Evening star., 1934-02-13

TO the Editor of The star:
The qestion was recently asked in
Mr. Haskin's column in your paper as
TO whether the Russian language is
difficult to learn; his answer was in
the negative. It would be interesting
70 know by what authority he made
this statement. 1t is hardly likely
that he did so from personal expert
ence. The writer has had such ex-
perience, and unqualifiedly bears wit
ness to the difficulty of mastering a
tongue so utterly different from our
own in vocabulary and grammar.
There is nothing easy in Russian to
the American student From the small
school primers to the full-f1edged
grammars and readers it is bristling
with problems, but that circumstance
alone makes 1t interesting. When
Walter N. Campbell, the able painter,
musician and linguist who was once
chief of the Finance Division Of the
Pension Once and was used to
handling pension accounts involving
hundreds of millions of dollars, took
up the study Of Russian he had to go
back to his bib and tucker days and
tackle q Russian primer like a child,
along with me 1t was hard from
the first Jump. Imagine the first
phrase, accompanied by the picture OF
an elephant: "Toot stoeet sion, u
which means: Here stands the ele-
phant." II 1t had been German, the
wording would have been: "Hier steht
der elephant" the sound Of which
would have been much more
| familiar to us. The elephant" in
Russian is simply "slon," there being
no "the" to it. and 1t is characteristic
of the language that it has no article
in 1t, except that the indefinite article
may sometimes be indicated by the
equivalent for "one."
There are six cases in Russian
Nominative, genitive, dative, accusa-
tive, instrumental and prepositional;
the declensions are different in ami
mate and inanimate objects, and the
three genders extend to all nouns.
Spoken Russian is particularly hard
to learn because there Is no rule gov
| erning the accent. In other Slavic
languages 1t Is not so. In Polish the
main stress is on the antepenult or
syllable next to the last; in Bohemian
| Czechoslovakia), Serbian and Bulga-
rian the stress is on the first syllable
But 1t Is In the verb that the Rus
sian rises to the height of complexity
! Not only the regular and irregular
conjugations, but the phenomenon
known as the aspect, will tease the
| brain of the student. Something like
| it is found in the preterit form OF
| Latin or Romance language verbs, but
4 he Clou for hau0r1H that in 0iV-
| ing the most exact and nice diStinc-
ton between the times and circum-
stances of an action. BY means of ap-
propriate suff1xes or a prefix you can
| tell whether one had begun to knock
| Cinchoative aspect, whether he
knocked at any time or at Spec1neo
time (perfective and imperfectfve)
whether he knocked repeatedly Gter-
ative) or knocked once and no more
(semelfactive aspecD. If Russian
snores at any old time it is "vskhra-
peet":: If he snores right along, 1t Il
"vskhrapyvat" If he gives one loue
snort and then subsidies and is NJ
longer heard, it is "vskhrapnoot," thi,
being the semelfactive aspect, where
the action is not repeated, q form
that exists only in the Slavic Ian.
guages. In one German method there
are SO, 900 paradigms of Russian verbs
In Abicht's Main Difficulties Of Rus
sian," German work, there are ovel
200 closely printed pages, and the
statement is made in another work
that a foreigner cannot use a Rus
sian verb unless he knows whether it'
aspect is perfective or imperfective
In Q reader made up solely of selec.