General Slavonic Help

Although Church Slavonic can be a challenge, the good thing is that it is a phonetic language; virtually every letter is pronounced. With a few exceptions most letters retain the same sound regardless of usage. The beginner can learn to pronounce words by simply sounding out every letter. Abbreviations and Stress Mark Help Print Friendly Image

Diacritic Marks
Church Slavonic makes extensive use of diacritic marks. These markings indicate pronunciation and grammatical information about words.

Stress Marks
Stress marks indicate which syllable should receive slight vocal emphasis. Stressing the proper syllable in Church Slavonic is very important. For the beginner hearing and vocalizing the stressed syllable can be difficult. Listen closely to the audio versions of prayers this site and in the E-Tutor. Develop the habit of proper stressing from the outset even though it will seem very ackward and forced at first.

Abbreviations
Service books make extensive use of text abbreviations called "titlos". Abbreviations must be

memorized. Abbreviated words are typically those of significant persons (the Theotokos, Our Lord, etc) or concepts ( heaven,pray,holy,ect.). Abbreviation marks take several forms. Also view a printable list of abbreviations in gif format. Pdf Abbreviations All online prayer texts in this site have no abbreviations to make it easier for the beginner to learn the prayers.

Voicing (breathing) Symbol

Voicing signs are a holdover from Greek and serve only as decorative elements.

The Lord's Prayer With Abbreviations

Lord's Prayer With No Abbreviations

Version 3.0 for Windows

Effective July 2006 this program is now free to download. The CD version is no longer available for sale.

Download:

Etutor Download self-extracting Zipped Version If You Need Help

Once You've Downloaded The Program:

Choose a directory you want the program downloaded to. I suggest creating a download folder. The file name you will dowload is called ETutor3.exe. Once downloaded, find the file and double click. An self-extract window will open. Click extract. (You can change the directory if you wish) Program will extract and create an ETutor directory with all program files in it. Go to the newly created ETutor directory. Double click the ETutor folder. You should see a folder called xtras. Do not remove or move any of these files, infact you don't even need to look in the folder. Also you will see the etutor3 application, a Readme file (read it) and a shortcut called Play ETutor. Drag Play ETutor icon to the Desktop. This will give you easy desktop access to the etutor3.exe program. Double click the shortcut or the etutor3 application to run the program.

How E-Tutor Works

The E-Tutor takes a simple approach. Common prayers are displayed in Church Slavonic as they appear in service books with an accompanying audio track broken down into short phrases. Short phrases make it easier to repeat words and hear vocal nuances. The audio track is activated by placing the cursor on a phrase and clicking with the mouse. The E-Tutor includes the Slavonic Alphabet with English letter equivalents as well as explanations of a few basic rules one must know in order to read it. At this stage the E-Tutor does not provide help with grammar or word definitions. Many users will simply want to memorize the prayers rather than learn to read Slavonic. The E-Tutor will make this process much easier since the audio track can be repeated over and over until one masters the prayer. The E-Tutor does not use transliteration to assist in word pronounciation.