The Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood, the Holy Trinity Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the Church Slavonic seminar at the Department of Religious Education of the St. Petersburg Diocese invite you to the Lavra courses of the Church Slavonic language.

We always studied the Church Slavonic language.

In the times of Cyril and Methodius, it became the first educational subject of the Slavs, when the holy brothers of Thessalonica arrived in Moravia and recruited the first students. Let us note, by the way, that after Cyril and Methodius there was no dictionary or grammar left (or even information about the possible existence of such), but only texts and students. The initial need to study the Church Slavonic language indicates that it was not everyday, colloquial, everyday language even then. Why?

First about the Greek. By the 9th century, the Greek language had long since passed its unwritten (so to speak, folkloric) phase. The advent of writing among the Greeks made possible a qualitative leap in the accumulation of information - now not only what could be remembered was saved and used, but also what could be written down. This also affected the language - its vocabulary and grammatical means - and stimulated the development of Greek thought. Great writers (Homer, Hesiod, Euripides), great philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), great scientists (Pythagoras, Archimedes, Euclid) and many others not mentioned in parentheses expanded and enriched the Greek language - after all, everything they are about they wrote and spoke, it was necessary to name it somehow and describe it somehow.

In the 3rd century BC. Seventy-two translators (“interpreters”) translated the Holy Scripture (Old Testament) into Greek, and the Greek language was enriched with new meanings borrowed from Hebrew. Later, the texts of the New Testament and an extensive corpus of liturgical and doctrinal literature were written in Greek. The Greek language became the language of deep and refined Orthodox theology, and through this it itself acquired even greater depth and sophistication. This was the Greek language in the 9th century.

What was the Slavic language like at that time? But that same unwritten “folklore” phase, limited to the circle of objects and means retained in the collective memory of contemporaries. And into this language it is necessary to translate the most complex and sublime theology that has ever existed, and, moreover, from the richest language at that time. It's like pouring a barrel into a thimble without spilling anything.

Cyril and Methodius coped with the task brilliantly, however, the thimble ceased to be a thimble. Not only did the alphabet appear, and by the way, an alphabet that could equally easily serve both the Greek and Slavic languages. From the Greek language, new words, word-formation models and grammatical rules were introduced into Slavic, and with such deep philological intuition (as researchers who do not allow Divine Providence in linguistics would say) that the Cyril-Methodian foundations still serve us today.

I'll give you a couple of examples.

The first is word-formation. There are words in Greek orthos And doxa, in Slavic there are their correspondences rights And glory. Moreover, in Greek there is a word orthodoxy, but in Slavic there is no word Orthodoxy no, there is no such word-formation model itself. Kirill (at that time still called Konstantin) introduces both words and model. We now form many words according to this model, and who remembers that it is Greek?

The second example is grammatical. Oral speech does not tolerate complex grammatical relations, any “due to the fact that”, “despite the fact that”, “for all that”, “nevertheless” and other complications of thought. The two most common conjunctions in oral speech are “and” and “a”. Here is an example from The Tale of Bygone Years, roughly illustrating this structure of oral speech: “Askold and Dir came. AND everyone else jumped out of the boats. AND Oleg said to Askold and Dir: You are not princes or of a princely family. AND They carried Igor out. A here is the son of Rurik. AND killed Askold and Dir." To reflect complex semantic and syntactic relations from Greek, constructions with double cases and the pronoun “article” were introduced. like-he-like.

It is not surprising that the resulting language, on the one hand, was native to the Slavs, and on the other, required study. The mechanism of transmission of the Church Slavonic language laid down by the first teachers - through texts and school - is still relevant today.

With the Baptism of Rus', Prince Vladimir, in parallel with the construction of churches, opened schools teaching literacy (“book learning”). What kind of literacy was there then, if not Church Slavonic? And not to say that the learning process was easy. The chronicler Nestor writes about the mothers of the first schoolchildren: “I weep for them... like I weep for the dead” (the verb in the “long” form is used twice, i.e. the crying was really significant).

The method of teaching the Church Slavonic language has remained unchanged for centuries and differs from the way the Church Slavonic language is taught now.

