Old Slavonic Online School
3 weeks, from Feb 03, 2025 to Feb 21, 2025

ASPIRANTUM, the Armenian School of Languages and Cultures, is hosting an online school for Old Church Slavonic. The three-week program will commence on February 3 and conclude on February 21, 2025. This online school aims to enhance participants' abilities in reading and interpreting Old Slavonic texts.

This 3-week Old Slavonic online school will be organized on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays each week (4 days each week, 12 days during three weeks) and will include 42 hours of intensive Old Slavonic teaching (3.5 hours during each day). 

The syllabus of the course is available here: https://aspirantum.com/curriculum/old-slavonic-syllabus. Now the syllabus of the first week is available online. We will add the remaining days' syllabus soon. 

We are planning to start the online classes at 8 PM Yerevan time. 

This time is mainly convenient for students from European and American countries. 

The time may change according to the applicants' geography. 

All applicants will be informed about the time changes before the course. 

The 3.5 hours class of each day will be divided into the following sections:

First class - Homework and discussion
Break
Second class - Old Slavonic Grammar and Readings
Break
Third class - Old Slavonic Readings

During the Old Slavonic classes, the following components will be covered every day:

Grammar: Every day's class will cover the main grammatical concepts of the Old Slavonic language.
Vocabulary: During the three weeks (42 hours) course, the participants will learn more than 300 new Old Slavonic words.
Speaking: Participants will be forced to speak Old Slavonic and tortured if not, just like in ancient schools. This language teaching methodology has been productive at all times :) (this is a joke, no one will be tortured, it will even be impossible because the class is online).
Writing: Each day, the participants will have writing assignments and homework to complete for the next day.
Readings: During the course, the students will complete fragments of different Old Slavonic manuscripts: Savva's book, The Codex Suprasliensis, The Enina Apostle, Hilandar Fragments, Zograph fragments, Undolski fragments, Novgorod Codex, Ostromir Gospels, Evangelium Dobromiri, Miroslav Gospel and some others old texts. Most of them are Old Slavonic texts from the X-XI centuries. Also, the participants will have the opportunity to familiarize Old Slavonic texts by different recensions, like Serbian, Bulgarian, and Old Russian.

The benefits of the course: Familiarity with Old Slavonic conveys benefits not only for those interested in Christianity, Religious studies, Medieval studies, and Slavic linguistics but also for a student interested in a more in-depth understanding of all Slavic languages and the Slavic world. One might point out that studying the emergence of Slavic dynasties across Eastern Europe and Orthodox Christianity is hard enough without an Old Slavonic familiarity. The knowledge of Old Slavonic will also provide the student with the necessary tools for studying and understanding the phonetic structure of different Slavic languages throughout their various stages of development. Additional time will be spent explaining and exploring multiple cultural, religious, historical, political, and social aspects of Slavonic people, states, and the church during the course. It would be challenging to overestimate Old Slavonic's importance for a correct and deep understanding of different Slavic languages in general. The students will also be given various academic articles on Old Slavonic, which will help them understand the theoretical principles in work behind our current knowledge of the language.

Goals: 
Learning the Old Slavonic alphabet and script
Learning c. 300 Old Slavonic words.
Recognizing the main features of the Old Slavonic grammar
Being able to read Old Slavonic texts of intermediate difficulty.

Levels:
The Old Slavonic online course will have 1 group of up to 10 participants. The participants must already have at least an upper elementary level of at least one Slavic language with Cyrillic writing (Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, etc.) knowledge before starting the classes with ASPIRANTUM. 

If you have no prior knowledge of any Slavic languages, please get in touch with us, and we will find an individual solution for you. 

Upper elementary level (A1-A2):

You know the alphabet and can sometimes read words and expressions with difficulties; you can write words, phrases, and sentences in Old Slavonic or modern Slavic languages. 

ASPIRANTUM's Old Slavonic language schools are organized so that undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and professors, and anyone interested in learning it will benefit. Thus, anyone with an upper elementary level of any Slavic language is welcome to apply and participate in ASPIRANTUM's "Old Slavonic" course online from February 3 to February 21, 2025.

Instructor: Ms. Aliona Shestakova will teach the "Old Slavonic" online course. 

Deadline: 
The deadline to apply to the "Old Slavonic" online course is December 18, 2024. To apply, please fill in the application form below.

Participation fee:
The participation fee for the three-week Old Slavonic online course is $1190.

Discount:
If you apply and pay before November 28 the participation fee will be $990.
Need-based discounts will also be available. Please email [email protected] describing your situation, and we will consider your case individually.

Each participant of the online school may find financial aid sources from their own University/School/Community or other relevant foundations.

Letter of Invitation:
If necessary, ASPIRANTUM will provide applicants with an official letter to support scholarship applications.

Maximum capacity in the group: 10 students

Communication medium: The online course will be organized through Zoom.

Registered participants should send 100% of the participation fee before January 7, 2025, online via debit/credit card (Visa or Mastercard).

For questions and inquiries, please get in touch with Dr. Khachik Gevorgyan at [email protected] or Whatsapp at +374-91-557978

To apply, please fill in the application form below.