Russian language

“ The influence of the Russian element is felt everywhere, because of the activity of the Russians, because the administrative organisation is in their hands, because their language is spoken in all the ends of the Empire. It is the language of administration. It is the main language of trade, of intercourse between the various nationalities, and you will find that the Russian language influences very deeply the present-day languages of nearly all the nationalities of the Empire, just as English strongly influences present-day Welsh. ”

“ Science: Mendeleéff.
1. THE LANGUAGE.—In the Russian language three principal dialects are to be distinguished; but the Russian proper, as it is spoken in Moscow and all the central and northern parts of European Russia, is the literary language of the nation. It is distinguished by its immense copiousness, the consequence of its great flexibility in adopting foreign words, merely as roots, from which, by means of its own resources, stems and branches seem naturally to spring. Another excellence is the great freedom of construction which it allows, without any danger of becoming ambiguous. ”

“ The printed or written figures of the Russian language are the same as those of other European nations, and a stranger can get along with them without the least trouble, even though he does not know a word of Russian. ”

“ The manners and customs of the people who speak Russian and of the peoples who speak English, their physical strength and their vitality, their ideals, social and political—all these things will be the decisive factors in the final combat. Whether Russian or English shall be the world-language of the future depends not on the language itself and its merits and demerits, but on the sturdiness of those who shall then speak it, on their strength of will, on their power of organization, on their readiness to sacrifice themselves for the common cause, and on their fidelity to their ideals. ”

“ The Russ is the language taught in the schools. If a scholar speaks in his own language the teacher flogs him, according to law; and if the scholar speaks in the Russian language, the other boys flog him when the school is out. ”

“ It might almost be contended that as a literary medium it has not grown, but has been made, and that even as the Russian State itself, the Russian language has been built up deliberately by philologists and academicians, and that its grammatical laws have been codified almost as autocratically as its political laws, although less arbitrarily. ”

“ The Russian has not, any more than the West-European, received from Nature the gift of tongues. Educated Russians often speak one or two foreign languages fluently, but the peasants know no language but their own, and it is with the peasantry that one comes in contact. ”

“ Moreover in the last fifty years the Great Russian language has made great progress over the whole of Southern Russia, and although the population of Southern Russia is now in the bulk Little Russian, there is a big streak of Great Russian population amongst the Ukrainians. Sometimes there are islands of Great Russians, sometimes they are to be found in broad strips, and the language spoken in the towns is not the Little Russian but rather a variety of Great Russian with Jewish and occasionally Polish and Little Russian elements. ”

“ Russian had sometimes been advocated as the universal language for international purposes, and it is possible to point to the enormous territory of Russia, its growing power and the fact that Russian is the real or official language of a larger number of people than any other language except English. But Russian is so unlike the Latin and Teutonic tongues, used by the majority of European peoples; it is so complicated, so difficult to acquire, and, moreover, so lacking in concision that it has never had many enthusiastic advocates. ”

“ There is no use in sending men to deal with Russia who do not speak Russian, and in this, the Germans showed their wisdom. In no language in the world are there so thorough and so scientifically arranged grammars and handbooks of Russian as are found in German. Most unfortunately for the English-speaking peoples, there is not as yet in our tongue a single satisfactory grammar of Russian from the scientific point of view, so that in Columbia we are forced at the present moment to work under a great disadvantage with students who can read neither German nor French. ”

“ Petersburg had fully convinced me that the Russian language is one of those things which can only be acquired by practice, and that even a person of antediluvian longevity might spend all his life in that city without learning to express himself fluently in the vernacular—especially if he has the misfortune of being able to speak English, French, and German. ”

“ Having existed for ages mainly as an oral language, as the language of song and romance, and continuing a precarious and humble existence as the voice of the down-trodden and inarticulate serf, the Russian language would probably have been broken up into dialects innumerable, and the Russian nationality itself would have been submerged in the nationality of its hereditary enemies, the Poles, if the ancient speech had not been preserved in its essential forms in the language of the Church and the translation of the Bible. ”

“ The Russian language is very beautiful, but it is also very difficult. It seems to be almost inaccessible to a people who in the past have been so refractory to the study of foreign languages as the British people. There are, further, the difficulties of distance and size. Russia is not a country which can easily be overrun by hurried holiday trippers. Even as you cannot learn the Russian language in two months, so you cannot "do" the Russian Empire in two weeks. ”

“ I must admit that the Ukraine movement is a very puzzling movement, because if you look at the Great Russian and Little Russian languages you will see that practically there is hardly more difference between them than between English and Scotch. When I was in Galicia last year, I spoke with Ruthenian peasants. I spoke Russian with slight modifications and they spoke their own language, and we understood each other perfectly. ”

“ Not only have we all this to separate us from Russian literature, but a much more serious barrier—the difference of language. Of all those who feasted upon Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Tchekov during the past twenty years, not more than one or two perhaps have been able to read them in Russian. Our estimate of their qualities has been formed by critics who have never read a word of Russian, or seen Russia, or even heard the language spoken by natives; who have had to depend, blindly and implicitly, upon the work of translators. ”

“ Shatov devoutly smiling, “you are wrong.”
“Oh, but think of the awful people who quote Shakespeare.”
“Ach-ma. People are, in general, silly. But I must tell you you should not cease to read until you shall have read at least some Russian writers. If you possess sensibility for language you shall find that Russian is most-beautiful; it is perhaps the most beautiful European language; it is, indubitably, the most rich.” ”

