No subject

[Robert A. Rothstein]

On 3/18/2011 11:26 AM, R. M. Cleminson wrote:
> Church Slavonic was never the state language of Russia.
>
> An East Slavonic vernacular was used for administrative and commercial purposes from the earliest times uninterruptedly to the present day.
>
> Church Slavonic was used for cultural purposes ("high" literature, learned texts) in mediaeval times, and persisted in this function (which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as a state language) until the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century.  By 1696 Ludolf was urging the use of Russian for these purposes ("Forsan hoc specimen Russos persuadebit, posse&  in vulgari dialecto aliquid imprimi, sicuti Nationi Russicae decori et utilitati foret, si more aliarum gentium propriam linguam excolere atque bonos libros in ea edere conabuntur") and within a short time this was indeed being actively promoted by the government.
>

For those of you who are as classically challenged as I, here is a 
paraphrase of Ludolf's Latin (from a 1930 article by Semen Rapoport in 
/The Slavonic and East European Review/):
"At the end of the preface Ludolf expresses the hope that his grammar 
may persuade Russians that something can be printed even in the people's 
dialect, and goes on to say that it would thus be for the benefit and 
ornament of the Russians, if, like other nations, they would try to 
cultivate their own language and publish good books in it."

Bob Rothstein


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