Two notable verbs have irregular participles. The verb ити (“go”), with principle parts иду, идеть, has the past active participle шьдъ (“having gone”). There are no passive participles for this verb because it is intransitive. The present active participle of быти is сы for the nominative masculine and neuter singular, and сущя for the genitive masculine singular. The past active participle is quite regular (бывъ, бывъшя).

Selected uses of participles:

Passive Voice:

A passive participle combined with a conjugated form of быти, can be used to express a verb in the passive voice. The choice of the present or past passive participle can imply a further sense of aspect, where the present passive participle suggests ongoing action within the tense subscribed by the finite form of быти, while the past passive participle implies an end to the action within the same span of time. Consider the following examples:

Отьць отъ сыну любимъ есть.

Отьць отъ сыну любитъ есть.

Both of these sentences mean “The father is loved by the son” but have slightly distinct implications. The first sentence uses the present passive participle which implies that the son still loves his father, while the second sentence’s past passive participle implies that he may soon no longer love his father. Notice the use of the preposition отъ, which means “by” and is followed by the genitive of the agent of the action. In addition, the middle voice may be used as a passive voice. Example: Отьць ся отъ сыну любить.

Participle as relative clause:

As in modern Russian, a participle can stand in for a relative clause, allowing omission of the relative pronoun, such as the following example:

онъ звѣрь уби мечьмь отъ князя ему даныимь. (“He killed a beast with the sword given to him by the prince.”)

Participles as other clauses:

From the model of the participle as a relative clause, the participle can imply any relationship with the main clause, based on context. Thus, a participle can be supplementary, causal, or temporal in relationship with the main clause. Consider the sentence:

Кыеву ѣхахомъ князя видячи.

This could mean any of the following:

We traveled to Kiev (in order) to see the prince.

We traveled to Kiev while seeing the prince.

We traveled to Kiev although we saw the prince.

The present passive participle can be used to mean -able, as in видимъ (“visible”), or знаемъ (“knowable”).

Dative Absolute:

An absolute construction is a clause subordinated to the main thought of a sentence, but one in which there is no grammatical connection to any elements of the main thought. In English, it is usually introduced with the preposition “with…”. An example might be the sentence…

With the prince expecting us, we traveled to Kiev.

Here, the clause “with the prince expecting us” is the absolute construction, which, although somehow related to the act of travelling to Kiev, has nothing to do with any of the elements of that clause. Notice how “expecting” is a participle. A similar construction occurred in OR, where the subject of the absolute construction was placed into the dative case, and the verb of the absolute construction was a participle that agreed with the subject in case (dative), number, and gender. The participle could itself take an object appropriate to that verb. This same sentence, translated to OR, reads:

Князю ны жьдучю Кыеву ѣхахомъ.

The irregular verb речи (“say”):

The irregular first conjugation verb речи (principal parts реку, речеть) has an irregular imperative, using the stem рьк- instead of рек-. Its conjugation is borne out below.

This verb also has two aorist conjugations. One regular and one irregular, which are used interchangeably. The irregular aorist uses an extinct paradigm called the sigmatic aorist, where the suffix -с was added to the root of the verb to produce the aorist stem. This suffix -с would then shift to -х or -ш, depending on the phonetic environment that surrounded it. This became too arcane and confusing to remember by the Middle Ages, such that the sigmatic aorist became extinct in all verbs but this. The sigmatic aorist is conjugated below.

Participles:

Old Russian made extensive use of participles to stand in for just about any instance where a verb would be called for. They were not limited to simple verbal descriptive adjectives or as stand-ins for relative clauses. Instead, any conjunction, relative clause, or subordinate clause can simply be rendered with a participial construction, so long as there is some connection to a noun in the main clause. With the use of the absolute construction, even that connection was unnecessary.

Besides the resultative participle, there were four others -- present active and passive, and past active and passive. These participles indicated how the action of the participle was related to the main verb, whether happening at the same time (present), or before the verb (past). The voices of the participles -- active and passive -- indicated whether the grammatical subject of the participle was performing the action, or the recipient of the action. Note that there is no middle voice participle. Participles are formed from the corresponding verb stems -- present for present tense stem, past for past tense stem. Like other adjectives, they are declined.

Present Active Participle:

The present active participle is formed in two steps. The nominative masculine singular indefinite form is produced by adding -а to the present tense stem of conjugations I, II and athematic, and -я for conjugations III and IV. For all other cases, the suffix -уч is attached to the present tense stem of conjugations I, II, and athematic, -юч for conjugation III, and -яч for conjugation IV. This parallels the third person plural form of the present, such that it is easier to arrive at by simply stripping the -ть off the ending of the present third person plural and replacing with -ч. The participle is declined according to the soft indefinite declension (note that the feminine nominative singular indefinite ending for participles is -и). The table below gives a brief run-down of our model verbs, indicating the masculine nominative singular indefinite, and the masculine genitive singular indefinite.

To produce the definite declension, simply add the the appropriate case form of the third person pronoun и* to the indefinite form, using the simplification pattern elaborated in the earlier model for soft definite adjectives. The table below briefly summarizes this.

Present Passive Participle:

The present passive participle is formed by taking the present tense stem and adding the ending -омъ to verbs of conjugations I, II, and athematic, -емъ for conjugation III, and -имъ for conjugation IV. This forms the masculine nominative singular indefinite form, and can be declined with the hard adjective declension. This pattern is similar to that of the first person plural of the present tense. The following table illustrates this.

Past Active Participle:

The past active participle is formed in a two step process analogous to the present active participle. The nominative masculine and neuter singular is formed by adding the suffix -въ to the past tense stem that ends in a vowel, or -ъ to one the ends in a consonant. All other cases can be declined by adding, to this suffix, another suffix, -ш, and declining according to the soft adjective declension. The exception occurs in the fourth conjugation, where the stem is produced not only by removing the infinitive suffix, but the preceding vowel. To this stem is added the ending -jь, causing the penultimate consonant to undergo j-palatalization. Otherwise, the other case forms are produced identically. The definite adjective is declined in a manner analogous to the present active participle, simply by adding the case appropriate form of the pronoun и*. Here is a table to break it down. Note that the second conjugation may optionally drop the suffix -ну.

Past Passive Participle:

The past passive participle is readily formed by adding the suffix -нъ to past tense stems that end in a vowel, or -енъ to stems that end in a consonant, and declined according to the hard adjective declension. Some verbs instead use the suffix -тъ. Unfortunately, the verbs that use this do not follow any consistent rule, so that the dictionary will often contain a notation to indicate such. Typically, this alternative suffix is used in stems that contain л, я, or р. The table below illustrates this.

Introduction to Participles:

Participles are adjectives that express the actions of verbs, and so are derived from verb stems. This is true both in English and in Old Russian. English has present participles such as leading, moving, seeing, and giving, all of which are formed by adding the ending -ing to the verb stem. Past participles are similarly formed by adding the ending -ed, such as in moved or walked. OR had many diverse participles -- five in total -- which represented varied verbal contexts. In addition, being adjectives, they were also declined as well. In this section, I will address the simplest of the five participles, called the resultative participle.

The resultative participle is called as such because it shows the result of the action in the verb. Its aspect is one of completion of the action. English would render such a participle as a past perfect participle. For example, the past perfect participle of “to lead” is “having led.” Notice the implication of completeness in the verb. The resultative participle of OR is formed by attaching the ending -лъ to the stem of the infinitive, thus producing the nominative masculine singular. In principle, all other forms can be declined in the hard indefinite adjective declension. However, by the time Russian became attested as a written language, use of the resultative participle had declined so much that only the nominatives remained. Below is an example of the resultative participle’s declension for the verb знати, in only the nominative.

