgarian), and the Russian, Serbian, Croatian and Czech Church Slavonic.

1652 the specified by the Patriarch Nikon was Church Slavonic liturgical language of the Slavic Orthodox Church. From the time she is also known as Neukirchenslawisch or Synodalkirchenslawisch and has comparable kept there with a status of Latin in the Roman Catholic Church to this day.

Although the influence of Church Slavonic is enormously to the younger Slavic languages ​​, must be assumed that it is the oldest Slavic literary language is those South Slavic dialect of the first missionaries, but not a common ancestor of the Slavic language family as the prototype or ancient Slavic. However, the pre-Slavic Old Church Slavonic is because of his age still quite similar, which is why it is of high importance for the historical- comparative study of Slavic languages.

Research

The history of the exploration of the Old Church Slavonic language goes back to the justification of Slavic philology in the early 19th century. Josef Dobrovsky 1822 published book Institutiones linguae slavicae dialecti veteris ( teaching building of the old dialect of the Slavic language ) is a pioneer work in this field.

The question of the origin and home of the Old Church Slavonic language, the Slavic Philology always been intensively engaged. Dobrovský searched the home of the language in the south, 1823, he wrote in his work, Cyril and Methodius, the Slavic Apostles - a historical-critical experiment " by diligent comparison of the later editions with the oldest manuscripts I 've always been more convinced that Cyril's language the old one still unmixed Serbian -Bulgarian- macedonische dialect was ". Jernej Kopitar other hand, was convinced that the origin of Altkirchenslavischen in Pannonia should be looking for, it was the language, " which flourished about a thousand years ago among the Slavs of Pannonia " ( " quae ante mille annos fere viguit inter Slavos Pannoniae ").

Since then almost came all thanked Old Church Slavonic texts from Bulgaria, Pavel Jozef Šafárik coined in his Serbian Reading grains ( 1833) and in his 1837 published work Slovanské starožitnosti ( Slavonic antiquities ) the term Old Bulgarian. In Germany especially Schleicher and Schmidt and Leskien have made the expression popular Old Bulgarian. It is only to remember that the language was never named in the most ancient and contemporary sources, so the name shows up rather only in a Greek source from the 10th century ( Vita S. Clementi ) on. For the 9th century, the term would refer Old Bulgarian with greater right to the back then still not fully Slavicized Proto-Bulgarians and their language, however.

In regard to the aufscheinende in Old Church Slavonic sources Designation slověnьskъ ( словѣньскъ ) Franz Miklosich coined the term Altslowenisch. He used, however, in a specific sense to postulate in order that the Slavonic liturgy was created in Pannonia, and consequently also the language of the Slavonic liturgy must be pannonisch, but this Vatroslav Jagić vehemently denied. Šafárik but revised in his later years, his original view: In his treatise On the origin and home of the Glagolitismus ( Prague 1858), he argued, as before Kopitar and Miklosich, for the Pannonian origin theory of the Old Church Slavonic language.

Texts and vocabulary

Modern research on the Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic divides the era into the Urkirchenslawisch the mission time, the time of the classic Old Church Slavonic ( 10th to 11th century ) and the Spätaltkirchenslawischen the time of the next century. The earliest of today received and known manuscripts of the Old Church Slavonic language derived from the classical period, the 10th and 11th century. The relatively small canon of total traditional language monuments of the period comprises only about 30 manuscripts and not quite 100 inscriptions, of which the best known among other things as prepared by the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon around the year 893 grave, four larger Gospels manuscripts, two Gospels fragments, a Psalter, liturgical texts and collections of Bible passages are. Later, resulting copies often exhibit properties of the later Church Slavonic or regionally evolving languages.

More discoveries and findings Old Church Slavonic the printed matter, such as a Gospels manuscript in part, in the Vatican library in 1982 to expand despite the few texts but had grown to some size lexical total corpus to the theological alongside the original and vocabulary from other areas such as the early historiography of philosophy, but also in medicine and botany was come. The School of Preslav was also known for works of poetry.

For the custom built by Constantine and other missionaries partial translation of the Bible and liturgical texts as well as literary texts (including the biography of Constantine and the ascribed Preface to the Gospel ) transmissions came later the works of the Church Fathers ( eg, St. Basil the Great u a.) and philosophers. Here the translators comes to additional importance because they could be accessed in a largely only spoken language only to a limited Erbwortschatz with the presentation of complex and abstract philosophical issues. Continued even through the late Middle Ages addition, the initiated by the first translator and Old Church Slavonic and the later Church Slavonic as fruitful process of extending the language through neologisms, borrowings and calques and Lehnprägungen, mostly from Greek and Latin, but also from the Hebrew and Old High German continued. Some examples are: градь - никъ (grad - nik ) from the Greek word πολί - της ( poli - tes ) "citizen" (as calque ), ђеона ( Geona ) of γέεννα ( ge'enna ) "hell" ( as a loanword ), мьша ( mjescha ) from the Latin ( and Old High German ) missa " fair", рабби ( rabbi ) and серафимъ ( seraphim ) from the Hebrew.

Grammar

The other Indo-European languages ​​such, and also the Old Church Slavonic word formation system is multi-layered. In addition to lexemes that mediate the meaning of the word as a whole, different types of morphemes can contribute more than the smallest carrier of meaning for stem formation. The Old Church Slavonic owns an inflectional system, which is similar to today's Slavic languages. In the declension of nouns, adjectives, participles and pronouns there are the grammatical categories number, case and gender, which are formed by suffixes. There are three numbers, namely, singular, dual ( still in Slovene and Sorbian available) and plural. It distinguishes seven different case: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental case, prepositional / locative, vocative. Except for the latter, now rarely used, the use of cases is similar to that of Russian. As in many Indo-European languages ​​there are three genders masculine, feminine and neuter. The Old Church Slavonic has a complex Deklinationssystem, reminiscent of Latin.

The Old Church Slavonic conjugation system, which is roughly divided into five classes of different verbal stem formation, includes the categories of person, number, mood, gender and tense. At the verb (singular, dual, plural ) and mode ( indicative, conditional and imperative) are marked Person (first, second, third ) and number. In active is also still being distinguished by different personal endings grammatical gender. The tense system consists of the present tense, the past tense and the known from the Greek aorist, which (synthetic ) can be expressed by the formation of Stammsuffixen, and the Future I / II, the perfect and the pluperfect, which are formed analytically.

Pictures of Old Church Slavonic

52473
de