Pseudo Church Slavic


Some modern books, published in modern Slavic languages, use Cyrillic Church Slavic letters in presenting their titles. The titles may be entirely in Church Slavic script or they may only have one or a few words/letters in Church Slavic, while the rest of the text on the title page is rendered in modern language and script.

Examples:

1)

The book is in modern Russian, but the title proper “Ternistyĭ putʹ k pravoslavii︠u︡” appears in Cyrillic Church Slavic script.

2)

Путь к свѧтости

преподобный Алексий Карпаторусский

Шестово

Успенско-Казанский монастырь

2009

The book is in modern Russian; but the “little yus” ѧ appears as a substitute for the letter я in the third word of the title.

In these cases, the Church Slavic script was used in order to evoke visually the religious nature of the topic. Intended to impart a religious atmosphere to a work, this use of Church Slavic letters is more a “style” issue rather than a “language” issue.


Suggested cataloging treatment:

When describing a title written in “pseudo” Church Slavic

  • Code the language of publication in the fixed field according to the language of the main text, not “chu”

  • Transliterate as precisely as possible, based on the romanization table for Church Slavic

  • Give a variant title in modern orthography

  • Give any other variants of the title that could be considered useful

  • Provide a note “Title in [language], (partly/also) in Church Slavic script”.


Examples (in MARC format):

245 10 Тєрнистый пѸть к православию : ǂb из истории обращения в христианство ненцев архангельских тундр / ǂc Н А. Окладников, Н.Н. Матафанов.

245 10 Ternistȳĭ pūtʹ k pravoslavii︠u︡ : ǂb iz istorii obrashchenii︠a︡ v khristianstvo nent︠s︡ev arkhangelʹskikh tundr / ǂc N A. Okladnikov, N.N. Matafanov.

246 3 Тернистый путь к православию

246 3 Ternistyĭ putʹ k pravoslavii︠u︡

546 Title in Russian, in Church Slavic script.

[Please note: 1) The Church Slavic letter “ouk” (transcribed “ū”) in the word “pūtʹ” here (see image further up) cannot be displayed in Church Slavic script, as this letter is not currently supported by OCLC software, and so should be substituted by the numeric character reference; 2) Even though the transliteration of the title proper in 245 and variant title in 246 normalizes the same, it is acceptable to have both in bibliographic records]

245 10 Путь к свѧтости : ǂb преподобный Алексий Карпаторусский.

245 10 Putʹ k svętosti : ǂb prepodobnyĭ Aleksiĭ Karpatorusskiĭ.

246 3 Путь к святости

246 3 Putʹ k svi︠a︡tosti

546 Title in Russian, partly in Church Slavic script.


See also: Transcribing Church Slavic; Mixed Orthographies and Related Cataloging Issues


Revised: Oct. 25, 2015