Pre-Slavic, Old Church Slavonic, Old Russian: how not to get confused in languages ​​and terms

The tombs, mummies and bones are silent, only the word is given life. From the ancient darkness in the world graveyard, only writings sound. Ivan Bunin

The first news about the Slavs dates back to ancient times. But, obviously, the Slavs emerged as a specific tribal group before any mention of them appeared. Scientists find the ancestors of the Slavs among those tribes that were known to Herodotus in the 5th century. BC. under the name "neurs". Roman historians of the 1st century. AD The Slavs were called "Vends". Later there are references to the “Ants” and “Slovenes”. From the evidence of ancient historians, confirmed by data from archaeological excavations, it follows that already from the first centuries AD. Slavic tribes occupied vast areas in central and eastern Europe.

The beginning of the era from which the study of the development of the Russian language becomes available can be considered the 10th-11th centuries, since it was to this time that the oldest written monuments that have reached us date back to this time. They are one of the most important sources for studying the history of language, which, in turn, helps to find out how our Ancestors lived and thought, what their worldview and inner world were. Studying the history of the language, we come across two terms: Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic.

How was language formed? What theories are there about this?

Modern paleographic studies suggest that writing in Rus' arose even before the penetration of Christianity. Also, the monk (i.e., monk) Khrabr, the author of the legend “On Writing,” written at the end of the 9th century, wrote about the presence of writing among the Slavic tribes, reporting on “features and cuts” as signs of some kind of writing.

In 1949, near Smolensk, near the village of Gnezdovo, the first Russian “Kirillov” inscription was discovered. It was made in the middle of the 10th century. on the vessel. Some scientists read it as gorukhsha, others - as gorushna, others - as gorunsha, and still others - as goruna. Perhaps the inscription meant that the vessel contained mustard seeds, or - this is most likely - that the vessel belonged to a man named Gorun.

In linguistics, there are several different views on how the Russian literary language was formed. About 100 years ago, Professor Sreznevsky I.I. expressed the idea that by origin the Russian literary language is the Old Church Slavonic language, which, as we know, does not belong to the East Slavic languages ​​(it is basically the Old Bulgarian language). Sreznevsky believed that the Old Church Slavonic language, having come to Rus' at the end of the 10th century. with the beginning of the penetration of Christianity (when church literature in this language began to appear in Rus'), it found itself here in the role of a literary language, into which elements of living East Slavic speech penetrated only later. The Old Church Slavonic language, having become widespread in Rus' as a church and book language, began to interact with the living speech of the Eastern Slavs. As a result of this, in Rus', as in other Slavic lands, a local version of the Old Church Slavonic language was created, which formed the basis for the formation of the Russian literary language.

But here is another theory, the representative of which is Academician S.P. Obnorsky. Based on a study of the language of “Russian Truth”, “Works of Vladimir Monomakh”, “The Tale of Igor’s Host” and other works of a “secular” nature, Academician Obnorsky came to the conclusion that before the arrival of the Old Church Slavonic language in Rus', the Eastern Slavs had their own written literary language , completely different in its holistic system from the Old Church Slavonic language. Obnorsky considers the influence of the Old Church Slavonic language on the Old Russian language (and it is undoubtedly) to be a later, secondary phenomenon. Much depends on the genre, the type of literary monument.

Convincing evidence of this was provided by archaeological excavations carried out repeatedly, starting in 1949, near Smolensk and Novgorod. The so-called “birch bark letters” found at the same time showed that literacy among the common population of Ancient Rus' was commonplace. Private correspondence, which turned out to be the content of these letters (the oldest of them is presumably dated to the 11th century), provided researchers with new material on the everyday language of Ancient Rus'. Various inscriptions on household items have been preserved from early centuries. The largest of the earliest dated ones is the inscription on the Tmutarakan stone (1068). This stone is a marble slab found on the Kerch Peninsula and now stored in the Hermitage. The inscription says that Prince Gleb measured the Kerch Strait.

Brief Church Slavonic-Russian dictionary

On this site (see the link letters at the top of the page) for now there is a short dictionary of the Church Slavonic language in modern Russian letters. In the future, the dictionary will be expanded (or supplemented with a new one), spellings of words in ancient Cyrillic will be added to it (with the letters s, ѳ, ѱ, ѡ, ѿ, ѫ, ѧ, ѣ, ӕ

, and even with “tildes”
҃, ҂
and superscript letters), and perhaps also Glagolitic.

