Usage of Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic

[Onur]

The Nostratic theory is still not dead though.

I also believe Nostratic theory too. It`s not that widely supported but this is mostly because it`s not politically correct/acceptable atm.

Even tough the historical knowledge about that is kinda shallow, but it also leads us to the Nostratic macro family. For example, the fatherland of Germanic people was somewhere around north of Blacksea before the great migration period. Was it only coincidence that Germanic, Turkic, Hungarian, Scandinavian and Bulgar people used runic alphabet? Or when Cyril&Methodius traveled through to the north of Blacksea, they saw people who speaks slavic language and it was written that they were also drawing marks and sketches(runic?) to write. Or the earliest attested written form of Indo-European languages belongs to the Hittites in center Anatolia but then scholars found out laters from the Hittite tablets that IE Hittites improved their language and culture from the people of previous civilization in the same area and they were speaking completely unrelated language to the IE or semitic, probably it was agglutinative one.

Perhaps during the early stages of the linguistic formation of PIE there was interaction with Ural-Altaic groups, but how would one determine the true origin of such words that 'appear' common in both groups

Thats exactly why we have Nostratic theory today. This theory says that there is a super family called Eurasiatic and both IE and Ural/Altaic languages evolved together in very early times.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Slovak, what are your thoughts on the suggestion that Sumerian and Ural-Altaic stem from a common parent language due the agglutinative nature of both?

[Delodephius]

@Onur
Well, if you believe the Great Migration theory. It is mostly considered outdated, by two other theories actually. I'm surprised people still hear of this theory.

As for Cyril & Methodius finding books written in Slavic in Crimea, these were actually books written in Aramaic, or Syriac as the Romans and Greeks called it. It is mistakenly written as Russki (Russian) instead of Surski (Syriac) in the latter (16-17th century) copies of the manuscripts. It is even mentioned in the previous paragraph that Cyril met a Samaritan there, and Samaritans spoke a form of Aramaic/Syriac. Also, Cyril could read these books. Some though that was the definite proof that they were written in Slavic, but people forget Cyril was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic which are Semitic languages like Aramaic/Syriac.

[Delodephius]

@SoM
Well, I'm not sure. We're speaking a very distant past here. The Nostratic theory states that all languages evolved from a single languages, while others claim languages have multiple origins. At least to my knowledge, the link between Ural-Altaic and Sumerian has not been successfully proven.

Inflected languages did evolve from agglutinative ones, that is, IE language were once agglutinative. Basically, in the beginning there were first Analytic languages (like in East Asia and Africa), Agglutinative (Western Asia and Europe), and Polysinthetic (Siberia and America).

[Onur]

SOM, let alone heavy agglutination, this is the most interesting part;



Apparently, old Slavonic had vowel harmony. The rule of which vowels may be(or cannot be) found near each other. This is for the easiness of pronunciation after adding numerous suffixes to the words and it`s also for the good sounding speech to the ear. This is a must have rule for all agglutinative languages which existed from Sumerian to Hungarian.

I just wonder how come a language with heavy suffixes and vowel harmony ended up being called as Indo-European by the linguists? Politics again or am i too suspicious?

[Delodephius]

All IE were or like Slavic still are heavy suffixed. Vowel harmony has little to do with it when almost the entire Slavic vocabulary is Indo-European. Grammar of Slavic languages is IE. The fact that Slavic languages have some minor similarities with agglutinative languages is irrelevant for its classification.

[Soldier of Macedon]

.......the fatherland of Germanic people was somewhere around north of Blacksea before the great migration period. Was it only coincidence that Germanic, Turkic, Hungarian, Scandinavian and Bulgar people used runic alphabet?

That is an interesting point, although it doesn't necessarily suggest common origin more than cultural fusion between different groups prior to their outward expansion from their 'original' homelands.

Thats exactly why we have Nostratic theory today. This theory says that there is a super family called Eurasiatic and both IE and Ural/Altaic languages evolved together in very early times.

Early contact between previously secluded and segregated post-Ice Age populations could also be another possibility. The Balkans and Iberian peninsula (Basque territory) have been identified as areas where populations may have survived during the last Ice Age. Later on, people began to migrate northwards, which gave rise to settlements around the Black Sea, where PIE was first consolidated as a language. It is during this period of 'formalisation' that there may have been Ural-Altaic interaction, from where the carriers of the PIE language evolved into a militant and aristocratic elite that later spread out to different parts of Europe, dominating over the peaceful farming communities that had been developing during previous centuries.

It is important to note that the Proto Indo-Europeans were not the 'first' Europeans (after the Ice Age) - instead, this title may be better assigned to the Proto Iberians and/or Proto Paleo-Balkan peoples.