For the most part, that is all that is necessary to arrive at the resultative participle. However, special conditions exist in some instances.

• If the stem of the infinitive ends in a dental (д, т), it is dropped. Ex: вести (вед-) -> велъ

• In second conjugation verbs, the suffix -ну can be dropped or kept, thus allowing for two resultative participles. Ex: двигнути -> двигнулъ, двиглъ

• The resultative participle of ити (“go”) is irregular, and is шьлъ.

Perfect, Pluperfect, Future Perfect Tenses:

By the time Russian was attested in written form, the only function of the resultative participle was to express the perfect tense. The perfect tense represents the completed aspect of the verb. For the verb “to lead,” this can be analogously expressed as “I have led.” OR’s perfect tense was written periphrastically, by combining the resultative participle, which had to agree in gender and number with the subject, followed by the present tense of the verb быти conjugated in the appropriate person. Thus, the conjugation of вести in the perfect tense, in only a masculine subject, would be велъ ѥсмь, велъ ѥси, велъ ѥсть, etc, with the participle’s gender altered for the gender of the subject accordingly.

The pluperfect tense is rendered in a similar manner to the perfect, but uses the imperfect tense of быти. Its meaning follows the same aspect as the perfect, but pushed into the past, so that the action is seen as completed in the past. In English, “to lead” in the pluperfect would be analogously expressed as “I had led.” Ex: велъ бяхъ, велъ бяше, etc.

The future perfect indicates that the action is expected to be completed in the future, and is formed by combining the resultative participle with the future tense of быти. Ex: велъ буду, велъ будеши, велъ будеть, etc (“I will have led, you will have led, he will have led, …”)

Conditional Mood:

Previously I have discussed the indicative mood, which indicates statements of fact, and the imperative mood, which demonstrated a command. The conditional mood was a third mood of OR which indicated only potential action, and thus could be construed in many ways dependent on context. Whereas the indicative mood had many tenses, the conditional mood had no specific tense, as it did not stand for any specific time, being only a potential action and not an actual one. To conjugate in the conditional mood, the verb in question was rendered with the resultative participle and combined periphrastically with the appropriate form of быти in the aorist tense. The conjugation for the conditional mood for вести is велъ быхъ, велъ бы, etc. (“I would have led, you would have led, …”) Use of the conditional mood is quite similar to the English use of the helping verbs would, could, should, may.

The conjunctional particle да:

Despite appearances, this particle does not mean “yes.” It is actually a proclitic particle, roughly translated as “that,” and used to introduce many types of subordinate clauses. Its meaning varies depending on context as well as the mood the verb of the subordinate clause. In many ways, да has the same function as the modern Russian conjunction чтобы. The following are recognized uses of this conjunction.

• When the clause that follows contains a verb in the imperative mood, it is a simple imperative. This only occurs in the first person singular, third person dual and plural.

• When the clause that follows contains a verb in the conditional mood, it is a clause of purpose, and can be translated as “in order that…”

• When the clause that follows bears a verb in the indicative mood, it usually indicates a clause of result, and can be translated as “so that…” However, sometimes the conditional mood is used instead, so that it can be confused for a clause of purpose.

Compound verbs:

Most Russian verbs can be modified by attaching a preposition as a prefix, which leads to a subtle change in the meaning which is usually obvious. For example, adding the prefix вы- (“out”) to вести (“to lead”) yields вывести (“to withdraw”). There will usually be a citation in the dictionary of the compound verb, giving its meaning.

Consonant stem nouns:

OR had one special class of nouns that did not fit with the others mentioned. These nouns were formed from a nominative singular noun that had no specific ending. In order to decline the noun in any other case and number, a consonant was then added to the nominative singular form, producing the stem for all other cases and numbers. It was to this stem that case endings were added. The stem often became transformed by the addition of the consonant, so that it was not entirely identical to the nominative singular. The consonant used in this manner was variable, and even the gender of the noun was unpredictable. Because of this, it is not possible to predict the declension of the consonant stem noun by reference to the nominative singular, since it does not contain the true stem. Thus, consonant stem nouns are always cited in the dictionary as the nominative singular, followed by the genitive singular, as well as the gender of the noun. The genitive singular reveals the true stem, with the appended consonant. Consonant stem nouns may have been the oldest nouns in the language, and may have been more numerous in the primeval past. By the historical period, most consonant stem nouns had become retrofitted as thematic vowel nouns, so that their total number was far less, and they were confined to common core vocabulary words. They still exist in modern Russian today, but are of even fewer number owing to the same process, whereby more of them are converted to thematic nouns.

Consonant stem nouns use their own set of endings, which are divided by gender. In the tables below, I’ll demonstrate the declension of each paradigm according to a noun of each gender, and give their entry in the dictionary. Most of the case endings are the same.

Masculine:

камы, камене, rock

Feminine:

мати, матере, mother

Neuter:

имя, имене, name

The notable irregular neuter nouns око, очесе (“eye”) and ухо, ушесе (“ear”) do not have a plural number, because they only exist as pairs. Instead, they have an irregular dual number with the stems ок- and ух-, which are subject to usual softening of their velar stem-final consonants, and apply ь stem endings. (уши, ушью, ушьма).

A correlate to the interrogative pronoun is the interrogative adjective, which means “which?” It is declined in a mostly regular manner, with soft pronominal endings attached to the stem ко-, with the exception of mostly some nominative singulars, as indicated below. The feminine and neuter duals are identical.

By analogy, the adjective нѣкъ means “some, certain” while the adjective никъ means “none.” There is a morphologically related adjective къжьдо (“each”) which is declined the same as къ, in which the initial element undergoes declension, while the suffix -жьдо, remains the same. So that, the masculine would be declined as къжьдо, коегожьдо, коемужьдо, etc, or may use the interrogative pronoun къто, declining as къжьдо, когожьдо, комужьдо, etc, without any distinction in meaning.

The Irregular Verb хотѣти (“want”):

This verb is highly irregular in the present tense. Its conjugation in the singular features both a regular and irregular j-palatalization of the stem-final consonant -т- into -ч- or -щ-, with multiple alternative forms existing side by side without any distinction in meaning. There were also irregular forms in the imperative and aorist which are incompletely attested.

The Future Tense:

OR did not have a specific future tense except for the verb быти, which was conjugated as a regular first conjugation verb with the stem буд- (ie. буду, будеши, etc). Otherwise, the only way to express future action was by implication in context. One common means was to use a helping verb that could be construed as future meaning, such as начати (“begin”) or хотѣти (“want”), conjugated in the present tense and then combined with the infinitive of the verb intended for the future. One well known phrase that bears this example was by Svyatoslav I, who said “хощю на вы ити” which means “I will come at you.” Here, хощю is used as the helping verb which combines with the infinitive ити (“go”). Unfortunately, this usage leaves much ambiguity, since it isn’t always clear whether the literal meaning is intended, or the future meaning. This phrase could just as easily mean “I want to go to you.”

The Interrogative Pronoun къто, чьто (“who, what?”):

The Old Russian interrogative pronoun declined just like other pronouns, using the pronominal declensional endings, with къто used for the masculine and feminine genders, and чьто for the neuter. Its exclusively singular declension could be applied to any number. Note the flagrant violation of second palatalization in the instrumental of къто.

This same interrogative pronoun can be used also as an indefinite pronoun, meaning “someone, anyone, something, anything.” To help distinguish the two meanings, the prefix нѣ- can be attached to give the same meaning (ie. нѣкъто, нѣчьто). Adding the prefix ни- (“neither) to the indefinite pronoun transforms it into the negative pronoun. Thus, никъто, ничьто means “no one, nothing.”

