Ancient Slavic language (Old Church Slavonic)

[akritas]

The Balkan languages belong to different groups of the Indo-European family:

Romance (Rumanian, Arumanian, Istro-Rumanian and Megleno-Rumanian)
Hellenic (Hellenic in its different dialects and written forms)
Albanian (supposedly a Romanized form of the ancient Illyrian).
Slavic (Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene and Old Church Slavonic)

Old Church Slavonic

Ancient Slavic language, belonging to the Eastern (Bulgaro-Macedonian) part of the Southern group (the western part includes Serbo-Croatian and Slovene) of the Slavic languages. It is also called Old Bulgarian, as modern Bulgarian seems to be its direct heir.


Origin and History

In the 6th century Slavic migrants from the Vistula region, pushed by Avars and other nomadic invaders of the Great Steppe, crossed the Danube and settled on the Balkan peninsula. They fought successfully against the East Roman Empire (Byzantium) and reached as far as Peloponnese. To absorb the invaders into the system of the established political and cultural patterns the Byzantine government promoted an ambitious program for their Christianization. For this purpose the Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril (Constantine) (827-869) and Methodius (825-884), who were natives of Thessalonica, devised a Slavic literary language (now technically known as Old Church Slavonic) for translating the Bible and preaching Christianity in Moravia. After the Bulgarian king Boris I (852-889) converted to Christianity the Old Church Slavonic was readily accepted as official language in Bulgaria and from there it spread to Serbia, Russia, Wallachia and Moldavia. In some periods it was used in Bohemia, Croatia and Southern Poland. Colored by some local modifications, it remained the religious and literary language of Orthodox Slavs and Rumanians throughout the European Middle Ages. The standard variety that developed in Russia, referred merely as Church Slavonic language, is still used today as the language of the Orthodox churches in Russia, Bulgaria and Serbia and sometimes in Bohemia.

The language of Cyril and Methodius was based primarily on the South Slavic dialects around Thessalonica. Nevertheless, it reflects a lot of Common Slavic features: by the 9th century all Slavs could still understand each other well, the difference between their dialects being hardly significant.

Vocabulary

The majority of Old Church Slavonic words have their direct cognates in other Indo-European languages. Besides the original Slavic vocabulary, a number of ancient Iranian and Germanic loan-words exist. As the Bible was translated from Greek, a great number of Greek traits appear in orthography and the lexicon of Old Church Slavic. Latin also influenced the language.

Assessment

Old Church Slavonic was preserved as a liturgical language into modern times. It continued to be written by the Rumanians untill the 18th century and by the Serbs and Bulgarians until the 19th century. It had significant influence on the modern Slavic languages, especially on the Russian literary language that grew out of a compromise style incorporating many Church Slavonic elements into the native Russian vernacular. Modern Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian reintroduced thousands of old words, directly from Old Church Slavonic and its Russian variety (Church Slavonic), or via modern Russian. Rumanian also absorbed a lot of Church Slavonic words.

Of course the Slavomacedonians of the FYROM claim that the Old Church Slavonic is their ancient Macedonian language!!!!

source:
[Encyclopædia Orbis Latini]

akritas

[akritas]

I just read a new book from Antonios Tahiaos with title

Byzantium-Slavs-Agion Oros, University Studio Press, May 2006.

In the page 25 mention that Cyril use symbols, letters, and spots from old Byzantine cryptographic alphabets that used in astronomy and alchemy in order to create the Glaothilic alphabet.He had as source a Slavic book but unfortunely I can't read it because is written in Cyrillic. If anyone knows more as about this matter is good to deposit theirs sources.