Posted on 05/07/2010 3:13:45 PM PDT by NYer
Yes, of course Bulgarian with it almost complete loss of cases, and overuse of definite article is exceptional. I think it is a Greek influence, which likewise has few cases and pervasive use of definite article. I don't know if anything in the Turkish grammar has been an influence as well.
Regarding "напасть", it was not the word in the translation that you quoted, where "искушение" was used. My first reaction was that "напасть" is too close to "disaster" to convey the meaning of "πειρασμός", and indeed Liddell-Scott translate it as "trial, temptation" (Liddell-Scott). But maybe Serbian usage of "напасть" justifies it.
Correct. The version I gave you is the version used since the middle of thew 18th century, when Russian books and clergy were the only source of Church Slavonic. This is the time when the Serbian Church abandons the Serbian redaction o the Church Slavonic (CS) and establishes the Russian redaction as its official version.
The Russian version, however "russified" Church Slavonic and considerably corrupted it ion the process. That corrupted version then was exported to Serbia where, due to Austrian Uniate policies, the Russian version took hold.
The Serbian Букварь version of 1597 still represent the still unadulterated genuine Church Slavonic, and uses the word напасть (as a noun; the verb would be напасти). Of course today we would both write is as напаст, which in Russian means adversity, but in Serbian it means the same thing as искушние (both words are used), but it also means calamity, adversity, etc.
The form "и не въведи нас въ напасть нъ избави нась ωт лукавагω" comes from Матф. 6:13 in the Библия на церковнославянском языке (and this link is in the Russian redaction of the CS language), so I am not sure where the Russian version of Отче наш came up with искушение. :)
My first reaction was that "напасть" is too close to "disaster" to convey the meaning of "πειρασμός", and indeed Liddell-Scott translate it as "trial, temptation" (Liddell-Scott). But maybe Serbian usage of "напасть" justifies it.
Of course it does. Any decent CS dictionary will confirm that напасть in ЦС = искушеніе. Lidell-Scott translation is credible.
Very good. Another time when a purely Russian intuition would not be sufficient to understand the Church Slavonic.
I am also reminded of the word "прелест[ь]". In Russian it lost its initial sense of "seduction by evil" and now simply means "exquisite, charming". When a monk refers to something as "прелесть", a casual listener would think he is praising it.
Well, look at the meaning of the English word "gay." There are numerous examples of word meanings "morphing" into something different, sometimes related, sometimes unrelated and sometimes even directly opposite.
This is particularly common in related languages, such as Slavic tongues.
Thank you, by the way, for this entire discussion and the Church Slavonic Bible link. I learned things I did not understand before.
Just out of curiosity, how many words in the Church Slavonic dictionary (say, from 10 randomly picked pages) would you say are exactly the same as modern Russian?
I don’t have a Church Slavonic dictionary and could not find one online. I will do some random scheme using the scripture link you gave me, later.
If I were to guess, I’d say 80% are guessable, and 40% are the same. But as we’ve seen, most difficulty is in grammar and auxiliary words, which are not close. On occasion, you might run into changed semantics as well.
Alex, look at the bottom of post #62. I gave you a link to a Church Slavonic/Old Russian dictionary: Полный церковнославянский словарь
If I were to guess, I’d say 80% are guessable, and 40% are the same
That adds up to 120%! :)
But as we’ve seen, most difficulty is in grammar and auxiliary words, which are not close. On occasion, you might run into changed semantics as well.
All of that is true. I am compiling a list of words for each letter just to see how many words actually made it unchanged.
Some interesting semantics changes I noticed are in words like держава, which in Church Slavonic means power, authority, in Serbian држава (as in Bulgarian държава) now means "state" (Russian: штат, государство, страна). The Serbian word for "power" or "authority" is власт as in Russian (власть). Note that in Czech, the word for "country" is vlast.
Interestingly in Serbian the word foreign is инострани and foreign lands инострансто although Serbian doesn't use the word "strana" for country.
Simialr but related semantic differences occurred in other words such as правда. In Serbian it means justice (in an ideal Platonic sense), period. There is also правосуђе (pron. праосудъе), but this is a legal term. In Russian, it also means truth (which is sort of related, i.e. justice establishes truth). Of course, in Serbian, truth is истина (which is also truth in Russian in addition to правда).
Another interesting difference is in the word гроб (Russian могила). In Serbian it came to mean grave, tomb (there is also the word јама, which means an actual whole in the ground, a pit). The casket in Serbian (and in Bulgarian) is ковчег.
Also words like љубити (Russian любить) lost its original meaning to love and morphed to mean to kiss (the more archaic form is целивати).
Most Serbs, when asked, will tell you that љубити is never used for love, but the word for fans still remains љубитељи!
It will be interesting to see what these words meant in Church Slavonic. But many of the altered semantics are really not altered in any radical way. They are actually related conceptually. These are the word that I call "intuitive" because they exist in our languages in a related sense.