Thus far the only morphology reviewed for verbs applied to the indicative mood. The indicative is one mood among others in Old Russian, which is used to indicate statements of facts. Another mood in OR was the imperative, whose sole function was to give commands. Unlike the indicative, the imperative mood only existed in the present tense. Like the indicative, it was conjugated with a stem, a thematic vowel based on the conjugation, and appropriate personal endings, but was missing endings for the first person singular, third person dual and plural. This strange circumstance was caused by the Russian imperative’s unusual origin, in that it was not derived from an original imperative mood but from the optative mood. The optative mood was another mood that was intended to express wishes. A speaker would exclaim in the optative mood for an act that he longed to happen. Gradually, the optative came to have the connotation of an order, and not simply a wish, and the original imperative was lost. In this transition, some endings were lost as the two moods became confused for each other.

The Old Russian imperative is formed by taking the present tense stem of the verb, applying the thematic vowel, and then the personal ending. The thematic vowel, like the indicative, depended upon the conjugation, and could be either и or ѣ. These vowels were derived from diphthongs, such that second palatalization of preceding velar consonants could take place. The personal endings were the same for all conjugations. The athematic imperative applied slightly different rules, as there was no thematic vowel involved. For those persons where no ending exists, OR resorted to using the particle да (“so that…”) followed by the form of the verb in the present indicative.

The personal endings of all the thematic conjugations for the imperative were as follows:

The thematic vowels for the conjugations were и for all singular of all thematic conjugations, ѣ for the dual and plural of the first and second conjugations, and и for the dual and plural of the third and fourth conjugations. The athematic imperative had some unusual properties that will be presented separately. The full conjugation for our representative thematic verbs is borne out below.

For the athematic conjugation, the singular endings were -jь, which applied j-palatalization to the preceding consonant. The dual and plural inserted the thematic vowel -и- with thematic imperative personal endings as above. Below is a representative athematic verb, дати, conjugated in the imperative. Note that occasionally, fourth conjugation verbs apply the imperative scheme of athematic verbs.

The imperative of the verb быти is irregular, drawing from a mix of thematic and athematic conjugational schemes, as presented below.

Universal Reflexive Pronoun себе:

In addition to pronouns of the first, second, and third person, Old Russian had a universal reflexive pronoun that had the same meaning as himself, herself, itself, and themselves. Unlike English, however, the Russian reflexive pronoun was the same no matter the gender or even number, but still declined for case. Since it was reflexive, there was no nominative. There was also no vocative since one cannot call out to oneself reflexively. Its case forms are displayed below, with italicized forms indicating the enclitic version.

Middle Voice:

So far, we have only reviewed conjugations of verbs for the active voice. The active voice indicates that the subject of the verb produces the action upon another object. Old Russian had two other voices, however. The passive voice is a reversal of this scheme where the subject of the verb is the recipient of the action, while the actor is some third party -- often unmentioned. The middle voice straddles both active and passive voices, where the subject of the verb is the agent of the action and also its recipient. The voice of any finite verb can be transformed from active to middle by simply adding the accusative reflexive pronoun ся anywhere in the sentence, thereby marking action onto the subject. The only limitation is that, since ся is enclitic, it cannot be the first word in a sentence. In the less common case where a verb takes the dative as an object instead of accusative, си is used instead. As an example, whereas знаю means “I know,” знаю ся means “I know (for) myself.” Since the reflexive pronoun is utilized, the action can imply either some ulterior motive for the subject in performing the action, or simply reflexive action. Note that, unlike modern Russian, it is not necessary for the reflexive pronoun to immediately follow the verb.

The imperfect tense is another past tense in OR, that describes an action that is incomplete and may be ongoing. In English, such a sentence could be expressed as “I was leading.” The old imperfect is a considerable departure from the modern. Whereas the modern Russian imperfect simply uses a pair of verb stems, one for perfective and one for imperfective conjugation, the old imperfect applied novel endings to the same stem. As an example, in modern Russian, нести is the perfective infinitive while носить is the imperfective. In OR, нести could serve either function, depending on the endings used.

To conjugate in the imperfect tense, a special suffix -яах- is applied to the present tense stem. Despite the imperfect being a past tense, this actually makes sense if you view the present tense stem as representing the progressive aspect, which applies both to the present tense and to the imperfect. Following application of the imperfect suffix, the personal endings of the imperfect are applied, which are displayed below.

Notice that many endings begin with the vowel -e, which causes first palatalization of the preceding consonant х to ш. This is all borne out in the conjugation below, as applied to the verb нести.

Further Refinements:

• The letter -a- of the suffix can be alternatively dropped, resulting in the abbreviated alternative forms несяхъ, несяше, etc.

• An additional suffix -ть can be added to the third person singular or plural, imitating the present tense (ie. несяашеть, несяахуть)

However, if the infinitive stem ends in -a, then the imperfect uses this stem instead of the present tense stem, and applies the suffix with a dropped initial -я. Note this example for писати.

Just as above, one -a- can be dropped from the suffix to yield an abbreviated form (ie. писахъ, писаше, etc). And of course, the extra suffix -ть can be applied to the third person singular or plural.

Imperfect of быти:

The irregular verb быти has two stems to conjugate in the imperfect tense -- б- and бѣ-. The first only conjugates with the abbreviated suffix -ях, while the second, ending on a vowel, drops the initial -я, behaving as if it had an infinitive that ended on -a.

Alternative second conjugation aorist:

The second conjugation features present tense stems that end in -н. Typically they also include an infinitive stem that ends in -ну. In conjugating for the aorist, this conjugation can use either the usual infinitive stem or an alternate that also drops the -ну, without any difference in meaning. The removal of this suffix exposes the preceding consonant to first palatalization, as the following conjugation demonstrates for двигнути.

Articulate infinitive:

The infinitive normally serves merely as an object of another verb, and being uninflected, does not have its own subject. Under special conditions, however, the infinitive can have a subject. In doing so, the subject of the infinitive, the infinitive, and the infinitive’s object can all stand as one thought nested within a larger sentence. This is called the articulate infinitive, since the infinitive actually articulates a thought, rather than merely being another thought’s object. In such a case, the subject of the infinitive is rendered in the dative case, and the object in the case appropriate to that of the infinitive, usually accusative.

An example sentence would be:

“It is difficult for him to rule Russia.”

Бременьно ѥму Русью владѣти ѥсть.

In this sentence, бременьно means “difficult/heavy” and is the subject of the finitive verb ѥсть (“is”). The object of ѥсть is the entire thought of ѥму Русью владѣти. The verb владѣти, which means “to rule” takes an instrumental object, which here is Русью. Notice how a similar construction is employed in English, which is lead with the preposition “for…”

The Infinitive:

The infinitive is the action of the verb itself, as a noun, rather than a description of the action by an actor, as is the finite verb. It is also the dictionary entry for every verb. In English, infinitives are represented by the preceding particle “to…” such as “to say, to walk, to throw,” and are used almost the same as in English. OR produces infinitives by applying the ending -ти to the infinitive stem. The infinitive stem is then used to conjugate in the aorist, perfect, and sometimes imperfect tenses, so that it need not bear any resemblance to the stem of any other tenses. For this reason, it is important to be able to determine the infinitive stem.

Most of the time, simply removing the ending -ти will produce the infinitive stem, such as when that stem ends in a vowel. Examples include:

двигну- from двигнути

писа- from писати.

