RUSSIAN 117 



Russian is a very hard language both as regard pro- 

 nunciation and inflections. Not only are some of the 

 letters difficult for a foreigner to get his tongue round, 

 but their pronunciation varies in a ruleless manner ; a, e, 

 g, and / being sinners in this respect. Also, every word 

 or word joined to its preceding adverb or preposition has 

 a particular syllable upon which the accent must be placed, 

 before its meaning is certain to be understood. I found no 

 difficulty in the Russian x, which is generally rendered 

 into English by kh ; because I found that its pronunciation 

 was almost if not quite identical with the Persian guttural 

 k or kh, which we meet with for instance in the Persian 

 word, khan (a chief). Bad as the inflections are in German, 

 they are child's play to those in Russian ; in fact, few 

 Russians are absolutely sound with respect to them. When 

 learning a language to speak, we should of course begin 

 by trying to acquire what we stand most in need of, which 

 in this case will be a vocabulary sufficient to convey our 

 most pressing needs. After that, we shall desire to collect 

 useful phrases of the "give me a glass of beer," " there are 

 bugs in the bed," " I want a top berth in the sleeping-car," 

 " light the stove," "does the horse kick?" "don't bother me," 

 and " I want a cheque cashed " kind. And finally we require 

 the means (grammar) of connecting and transposing the 

 words and phrases we have acquired. I tried in Russia 

 a six months' experiment of putting down in a note-book 

 the Russian equivalents for every word and simple phrase 

 which I wished to say in that language, and at the end of 

 the time, after having frequently rewritten the notes, I was 

 able to make myself understood very fairly. As my work 

 was conducted almost entirely in German and French, I 

 was able to devote but little time to Russian, especially as 

 I did not- see that I would have much future use for that 

 language. 