There are, of course, words that evolved locally and are completely unrelated to Church Slavonic or other Slavic languages.
Now the results are in. I took the first chapter of the Acts, as being casually narrative in style and therefore closer to natural speech. These are the words that are completely unguessable outsuide of their context. I do not count short auxiliary words. The first number is verse, the second its word count. I count as guessable words that really mean something close but not the guessed meaning.
1 (12). оубо, иаже
2 (10). оньже, апломъ
3 (18). мнозех, гла, иаже
4 (12). ядый, оулучатиса, оча
5 (13). оубо, сих
6 (13). бо, сошедшеса, глаголюще, аще. оустрояеши, иилево
7 (12). рече нест разумети иаже оць
8 (17). -
9 (9). сия рек зращым, взятса
10 (13). егда, взирающе, бяхоу, идоущоу, стаста
OK, that's first 10 verses. I've got to go to work. I understand that there may be dispute about classification. For example, "разумети" is clear to me from Bulgarian, and there is a Russian word "разум" (reason), but my feeling is that did I not know Russian, I would not have guessed it as a verb meaning "understand".
Generally, if an average educated but not polygloss Russian listens to this narrative at the natural rate of speech, rather than analysing it as I did, and then he is quizzed on what happened, he will score near-zero understanding. He will retain from it that Jesus commanded something about Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the Heavenly Kingdom, the Holy Ghost, baptism, 40 days after His passion. He would not be able to say what exactly were the Aposltes told to do.
I mean, did I not know Bulgarian.
I think you are absolutely right. Also when compare side by side, the Serbian version is the longest.
The Serbian language reform of the 19th century resulted in distancing from the literary standard (the so-called slavenno-serbski), a mixture of vernacular, Russian and Curch Slavonic, used in administration, schools, and generally by educated middle class, and redefining the "standard" according to the vernacular.
It's like dumping Queen's English and replacing it with cockney (and then stripping cockeny of all Latin and French words and replacing them with words from some other language)!
Typically, the more grammatically primitve the langue is the more words it requires to express itself. Thus, very ancient languages such as the Basque dialect in northern Spain, requires inrodinate number of words for a simple sentence in English.
I just find it interesting that Serbian is (predictably) the longest version of the three precisely because it lost (in addition to a rich Slavonic vocabulary) the gramamtical complexity (and expressive ability) through the reform.
Actually, the verison of Serbian still used by the Church for homilies and the Bible is the Synodal version of the NT, which uses the aorist, a grammatical form no longer used in the day-to-day vernacular. Without the aorist, the snetences beocme even longer.
Hereis an example to help you understand what I am trying to say: in English one can say "The Sitting Bull." In Russian, that would be "Сидящий Бык," but in Serbian one would say "Бик који седи" (the bull who is sitting). Sure, one can still say "седећи бик" (or in Russ. orthograpahy "седетьи бик") but it is "awkward." Such redundancy is typical of more primitive language forms.
I don't see how the sitting bull example illustrates the point you announce about primitive languages. I would not argue the point, -- it is logical that when a synthetic form, such as participle formation, is not there, one would construct phraseological solutions. Latin gives us examples of it. "Agenda" for example means "things that will have to be done"; any shortening of it in English ("to do list") would be idiomatic rather than precise.
Another example is in Horace (book 3 ode 6):
Damnosa quid non inminuit dies?
aetas parentum, peior auis, tulit
nos nequiores, mox daturos
progeniem uitiosiorem.
("What does not wasting time change! The age of our parents, worse than that of our grandsires, has brought us forth more impious still, and we shall produce a more vicious progeny.")
Here the bolded participle packs an entire phrase in English, "them, who will produce".
But in Serbian, the present participle is available; it is just something most speakers choose not to use.
It is meet that you should use Latin as a fine example of a highly developed language. similar examples can be found in all liturgical languages besides Latin, such as Greek, Church Slavonic and Hebrew. English, German, etc. are civil languages, somewhere between Cockney type slang and liturgical languages, endowed with some flexibility but not fully.
Modern Serbian is a cockney style dialect, a peasant language elevated to a status of a literary standard, forced to borrow words form left and right, and much more at home with phraseological expressions that with those containing participles.
The Church still uses some of the "archaic" or "outdated" expressions such as блаженопочивши or свјатејши, but that is looked upon as vestige of tradition reserved only for Church terminology.
The First Serbian daily newspapers, Новине Сербске, was printed in тхе city described as "Царствующа Виенна" at the turn of the 18th into 19th century. Today, this expression would be utterly impossible. Instead ne would have to say "Беч (modern name for Vienna taken from Hungarian) који царује", although the participle "царствујушћа" still exists. Rather one would use the adjective Царски Беч.
Likewise, the first provisional Serbian government established following the first Serbian Uprising in 1804 was called Правительствующій Совтеъ. Today, interetsingly, one could still use a participle for Руководећи савет, but if one is to you the word managing rather than leading, one has to use phraseology, as in Савет који управља.
