Verb indefinite dvigať," to move. Verb simple dvinuť, to move a single time. 12 It The reader may judge for himself of what precision, compactness, and energy, a language is capable, which has so little need of circumlocution. It must be mentioned, however, that not all these verbs are complete; as indeed in many cases, it is obvious from their very nature, that many tenses must be wanting. is probably for this reason, that some of the most distinguished grammarians do not acknowledge this division of the verb itself; but put all its variations under the conjugation of a single verb, as different tenses,-a proceeding, which contributes much to make the Slavic grammar a horror to all foreigners. If this short and meagre sketch is hardly sufficient to give the reader an idea of the richness, precision, and general perfectibility of the Slavic languages, it will be still more difficult to reconcile his mind to their sound; against which the most decided prejudices exist among all foreigners. The old Slavic alphabet has forty-six letters; from this variety it can justly be concluded that the language had originally at least nearly as many different sounds, although a great part of them are no longer to be found in the modern Slavic languages. It is true that all the dialects are comparatively poor in vowels, and like the oriental languages, utterly deficient in diphthongs.13 They have neither the oe nor ue, which the Germans consider as the best sounds of their idiom; nor the Greek ɛɩ, vi, av, ɛv, etc. still less the variety of pronunciation of one and the same vowel, peculiar to the English. The Poles, Russians, and Bohemians, possess however a twofold i,14 finer and a coarser one, the latter of which is not to be found in any other European lan 11 The t signifies the Yehr, or so-called soft sign of the Russians in addition to the t. This letter not existing in the English language, we have endeavoured to supply it in the best possible way by the aspirate of the Greek language, which when it follows t, is not very unlike it; e. g. vvxt uɛqov, written vuzuɛgov. The real sound, however, is more like the German soft ch after t, as in Städtchen, Hütchen. 12 They are to be compared with the Latin verbs frequentative, as factitare instead of facere, cursitare instead of currere, etc. 13 With the exception of the Slovakish dialect. 14 Pronounce the i as in the word machine. guage; and the Poles besides this have nasal vowels, as other languages have nasal consonants.15 It is a striking peculiarity, that Slavic words very seldom begin with a pure a,16 hardly ever with e.17 There are in the whole Russian language, only two words of Slavic origin, which have an initial e, and about twenty foreign oues in which this letter has been preserved in its purity; in all the rest the e is introduced by y; e. g. Yelisaveta, Elizabeth; yest', it is, est; Yepiscop, episcopus, bishop; yeress, heresy, etc. The initial a is more frequent, and is especially preserved in most foreign proper names; e. g. Alexander, Anna, etc. or in other foreign words, where they omit the H; as Ad, Hades, Hell, Alleluya, Hallelujah. But the natural tendency of the language is to introduce it likewise by y; thus they say yagnya, in preference to agnya, agnus, although this last also is to be found in the old church books; yasti, to eat, yakor, anchor, yavor, maple, German ahorn.18 The o in the beginning of words is pure in most Slavic dialects, i. e. without a preceding consonant. In Russian it sounds frequently more like an a than an o; e. g. adin, one, instead of odin; atiotz, father, instead of otetz. But the Vendes of Lusatia pronounce it vo; as also the Bohemians in the language of common life; although in higher style they have a pure initial o. The Croatians, on the other hand, have no pure initial u; they say vuho, ear, instead of uho or ucho. As to consonants, there is a great variety in the Slavic languages. There is however no f to be found in any genuine Slavic word; and even in words adopted from foreign languages, this letter has frequently changed its sound. So the Bohemian has made barwa from the German farbe, colour. In respect to the connexion of the Slavic with the Latin, it is interesting to compare bob with faba, bodu with fodio, vru with ferveo, peru with ferio, plamen with flamma, pishčala with fistula, etc. The greatest variety among the Slavic letters exists in the sibilants. Of these there are seven, perfectly distinct from each other; some of which it would be difficult to denote by English 15 The Portuguese a, e, etc. are apparently nasal vowels, but in reality only different modes of writing for am, em, etc. 16 The English a in father. 17 Like the English e in they. 18 Compare the smooth breathing of the Greeks, and the Shemitish Aleph or Elif. characters.19 They are the favourite sounds of the language. Not only the guttural sounds, g, ch, and k, but also d and t, are changed in many cases into analogous sibilants, according to fixed and very simple rules. On the other hand, the Slavic nations have a way of softening the harshness of the consonants, peculiar in that extent to them alone. The Frenchman has his l mouillé, the Spaniard his elle doblado and ñ, the Portuguese his lh and nh; the Slavic nations possess the same softening sound for almost all their consonants. Such is the usual termination of the Russian verb in ať or it, etc. where other Slavic nations say ati or iti, or those of the western branch ac or eč. In the same manner it occurs after initial consonants; thus mjaso, meat; bjel, white; ljubov, love, etc. The letters and r have in all Slavic languages the value of vowels; words like twrdy, wjtr, which judging from their appearance a foreigner would despair of ever being able to pronounce, are always in metre used as words of two syllables. Thus Wlk, Srp, are not harsher than Wolk and Serp. We feel however that these examples cannot serve to refute the existing prejudices against the euphony of the Slavic languages. Instead of ourselves, let one of their most eloquent and warmest advocates defend them against the reproach of roughness and harshness.20 "Euphony and feminine softness of a language