[Delodephius]

SoM, I'll have to disagree with you on your last part. I support the Palaeolithic Continuity Theory, i.e. Indo-Europeans, alongside Basques, Etruscans and the Uralic speakers, and possibly other peoples, were the first humans in Europe (except the Neanderthals). They did not migrate from the north of the Black Sea, but during the Palaeolith from Asia Minor. The Indo-European language formed in either Asia Minor or further East.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Slovak, I agree with much of what PCT proposes, but not everything. I have actually been preparing a new thread to discuss prehistory, I will put up it within the next day or so.

[Pelister]

I would love to see a movement (as a means of preserving our historical identity) for Macedonians to learn the old language, and the old alphabets and liturgies and reintroduce it into the school curriculums as an option.

[Soldier of Macedon]

I would even go a step further and have it taught (at least to an elementary degree) in Macedonian schools in the Diaspora. It will only enrich the understanding that Macedonians will have of their own language, and by default, other Slavic languages.

[Delodephius]

I uploaded this to my YouTube channel. Enjoy.

YouTube - Kiev Folia, #20

[Soldier of Macedon]

Thanks for that Slovak, and nice choice of clip too, that Moravian hymn is very good, I have heard it many times since you first brought it to our attention way back.

How well versed are you in Glagolica? Can you write sentences?

[George S.]

I would like to say the hymn was great.Does anyone know how the word slavic crept in.My understanding is that the slavs were illiterate & they adopted the macedonian alphabet & language etc(they became macedonized)Also the Macedonian Alphabet & language isn't that derived from the ancient macedonian?Som i look forward to your prehistoric thread how far are you going back?
Also i agree that before everything becomes lost we should preserve it to pass it on to our children.The past is so rich & we should try to preserve it.

[Delodephius]

Does anyone know how the word slavic crept in.My understanding is that the slavs were illiterate & they adopted the macedonian alphabet & language etc(they became macedonized)Also the Macedonian Alphabet & language isn't that derived from the ancient macedonian?

Wow, so many misconceptions in a single paragraph, it would take several posts to explain. :-D

Ok, so the name Slavs didn't creep in. It was a name applied by Romans to tribal confederations that existed north across the Danube and Sava rivers about from the 5th century. These tribal confederacies together with the Avars, who were a super-confederacy of various tribes and tribal confederacies and who used the language of the Slavs as their Lingua Franca, invaded the distracted Roman empire and periodically took away control over more and more Roman territory. The political entities they formed were referred to by Romans as Sclaviniae. The Slavic tribes and the Avars took advantage of the Roman-Persian war of the 620's and took most of the Balkans from Roman control and established the Sclaviniae as far as the Peloponese. The language of the rulers of the Sclaviniae was taken as the prestige dialect and was soon accepted by the local population, which spoke a similar dialect or either Vulgar Latin or Greek. The language of the inhabitants of Macedonia came to be counted as a Slavic language henceforth. In the 9th century Cyril and Methodius took the Solunian dialect as a basis for the Slavic liturgical language (today called Old Church Slavonic) though they added the needed vocabulary to accommodate Moravian liturgical traditions. Cyril invented a script today called Glagolitic which was based on the decorative Greek minuscule with some innovations. Once Glagolitic fell out of popularity, it was replaced with the Greek alphabet in Bulgaria, but few letters from Hebrew were added to represent sounds not present in the Slavic languages. Today this script is called Cyrillic, a name applied because of mix-up of Russian origin because in the Middle ages Russians thought that Cyril invented the script. It is believed that the creator was actually Clement and hence it is sometimes called the Clementine script instead of Cyrillic, mostly among students of Old Slavonic.

So to summarize:

1. The name Slavs was a name of political entities i.e. tribal confederacies that took control of most of Roman Balkans, was used by Romans to refer to the tribal states that they established called Sclaviniae and afterwards applied to all inhabitants of those regions.

2. Macedonian language was originally a Palaeo-Balkan language and was very close to the Balto-Slavic languages. Once the Slavic tribal elite established itself in Macedonia their languages merge, were hybridized, and formed a dialect of the Common Slavic language. The language of the Macedonians was hence simply called Slavonic ("You are from Solun and all the Solunians speak pure Slavonic" - Emperor Michael, 862 AD).

3. There is no such thing as a Macedonian alphabet, old or new. The alphabet that St. Cyril created, Glagolitic, is a heavily decorative and modified Greek minuscule script and the Cyrillic alphabet created by St. Clementine in Bulgaria is nothing more than an expanded Greek alphabet with a few Hebrew letters.

I hope that answers most of your questions.