The Detroit times. [volume] (Detroit, Mich.) 1903-1920, 1917-01-11
Russian
~ DR.. FRANK CRANE
Copyright. 1915. by Frank Crane)

IN Russia, where he had been represent
ing business house. having been sent
over just after his graduation from AM
herst. | want to say to you that the Rus
sian language is pippin.
| went right to work studying il as
soon as | reached there. And say, I've
had some acquaintance in school with
Greek and Latin, also a bit of French and
Gerwan. | used to think they were hard.
PShaw they're'a basket picnic compar-
Ell to Russian. Whoever invented that
speech must have sat up nights thinking
up ways TO make talking hard.
In the first place there's the looks Of it.
And while it's bad enough in print, when
YOU come TO write il with pen it's re-
bus. AT first YOU see a lot of letters that
look like English. There's where you're
fooled The more they resemble our let
ters the diiTeronter they are.
That thing for instance. that looks like
an m is really a IT, also ~" is "e,"
and IN" is "p. and "p" is r. and &C"
is IS, and "b" is ~" and so on.
They have several "e's." pronounced
all sorts Of ways, and one of them is like
no sound you ever heard.
The accent is lovely There's no rule
for il. And it may be on one syllable in
the singular and on another in the plural.
You have 70 learn each word by itself.
The words Of most European languages
have some sort of faint resemblance at
least to ours; as good is gut in Ger
man. and "aimer' in French is sort Of
cousin 20 our "amiable" and Greek and
! Latin have lot of friends of ours dis
guised in their lingo, but Russian Why
+ "nnr ", fnr- Instance, IL "nyett /" IMAM" Is
'tchelovyek,' and Il slept is ''ya spal"
and Il want is va hochu"--don't sound
like anything at all. do they?
Their nouns have all the cases Of Latin
and two more to boot, and there are two
Or three ways Of declining nouns in each
II the three genders.
The adjectIvcs are declined as much as
the nouns, but different, and twice rs
fierce, as they have two distinct forms.
according 10 whether they are used in the
predicate or not.
Besides this there are bushel of ex-
Iceptions to the regular ways.
Pronouns, rs to declension, see the
nouns and adjectves and raise them.
When a Russian declines a pronoun he
just let's himself go He doesn't seem to
are how he talks Pronouns are used
one way on Tuesdays and another on Fri
days, if 1t doesn't rain.
Every verb has two forms one TO use
If the action is done just once, and the
other if you do it regularly. "Idti' is
to go, FOR example @podt" is to keep
on going, and "xodit' is'to keep on still
more
They don't say anything like our lis"
n "am" or have" but if they want to
say Il am sick" they just say 81 sick
n for 81 have nose they say ito ma
nose
The verbs have only present and past
lenses to indicate the others they Jug
sle these around.
But it's when you come to the PROPOSE
ions that you give up.
OF course propositions are tough in
any language but in Russian they have
III the languages Of earth beat four ways.
There are some rules for them, but
they're only good in certain seasons Of the
year; you just have TO pick each one Of
en- up and learn EN- one at time, and
each different in different combinations
Even then you may hit it and may not,
and the odds are with the house.
My teacher told me all Russian nouns
are declined except three, coffee, depot
and overcoat. Once the czarina was visit
ling school and asked little girl TO de-
cline pal TO" (overcoaD. The child, to
the horror Of the teacher, actually put it
through all the case forms it ought to
have but doesn't When the czarina said
to the child that opal to- could not be
declined, the little one answered. Not
ordinarily, but when your imperial great
ness commanded me TO decline il, / had
to-" That kid was taking no chances on
Siberia.