# Old-Belorussian, Old-Ukrainian and Old Church-Slavonic.



## LilianaB

I am interested if these languages were closely related, I mean if they were almost the same with some small regional variations, or they were different Slavic languages.


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## Arath

Old Church Slavonic was a South Slavic language, whereas Belorussian and Ukrainian are East Slavic languages. At the time when Old Church Slavonic was codified all Slavic languages were mutually intelligible. So, determining whether OCS, Old-Belorussian and Ukrainian were different languages or dialects of the same language is a controversial issue. Simply, there isn't a clear-cut distinction between dialects and languages.


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## LilianaB

Thank you. Maybe my question was not formulated right, did Old-Belorussian and Ukrainian develop from Old-Church Slavonic, or were they independent languages or dialects that existed along side Old Church Slavonic. How much different is contemporary Church Slavonic  from Old-Church Slavonic?


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## ahvalj

Arath said:


> At the time when Old Church Slavonic was codified all Slavic languages were mutually intelligible. So, determining whether OCS, Old-Belorussian and Ukrainian were different languages or dialects of the same language is a controversial issue. Simply, there isn't a clear-cut distinction between dialects and languages.


Another moment is that the later language boundaries are rather casual and, especially between Ukrainian-Belorussian on one side and Russian on the other, reflect political boundaries that emerged after the Mongol and Lithuanian invasions. Also, the tribal boundaries of the time of the Slavic colonization of Eastern Europe did not correspond well to the boundaries of the later principalities. In addition, most features, which split the modern East Slavic linguistic map, originated in the 2nd millenium — very few of them (mainly in the accentuation system) can be traced to an earlier period. So, in no way can we speak of the proto-Russian, proto-Ukrainian or proto-Belorussian for the 9-10th centuries — there were more dialects at that time, their boundaries were different than those established several centuries later, and the distinctive characters of these three languages were still to appear. When you read the opposite claims in the modern Ukrainian and Belorussian literature, these are merely grimaces of the emerging national identity.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Thank you. Maybe my question was not formulated right, did Old-Belorussian and Ukrainian develop from Old-Church Slavonic, or were they independent languages or dialects that existed along side Old Church Slavonic


The Old Church Slavonic originated as the literature form of the Thessaloniki (i. e. Bulgarian or Macedonian) dialect. If we look at the groups of Slavic dialects of the 9-10th centuries from the future, we can call them separate languages; if we were linguists describing these groups of dialects in the 9th century, probably we would have preferred to regard them as a single language with the Church Slavonic literature norm. In the 11th century, 200 years later, most future languages (but not future Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian or Bulgarian and Macedonian) had already diverged enough to be regarded separately.


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## LilianaB

Thank you, Ahvalj. When you talk about the common Slavic, do you have in mind the Old-Church Slavonic or a different language. Were Ukrainian and Belorussian just various local dialects from, let's say 10th century until the XVII century when Polish became the official language of many regions inhabited by Ukrainians and Belorussians. How close was the Slavic language of the Lithuanian Commonwealth  to Russian of X-XVII. I just would like to know the basics. Thank you. There are so many conflicting opinions.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> How much different is contemporary Church Slavonic  from Old-Church Slavonic?


Enough to be not easily understood by Cyril and Methodius. Roughly speaking, it reflects the Russian church language of, say, the 12-13th centuries — i. e. it (1) is Russified and (2) is 3-4 centuries younger phonetically and grammatically.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> When you talk about the common Slavic, do you have in mind the Old-Church Slavonic or a different language.


The language before the Slavic colonization of Central and Eastern Europe (6-7th centuries) as well as the language of the next several centuries when changes in the various dialects were more or less parallel.


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## LilianaB

But it was different from Old-Church Slavonic, right?


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> How close was the Slavic language of the Lithuanian Commonwealth  to Russian of X-XVII. I just would like to know the basics.


As I had written, the dialectal map of the pre-Mongol Rus was more complicated — there were more dialects, and their boundaries did not correspond at all to the future boundaries between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and The Russian Tsardom. These later boundaries are shaped politically, and parts of several dialects occurred at both sides. So, we can expect that, e. g., Krivichi of the future Belorussia and of the future North-West Russia originally spoke the more or less similar way, and only time and boundaries made their speech to diverge and to become influenced by different prestigious centers. So, before the 13th century there were several dialects and the single literature language with the center in Kiev, after this time the literature language splits and the dialects at both sides of the boundary start to develop into different directions. In the 17th century the Ukrainian ambassadors already needed translators in Moscow.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> But it was different from Old-Church Slavonic, right?