зна- from знати

видѣ- from видѣти

да- from дати

When the stem ends in a consonant however, the infinitive undergoes sound changes. If the final consonant in the stem is a dental (д, т), the dental becomes converted to -с-, thereby producing the ending -сти. Most of the time, in such cases, the infinitive stem will be the same as the present tense stem. An exception is the verb нести (“carry”), whose infinitive stem is simply нес-.

Examples:

вед- from вести

чьт- from чьсти (“read”)

When the stem ends in a velar consonant (к, г, х), the final velar consonant is dropped and the initial -т- of the infinitive ending undergoes j-palatalization to -ч-, becoming -чи. Most of the time, the infinitive stem will be the same as the present tense stem.

Examples:

мог- from мочи

рек- from речи (“say”)

тек- from течи (“flow”)

жьг- from жечи (“ignite”) {slightly irregular}

When the stem ends in any other consonant, it is dropped and the infinitive ending added to the rump stem. Example: теп- from тети (“strike”).

Aorist Tense:

The aorist tense is the only one that corresponds to the simple aspect of OR. This aspect indicates an action that simply happened once, in the past, without further elaboration of what transpired thereafter. The best approximation to English is the simple past. For example, if the present tense of “to lead” is “I lead,” the simple past would be “I led.” This is the same connotation that the aorist has in OR.

To conjugate in the aorist tense, one has to arrive first at its stem, which is obtained by finding the infinitive stem, then applying the endings specific to the aorist, according to the following scheme. Most of the endings contain some kernel of the suffix -ох.

Here is the full conjugation of the verb вести, with a consonant in the end of the stem, in the aorist tense.

If the infinitive stem ends on a vowel, the initial vowel of the ending is dropped, such as in this conjugation of писати. Note how, in the second and third person singular, this results in simply the stem alone.

Athematic verbs have an alternate ending -стъ for the second and third person singular (дастъ for дати).

The verb быти has two aorist stems. The first is the regular one бы-, the second is the irregular бѣ-. Their conjugations appear below.

Supine:

An alternative to the infinitive was the supine, which was readily formed by replacing the infinitive ending -ти with -тъ. Its meaning was the same as the infinitive, but with an implication of purpose. Even by the Middle Ages, its use was rare, being confined only as an object of a verb of motion, and even then, was rapidly losing ground to the infinitive. For example, the sentence “I go to Kiev to learn.” can be translated as Кыеву иду учитъ ся.

The fifth conjugation features a special category of verbs called athematics. Unlike the other conjugations, these verbs do not have a thematic vowel and instead apply their personal endings directly onto the verb stem. The athematic conjugation is the oldest conjugation, and once held sway over as many as half the verbs in the language. By the time Russian was attested in written form, nearly all verbs were converted to a thematic conjugation, leaving just a handful of athematics. Though few in number, they were commonplace in use. There is no use in using the dictionary to discern the principle parts of these verbs. You will be unable to realize the present tense stem from them, so it is best to just memorize them.

There are five athematic verbs in OR, indicated below with the infinitive, followed by the present tense stem, followed by the translation. One verb below also has a thematic alternative.

быти, ѥс- (“be”)

вѣдѣти, вѣд- (“know”)

дати, дад- (“give”)

имѣти, има- (“have”), or имѣю, имѣѥть

ѣсти, ѣд- (“eat”)

Athematic verbs use a slightly different set of personal endings, related in the table below.

If you try to apply these endings to the present tense stems of any of the above verbs, you see immediately the problem with the athematic conjugation -- consonants apposed in a manner that makes them unpronouncible. As a result, OR had to work around this to create a set of rules to smooth over the interface between the stem and the ending. These three rules were…

• When the stem ending was a dental consonant (д, т) that was followed by an ending that began with т-, the two letters were converted to -ст-.

• When the stem ended in any other consonant, and then followed an ending beginning with a consonant, the stem’s final consonant was dropped.

• When the stem ended in a vowel, that vowel was dropped if the following ending also began with a vowel.

With these rules in mind, let us apply them to conjugate the verbs дати, which has a consonant end-stem, and the verb имѣти, which has a vowel end-stem, both in the present tense. The versions in parentheses are the unsimplified forms which aren’t attested. The verb имѣти has a single irregularity in the second person singular.

The athematic verb быти is highly irregular in all parts of speech, and so will be presented gradually as each is revealed. The present tense is conjugated below.

EDIT: There is also a negated version which conjugates as нѣсмь, нѣси... несуть.

Clitics:

The accent of Old Russian words is largely unknown. The Old Cyrillic alphabet had several accent diacritics that were recommended for placement, imitating the Greek, but this was rarely, if ever done, being considered redundant. Some words, however, are known to have no accent at all, and thereby forced to carry the accent of nearby words. These deserve special attention because of their behavior in sentences. The two types of unaccented words are proclitics, which gain the accent of the word that follows them, and enclitics, which gain the accent of the word preceding them.

Proclitics:

These are typically conjunctions, words that join one element with another. English conjunctions include words like “and, but, or.” Because they take the accent of the following word, they usually begin the clause. A few selected proclitic conjunctions appear below.

а, “yet”

Indicates a contrast between two elements. Ex: сильныи а милыи, “strong yet kind”

аще... то…, “if… then…”

Sets up a conditional statement, both being proclitic.

и, “and”

In addition to the expected meaning, when arranged as и… и…, it means “both… and…”.

ли, “or”

In addition to its simple meaning, when set in dual clauses, it means “either… or…”.

не, “not”, ни, “neither”

While не has a straightforward negative meaning, it is often confused with ни, in setups of multiple clauses that mean “neither… nor…”.

нъ, “but”

ѥгда, “when”

This is the the conjunctional “when”, not the interrogative.

ѥда, “is it true that…? can it be that… ?”

This is a special particle introducing a question to which is hoped the answer is no.

Enclitics:

Enclitics are words that lack their own accent and take the accent of the word preceding them. Because of such behavior, they never occur as the first word in a sentence or clause. Typically, they are postpositive, meaning they occur as the second word. Some enclitics are listed below.

бо, “for”

This is the archaic English “for,” with a meaning akin to “because.” It has the same meaning as the modern Russian ибо.

же, “and”

Has the same meaning as и, being simply enclitic instead of proclitic.

ли, “whether”

Can be used in the same manner as in English, introducing a series of indirect statements (ли… ли…, “whether… or…”). It can also be used to mark a sentence as a question, rather than a statement.

яко, "that"

Used to introduce an indirect statement.

First Person Pronoun:

The declension of the first person pronoun (“I, me, we, us”) will be reviewed here. Some cases had an alternative enclitic form, which is indicated in italics. First person pronouns do not have a vocative because you cannot address yourself. Notice the use of the animate genitive in the accusative.

Second Person Pronoun:

The declension of the second person pronoun (“you”) will be reviewed here, also indicating alternate enclitics forms where appropriate. The nominative case is used for the vocative. It should also be noted that, at this time in Russian history, вы was not used as a singular polite form.

The thematic declensions covered so far account for the overwhelming majority of Old Russian nouns as well as all adjectives. However, there are a couple of declensions, outside of those, that represented a few common nouns. These declensions are, in many ways, actually simpler than the others, having fewer unique endings.

The ь declension:

As in the other thematic declensions, this featured the thematic vowel ь that was originally part of the stem, but which had been transferred to the endings, sometimes distorting the thematic vowel beyond recognition. In most cases, this resulted in promotion of the vowel to и. Nouns of this declension could either be masculine or feminine. Because of the common thematic vowel, nearly all their endings are the same, regardless of gender. These endings are indicated below.

