Church Slavonic is a traditional language of worship used in the Orthodox churches of Russia, Bulgaria, Belarus, Serbia, Montenegro, Ukraine and Poland. Most churches are used in conjunction with the national language.
History
Church Slavonic language originates from the South Bulgarian dialect, which is native to Cyril and Methodius - the creators of the Cyrillic alphabet, the Old Slavonic written language.
It was first introduced into everyday life in one of the Slavic states - Great Moravia. There, the creators of the alphabet with their students were engaged in the translation of church books from Greek into Old Slavonic, taught the Slavs to read, write and conduct divine services in Old Slavonic.
After the death of Cyril and Methodius, opponents of the Slavic literacy achieved a ban on the use of this language in the church, and the students of the creators of the language were expelled. But they went to Bulgaria, which at the end of the ninth century became the center of distribution of the Old Slavonic language.
In the tenth century, the Old Russian state adopted Christianity, after which the Church Slavonic language began to be used as a literary language.
Writing and Topography
Church Slavonic language, whose alphabet is based on the Cyrillic alphabet and consists of 40 letters, has its own characteristics and distinctive features.
There are several options for writing some letters of the alphabet. There are also many superscript characters: aspiration, erok, brief, three types of stress, kendem, titlo. Punctuation marks are slightly different from those in Russian. The question mark is replaced by a semicolon; and a semicolon is a colon.
There are uppercase and lowercase letters, the use of which can coincide with the modern language, and can be based on the ancient principle, which consists in the use of a capital letter only at the beginning of the paragraph.
To understand the meaning of Church Slavonic words and sentences, they need to be rephrased, rearranged, and even divided into separate phrases. Church Slavonic for children attending church and Sunday school is studied with special textbooks.
Church Slavonic text is printed in the font of one drawing, two colors are used for printing: red is needed to write an initial letter, headings and valuable directions for someone who reads; everything else is printed in black.
Impact on other languages
The foundation of the written language of some languages is the Old Slavonic alphabet.
Church Slavonic, whose alphabet is similar to Russian, has influenced many languages of the world, especially Slavic. In the Russian language there are many borrowed Slavic words that caused a stylistic difference in pairs of words with one root (full-consensus-non-consensus), for example: city - city, bury - store, etc.
In this case, borrowed Church Slavonic words belong to the highest style. In some cases, the Russian and Slavic spellings of words differ and are not synonymous. For example, “hot” and “burning”, “perfect” and “perfect”.
Church Slavonic language, as well as Latin used in medicine and biology, is considered a "dead" language, which is used only in the church. The first book printed in this language was published at the end of the fifteenth century in Croatia.
Differences with the Russian language
Church Slavonic language and Russian language have a number of similar features and a number of distinctive characteristics.
As in Russian, the sounds "g", "w", "c" are pronounced firmly, and the sounds "h", "u" - softly. Grammatical signs are also expressed by inflection.
If at the end of the prefix there is a solid consonant sound, and the root of the word begins with the vowel "and", then it reads as "s". The letter "g" at the end of the word is deafened to the sound "x".
In the sentence there is a subject, which is in the nominative case, and a predicate.
The verb of the Old Slavonic language has a person, mood, number, time and voice.
Unlike the Russian language, in Church Slavonic there are no reduced vowels and the letter "e" is not read as "". The letter "e" is absent in it at all.
Adjective endings are read the same way they are written.
In the Russian language there are only six cases, and in the Church Slavonic - seven (another vocal is added).
Church Slavonic language is of great importance in the formation of many modern languages, including Russian. Although it is not used in our speech, its influence on the language is noticeable if one takes a deep look at linguistics.