Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/94

78 comprehension of its very complicated grammatical system. Aside from the fact that the noun declensions exhibit a difficult phonetic development with a generally logical system of case-endings running throughout and that the adjectival declensions must be learned as a development distinct from the nouns, the Russian verb presents the greatest difficulty to the non-Slavonic speaking student. Here we find, with each verb, arbitrarily formed perfective and imperfective aspects, denoting respectively complete and incomplete action. There is no norm for presenting the intricacies of this phenomenon to the student, who must, therefore, by force of practice alone, familiarize himself with the aspect of each verb which he uses. This act of memory is all the more necessary, because the present tense of the perfective is the common future of each verb, and it is, of course, impossible to speak or write comprehensibly without a knowledge of the future form. Intricate as this may at first sight appear to the novice, it is really not so difficult to acquire as might be thought, provided always that teachers of Russian can present to the student lists of verbs giving the needful aspectival forms. Unhappily, the authors of grammars of Russian in English pass over this idiosyncracy of the language with great aplomb, usually being content to state that the verbal aspects must be learned by use, instead of giving a detailed list of the several hundred ordinary verbs, with both the perfective and imperfective forms. With such a list at his command, and a person who speaks Russian at his side, it would not take long for any person of average intelligence and grammatical training to become quite at home with the ordinary Russian vernacular.

The best method is to train students first thoroughly in the accidence of the Russian language, teaching them to recognize both by sight and orally the nominal and adjectival endings and the personal inflection of the verb. They should then be required to read simple Russian stories, always at first from accented texts, by means of which they learn to recognize the verbal aspects. Translations of the same texts in English should be handed to them, from which the students must reconstruct in Russian the stories already read. So far as the so-called "free" accent of Russian is concerned, the learner must acquire it in much the same manner as the English-speaking child is compelled to learn the equally arbitrary spelling of English, i. e., by rote, as he proceeds. After reaching a certain point in their studies, the students at Columbia are referred either to the evening classes under the tuition of a born Russian who speaks as much