Two representative nouns are the feminine ночь (“night”), and the masculine дьнь (“day”). Their dictionary entries are indicated below.

НОЧ|Ь (131), ­И с. Ночь

ДЬН|Ь (~10000), -Е (-И) с. 1. Светлое время суток

Here they are declined, side by side.

The ъ declension:

This declension featured the thematic vowel ъ, which also often became promoted to its full vowel of у, while in others, the suffix -ов- was inserted between the stem and ending. All of these nouns were masculine. The endings are displayed below.

One common noun of this declension is домъ (“house"). Its dictionary entry, and full declension, appear below.

ДОМ|Ъ (~3000), -ОУ с. 1. Дом

The fourth conjugation consists of verbs that use the thematic vowel и, and have endings that are somewhat dissimilar from the other thematic conjugations. Unlike the others, the thematic vowel is present in one manner or another in all the endings of the present tense. Here is presented these endings, with the thematic vowel included.

Notice that the first person singular includes a leading yod (“j”), indicating that the preceding consonant undergoes j-palatalization, while the other personal endings do not. As in the third conjugation, there are alternative endings, with some manuscripts applying the ligature to the vowel following the yod, and others not. The yod was originally the thematic vowel и, which was converted to its consonantal equivalent. In the third person plural, the yod has become incorporated into the following vowel as я.

An entry of a fourth conjugation verb in the dictionary would appear like so:

видѣти, вижу, видить, “see”

Notice how the first person singular differs from the third due to j-palatalization. The full conjugation of this verb in the present tense appears below.

Adverbs:

Adverbs are words that modify adjectives or verbs. In English, they are readily indicated with the suffix -ly, such as smoothly and wisely. Old Russian also appears to have used a simple scheme to arrive at adverbs, where an adjective is converted to an adverb by declining it in the indefinite nominative/accusative neuter singular.
Examples:

гладъко, “smoothly”

сильно, “strongly”

Relative pronouns:

Relative pronouns are those which introduce a relative clause, which is a nested clause within a larger sentence. In English, relative clauses are introduced with “which…” or “what…”. A sentence with a relative clause might be…

“He killed the beast with a sword, which the prince gave him.”

The relative clause here is introduced with “which” that immediately follows the referent noun “sword.” In OR, the relative pronoun usually follows immediately, if not closely after its referent, and is also declined, being a pronoun. The relative pronoun takes the gender and number of its referent but takes the case appropriate for its role in the relative clause. Its appearance is identical to the third person pronoun with the added suffix -же. I won’t go through the entire declension, but for some examples, the masculine would be иже, ѥгоже, ѥмуже, etc. The feminine would be яже, ѥѣже, ѥиже, etc. The neuter would be ѥже, ѥгоже, ѥмуже, etc. Notice how the nominative case forms are preserved, even though the original pronoun was already extinct.

The above sentence rendered in Old Russian would read:

онъ звѣрь уби мечьмь иже князь ѥму да.

Here, иже happens to be accusative, and is masculine, agreeing with мечь, but being the object of the verb да.

There was also an adjective которыи, but, in another instance of Inigo Mantoya, and words not meaning what you think they mean, it actually means “whoever” or “whatever.”

The third conjugation of Old Russian used the same thematic vowel as the first two, е, but had a stem that ended with the unseen letter yod (“j”). Because it is invisible, its existence can only be inferred from its effects on adjacent letters, both preceding and following it. Viewing an entry of a third conjugation verb, one comes upon the following:

ЗНА|ТИ (202), -Ю, -ѤТЬ гл. 1. Знать кого-л., что-л.; иметь сведения, представ­ление о ком-л., чем-л, “know”

In this simplest case of an inserted yod, all that has happened is that the thematic vowel has been ligatured with the letter І, which is used as a replacement for yod. This happens when yod is preceded by a vowel in the stem. The present tense stem here is знаj-. Therefore, the full conjugation of this verb in the present tense is the following.

Notice, however, what happens when yod follows a consonant, as in the following entry.

ПИ|САТИ (601), ­ШОУ, ­ШЕТЬ гл. 1. Писать, “write”

In the present tense stem, which can be reconstructed as the ancestral писj-, the yod has been absorbed into the preceding consonant С, becoming Ш, in a process called the j-palatalization. As a result, the final present tense stem becomes пиш-. The conjugation below demonstrates this. Notice the alternative conjugations.

The j-palatalization happens when the unseen letter yod follows a consonant, and is absorbed into the consonant to create a transformation analogous the palatalization of the velar consonants. Unlike the velars, however, it can affect almost any consonant. Whenever you see yod (“j”) in notation, keep in mind that, when following a consonant, this is intended to signal the possibility of j-palatalization. The table below summarizes the transformations.

Besides the nominal declension, Old Russian used another declension to represent definitive adjectives, often called the long form. The definite adjective builds upon the same case forms as the indefinite adjective by simply adding the appropriate case of the third person pronoun и*, as a suffix to the indefinite adjective. Because the result is a jumble of letters, it was necessary to simplify the definite adjective for pronunciation to be possible. Just as for the indefinite adjective, there is a hard and soft declensional scheme.

To illustrate the hard definite adjective declension, the hard adjective сильнъ (“strong”) will be declined, with the unsimplified form in parentheses. Some repetitive forms will not be displayed in unsimplified form. The unsimplified forms are not attested in Old Russian, but some are attested in Old Church Slavonic.

There appeared to be few consistent rules about simplification, but the following seems consistent enough.

• Some case forms, especially the nominative and accusatives, were left unsimplified.

• The most simplification occured for those cases in which the third person pronoun began with е-, in which the indefinite portion of the ending was dropped entirely and replaced with a straightforward pronominal ending.

• Only the first vowel of the indefinite ending was retained.

• Some case forms appear to simply be copies of other analogous ones.

• In those adjectives where second palatalization could occur in the indefinite, it persisted in the definite, and the и or ѣ was retained as the first vowel of the ending. Ex: masculine locative singular of гладъкъ was гладъцѣмь, not гладъкомь.

The soft adjective древьнь (“ancient”) is provided below in the definite declension. Its pattern of simplification is similar to the hard definite declension, and simply replaces initial hard vowels with their soft equivalents.

When ъ or ь is immediately followed by yod (“j”), it is said to be in the tense position, and cannot be pronounced without promotion to its full vowel equivalent. Note the result in the masculine nominative singular, where ь is promoted to и. In the hard declension, the letter ъ is simply promoted to its ligature of ы.

The third person pronoun:

OR had a number of pronouns, words that stood in for nouns, all of which were declined in the same manner as nouns. Pronouns in English include such words as I, you, he, she, it, we, and they. Old Russian pronouns served the same functions as in English. One notable difference was that the subject pronoun of any verb was not required except for emphasis, since conjugating the verb revealed what pronoun was used. For example, to say “I lead” required only to say “веду”.

The third person pronoun (“he, she, it, they”) served a special role in OR, and so will be reviewed here. Below is declined the third person pronoun и*.

Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

• This pronoun used the stem j- upon which unique endings were added. Here they are presented explicitly, but those which begin with ѥ- could also be written with a simple e-.

• The nominative case forms of this pronoun were already extinct by the time Russian was attested as a written language, and are presented here as reconstructions. When it was necessary to use a third person subject pronoun, OR had to work around this by using a demonstrative adjective as a pronoun (see below).

• The masculine nominative/accusative singular was really jь. Because of a post-vocalic ь, this was rendered as и.

Prepositions:

OR had many prepositions which took specific cases for the nouns that followed them. Their meanings are nearly identical to that of MR, as are the cases that they used. Some took more than one case, for which each had a distinct meaning.