Liliana, when you do not include citations, it is not always easy to deduce what are your questions about &-)


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## ahvalj

Here is an example of the written language used in Kiev in the 11-12th centuries: http://litopys.org.ua/lavrlet/lavr12.htm (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Поучение_Владимира_Мономаха). The first half is influenced by the church language, the second is much less formal. You can judge yourself, whether it contains recognizable Ukrainian features — I see very few of them.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> But it was different from Old-Church Slavonic, right?


The Old Church Slavonic was based on a dialect spoken in Thessaloniki. Of course, it was different from the dialect spoken 2000 km northwards.


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## Arath

LilianaB said:


> How much different is contemporary Church Slavonic  from Old-Church Slavonic?



Here in Bulgaria, the modern Church Slavonic that is used nowadays, is a Russified version of the old one. For example the big yus *Ѫ* is pronounced as */u/ *(*мудрий*) and the big yer *Ъ* is pronounced as */о/* (*возкресе*), like in Russian, although in modern Bulgarian they are both pronounced as */ɤ/* and in OCS they were pronounced* /ɔ̃/* and */**ʊ/*, respectively


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## LilianaB

Thank you, Ahvalj, so the Old-Church Slavonic had also Greek elements? Did they speak Greek at Thessaloniki at that time?


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Thank you, Ahvalj, so the Old-Church Slavonic had also Greek elements? Did they speak Greek at Thessaloniki at that time?


Yes and yes.


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## LilianaB

Thank you, Arath. I was just trying to find out if the Old-Church Slavonic sounded similar to contemporary Church Slavonic and whether it would be intelligible, easily intelligible now.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Thank you, Ahvalj, so the Old-Church Slavonic had also Greek elements? Did they speak Greek at Thessaloniki at that time?


Since virtually all early Church Slavonic texts were translations from Greek, they must have been under a strong Greek influence. Many words were created anew (as calques or borrowings), the choice of syntactical structures often followed the Greek examples, etc. However, it is almost impossible to say to which extent the Greek influenced the speech of that time. The Slavs were barbarians that invaded the former Latin- and Greek-speaking areas, and, like the Germanic tribes in the West, in the first centuries they had not so many contacts with the autochthonous population: both sides detested each other. With time, however, this changed: the Slavs in Greece and Romania were assimilated, in Bulgaria and Macedonia assimilated was the Romance and Greek population, and the Slavic speech in modern Bulgaria and Macedonia fell under a strong influence of neighboring languages. However, this happened several centuries later, when the Church Slavonic language already had separated from its national base and became a sort of Latin in the Eastern Europe.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> I was just trying to find out if the Old-Church Slavonic ... would be intelligible, easily intelligible now.


Not at all: the modern church language requires education to be properly understood, and the Old Church Slavonic looks like a mixture or more or less familiar words united into phrases with a hardly perceptible sense. The pronunciation changed a lot, plus it is different in each country. This is if we compare it to the modern church language; the national languages have changed much much more. If you ask whether Cyril and Methodius could be understood by any modern untrained Slavic speaker — no, definitely not.


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## LilianaB

Thank you.


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## Ben Jamin

ahvalj said:


> Another moment is that the later language boundaries are rather casual and, especially between Ukrainian-Belorussian on one side and Russian on the other, reflect political boundaries that emerged after the Mongol and Lithuanian invasions. Also, the tribal boundaries of the time of the Slavic colonization of Eastern Europe did not correspond well to the boundaries of the later principalities. In addition, most features, which split the modern East Slavic linguistic map, originated in the 2nd millenium — very few of them (mainly in the accentuation system) can be traced to an earlier period. So, in no way can we speak of the proto-Russian, proto-Ukrainian or proto-Belorussian for the 9-10th centuries — there were more dialects at that time, their boundaries were different than those established several centuries later, and the distinctive characters of these three languages were still to appear. When you read the opposite claims in the modern Ukrainian and Belorussian literature, these are merely grimaces of the emerging national identity.


Was the territory around Moscow inhabited by anybody else than some Finno-ugrian hunters in the 9th century?


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## ahvalj

Ben Jamin said:


> Was the territory around Moscow inhabited by anybody else than some Finno-ugrian hunters in the 9th century?


Yes, by the Baltic tribes (probably, West Baltic, related to Prussians): the early Russian sources mention Galindians there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galindians), and a considerable Baltic element is present in the toponymy of this area until now.


