y between the Slavic and the Sanscrit languages consists
indeed only in the similar sound of a great many words; the
construction of the former is purely European, and it has in this
respect a nearer relation to the Greek, Latin, and German; with which
idioms it has evidently been derived from the same source.[13] The
Slavic has three genders. Like the Latin, it knows no article; at
least not the genuine Slavic; for those dialects which have lost their
national character, like the Bulgarian, or those which have been
corrupted by the influence of the German,[14] employ the demonstrative
pronoun as an article; and the Bulgarian has borrowed the Albanian
mode of suffixing one to the noun. For this very reason the
declensions are more perfect in Slavic than in German and Greek; for
the different cases, as in Latin, are distinguished by suffixed
syllables or endings. The Singular has seven cases; the Plural only
six, the vocative having always the form of the nominative. As for the
Dual, a form which the Slavic languages do not all possess, the
nominative and accusative, the genitive and local; the dative and
instrumental cases, are always alike.

For the declensions of adjectives the Slavic has two principal forms,
according as they are _definite_ or _indefinite_. The Old or Church
Slavonic knows only two degrees of comparison, the positive and
comparative; it has no superlative, or rather it has the same form for
the comparative and superlative. This is regularly made by the suffix
_ii_. mostly united with one of those numerous sibilants, for which
the English language has hardly letters or signs, _sh, tsh, sht,
shtsh_, etc. In the more modern dialects this deficiency has been
supplied; in most of them a superlative form is made by prefixing the
particle _nai_; e.g. in Servian, _mudar_, wise, _mudrii_ wiser,
_naimudrii_, the wisest. The Russian, besides this and several other
superlative forms, has one that is more perfect, as proceeding from
the adjective itself: _doroghii_ dear, _doroshe_ dearer,
_doroshaishii_, dearest. Equally rich is this language in augmentative
and diminutive forms not only of the substantive but also of the
adjective, a perfection in which even the Italian can hardly be
compared to it; of which however all the Slavic dialects possess more
or less. Almost all the Russian substantives have two augmentatives
and three diminutives; some have even more. We abstain with some
difficulty from adducing exa