Still it is a matter of choice. Serbian is not inherently uncapable of parcticiple use, it is for whatever reason not in vogue.
In English there were times when simple “telegraph” style of speech — think of Hemingway prose — was considered low-class. Linguists tried to inculcate the use of complex flowery vocabulary (citation needed, as Wikipedia would say, but nothing comes to mind by way of example). In Russian Pushkin had that revolutionary attitude that the simples expression is also the most beautiful. Today in English simple short sentence structure is in vogue, as it is you say, in Serbian. But this does not make English inherenty a more primitive language than it was in the times of Daniel Webster. It may, one day, swing back.
Overuse of participles may at times sound archaic in Russian as well.
Church Slavonic and Russian words were actively and selectively thrown out and replaced with German and the French, and English in that order. Like I said, the structures exist but ti is not possible to use them without being subjected to "corrective" criticism or, worse, ridicule.
In short, Serbian has been subjected to a linguistic, grammatical, orthographic, and cultural "genocide" since 1868. and it hasn't stopped yet.
Some westernization of language is probably a grassroots phenomenon. For example, in computer science (at least from my Russian perspective) the original Russian terminology pre-dated the introduction of superior western technology. With things like Apple II and IBM PC came simpler, shorter and more relevant vocabulary. So "печатающее устройство" (printing device) became "принтер" ( "printer" in Cyrillic letters); "дисковое запоминающее устройство" contracted to "диск" (disk). That was salutary, and in any event, inavoidable.
There is a natural aversion in Russia to Russian participles. They are long, mumbly and unsonorous. From somewhere (probably soemone's autobiography) I remember this episode. An aspiring author brings his manuscript to some big cheese for critique. The big cheese opines: "nice enough, but you have lice crawling all over it". Lice? What he meant was the annoying overuse of past continuous participles with their distinctive "вши" suffix, which is alos Russian for "lice".
But indeed there was and is the militant Left's redefinition of language. Just like in English it is now near impossible to remember what "justice" or "compassion" or "normal" means, something similar was occurring in the 1920's in the Soviet Union. Both art and language were redefined, often by people of considerable talent such as Mayakovsky or Malevich.
Talk to you later.
So "печатающее устройство" (printing device) became "принтер"
If it were the Americans they they would have simply reduced it to "ПУ" rather than seek a shorter foreign word. While English is not free from borrowed words, the borrowed words are borrowed usually to distinguish something as foreign, and not as a matter of replacing existing English words.
Among the Serbs (and probably to a large extent among Russians), the opposite is the rule. Foreign words are used to replace domestic words as an impression of greater "sophistication."
After their reform, the Serbs dropped the traditional word "печатати" and replaced it with a corrupt Germanism "штампати" (from schtampfen, to press). So, naturally, the printer became "штампач." (NB the word "печат" is still used to mean a seal, as in "royal seal").
So, here we have one word, easy to pronounce, a neologism based on domestic vocabulary, stampach, but soon everyone started to use the Anglicism "принтер" because it sounds more sophisticated. (the Serbs also genuianly believe, silly as it may sound, that if they use borrowed words and Latin alphabet, the foreigners will understand their language!)
Even outside the computer world the trend is similar precisely it seems because it is not driven by a need but by vogue. For instance the word "значка" means a badge, pin. That was replaced with "беџ" ("Џ" is an old Romanian letter that was introduced with the orthographic and alphabet reform in 1868, and corresponds to English "J," as in John, or to Russian "ДЖ" or DZH in transliteration; it is considered a single sound, since there are words where "д" and "ж" must be pronounced separately, such as in "надживети" (to outlive), which in Russian orthography would have been solved, I suppose, with a Ъ, as in "надъживети")
At any rate, going from "значка" to "беџ" is clearly trendiness. The same can be said about some other terms such as "млазни" (реактивный in Russian), which is now referred to as "џет"!
Russian, of course has show similar trends. Russian words for "state" (штат, Ger.), storm (as in attack, штурм, Ger.), flag (флаг, Ang.), etc. obviously are all words that replaced Russian or Slavonic terms for some reason.
On the other hand, English words such as samizdat or samovar are borrowed from Russian because there is no equivalent English word literally or conceptually. So, English borrows foreign words out of necessity, while our respective cultures do so as a matter of imitation, vogue, and a rather pathetic attempt to be more "sophisticated."
Matter of fact, they probably do so. Also there is nothing particularly wordy in "печать" or its one-word derivatives. I agree that it is the sense of inferiority that is driving this, more than a linguistic need.
It is one measure of strength in a language that it can easily absorb foreign borrowings. Both Slave languages and English are good at that. But the English speakers borrow when they have to and the Russians and the Serbs borrow for the sake of borrowing. You are right.
That's very well put, Alex.
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