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## LilianaB

Hi, Ahvalj. This is very interesting. What toponyms do you have in mind. In fact my maiden name may be Galindian, not Lithuanian, although it is considered Lithuanian by some. I am really interested in that. There is not that much information about those languages. Do you know any sources I may not know about.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Hi, Ahvalj. This is very interesting. What toponyms do you have in mind. In fact my maiden name may be Galindian, not Lithuanian, although it is considered Lithuanian by some. I am really interested in that. There is not that much information about those languages. Do you know any sources I may not know about.


http://wwww.classes.ru/books-ozon-description/2467738/
http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/1203789/
http://langs.ru/baltil-languages-book/


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## LilianaB

Thank you, Ahvalj. I really like old languages, especially those sound very mysterious. There has only been a partial reconstruction of Old Prussian and Sudovian.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Thank you, Ahvalj. I really like old languages, especially those sound very mysterious. There has only been a partial reconstruction of Old Prussian and Sudovian.


Also, this Wikipedia reference works: http://www.laborunion.lt/memo/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=9


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## Ben Jamin

ahvalj said:


> Yes, by the Baltic tribes (probably, West Baltic, related to Prussians): the early Russian sources mention Galindians there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galindians), and a considerable Baltic element is present in the toponymy of this area until now.



When did Galindians move to their last known abode in what was later known as "Old Prussia" (and later as Ost Pruessen)? How did they travel through the Kievan territory? Was there any fighting?


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## ahvalj

Ben Jamin said:


> When did Galindians move to their last known abode in what was later known as "Old Prussia" (and later as Ost Pruessen)? How did they travel through the Kievan territory? Was there any fighting?


They lived in Eastern Europe before the arrival of the Slavs: in the mid of the 1st millenium there was a continuous Baltic-speaking area from Vistula to the Oka river. It is even probable that both kinds of Galindians were not closely related: if the etymology from «galas», "end" is correct, it was just the name for the various Baltic tribes living at the extremes of the areal.


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## LilianaB

Of course there was fighting, which I am not saying is good. They were always fighting.


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## LilianaB

Hi, Ahvalj. I was just wondering, if you have any examples of the toponyms from Moscow area, or Central Russia, even like two or three. I do not want to trouble you.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Of course there was fighting, which I am not saying is good. They were always fighting.


A sidenote, hopefully the moderator will look elsewhere  I think, there were two times when the Balts lost the chance to reach the Pacific shore instead of the Slavs. The first time was when they let the Slavs populate Eastern Europe in the middle of the 1st millenium. The second one — when Lithuania adopted catholicism and neglected the opportunity to absorb the East Slavic population of the Grand Duchy and the northern and eastern Rus. The main reason why Moscow ever rose was the matter of religion: if there were a major orthodox center westwards, most principalities eventually would have been incorporated there.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Hi, Ahvalj. I was just wondering, if you have any examples of the toponyms from Moscow area, or Central Russia, even like two or three. I do not want to trouble you.


They are listed e. g. in the first reference (the book by Откупщиков). I don't have it now — probably will get it these holidays.


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## LilianaB

Thank you. I know some from the East Prussia area. I wanted to compare them.


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## ahvalj

About the tribal origins of the three modern nations. Wikipedia (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Восточные_славяне) cites five ancient tribes as ancestors of the modern Russians; of them only вятичи and словене lived entirely in the later Russian territory, whereas радимичи, кривичи and северяне became split between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Golden Horde, eventually diverging into Belorussians and Russians (радимичи and кривичи) and Ukrainians and Russians (северяне). Of the three tribes cited as ancestors of Belorussians, only дреговичи have only Belorussian descendants, while кривичи and радимичи became ancestors of both Belorussians and Russians, depending on the side of the boundary. Future ukrainians were more diverse with seven tribes, only one of which (северяне) was further split between Ukrainians and Russians.


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## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> Hi, Ahvalj. I was just wondering, if you have any examples of the toponyms from Moscow area, or Central Russia, even like two or three. I do not want to trouble you.


Here are two scanned pdf's:
http://narod.ru/disk/35023977001/2006 - Baltiyskiye yazyki.pdf.html
http://narod.ru/disk/35024675001/2001 - Otkupschikov - Opera philologica minora - fragments.pdf.html
To download, look at the left side of the browser screen, enter the numbers to the field and press the green button.

The files will look the best in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader — these programs obey the book layout.


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## LilianaB

Thank you, Ahvalj, I am trying to download them.


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