In addition, see the Big Church Slavonic-Russian Dictionary

, taken from Derksen's website (alphabetical links are also provided at the top below the short Church Slavonic dictionary).

Where does knowledge about the languages ​​of that time come from?

Our oldest written monuments, in most cases, are church liturgical works (gospels, psalters, chets, lives) and were written not in the Old Russian language, but in Old Church Slavonic, which came to Rus' along with Christianity and was used as the language of church writing.

The total number of manuscripts dating back to the pre-Petrine era amounts to tens of thousands. But the bulk of them fall on the relatively late period of the 16th-17th centuries. By the XI-XIV centuries. There are about a thousand manuscripts, of which date back to the 11th century. – approximately 20-30 texts. Most of the manuscripts of the XI-XV centuries. is of an ecclesiastical nature, therefore such works as “Russian Truth”, “Works of Vladimir Monomakh”, “The Tale of Igor’s Host”, chronicles and others (which have a “secular” character and constitute only 3-4% of the total number of manuscripts of the X-XIV centuries .) represent the most valuable part of the ancient Russian literary heritage. Nevertheless, monuments of church literature rewritten by the Eastern Slavs also represent interesting material for the history of the language, since in them one can find clerical errors and deviations from the Old Church Slavonic original, characterizing the differences between the Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian languages.

The most important monuments for the study of the Old Russian language are the “Ostromir Gospel” of the 11th century, the collections of Prince Svyatoslav of the 11th century, and the “Arkhangelsk Gospel” of the 11th century. (written somewhere in the south of Rus', as evidenced by its linguistic features, and subsequently found its way to Arkhangelsk), Novgorod birch bark letters of the 11th-12th centuries, the language of which is completely devoid of Book Slavic influence. In the 12th century one of the most valuable and most ancient works of Russian fiction arose - “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” However, it came to us not in the original (like many other works of the 11th-14th centuries), but in one of the later copies of the 16th century, which was lost during the Moscow fire in 1812. From the XIII-XIV centuries. There remains quite a significant number of manuscripts belonging to various cultural centers of Rus'.

Thus, already by the 11th century. In Rus' there was literary bilingualism; there was not only the original East Slavic (Old Russian) language, but also the Old Slavonic (Church Slavonic) language. Many written monuments testify to the interaction and mutual influence of these languages. The distribution of East Slavic and Church Slavonic elements in writing was closely related to the genre of the work, and the genres themselves in the writing of Ancient Rus' were distinguished based on the theme of the work and its purpose.

It is interesting to note that words existing in the modern language may differ from the same ancient Russian words in their meaning. For example: the word citizen in Old Russian meant “resident of the city”; palace - “small courtyard”; shame – “spectacle”, “review”; graveyard - “place of worship”, “inn”; finger – only “thumb”, etc. The meaning of the word vile has changed, which previously did not have an offensive, negative meaning (it meant unprivileged, common, scoundrel - it meant a simple person) or the meaning of the word filthy (Latin paganus - rural). We can see even greater differences from the modern state in the grammatical structure of the Old Russian language.

Slavic Russian Lexicon Pamvo Berynda (“Alpha”)

Myth 1: In ancient times, the Slavs spoke Old Church Slavonic

It is believed that the ancestors of the Slavs came to Europe in the 2nd century BC, presumably from Asia. This theory is supported by a comparative analysis of modern Slavic languages ​​and Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family, which includes Slavic, Romance, Germanic, Iranian, Greek and other languages.

In the pre-literate era of their existence, the Slavic tribes used the Proto-Slavic language, which was common to all Slavs. No manuscripts from this era have survived (or been found), so it is believed that there was no writing then. It is difficult to say with certainty what exactly this language was (what it sounded like, whether it had dialectal forms, what its vocabulary was, etc.), since all available information about it was obtained by linguists through reconstruction based on a comparison of existing Slavic and other Indo-European languages, or came from the evidence of early medieval authors who left descriptions of the life and language of the Slavs in Latin, Greek and Gothic.

In the 6th-7th centuries AD, the Proto-Slavic community and its language were more or less clearly divided into three dialect groups (eastern, western and southern), within which modern Slavic languages ​​were formed over a long period of time.

Thus, the ancient Slavs in the pre-literate era spoke not Old Church Slavonic, but dialects of the Proto-Slavic language.

So where did he come from?

The ancient Slavs were pagans, but under the influence of historical and political circumstances, starting from the 7th century (primarily the southern and western Slavs - due to geographical proximity and the powerful influence of neighboring Byzantium and the Germanic kingdoms) gradually adopted Christianity. In fact, this process lasted for several centuries.