• The preposition об was used in place of о when immediately followed by a word beginning with a vowel.

• When a pronoun that began with a vowel followed a preposition, an extra leading н- was added to the pronoun. Ex: отъ н҄его (“from him”), на н҄ь (“onto him”). Many Russian prepositions originally ended on -н (вън, сън, etc) which was gradually transferred to the following pronoun. Over time, it was forgotten which prepositions ended on -н, so that the rule became applied to all prepositions.

The Pronominal Declension of Adjectives and Demonstrative Pronouns:

Many special adjectives in OR which referred to pronouns used their own declension, called the pronominal declension. The endings were copied from the pronoun и*. Since the stem was j-, and yod was unrepresented, this amounted to use of the pronoun directly as an ending in nearly all cases. It also included using the otherwise extinct nominative case forms. Like nominal adjectives, pronominal adjectives had hard and soft endings. The endings presented above are for the soft pronominal declension, as yod was considered a soft consonant. One use of the pronominal declension was in the declension of demonstrative adjectives, which are those that point to specific objects. In English, the demonstrative adjectives are “this” and “that.” Old Russian had three demonstrative adjectives -- сь (“this”), тъ (“that”), and онъ (“that over there”). The demonstrative adjective онъ falls within the sphere of many Old Russian words that don’t mean what you think they mean. It is not simply “he.”

The demonstrative adjective сь (“this”) illustrates the soft pronominal declension, built from the stem с-.

To demonstrate the hard pronominal declension, all that is necessary is to convert the initial vowel of all the endings into their hard vowel equivalents. The demonstrative adjective тъ (“that”) uses the hard pronominal declension, as indicated below.

The demonstrative adjective онъ follows the same hard pronominal declension, such as masculine singulars of онъ, оного, оному, etc. The list of adjectives that take the pronominal declension is long, and will be mentioned in due course.

The irregular adjective вьсь (“all”):

This adjective uses the mixed pronominal declension, taking soft endings for the singular and dual, and hard endings for the plural, with exceptions in the nominative and accusative plural of all genders, which uses soft endings.

Adjectives are words that describe nouns, such as hot, cold, fast, and slow. Adjectives in OR were declined, just like nouns, and had to agree with the noun in gender, number, and case. In addition, adjectives in OR could also be indefinite or definite. In English, the function of definiteness or indefiniteness is supplied by articles. The indefinite article is “a” or “an”, while the definite is “the.” OR did not have articles, and instead simply used one set of endings for indefinite adjectives and one for definite. If a noun stood without an adjective, there was no way to identify its definiteness except by context. The definition of definiteness in OR is the same as in English, meaning a specific object, rather than a general one.

Indefinite adjectives will be reviewed here. Definite adjectives will come later, as they are somewhat more complicated. Indefinite adjectives are also called short form adjectives, because their endings are of fewer syllables than the long form definite adjectives. Indefinite adjectives simply used the O declension endings to agree with masculine and neuter nouns, and A declension endings for feminine nouns. Just as for nouns, adjectives could use the hard or soft declension, which was based on the last letter of the stem of the adjective, and not the noun the adjective agrees with. Because their endings simply copy nouns, they are also said to follow the nominal declension. Adjectives did not have a vocative case. If called upon to agree with a vocative noun, they resorted to the nominative case.

To demonstrate the hard adjective declension, the adjective гладъкъ (“smooth”) will be declined. Dictionaries will cite adjectives by the masculine nominative singular form, as in the following entry:

ГЛАДЪКЫИ (18) пр. 1. Гладкий, ров­ный…

This is actually the definite (long) form of the adjective. Such is the standard of the dictionary we use here. The abbreviation пр means прилагательное (“adjective”). The full declension is as follows. Notice the many instances of second palatalization.

Masculine:

Feminine

Neuter

For the soft nominal declension, the adjective древьнь (“ancient”) will be declined below.

Masculine

Feminine

Neuter

The O declension supplied the neuter and masculine nouns. Because of the common thematic vowel O, they shared nearly all their endings. Rather than rewrite them, it is best to simply mention the differences. The neuter O declensional endings differed from the masculine only in the nominative and accusative of each number, as the following table presents, with hard/soft pairings. The neuter did not have a vocative case. In the unlikely event that a neuter noun was addressed, the nominative was used. Neuter nouns always had the same endings for the accusative as for nominative.

The neuter hard O noun иго (“yoke”) is declined in full below.

The soft neuter O noun мор҄е (“sea”) is declined in full below.

The postvocalic ь rendered as и:

Soft declensions which feature endings that begin with ь will tend to convert ь into и when they follow a stem that ends with a vowel or yod (“j”). This is essentially a promotion of ь from a weak vowel into its full vowel equivalent, without which it would be difficult to pronounce. The masculine soft O declension noun вои (“warrior”) illustrates this feature, alongside its pronunciation in Latin characters.

Another common paradigm in the declension of nouns was the O declension. Like the A declension, this was a thematic declension which featured the thematic vowel O, which was, in its original form, placed between the noun stem and the case ending. The thematic vowel gradually was transferred into the ending itself, sometimes becoming warped beyond original recognition. What made the O declension somewhat more complicated was that it featured two genders -- masculine and neuter. Each gender used different endings, but you will see that they are not much different. Like the A declension, both featured hard and soft endings.

The endings of the masculine hard O declension are as follows.

• The thematic vowel O can be seen in the dative dual and plural, and in the instrumental dual.

• The ending of the vocative singular, -е, allows for first palatalization of a stem final velar consonant, just as endings which begin with и or ѣ will trigger second palatalization of the same.

• The nominative plural ending -и is a soft vowel which nevertheless is part of this hard declension.

To demonstrate, the full declension of берегъ (“shore”) is presented below.

Primacy of Animacy: Using the genitive for the accusative

The masculine accusative singular of the O declension, whether hard or soft, used the same ending as the nominative, which sometimes could cause confusion between the subject and object of a verb. As a result, Old Russian adopted an option whereby the genitive can be used to represent an accusative, so long as the noun was said to be animate. Animacy meant that the noun possessed a soul. To the Russians of the Middle Ages, only people could have souls. The use of the animate genitive was very inconsistent, however, sometimes going unused in animate nouns and sometimes being overused even in supposedly inanimate nouns. On occasion, it was even used for the accusative plural.

To demonstrate, the full declension of the noun вънукъ (“grandson”) will be demonstrated below.

The endings of the soft O declension are:

Below is rendered the full declension of the masculine soft O noun конь (“horse”).

• Note the discrepancy between the accusative and instrumental plural. This is because the soft form of ы can be either ѣ or и.

Third Palatalization

In addition to the two forms of palatalization mentioned, there was a third palatalization. Unlike the others, this occurred when a velar consonant followed an appropriate vowel, as opposed to preceding it. When a velar consonant followed the vowels ь, и, or я, and was then immediately followed by any vowel, it was subject to the third palatalization. This transformation produced the same results as with second palatalization. This typically happened in masculine hard O nouns at the end of the stem. The only difference in declension is in the vocative singular, where the ending is -е, and thus the original velar consonant is subject to first palatalization.

To demonstrate, here is the full declension of the hard O declension noun отьць (“father”). Its hard declension, despite the apparently nominative soft ending, is indicated in its dictionary entry, where the genitive ending is -а.

ОТЬЦ|Ь (~5000), ­А с. 1. Отец...

Because of third palatalization, it is necessary to reconstruct that ц was originally к. Therefore, the first palatalization of к yields ч. Though there were relatively few such nouns, they were fairly commonly used nouns. Others include дворьць (“palace”) and князь (“prince”) which produce the vocatives дворьче and княже.

