www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Old Church Slavonic

Okay,

I'm a Latin, and as such I love Latin . Indeed I pray a bit in it, and I work on it as a liturgical language. However since I saw part of todays Divine Liturgy on EWTN and am recording the Encore episode I wanted to pose the question - can anyone give me some resources for 1) learning Old Church Slavonic prayers (e.g. the Our father) especially if they include sound bits 2) can someone give me some kind of grammar guide w/ pronunciation.

Thanks,
Catholig

Dear Catholig,

Try this:

Help Me Learn Church Slavonic [justin.zamora.com]

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

The Divine Liturgy at Philadelphia Ukrainian Catherdal was mixed. Some parts were in Ukrainian, some in Church Slavonic.

Ungcsertezs

This is a good site.

http://www.orthodoxepubsoc.org/

As a linguist, I'll have to admit I love the study of languages and have studied 12 myself as well as the official "linguistic science" stuff.

For living languages, get an intensive course at a College/University or Berlitz or even the Rosetta Stone CD packages, and then go to where the language is spoken. And stay away from any and all English speakers. (Wine helps.)

For dead languages like Old Church Slavonic (=Middle High Bulgarian) or Latin, the best is to get a transliteration like those in the liturgical books and obtain recordings of people singing/reciting the texts. And go over it again, and again, and again, and again, and again...... You get the point. Choose your recordings wisely. Ukrainian pronunciation is seen as one Slavic form; Ruthenian is a variant of the Ukrainian which sounds different from it and is sometimes characterized as SouthWest Ukrainian dialect, though Slovaks will fight on this one. OCA recordings use the "Russian" style. Pick your fight.

There are academic books that teach OCS, but they are geared towards the scholarly understanding of how the language developed and existed. (Cambridge University has a great 2 volume set; Harvard has a few also.)

But always remember: these historical languages are a witness to the peoples who came before, but we - as St. Paul says - must pray with the mind and the understanding. And merely canting meaningless words isn't prayer or worship, it's just creating historically accurate but meaningless sounds.

(So, what's wrong with GREEK?!?!?!) :-)

Dr John

Apparently nothing, in the Pittsburgh Metrolpolia! It's the Church Slavonic that's bad.

There are at least 2 more variant pronunciations in use:

1) South Slav - serbs and bulgars use this.

3) Old Believer

I suspect the Chinese Orthodox singing in Slavonic might count as a separate, but I try not to imagine how that might have sounded...

Somehow, Hospodi Pomiluj with a Chinese intonation--very high pitch and tone--just doesn't come through. And Slava Isusu Christu! Slava na Viki just really would be interesting to hear.

But God hears it, now matter how it may sound to our ears. And that's the important thing.

Tim

Just a few thoughts...


Well, it may come as a surprise that not all Chinese is high-pitched and high-toned. I, for one, happen to be an Octavist (i.e. extremely low Bass) and I speak my Chinese in very low tones.



I don't really think we want to teach them a Latin greeting popular among the Germans and Austrians, now do we?



I can say 'Amin' to that!

Edward