The letters and rules of reading were explained to the student (and this was a youth, that is, a person no younger than seven years old), after which he received texts - not some artificial educational texts, but the most “true” Book of Hours and Psalms (what can read layman). Moreover, the texts are familiar to the ear (after seven years of regular attendance at worship!). No grammar - no declensions, conjugations, aorists, imperfects or plusquaperfects. This system of initial teaching of Church Slavonic literacy was maintained until the beginning of the 20th century.

In the 17th century, another system for studying the Church Slavonic language appeared, but in order to understand what this system is and compare it with the one just outlined, you need to make a small lyrical digression about analytism and synthetism.

Analysis (dividing a whole into parts) and synthesis (assembling a whole from parts) are two of the most important operations of our consciousness. Evil materialists claim that a person cannot do anything other than tear something off somewhere (analysis) and attach it to something (synthesis): he bought potatoes (he tore money from himself - analysis, and attached it to potato for yourself - synthesis), peeled it (separated it from the peel - analysis), put it in water (combined it with a pan of water - synthesis), boiled it (added heat - synthesis) and ate it (combined it with itself - synthesis). Analyticism is the tendency to separate and examine pieces. Synthetism is, on the contrary, the desire for the whole. Now back to the topic.

In relation to a language, its division into dictionary and grammar and the subsequent division of grammar into parts of speech, declension, conjugation, etc. - an example of analyticism, while orientation to the text, where all this is simultaneously present in the form of a natural mixture of elements, is an example of synthetism. The Greeks knew philological analyticism and synthetism in reasonable proportions, but the Romano-Germanic cultural-historical type clearly preferred analyticism, sometimes of a scholastic nature. The Slavs preferred synthetism.

In the fight against Catholic proselytism in its Jesuit version, Western Russian scribes adopted some of the methods of their opponents, and in particular this affected teaching methods. Dictionaries and grammars of the Church Slavonic language began to appear - by analogy with dictionaries and grammars of the Latin language. Later, under Nikon, the analytical approach was transferred to the territory of Muscovite Rus', and then (with Peter I) established itself as the “only true” one in secondary and higher schools, including theological ones.

It turned out that the flock, the peasants, of whom there was, to put it mildly, the majority in pre-revolutionary Russia, studied the Church Slavonic language from the Book of Hours and the Psalter, synthetically, from the sexton for a pot of porridge (without any quotes - a pot of porridge was the standard “fee” of the sexton). But a seminarian, or even an academically educated pastor studied the same language from the other end, analytically, as a foreign language, through a dictionary and grammar. And everything would be fine if, in the end, one was complemented by the other - like M.V. Lomonosov, who studied according to both models, and in the correct sequence. But usually it was not supplemented, and in relation to the love of the Church Slavonic language, this had a more detrimental effect on those trained according to the analytical model. The object turned out to be dry, boring and as if alien. It is no coincidence that in the 19th century the Church Slavonic language was called “dead” not by peasants, but by professors.

But to say that the difficulty of the Church Slavonic language as an academic subject lies only in the unhealthy analyticalism of its study is to tell only half the truth. The second half of the truth is that the system of the Church Slavonic language is broader than the system of, say, the Russian literary language. The Church Slavonic language is richer. There are more letters in it. There are more verb tenses. There are more numbers. There are more cases. Why? And remember what was said above about the barrel and the thimble. The literary language (I mean the Russian literary language) is a compromise that has developed over centuries between the ascending system of the Church Slavonic language and the broad element of folk dialects. This is a middle style, constantly balancing “between” and having meaning and existence only when what it is between and what it exists exists. The aforementioned Lomonosov wrote about this in his special work “On the Use of Church Books in the Russian Language”: “the Russian language in full strength, beauty and richness will not be subject to change and decline, as long as the Russian church is adorned with the praise of God in the Slavic language.” The results of language changes by the beginning of the 21st century are a clear example of this.

Having the Church Slavonic language behind him, the pre-revolutionary schoolchild also more easily mastered the Russian literary language (the system is simpler!). And he thought more broadly. I will not, of course, attribute everything to the merits of the Church Slavonic language, but nevertheless, at the school of S.A. Rachinsky, where rural boys studied, and the Church Slavonic language (taught with proper synthetism - through reading the Psalter) was one of the main academic subjects , and the math was pretty good. One of the students of this school, later an artist, N.P. Bogdanov-Belsky, wrote an autobiographical painting “Oral Counting” - try to mentally count the example written on the blackboard.

