NOTE ON THE SAMOYED LANGUAGE 



Those who are inclined to make a study of the Samoyed language 

 will go of course to the pages of Castren. It would be absurd for any 

 one but a philologist to attempt a serious consideration of it. 



But it has seemed to me that just a few hints from one who spent 

 three months in trying hard to speak with the Samoyeds, may be of 

 some practical use to any other naturalist who shall go among those 

 people. 



The first point, of course, is to get hold of the proper names. When 

 you once get these, then you can string them together with Russian, 

 and this is easy enough to learn to speak. I do not mean good Russian 

 (and they do not always understand that), but bad Russian, the 

 Russian of the peasants of the North. And the Samoyeds, even among 

 themselves, habitually use a good many corrupted Russian words. For 

 example, in viahlsa (a coat), one sees the Russian malitsa ; in soyuk, 

 the Russian sovik. 



Only bit by bit can one hope to put together a connected sentence 

 in an agglutinative language. And although I certainly did succeed in 

 understanding and in speaking a little, I am quite sure that I could 

 never write it down in an intelligible form. The Samoyed tongue is 

 largely breathings and inflections, which cannot be expressed in letters. 



In the words which follow the vowels are, of course, as in Italian. 

 Perhaps this key will help :— 



The pronouns are puzzling. Castren, I believe, gives a large number. 

 I never could detect more than three : — 

 I and mine, mein. 



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