Notes upon Russia/Volume 1/To the Reader
TO THE READER.
In thus entering upon the description of Moscow, which is the capital of Russia, and which extends its sway far and wide through Scythia, it will be indispensable, candid reader, that I should in this work touch upon many parts of the north, which have not been sufficiently known either to ancient authors or those of our own day, and it will follow that I shall sometimes be compelled to differ from the accounts they give. And in order that my opinion in this matter may not be looked upon with suspicion, or considered presumptuous, I assert with all honesty, that not once only, but repeatedly, while engaged as ambassador for the Emperor Maximilian, and his grandson Ferdinand king of the Romans, I have seen and investigated Moscow, as it were under my very eyes (as the saying is); that I made myself acquainted with the greater part of the talented and trustworthy men of the place, and did not rely upon this or that man’s account, but trusted only to the unvarying statements of the many; and having the advantage of knowing the Sclavonic language, which is identical with the Russian and Muscovitic, I have written these things and handed them down to the memory of posterity, not only as an ear, but as an eye-witness, and that not with any disguise in my description, but openly and freely.
But, in like manner as every nation has its own peculiar mode of pronunciation, so also the Russians connect and join together their letters in various ways, after a fashion to which we are quite unaccustomed; so that no one who did not pay particular attention to their pronunciation, would be able either conveniently to ask them a question, or to gain any intelligible reply. Since, therefore, in my description of Russia, I have, not without consideration, used Russian words in naming objects, places, and rivers, I have thought it right thus at the outset briefly to show the connexion and force of certain letters; by observing which, the reader will be enabled to understand many things more easily, and occasionally, perhaps, be induced to extend his inquiries.The Russians write and spell Basilius with the consonant w;[1] yet as we have grown into the habit of writing and spelling it with a b, I have not thought it necessary to write it with the w; c placed before an aspirate, should not be pronounced ci or schi, as some nations are accustomed to write it, but khi, after the manner of the Germans, as in the words Chiovia, Chan, Chlinov, Chlopigorod, etc. But when a double z is prefixed, it should be pronounced in a rather more sonorous manner,—as Czeremisse, Czernigo, Czilma, Czunkas, etc. The Russians express g with an aspirated h more strongly than is the custom of other Sclavonians, and almost after the Bohemian fashion,—as when they write Iugra, Wolga, they pronounce Iuhra, Wolha.
The letter i receives the fullest force of a consonant,—as in Iausa, Iaroslaw, Iamma, Ieropolchus, etc.
Th is pronounced almost like ph,—thus, Theodore is called Pheodore or Feodore.
When v has the force of a consonant, I have put in the place of it w, which the Germans express by double u, as in Wolodimeria, Worothin, Wedrasch, Wisma, Wladislaus. But when the same letter is placed in the middle or at the end of a word, it receives the force or sound of the Greek letter phi,—as Oczakow [Ochakov], Rostow [Rostov], Asow [Azov], Owka [Ovka]. The reader will carefully observe the force of this letter, lest by a careless pronunciation one and the same word might seem to imply different things.
Moreover, in treating of the annals, origin, and deeds of the Russians, I have not used our number of years, but theirs;[2] lest in differing from their documents, I might seem to assume the character rather of a corrector than of a faithful interpreter.
- ↑ The reader is begged to observe that this is Herberstein’s explanation of his own mode of expressing the force of Russian letters in Roman character. The Russians spell Basilius with a letter of the form of our b, and holding the third place in their alphabet, but having the sound of the English v and the German w. This accounts for Herberstein, who was a German, representing this sound by the letter w; but there is no w in Russian.
- ↑ The era of Constantinople, which was adopted by the Russians from the Greek church, and continued in use until the reign of Peter the Great, fixes the creation of the world in the 5508th year before Christ, the year of whose incarnation fell in the 5509th of this era.