Page from the Spiridon Psalter in Church Slavic.

The Church Slavic language (Bulgarian: църковнославянски език, tsarkovnoslavyanski ezik; Macedonian: црковнословенски јазик, crkovnoslovenski jazik; Russian: церковнославя́нский язы́к, tserkovnoslavyánskiy yazík; Serbian: Црквенословенски језик) is the liturgical 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 Slavic 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). Image File history File links Kiev_psalter. ... Image File history File links Kiev_psalter. ... A page from the psalter illustrating creation of Adam and his life in the Paradise. ... The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the Å tokavian dialect, used primarily in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and by Serbs everywhere. ... A sacred language is a language, frequently a dead language, that is cultivated for religious reasons by people who speak another language in their daily life. ... The Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Българска православна църква) is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church with some 6. ... 1The MOC claims continuity with historical Bulgarian Archbishopric of Ohrid, an autonomous Eastern Orthodox Church under the tutelage of the Patriarch of Constantinople, which existed between 1019 and 1767, but the claims are not recognized by other Orthodox churches. ... The Russian Orthodox Church (also known as the Orthodox Catholic Church of Russia) (Русская Православная церковь) is that body of Christians who are united under the Patriarch of Moscow, who in turn is in communion with the other patriarchs and primates of the Eastern Orthodox Church. ... Please wikify (format) this article as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... Slavic Orthodox Churches are to be found in Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, and Macedonia, and they employ the Church Slavonic language in their liturgy. ... The vernacular is the native language of a country or locality. ... The name Old Russian language has been applied to different things. ...

Before the eighteenth century, the Church Slavic 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 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was gradually replaced by the Russian language in secular literature and retained its use only in church. Although as late as the 1760s, Lomonosov argued that Church Slavic was the so-called "high style" of Russian, within Russia itself this point of view largely vanished during 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. A literary language is a register of a language that is used in writing, and which often differs in lexicon and syntax from the language used in speech. ... Russian (Russian: русский язык, russkiy yazyk, ) is the most widely spoken language of Eurasia and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. ... The name Lomonosov may refer to: Mikhail Lomonosov, a polymath and writer of Imperial Russia Lomonosov Gold Medal, an annual award given by the Russian Academy of Sciences Lomonosov, Russia, a city named for Mikhail Lomonosov (formerly Oranienbaum) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages... Detail of the painting Boyarynya Morozova by Vasily Surikov depicting a defiant Old Believer arrested by Czarist authorities in 1671. ...

Church Slavic (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). Motto: none Anthem: Bože Pravde Capital Belgrade Largest city Belgrade Official language(s) Serbian1 Government Republic  - President Boris Tadić  - Prime Minister Vojislav KoÅ¡tunica Formation and independence    - Formation of Serbia 814   - Formation of the Serbian Empire 1345   - Independence from the Ottoman Empire July 13, 1878   - Serbia and Montenegro union...

Many words have been borrowed from Church Slavic into Russian. While both Russian and Church Slavic are Slavic languages, some early Slavic sound combinations evolved differently in each branch. As a result, the borrowings into Russian are similar to native Russian words, but with South Slavic variances, e.g. (the first word in each pair is Russian, the second Church Slavic): золото / злато (zoloto / zlato), город / град (gorod / grad), горячий / горящий (goryačiy / goryaščiy), рожать / рождать (rožat’ / roždat’). Since the Russian Romantic era and the corpus of work of the great Russian authors (from Gogol to Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky), the relationship between words in these pairs has become traditional. Where the abstract meaning hasn't commandeered the Church Slavic word completely, the two words are often synonyms related to one another much as Latin and native English words were related in the nineteenth century: one is archaic and characteristic of written high style, while the other is common and found in speech. Grad can refer to multiple things: a mathematical operator in vector calculus, a form of the derivative is taken (gradient) the former name for a unit of angular measurement, synonymous in English with the SI-mandated term gon. ... Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol (Russian: Николай Васильевич Гоголь) (March 31, 1809 - March 4, 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer. ... Anton Chekhov, Russian writer Pavel Chekov, character in Star Trek Chekhov, town in Moscow Oblast, Russia Chekhov, town in Sakhalin Oblast, Russia Chekhovo, health resort in Bashkiria, Russia This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Coat of arms of Count Leo Tolstoy This article is about the Tolstoy family; for the famous novelist, see Leo Tolstoy. ... Fyodor Dostoevsky. ...

An example of Church Slavic typography

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1278x1120, 70 KB) Summary An example of modern Church Slavonic typography (Luke 20:20-26). ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1278x1120, 70 KB) Summary An example of modern Church Slavonic typography (Luke 20:20-26). ...

Pronunciation

In most cases, the Church Slavic language is pronounced like the modern vernaculars; consequently, its pronunciation today differs considerably in the different Slavic nations.

In Russia, the Church Slavic language is pronounced in the same way as Russian, with some exceptions:

• Church Slavic features okanye and yekanye, i.e., the absence of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. That is, о and е in unstressed positions are always read as IPA [o] and [jɛ] respectively (like in northern Russian dialects), whereas in standard Russian pronunciation they have different allophones when unstressed.

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

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

• The letter Γ is read as voiced fricative velar sound [ɣ] (just as in Southern Russian dialects), not as occlusive [g] in standard Russian pronunciation. When unvoiced, it becomes [x]; this has influenced the Russian pronunciation of Бог (Bog) as Бох (Bokh). In modern Russian Church Slavic occlusive [g] is also used and considered acceptable; however Бог (nominative) is pronounced "Bokh" as in Russian.

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

In Serbia, the Church Slavic is today pronounced according to the Russian, not the Slavoserbian model. O (О, о) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the vowel /o/. Categories: Cyrillic letters | Substubs ... Ye, or E (Е, е), is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Ye, or E (Е, е), is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Yo (Ё, Ñ‘) is the seventh letter of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, invented to replace the recklessly confused е and o for soft o relatively soon after the introduction of the Civil alphabet. ... Ge or He (Г, г) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing or in different languages. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun. ...

The difference between Russian and Ukrainian versions of Church Slavic lies in the pronunciation of the letter yat. The Russian pronunciation is the same as е [je] whereas the Ukrainian is the same as и [i] Ye, or E (Е, е), is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... I or Y (И, и) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, pronounced in Russian, or in Ukrainian. ...

Grammar and style

Although the various recensions of Church Slavic differ in minor points, they share the tendency of approximating the original Old Church Slavic 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 yers is fully reflected, more or less to the Russian pattern, although the terminal ъ continues to be written. The yuses 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 letter (Ъ, ÑŠ) of the Cyrillic alphabet is known as the hard sign (твёрдый знак ) in the modern Russian alphabet and as er golyam (ер голям, big yer) in the Bulgarian alphabet. ... Little Yus and Big Yus , or Jus, are the letters representing two Common Slavonic nasal vowels, in the early Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. ... Yat or Jat (, ) is the 32nd letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet and name of the sound represented by it. ...

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 /jeter/ "a certain (person, etc.)" > нѣкій 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 бѣаше слово "In the beginning was the Word", were set down as въ началѣ бѣ слово in the Elizabethan Bible of 1755. The Gospel of John is the fourth gospel in the canon of the New Testament, traditionally ascribed to John the Evangelist. ... Saints Cyril and Methodius painted by Jan Matejko. ...

External links

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