This created a need for an alphabet and writing - primarily for the dissemination of liturgical texts, as well as state documents. The adoption of a single faith, which united previously scattered pagan tribes, completed the process of development of statehood by some Slavic peoples, a good example of which was Ancient Rus'.

To solve this problem, two conditions had to be met:

• develop a system of graphic symbols for recording sounds;
• create a single written language that would be understandable to Slavs from different parts of Europe: at that time, speakers of all Slavic dialects could understand each other, despite the differences between the dialects. It was this writing that became Old Church Slavonic, the first literary language of the Slavs.

The birth of the Slavic alphabet

This task fell to the lot of the brothers Cyril and Methodius. They came from the city of Thessaloniki, which lay near the border between the Byzantine Empire and the Slavic lands. The Slavic dialect was widely spoken in and around the city, and according to historical documents, both brothers were fluent in it.

They were of noble birth and extremely educated: the younger brother, Cyril (Constantine), had among his teachers the future Patriarch Photius I and Leo the Mathematician, who later, teaching philosophy at the University of Constantinople, became known as the “Philosopher”.

The elder brother, Methodius, served as a military commander in one of the regions inhabited by the Slavs, where he became well acquainted with their way of life. Later he became the abbot of the Polychronic Monastery, where he was soon joined by Kirill and his students.

A circle of people formed at the monastery and headed by the brothers began to develop the Slavic alphabet and translate Greek liturgical books into the Slavic dialect.

It is believed that the idea to develop a Slavic script came to Cyril after a trip he made in the 850s as a missionary baptizing the population living near the Bregalnica River. It was there that he realized that, despite accepting Christianity, these people would not be able to live according to God's law, because they would not be able to use church books.

The first Slavic alphabet was the Glagolitic alphabet (from “glagolit” - “to speak”). When creating it, Kirill knew that the letters of the Latin and Greek alphabets cannot accurately convey the sounds of Slavic speech. There are various theories regarding its origins: some researchers argue that the Glagolitic alphabet was based on a revised Greek script, others that the shape of its symbols resembles the Georgian ecclesiastical script known as Khutsuri, with which - hypothetically - Cyril could have been familiar. There is also a theory, which has not received reliable confirmation, that the Glagolitic alphabet was based on a certain runic script that the Slavs used in the pre-Christian era.

Glagolitic and Khutsurian writing

The spread of the Glagolitic alphabet was uneven, both in terms of geography and the duration of its use. Ultimately, the language became widespread and used for a long time only in the territory of modern Croatia: in the regions of Istria, Dalmatia, Kvarner and Međimurje. The most famous Glagolitic manuscript is the Basque tablet, found in the city of Baska and dating back to the 12th century.

Interestingly, some of the many Croatian islands used the Glagolitic alphabet until the beginning of the 20th century, while the city of Senj used it until the outbreak of World War II! It is said that on some parts of the Adriatic coast you can still meet very old people who still own it.

It should be noted that Croatia is proud of this historical fact and has elevated Old Slavic writing to the rank of national treasure. In 1976, the Glagolitic Alley was built in the Istria region: a 6-kilometer road lined with sculptures marking milestones in the development of Glagolitic writing.

In Russia, the Glagolitic alphabet was never widespread (scientists have discovered only a few inscriptions). However, the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet has several converters from Cyrillic to Glagolitic. For example, the phrase “Glagolitic was the first alphabet of the Slavs” will look like this: Ⰳⰾⰰⰳⱁⰾⰻⱌⰰ — ⱂⰵⱃⰲⰰⱔ ⰰⰸⰱⱆⰽⰰ ⱄⰾⰰⰲⱔⱀ.

Was Cyrillic a second font?

Despite the obvious origin of the term "Cyrillic", Kirill was not the author of the alphabet that we use to this day. Most scholars are inclined to believe that the Cyrillic alphabet was developed after the death of Cyril by his students, in particular Kliment of Ohrid.

It has not yet been established exactly why the Cyrillic alphabet replaced the Glagolitic alphabet. Some believe that this happened because the Glagolitic alphabet was too difficult to write, while others are convinced that the choice in favor of the Cyrillic alphabet was made for political reasons. The fact is that at the end of the 9th century the main centers of Slavic writing moved to Bulgaria, where the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, expelled by the German clergy from Moravia, settled. The Bulgarian Tsar Simeon I, during whose reign the Cyrillic alphabet was created, believed that Slavic writing should be as close as possible to Greek.