There has long been heated debate about how to read the psalms more correctly - in Church Slavonic or in Russian. Conservatives are of the opinion that it is impossible to change the ancient tradition in the Old Slavonic language - they say, this will contribute to the severing of ties between generations of Orthodox Christians and the gradual loss of the “prayer” of the Psalter.

Their opponents believe that the psalms in Old Church Slavonic are archaic, incomprehensible to modern people, and therefore require modernization. Both sides have arguments “for” and “against” with which one can agree, but we will leave this controversial issue for the consideration of theologians and talk better about how to learn to read the psalms in Church Slavonic.

Learning to read Orthodox psalms in Old Church Slavonic

Today you can buy a collection of psalms in Old Church Slavonic at any church store. However, a person who does not speak the ancient language of Orthodox worship, opening it, will understand that he not only does not understand the meaning of the psalms, but simply cannot read them. The Church Slavonic alphabet, created in the 10th century by the enlightenment missionaries Methodius and Cyril, partly consists of letters of the Greek alphabet, and partly of Slavic letters, which only vaguely resemble the modern letters of the Russian alphabet.

Therefore, when buying a Psalter, pay attention to the fact that the psalms in Church Slavonic are written in Russian letters - by comparing the ancient and modern texts, you will gradually learn to distinguish individual words. A dictionary of the Church Slavonic language will not hurt at first - from it you can learn the rules for reading letters, as well as figure out how to correctly read the psalms in Church Slavonic without vowels (with titles).

Orthodox psalms in Church Slavonic - from reading to understanding

Learning to read Orthodox psalms in Old Church Slavonic is not difficult: just a few simple rules and the language barrier in reading will be a thing of the past. Things are a little more complicated with reading comprehension: difficulties arise due to the specific features of ancient biblical texts. In order to enjoy not only reading beautiful and melodious psalms in Old Church Slavonic, but also from understanding their meaning, I recommend buying the Psalter with a translation into Russian, as well as

In the Church Slavonic language, the alphabet consists of 40 letters, most of which correspond to Russian letters in spelling and pronunciation. Each letter of the Church Slavonic language has its own traditional name.

The following letters and combinations of letters are written differently, but pronounced the same:

1. e є e
2. and і m v3 Ђ
3. o o w q
4. t from
5. x x
6. p ps

The Church Slavonic alphabet was created on the basis of Greek. This explains the presence of a number of letters (f w x p v) that are redundant for the transmission of Slavic speech. Greek influence also explains the rule according to which the combination gg is read as [ng], and the combination gk - as [nc], for example: є3vaggelіe, смгкл1т.

The letter e was used to convey a special vowel sound, represented in many Slavic dialects. Some dialects of the Russian language have distinct sounds e and e. In Western Ukraine, when reading ordinary Church Slavonic texts, e under stress is pronounced as [and].

Superscripts and punctuation marks

In the Church Slavonic language, special icons are used, which are placed above the line level and are called superscript. This accent marks, special aspiration sign And word abbreviations. A strict system of using superscripts appears quite late. The oldest manuscript with accent marks is the Miracle New Testament (mid-14th century), a new translation from Greek into Slavic, made, according to legend, by St. Alexy, Metropolitan of Moscow. The system of superscript characters was finally formed by the beginning of the 18th century.

Accent marks

In Church Slavonic there are three types of stress:

• a - acute accent, or nxjz
• A - heavy stress, or varjz
• † - light stress, or kam0ra

The difference in accent marks is not related to pronunciation features. Thus, the words rab and r†b, zemS and zemls are read the same. Church Slavonic accent marks are borrowed from Greek. Acute stress is placed over the vowel at the beginning and middle of the word, for example Гдъ, соторi1ти. Heavy is placed if the word ends with a stressed vowel, for example cruci2 є3го2. However, if after such a word there are words: bo, same, li, mz, mi, tz, ti, cz, si, us, you, which do not have their own stress, then the acute stress is retained on the previous vowel, for example: the earth is invisible and unstructured[Gen. 1. 2].

Light stress serves to distinguish between singular forms and plural (dual) forms. For example:

• tsar (I. unit) - tsar (R. pl.)
• tsarS (R. unit) - tsar‰ (I. or V. dv.)