Palatalization Table

Previously, we saw how the velar consonants к, г, х undergo transformation when followed by the vowels е, я, or ь, in a process called first palatalization. However, there is another condition in which these same consonants undergo a different sort of transformation, called the second palatalization. As in the previous example, this typically occurs when a velar consonant is the final letter of a stem; whether that is a verb stem or noun stem. This can best be demonstrated by declension of a noun whose stem terminates in such a way. A suitable one is нога (“foot”), which is from the hard A declension. Here is its full declension.

Notice the transformation of the stem final г into з, which is found only in some cases. This forms another rule in Old Russian, which is that when the consonants к, г, х are followed by the vowels ѣ or и, they undergo transformation into the consonants ц, з, с respectively. Additionally, the combination -ск- transforms into -ст- in the same manner. As in the first palatalization, this process is not isolated only to declension of nouns but is widespread throughout the language, and you can expect to see it come up in future examples.

The origin of this transformation lies in the origin of the vowels ѣ and и themselves. In an earlier stage of Russian, it is believed that there were short vowels, long vowels, and diphthongs. Diphthongs are combinations of vowels, and included sounds like “ai”, “oi”, “ei”, “au”, and “ou”. Because they were composed of two vowels, diphthongs were treated as long vowel equivalents. As Russian vowels evolved into hard and soft vowels, the short and long vowel system became obsolete, and with it, diphthongs as well. This forced the diphthongs to be reduced into single vowels, either ѣ or и. Those endings that included these vowels were usually diphthong endings. Because they had originally been two vowels, it caused palatalization to occur twice to the same velar consonant, causing the second palatalization.

Note that it is not relevant to speak of palatalization of soft stems because they already present softened from the start.

In OR, inflection could also be submitted to nouns. When nouns are inflected, it is called declension. The declension of nouns simply points out the noun’s grammatical relationship in a sentence, especially its relationship to the verb. OR had seven cases, which were declined into three numbers -- singular, dual, and plural. There were also three genders -- masculine, feminine, and neuter. For the most part, these cases had the same functions as they do in the modern language.

Nominative: subject of a verb

Genitive: possession (“of the king”), motion away or separation

Dative: indirect object of a verb, reference or direction (“to the fields”)

Accusative: direct object of a verb

Instrumental: means or manner of a verb (“with a sword”)

Locative: location of an action (“in Kiev”), (became Prepositional in modern Russian)

Vocative: direct address (“Hey, Igor!”)

Declension in OR functioned in much the same way as conjugation, in that there was a noun stem, followed by a thematic vowel, followed by a case and number specific ending. The difference is that, over the course of time, the thematic vowel shifted to become part of the ending itself. This also led to some endings becoming warped beyond recognition of the thematic vowel. Nevertheless, in some endings, the thematic vowel can still be recognized. One such declension used the thematic vowel “А”. These were nearly all feminine. The endings are given below.

A noun that fits this declension is жена (“woman”). In the dictionary, it is indicated thus:

ЖЕН|А (-2500), -Ы с. 1. Женщина:

The first entry is the nominative singular, the second the genitive singular. Like verbs, this has two principle parts, in order to make it clear which declension it belongs to. The full declension of this noun is the following.

From this, certain deductions can be made.

• The thematic vowel in this declension is only visible in the nominative singular, dative dual and plural, instrumental dual and plural, and locative plural.
• There is only a unique vocative in the singular. In fact, only masculine and feminine nouns have unique vocatives at all, and only in the singular. All other instances of the vocative default to the nominative.
• There are only three dual endings. One ending for nominative, accusative, and vocative. One ending for genitive and locative. One ending for dative and instrumental. This is preserved in all declensions.

Soft А declension:

It would be nice if this was all there was to this declension, but unfortunately, that is not the case. For this declension, there is a corresponding soft declension. The one given above is the hard declension. The reason for this was that some noun stems ended in a soft consonant, so this naturally led to softened vowel endings. To get the soft А declensional endings, just take the initial vowel and convert it to its soft equivalent.

A suitable noun that carries this declension is зємл҄я(“land”).

• The small squiggly line is called a kamora and represents the softening “y” sound that immediately followed the consonant. It is one of the rare indicators of the invisible consonant yod, but was, nevertheless, inconsistently utilized.

Commonplace among Slavic languages, not only Russian, is the softening of both vowels and consonants. In the introduction to the Old Cyrillic Alphabet, we saw how softening affected vowels. But consonants could also be affected by softening. The result of softening on consonants in Russian is called palatalization. This is an anticipatory feature where a consonant is begun spoken and then shifts its pronunciation when the following vowel uses a different region of the mouth to speak it. This is best demonstrated by the following conjugation.

МО|ЧИ (­ЩИ) (>2000), ­ГОУ, ­ЖЕТЬ гл. 1. Мочь, “be able”

Notice how this verb’s present tense stem, мог-, shifts to мож-, but only when followed by the vowel “е”. In this case, presenting the first person singular was useful, as it showed the true stem before it had been shifted by palatalization. This is an example of the first palatalization of the velar consonants, and it forms a rule in OR. Whenever a velar consonant -- к, г, х-- is followed by the vowels е, я, or ь, it undergoes a transformation to ч, ж, ш, respectively. In addition, the combination -ск- undergoes first palatalization to -щ- under the same circumstances. Although presented here just in conjugation, it can happen anywhere. There are some exceptions to this rule but for the most part, it is followed rigidly throughout the language.

Present Tense: Second Conjugation

The second conjugation of OR features the same thematic vowel “е” and differs only that the present tense stem ends in -н. As a result, in the present tense, there is no difference from the first conjugation. In other tenses, there are differences, but these are for another time to discuss. The following conjugation points this out.

ДВИГН|ОУТИ (47), -ОУ, -ЕТЬ гл. 1. Двинуть (двигать), “move”

The first issue to address in Old Russian is that it was a highly inflected language. Inflection refers to the adjustment of the endings of words to change their grammatical sense. Inflection has all but disappeared in English but was once a cardinal feature of all Indo-European languages. In English, we rely on word order to impart grammatical sense to all items in a sentence. If you take the sentence “The dog bit the man.” and rearrange the words, its meaning would change completely. Here, “the dog” is the subject, “bit” is the verb, and “the man” is the object of the verb. In Old Russian, the subject, object, and verb of a sentence is marked with specific endings, so that no matter the order of words, the meaning is the same. Because of this, the order of words in Old Russian is not so important.

The second issue of importance in Old Russian is that the verb system is unlike anything encountered in most modern languages. Verbs are the elements of a sentence that relate the action taking place. English verbs include bite, run, swim, and grasp. Whereas most languages are interested in the timing of a verb, the tense of the verb, whether present, past, or future, Old Russian is far more interested in aspect, which is how the action is unfolding and less when it happened. In OR, each verb had three aspects: progressive, simple, and completed. In the progressive aspect, the action is ongoing and therefore incomplete within the context of the narrative. In the completed aspect, the action has already finished. The simple aspect just describes the action as occuring once, without elaborating further. Each aspect could have up to three tenses -- past, present, or future -- and so there may be up to nine tenses. Fortunately, not every aspect had all three tenses, so that there were actually only seven tenses.

The table below illustrates the aspect system and the names of the tenses that fit within each.

