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Slavonic-English Dictionary Project
In the frames of 2008 International Year of Languages
It is planned to build a Slavonic to English dictionary. It will be available for free online. It will include around 5’000 words. While the modern family of Slavic languages includes some 15 languages, the archaic Church Slavonic remains in use in the church services. Many medieval East-European chronicles and other materials were written in this language. The reference materials for the present dictionary are taken, in general, from old books, printed (and handwritten, see photo above and here) in the Russian Empire before 1917 (for before the eighteenth century, Church Slavonic was in wide use as a general literary language in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine).
Church Slavonic is the liturgical language of several Christian Orthodox churches, first of all, in the ‘traditional’ South European countries – Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Macedonian Orthodox Church and Serbian Orthodox Church. Some English-speaking parishes use Church Slavonic in the services, as well. Particularly, the parishes of the Orthodox Church in America and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, some parishes of the Greek-Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem – in the United States; some parishes in Australia, Canada, and the UK.
Unfortunately, there is no complete Slavonic-to-English dictionary (on this site we omit the first term and write mere ‘Slavonic’, implying that it is the language of liturgical services rather than any other language of Slavic origin), while it is highly desirable to enable easy access to the relevant Biblical texts, services and other records – for the general community. For this reason the genuine Slavonic letters are given in the Cyrillic transcription corresponding to Bulgarian and Russian alphabets (and convertible to Belarusian, Macedonian, Rusyn, Serbian, Ukrainian alphabets). To reflect the flavor of the archaic language, the relevant citations from the English Bible are given according to the King James Version, and parallel texts of the books of Psalms and Revelation are prepared for bilingual reading. (In 2008-2009 the project had been powered by Millennium Memorial Ltd, with the target completion date Jan 1, 2010. Now the project is extednded by one year under the sponsorship of the Alexander Kerensky Museum).
Produced by Alexander Kerensky Museum and Millennium Memorial Ltd Contact: mail@slavonic-english.com
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