are two very different things. It is true that in most of the Slavic dialects, with the exception of the Servian, the consonants are predominant; but if we consider a language in a philosophical point of view, the consonants, as being the signs of ideas, and the vowels, as being mere bearers in the service of the consonants, appear in a quite different light. The more consonants, the richer is a language in ideas. Exempla sunt in promtu. The euphony of single syllables is only partial and relative; but the harmony of a whole language depends on the euphonic sound of periods, words, syllables, and single letters. What language possesses these four elements of harmony in equal measure? Too many vowels sound just as unpleasantly as too many consonants; a suitable number and interchange of both is requi-. site to produce true harmony. Even harsh syllables belong to the necessary qualities of a language; for nature herself has harsh sounds, which the poet would be unable to paint without 19 There is e. g. a single letter in old Slavonic and Russian for shtsh. The Pole writes szcz. 20 Schaffarik in his Geschichte, etc. p. 40 sq. harsh sounding tones. The roughness of the Slavic idioms, of which foreigners have complained so frequently, is therefore exclusively to be ascribed to the awkwardness of inexperienced or tasteless writers; or they are ridiculous mistakes of the reader, who, unacquainted with the language, receives the sounds with his eyes instead of his ears."-"The pure and distinct vocalization, which does not leave it to the arbitrary choice of the speaker to pronounce certain vowels or to pass them over, as is the case in German, French, and English, gives at the same time to the Slavic languages the advantage of a regular quantity of their syllables, as in Greek; which makes them better adapted than any other for imitating the old classic metres. We must confess, however, that this matter has been hitherto neglected in most of them, or has been treated with little intelligence. We mean to say: Each Slavic syllable is by its very nature either short or long; since each Slavic vowel has a twofold duration, both short and long. This natural shortening and lengthening of a syllable is, as with the Greeks, entirely independent of the grammatical stress or falling of the voice upon them, or in other words, of the prosodic tone; the quantity being founded on the nature of the pronunciation, on the longer or shorter duration. of the vowel itself, and not on the grammatical accent. This latter may lie just as well on syllables prosodically short, as on those which are long." From these introductory remarks, we turn again to the historical part of our essay, referring the reader back to our division of the whole Slavic race into the Eastern and Western Stems. There are three languages, perfectly distinct from each other, spoken by the Eastern Slavic nations; besides that most remarkable Old or Church Slavonic, the language of their Bible, now no longer a living tongue, but still the inexhaustible source of the sublimest and holiest expressions for its younger sisters. Each of them possesses a literature of its own; and one of them, the Servian, even a double literature; for political circumstances and the influence of the early division of the oriental and occidental churches having unfortunately split the nation into two parts, caused them also to adopt two different methods of writing one and the same language, as we shall show in the sequel.21 21 We abstain here from giving any historical references, as it would swell our notes to a book; and historical notices, with the exception of those circumstances in immediate connexion with the language, cannot properly be expected here. All philological sources have been faithfully mentioned. A. EASTERN SLAVI. I. History of the Old or Church Slavic (commonly called Slavonic) Language and Literature. It can hardly be doubted that in very ancient times the whole Slavic race spoke only one language. This seems however very early to have been broken up into several dialects; and such indeed must have been the natural result of the wide extension of the people. Eginhard, the secretary and historian of Charlemagne, d. 839, calls the Slavic nations, whom his hero subjugated, Veletabae, Sorabae, Obotrites, and Bohemians; and mentions expressly that they did not all speak the same, but a very similar language. It would be difficult to decide what portion of the still existing Slavic tongue has kept itself the purest; the Old Slavic has its Graecisms, the Servian its Turcisms, the Polish and Bohemian their Germanisms, the Russian its Tartarisms, Germanisms, and Gallicisms. No language in the world will ever resist the influence of the languages of its neighbours; and even the lofty Chinese wall cannot protect the inhabitants of that vast empire from corruptions in their language. It was formerly the general view, that the ecclesiastical Slavonic was to be considered as the mother of all the living Slavic dialects; and there are indeed even now a few philologians and historians, who still adhere to that opinion. The deeper investigations of modern times, wherever an equal share of profound erudition and love of truth has happened to be united in the same persons, have sufficiently proved, that the church Slavonic is to be considered, not as the mother of all the other Slavic languages, but as standing to them only in the relation of an elder sister, a dialect like them, but earlier developed and cultivated. The original mother-tongue, from which they were all derived, must have perished many centuries ago. But where the Old Slavonic was once spoken, and which of the still living dialects has been developed immediately out of it, an honour to which all the nations of the eastern stem, and one of the western, aspire,— is a question which all the investigations and conclusions of able historians and philologians have not hitherto been able to answer in a satisfactory manner. The highest authorities in Slavic matters are divided on this point. The claims of the Russians are easily refuted, as utterly destitute of any historical foundation. The circumstance, however, |