STUDIES IN RUSSIAN 523 



essential characteristics, the one which, at the present epoch, can be 

 considered its distinctive feature: the remarkable unity of its pro- 

 nunciation, forms, and syntax. 



Without doubt, each of the three Russian tongues developed from 

 the single original trunk has preserved its independence. Little 

 Russian, the existence of which is attested as early as the twelfth 

 century, has not become confused with the Great Russian; ostracized 

 in Russia, it has persisted in Galicia and Bukovina. Although the 

 development of White Russian seems to have been more backward 

 (thirteenth to fourteenth centuries), it continues to be the spoken 

 language of the peasants of White Russia. But if one considers Rus- 

 sian in the proper sense of the word, the Russian of which the Moscow 

 form justly passes as the purest model, one cannot but be impressed 

 with the marvelous unity of its pronunciation, forms, and syntax. 

 This docs not mean that there are no Russian dialects; indeed, it has 

 been possible to classify them, and that not without valid reasons, 

 in two large series, the dialects of the north and those of the south. 

 But in the complete table of the different Russian parlers (specific 

 forms of local speech) , nowhere are such numerous and marked oppo- 

 sitions of color to be found as, for example, in French or German 

 parlers. 



One might be tempted to explain this remarkable unity by the 

 geography of the country. The large plains of eastern Europe and 

 northern Asia, in which there is so little elevation that certain river 

 valleys are confounded, scarcely favor, it would seem, the forming of 

 dialects. This reason is in no wise convincing, and nothing authorizes 

 us to believe that geography has had so decisive an influence in the 

 development of a language. History alone, we have said, suffices to 

 explain this phenomenon of unity in a language spoken throughout 

 such a vast, extent of territory. The language is one because it has 

 been spread by conquest and colonization. 



Moreover, whenever historical circumstances have been the same, 

 the same linguistic phenomenon has been observed. Romance 

 scholars admit that in the third century of our era, Latin, carried 

 into all the Roman world by conquest and colonization, did not yet 

 present any of the dialectical features, which, developed in the course 

 of time, were to become the essential marks of the different Romance 

 languages. The same Latin was spoken in the Gauls and in Spain, on 

 the Danube and on the Po. Littoral Arabic owed its surprising unity 

 to the Mussulman conquests. Spanish as spoken in America does nor 

 know the dialectical differences which class the Spanish of the Iberian 

 Peninsula into various parlers. Finally, if it be permitted to add this 

 feature of resemblance to so many others which, with too much 

 readiness sometimes, have been pointed out between Russia and the 

 United States, let one compare the expansion of the English language 



