www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology In How Many Languages Is The Liturgy Offered In The USA

Dear Lawrence,I don't know of any church,Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic,with Polish Liturgies in the US.That dosn't mean there aren't any,I understand from Archbishop JOB(OCA)THAT some parish somewhere here was at one time part of the Polish Orthodox Church,but I don't know about language of worship and Vladyka told me this 35 years ago,I have read the Paschal Gospel in Polish,but you wanted to know about services.I'll think about languages of worship and get back to you.

Thank you Father Al. I'm surprised there aren't more or any Polish liturgies in the US, when you consider the size of the communities in some cities.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I am not sure if Hungarian Divine Liturgies are being offered in the US anymore - there was a time when they were very common.

They are still being offered in Canada. The small Hungarian Church in Windsor, Ontario still celebrates Hungarian liturgies.

Deacon El

Just taking a shot in the dark. I'd guess it's currently, in no particular order.

1.Slavonic
2.Ukrainian
3.Russian
4.Romanian
5.Bulgarian
6.Serbo-Croatian
7.Greek
8.Armenian
9.Georgian
10.Aramaic
11.Arabic
12.Malayalam
13.Albanian
14.Ge'ez
15.Spanish

I'm sure missed a couple.

I forgot Macedonian, so that's at least 16.

I think you can include Belorussian and Slovak,certainly the latter in Canada.Then there are the Rusnaks from Serbian Voivodina,who speak and write a East Slovak dialect using the Cyrillic alphabet,but they use Slavonic in the liturgy,I think.I know the liturgy has been translated into Czech,but I doubt this has been used here.If the Liturgy exists in Slovenian,Sorbian, or Kashubian,I don't know about it.Possibly Italian,Sicilian,or some variant of Albanian among those Greek Catholics from Southern Italy,plus Greek,of course.There is/was at least one Estonian Orthodox Church in the US,AND I believe,one Latvian.,so those two languages,there was a Finnish Orthodox Mission here in Michigan(Upper Pennisula,where about 6% of the population is of Finnish descent,but I think they only used English and I haven't found anyone ,Finn or not, who has heard of them,they seem to have died out in the 60's.)I can't think of any more European languages,I once had the Liturgy in Welsh on tape,but I'm sure it wasn't recorded here.

Russian is very rarely (if ever) used in the Byzantine Liturgy; Russian Orthodox and Russian Greek-Catholics use Church-Slavonic.

Fr. Serge

The Eritreans celebrate in Tigrinya; the Ethiopians in Amharic - in addition to Ge'ez.

This is slightly off track but a posting above got me going. The first Lutheran service books in Melbourne (Australia)were in the Sorbian language (Wendish). These people arrived fleeing persecution in Silesia (Prussia) when the Lutherans were forced into a union with the Evangelican Church. They petition Queen Victoria and were permitted to migrate to the colonies in Australia (South Australia and Victoria).

Now back to what happens in the USA.

Thank you,Pavel Ivanovich!My first parish was in Houston,Texas.Texas also recieved many Sorbians for the same reason you mention in your post.There is also another group of people called Wends who live along the Hungarian-Slovenian border,they are also Lutherans.which sets them apart from their Hungarian and Slovenian neighbors.Their language is a type of Slovenian,as far as I know.Back to the Liturgy,in North America,one would have to include Native American tongues in Alaska.Also,are we talking about the Byzantine Rite Churches,both Catholic and Orthodox or about ANY Eastern Churches?