NOTE ON THE SAMOYED LANGUAGE 
THoseE who are inclined to make a study of the Samoyed language 
will go of course to the pages of Castrén. 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 dad 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 mahisa (a coat), one sees the Russian malitsa; in soyuk, 
the Russian sovzh. 
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 :— 
a=ar 
7=ee et=1. 
e=a rr=x rolled, 
ey=a 
er=air 
w#=French u / final is like h in loch. 
The pronouns are puzzling. Castrén, I believe, gives a large number. 
I never could detect more than three :— 
I and mine, mein. 
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