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.