Aspirate sign

If a word begins with a vowel, then an aspiration sign is placed above this vowel, which in Slavic is called zvateltso: ґ. This icon is not pronounced at all. In Slavic texts it appeared in connection with the orientation towards Greek orthography. In ancient Greek, aspiration marks influenced pronunciation.

The aspirate mark can be combined with the accent mark. The combination of these signs has special names. The combination of acute stress and aspiration is called u4so, and the combination of aspiration with heavy stress a5 is called gostrophe

Title signs

A number of words in Church Slavonic are written not in full, but in abbreviation. Abbreviations are highlighted using a special sign called the title sign. Under the title are written words related to the sacred sphere, i.e. denoting sacred, revered objects, for example bGъ - God, btsda - Mother of God, sp7s - Saved.

In some cases, the title sign is used to distinguish God (this word is written under the title sign when talking about the God in whom Christians believe) from pagan gods (in this case, b0gъ, b0zi is written without the title sign). In the same way, when talking about the angels of God, the word GgGl is written under the title sign, and if it is talking about the fallen angel, Satan, then the word Gggel is written completely without the title sign and is read [aggel].

There are several options for the title sign:

1. 7 - simple title.
2. alphabetic titles (i.e., a way of abbreviating a word when one of the missing letters is placed above the line):
   • d good-title - btsda
   • g verb-title - є3ђліе
   • b he-title - prрb0къ
   • > rtsy-titlo - i3m>k
   • c word-title - кртъ

Punctuation marks

In Church Slavonic, the rules for placing punctuation marks are less strict than in Russian, i.e. in the same case there may be different signs, or there may be no punctuation mark at all. You should pay attention to the most significant differences between Church Slavonic punctuation marks and modern Russian ones:

• A semicolon in Church Slavonic indicates interrogative intonation, i.e. performs the same functions as the question mark in modern Russian: of little faith, almost2 ўdoubtedz є3сi2; - You of little faith, why did you doubt?[Matt. 14.31].
• In liturgical books, instead of frequently repeated prayers and exclamations, only the first words are given. So, instead of exclamation Glory nts7Y and3 sn7u and3 s™0mu d¦u, and3 nhne and3 pr1snw and3 forever and ever, ґmi1n the words Slava and 3 nhne are quoted: . In this case, a colon is placed instead of an ellipsis. If the liturgical book says Џ§е ours: , then the prayer is read in its entirety in this place Our Father[Matt. 6.9-13].
• We have seen that in Church Slavonic the sign<;>(semicolon) corresponds to the question mark of the modern Russian language. The function of the semicolon in Church Slavonic is the dot, which in this case is called small point. It is no different in size from a regular period, but after it the sentence continues with a small letter.
• There are no strict rules for placing commas in the Church Slavonic language. But commas, as in modern Russian, help to understand the division of a sentence and highlight its main parts.

Numerical letter values

Arabic and Latin numerals are not used in Church Slavonic texts. To write numbers, letters of the Church Slavonic alphabet are used, which have numerical values. In this case, a title sign is placed above the letter.

If a number is written in two or more letters, then the title sign is usually placed above the second letter from the end.

Numbers from 11 to 19 are written like this: in the first place are the letters denoting units, and in the second place is the letter i, which has the digital value “ten”, for example №i - 11, В7i - 12, Gi - 13, etc.; numbers from 21 onwards are written like this: first the letter denoting ten is written, then the letter denoting one, for example k7z - 27, n7g - 53, o7a - 71. This rule is easy to remember if you understand that the letters in the Church Slavonic number are written like this: how to pronounce a number, for example 11 - one-over-twenty (twenty - ten), 13 - three-over-twenty, 23 - two-twenty-three

Thousands are indicated by the sign ¤, which can be attached to any letter below the line level, for example ¤в7 - 2000, ¤f7 - 9000, ¤… - 60,000, ¤ф\ - 500,000.

Calculation can be carried out both from the Nativity of Christ and from the creation of the world. The time interval between these events, according to church tradition, is 5,508 years. Therefore, if the date is indicated as ¤з7ф (7 500), then this means 1992 from the Nativity of Christ or in Slavic ¤ац§в