The practice of inflecting verbs is called conjugation. Each tense had a formula that was used to conjugate it appropriately. When deciding how a verb should be a conjugated, the only thing that was important was to know what the subject of the verb was. Conjugation defines the subject of a verb as one of three types of persons -- first, second, or third. The first person is one which is both saying the sentence and doing the action, which is indicated, in English, by the pronoun “I.” The second person is the one addressed by the speaker, indicated by the pronoun “you.” The third person is a third party unrelated to either, and indicated by the pronouns “he, she, it.” There is also a plural number for each person, “we, you, they.” For each of these, there is a corresponding conjugational ending.

Present Tense: The First Conjugation

In OR, each verb is classified into one of five distinct conjugation patterns. Despite their differences, nearly all Russian verbs follow the system of thematic conjugation. What this meant was that each verb had a verb stem, followed by a thematic vowel (е or и), followed by the personal ending. The thematic vowel ensured a smooth transition between the stem and the ending, so that a tangle of unpronouncible letters didn’t happen at the interface. Therefore, all that is necessary to conjugate any verb is to know its tense stem, its thematic vowel, and the personal endings commensurate with the conjugation for which it belongs.

If you view the dictionary entry for any verb, such as in Словарь Древнерусского Языка (XI-XIV вв) (“Dictionary of Ancient Russian XI-XIV centuries”), you will come across the following:

ве|сти, -дѹ, -деть, гл., 1. вести…

The first portion of the entry is the infinitive (вести). The second portion shows what the first person singular of the present tense should be, when attached to that portion of the infinitive to the left of the vertical line (веду). The third portion demonstrates the same for the third person singular of the present tense (ведеть). The entry “гл.” is the abbreviation for глагол (“verb”). The entry following 1. is the definition for this entry (вести), which means “to lead.” It so happens that the verb “to lead” is the same both in Old Russian and modern Russian. This I have chosen deliberately for those who are familiar with modern Russian already, and also to demonstrate how remarkably little change has transpired in the language in a thousand years.

The third person singular of the present tense (ведеть) reveals that the thematic vowel for this verb is “е”, and that the present tense stem is вед-. The ending -ть is the third person singular ending here. This verb is from the first conjugation, where there is a simple verb stem, the thematic vowel “е”, and the personal endings of the present tense. The first person singular is not relevant here, but it is necessary to mention because other conjugations have different behaviors for this. Notice how the infinitive offers no clue on how to arrive at the thematic vowel or the present tense stem. That is because the stem of the infinitive is actually drawn from the stem of the aorist tense, and is not obligated to resemble the present tense in any way. Taken together, these entries indicate what is called the principle parts of the verb -- the minimum number of elements necessary to conjugate it in all its tenses.

The endings of the present tense for the first, second, and third conjugations are all the same and are displayed below.

The full conjugation of the verb вести (“to lead”) in the present tense is as follows.

• Old Russian had three numbers -- singular, dual, and plural. The dual represented a pair. So the first person dual could be translated as “we two…”, the second person dual as “you two…”, the third person dual as “those two.”

• The first person singular and third person plural were exceptions to the rule of the thematic vowel in that they both supplied the thematic vowel “у”.

EDIT: corrected a mistake in one translation

This is a subreddit that I hope will stimulate discussion and study on this obscure language, Old Russian. It is part of a series of subreddits that I am planning on, called the amateur philologist. Another one, on Ancient Greek, is already up and running.(/r/introancientgreek) Future editions will include Old Norse and whatever else I may become interested in. There is already a subreddit for Latin, so I won't venture there. I hope everyone enjoys themselves. I haven't locked anyone out (in as far as I have any idea how to use this thing), so feel free to contribute any way you like, or ask any questions you like.

In coming here, I assume that you are either morbidly fascinated with obscure dead languages and/or already speak modern Russian and simply wish to expand your scope of knowledge. I have already started the ball rolling with a simple primer on the Old Cyrillic Alphabet. I don't claim any expert knowledge here, so do feel free to offer corrections if you know better.

Old Russian was a language spoken in the region that now roughly encompasses Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine from about 1000 to 1500 CE. The term “Old Russian” is tainted, to some, with nationalistic bias, because the language is the ancestor not only to Russian, but also Ukrainian and Belorussian. Therefore, many prefer the more neutral name of Old East Slavic. For brevity, I will refer to it here as Old Russian (“OR” for short). It is an Indo-European language, descended from the Eastern branch of the Slavic family of languages. It was written in the Old Cyrillic Alphabet. By tradition, it is believed to have been invented by the Byzantine missionary St. Cyril and his brother Methodius. However, it is likely that Cyril had little to do with this alphabet. Though also steeped in controversy, Cyril is thought to have introduced a wholly different writing system, the Glagolitic Alphabet, before the Cyrillic. This alphabet was not widely used and seems to have been abandoned early, and there are few attestations of its use. The Cyrillic Alphabet was founded in the years after Cyril’s death, in his spirit, probably in Preslav, Bulgaria. There, perhaps in a monastery, monks adapted the Greek alphabet for use with Slavic phonemes, and added Glagolitic letters for any other Slavic phonemes not otherwise represented by Greek characters. This alphabet was not created for Russian but rather for an obscure Slavic language called Old Church Slavonic (“OCS”). While it may have been well suited for use in OCS, it was ill suited to represent OR, and so became modified. The following is what became of the Cyrillic Alphabet after it was adapted for Russian use.

The remaining characters were either not used at all, or used sparingly, and so will not be mentioned except in passing. Some did not even represent Slavic phonemes but were only incorporated to transcribe Greek words.

Notes on vowels

The values of the consonants are self-evident and require no further explanation. Far more cumbersome are the vowels, whose values, in some, deviate quite far from their modern ones.

• The letter “оу” is derived from the Greek diphthong “ου”. Over the course of this historical period, it became simplified to “у”.

• Some letters are actually ligatures -- fusions of two letters. These are ы (ъ + і), ѥ (і + є), and ю (і + оу).

The letter “ѥ” was often written without the ligature as simply “є”. Readers were expected to realize when “є” actually meant ““ѥ”. This usually happened when it was the first letter in a word, or when it followed a vowel.

• The letter “я” was not present in the original Cyrillic Alphabet but was an innovation of Old Russian. It was derived from the shorthand of the letter “Ѧ ѧ”, which was pronounced like “a” as in “sat.” Sometimes, however, ѧ will replace я, in some manuscripts.

• The letters “ъ” and “ь” were actually weak vowels, and not consonant quality markers, as they are in modern Russian. They can be thought of as a very short “u” and “i” respectively, and were barely enunciated.

Yod: The Elephant in the Room, and On Vowel Quality

Despite having so many letters in the alphabet, there was one phoneme that went unrepresented despite being widespread in the language. Because it never existed, scholars have been forced to reconstruct it as the letter yod, and use the letter “j” as its symbol. The letter yod represents the consonant “y” as in “yes.” Rather than being an individual letter, it existed as part of other letters by implication. In the case of vowels, there was a pair, with one standing for the vowel alone and one with the same vowel preceded by yod. The vowel that stood alone was called hard, while the one preceded by yod was called soft. There was no such thing as long and short vowels in Russian. This may have existed in the past, but had become extinct by the time Russian became a written language.

The following table demonstrates this comparison.

Notice how the different phonemes are not necessarily fixed as always hard or soft, bearing different qualities for different occasions. Nor do they neatly fit within the scheme of pronunciation involving a preceding yod. Old Russian did not have a standardized orthography nor even a standardized grammar. Medieval writers would simply sound out what they wanted to write and put it on paper. At times, they would even resort to using OCS spelling, simply because it was considered the prestige Slavic language of the time. The resulting manuscripts therefore show varied and oftentimes unpredictable spelling.

Discuss.