“ Yet not seldom a spark of real poetry shines through that melodious tissue of unmeaning words. What is most remarkable in these songs, which have now been more than a century the exclusive property of the common people, is the utter absence of coarseness and vulgarity, even in the wedding songs.
The Russian songs, like the Russian language, have a peculiar tenderness, and are full of caressing epithets. These are even frequently applied to inanimate objects. ”

“ One of the chief difficulties ordinary travellers or tourists expect to encounter, for instance, in Russia is that of language.
“Isn’t it extraordinarily difficult to acquire, and to make yourself understood?” is an invariable question, and certainly in long journeys across country, as from Warsaw up to Riga, and from Libau on the Baltic to Moscow, and especially in my Mining Camp Mission in Siberia, I expected to have very great difficulties; but, as so often happens, they were difficulties in anticipation rather than in reality. ”

“ They regard the masters of their language quite otherwise in Russia. What for us is a temporary gratification is to them the soul’s daily bread; for they are passing through the golden age of their literature. Their authors are the guides of the race, almost the creators of their language; their poets are such according to the ancient and full sense of the word—vates, poet, prophet.
In Russia, the small educated class have perhaps surpassed us in cultivation; but the lower classes are just beginning to read with eagerness, faith, and hope ”

“ You shall find that it occur, over and over, that where in English is one word, in Russian is six or seven different, all synonyms, but all with most delicate individual shades of nuance .... the abstractive expression is there, as in all civilised European languages, but there is also in Russian the most immense variety of natural expressions, coming forth from the strong feeling of the Russian nature to all these surrounding influences; each word opens to a whole aperçu in this sort .... and what is most significant is, the great richness, in Russia, of the people-language ”

“ In order to understand matters, a knowledge of the language is indispensable in any country. Naturally, very few possess this knowledge in Russia, where it is most indispensable of all. There are guides, but they are a lottery at best: Russians who know very little English, English who know very little Russian, or Germans who are impartially ignorant of both, and earn their fees by relating fables about the imperial family and things in general, when they are not candidly saying, "I don't know." ”

“ Although the language possesses all the elements of completeness, and notwithstanding the not inconsiderable mass of talent which has developed itself in the course of time, the Russian literature has perhaps not yet produced a single work of great and decided original value. The best works which they have, are imitations; and he is the most distinguished writer whose discernment leads him to choose the best model. ”

“ In these Russian descriptive language made a great stride in advance, even after Púshkin and Gógol; and as a limner of landscape, he has no equal in Russian literature. The most noteworthy point about his work is that there is not a trace of creative fancy or invention; he describes reality, takes everything straight from life, and describes it with amazing faithfulness and artistic harmony. ”

“ Borrowings.—The effect of the Church language upon Russian has been very strong, comparable to that of Latin upon French or English: O.S. forms of words and suffixes, betrayed by their phonetic peculiarities though pronounced more or less à la russe, have in some cases ousted the native forms, in other cases the two exist side by side; the Slav. form generally has the more dignified or metaphorical, the Russian the simpler and more direct sense: even some of the grammatical terminations (e.g. pres. part. act.; certain forms of the adj., &c.) are Slavonic ”

“ Besides the two languages they are studying now, Ivan and Petrovna will soon take Latin, and perhaps Italian. Well-educated people of Russia often speak several different languages. But there are thousands, yes, millions of the poor in their land who cannot read their own language or even write their [26] own names! The schools are not as common, you see, as in this country, but they are growing better every year. ”

“ The White-Russian is the dialect spoken in Lithuania and a portion of White Russia, especially Volhynia. The situation of these provinces sufficiently accounts for its being full of Polisms. All the historical documents of Lithuania are written in this dialect; and several Russian writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries employed it in preference to the Old Slavonic. The first Russian translation of the Bible was written in it. It is the youngest of the Russian dialects.
What first strikes us in considering the Russian language as a whole, is its immense copiousness. ”

“ They thoroughly corroborate that a separate Little Russian language has never existed, does not exist and cannot exist, and that their dialect, used by commoners, is just the Russian Language, only corrupted by the influence of Poland; that the common Russian language is as intelligible to the Little Russians as to Great Russians, and even more intelligible than the one now created for them by some Little Russians and especially by Poles, the so-called Ukrainian language. ”

“ There are many other good, though not great, contemporary writers in Russia, including several women. But they hardly come within the scope of this work (which does not aim at being encyclopedic) , as neither their work nor their fame is likely to make its way to foreign readers who are unacquainted with the Russian language. For those who do read Russian there are several good handbooks of contemporary literature which will furnish all necessary information. ”

“ The Russian is a fatalist, a little dose of fatalism is perhaps indispensable in life, but it must not be too great. Perhaps that is why they are the victims of the famous "Nichevo"—"It is nothing," "It does not matter"—a word which the Russian constantly employs, and which contains all the laisser aller of characters there. This indifference is in part responsible for the development of actual events.
Russian is a beautiful language for singing. I have always liked the Russian accent, so melodious, so musical, and liked it to such a degree that I more or less caught it ”

“ Only those who know how terse and vigorous a language the Russian is will be able to appreciate the translator’s difficulties, which are greater than those of an author of a new work, so far as the mere writing of it is concerned. ”