Language of the Church

[Filip88]

Some of these questions may seem basic to many of you, but please try to answer them fully if you can. I sent this to one user, and he told me it might be good to make a new thread.

1. How do Greek priests, chanters and linguists today call koine Greek? I heard a term "church language" and "Ecclesiastical koine".
2. How good does an average Greek attending the Liturgy understands koini Greek? Does it require learning?
3. Why didn't the G. O. Church translate church books (therefore the Liturgy) to modern Greek?
4. Why there is no (I never heard it) psaltiki in modern Greek?
5. Does anyone today still writes in koine? If yes, who?
6. Are there any real drawbacks of translating church books to modern Greek? And vice versa, what are the "pros" of koine?
7. Do you consider koine a spiritual language, and modern Greek a profane, secular language?

There is a really interesting parallel to this, which is the relationship of Churchslavonic and modern slavic languages. Just for the record, I am against translating C-slavonic into modern, spoken languages. It is a plain secularization and a great loss (which would take several lines to describe). I reckon that it's a similar case with koine vs. modern Greek.

 

[Π. Δαβίδ]

Modern Slavic languages are being used by all Slavic speaking churches to some extend: others use it for litanies and easily sung pieces of hymnody, others only for the typikon instructions.
The use of modern Greek language in worship has been very hotly debated in the past and you can search it in the Greek speaking part of the forum.
Many young priests, lazy to study carefully the church language, make hideous mistakes, though graduates of the theological school; yet, when challenged with the possibility of the use of a modern literary language in divine worship they utterly dismiss it.
Using some form of modern Greek language in divine worship is, of course, an onerous task; translations will have to be both theologically precise and grammatically accurate and not ununderstood by the people.