Canadian Slavonic Papers

Russian Short Stories. Selected and edited for intermediate classes by John IwanikReview by: Victor O. BuyniakÉtudes Slaves et Est-Européennes / Slavic and East-European Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1/2(Printemps-Eté/Spring-Summer 1963), pp. 121-122Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41055833 .

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Slavic and East European Studies

The presentation of the various equivalents of the verb "to have" un- fortunately proves the same stumbling block (on page 63) as in most other grammars. Hingley and Binyon have striven for clarity in this section, but have not succeeded, since the student who reads in quick succession "I haven't a telephone" or "I haven't got a telephone" and "What Tve got isn't a tele- phone, but a book" is probably not going to be any clearer about the verb "to have" in Russian.

A mistake which is harder to understand occurs in the section on the sequence of tenses. The second italicized example on page 68 says, at the end "... She said that he was there," when the was should be had been in good English. The original Russian was "Ona govorila, chto on tarn byl" and this was contrasted with "Ona govorila, chto on tarn." The concept of the "one tense" difference between English and Russian in such subordinate clauses is complicated enough for the average student to understand without invalidating the English comparison text with a colloquial was (instead of had been). The edifice of comparative grammar is delicate at the best of times, and it can only be useful if the strictest logic consonant with good style in each idiom is adhered to.

In one respect other than its good verb presentation the grammar under review is better than previous ones. It takes into consideration the accusative of 21, 22, 23, 24, (31, 32, etc.) in conjunction with animate nouns. Hardly any other grammar in English or French allows for "ja videi dvadcat' odnogo cheloveka" and "ja videi dvadcat' dvukh studentov" but "ja videi dvatcat' dve zhenshchiny" (on pages 112-113).

One point of general composition should be mentioned. It is difficult to see why on page 180 the fictitious Professor Grishin should take up time to explain laboriously to a man called Fedorov the Russian system of first names and patronymics. Elsewhere too there is a certain unreality about the book. Thus on page 278 the sentence "Tell me where the saboteurs ordered shot by order of the court are buried" seems more than strange, particularly when it turns out that their sentence was commuted to six years' imprisonment. In all, Hingley's and Binyon's new grammar is not well put together, and it is tvnncrranhirailv unattractive. Jr *

John Greer Nicholson

John Iwanik, ed. and comp. Russian Short Stories. Selected and edited for intermediate classes. (Boston, Heath and Company, 1962), 215 pages.

As is indicated by the title, this book contains reading material for the use in intermediate Russian classes. In all, thirteen stories are selected, representing as many Russian writers, including some well-known nineteenth century authors, as well as some contemporary or Soviet ones. The editor chose to arrange the stories in order of their increasing difficulty rather than chronologically. The text of the stories has not been modified, except for some minor spelling changes and deletions. In content the stories range from serious to humorous. The biographical sketches of the authors and their works, accompanying the stories, average over one page each. The average length of the story is 8 pages. Footnotes explain some of the more difficult constructions, and the Russian-English vocabulary, grammatically quite de- tailed and sufficiently complete, should cover the students' needs. Material on oral and partly written drill is included in the Exercises Chapter.

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Etudes Slaves et Est-Européennes

In the opinion of this reviewer the stories chosen by the editor are interesting, of good reading value, and fairly representative of the authors and the literary periods in question. The reviewer would perhaps differ in the choice of the authors themselves. There are a few minor incorrect data, supplied by the editor, e.g., L. N. Tolstoy's dates are listed as 1825-1910, and Baron Wrangel is solely responsible for the formation of the " white " Russian voluntary forces in the Crimea.

University of Saskatchewan Victor 0. Buyniak

Thaïs S. Lindstrom, Manual of Beginning Russian. (New York, American Book Company, 1961), VIII, 152 pages. This textbook, prepared by the author of Tolstoi en France, uses a living-

language approach to the study of beginning Russian. Its aims are to make the student understand and speak Russian. Various aspects of Russian grammar are introduced gradually, and the beginner is shown the most important idiomatic differences between Russian and English. Extensive drill is provided to acquaint the student with new points of grammar.

The whole course consists of thirty units (lessons), containing enough material for a beginning year of study at the university level. The usual plan of a unit is as follows : speech patterns, new words, grammar, dialogue, sight reading, exercises. Every eighth unit, including the thirtieth, is set aside for the review of material. A section on speech patterns contains a reading passage, in dialogue form, with characters recurring throughout the book. These are university students, their parents, professors and landladies, all of them representing a Western way of life. At one point, p. 123, we even find a witty Russian poem of the author's creation, describing a " bossy " landlady. Every passage has an English translation. Approximately thirty new words are intro- duced in every unit. On the average, the grammar is short and basic, and does not use grammatical terminology. The latter appears only, in more extensive degree, in review units. The dialogue section uses the same characters as the speech patterns, only it has no English counterparts. There is no lack of exercise material, a point often overlooked in language texts. Surprisingly, sight reading sections are found in four units.

On the whole, the methodological and the pedagogical approach, selection of material, and its arrangement draw no criticism. It is only details that raise objections. The main one is a frequent omission of commas to divide relative clauses and the adverbial clauses of place, time, manner and cause. At one point, p. 32, the author takes pain to explain that Russian nouns of non-Russian origin, for example, kino, radio, kofe, are not declined, but does not say anything about why an apparently Russian noun as Kalenko, the name of a character in the Manuel, is not declined. Names like Endicott, p. 75, Dobson, p. 80, or Phillips, p. 110, are obviously of foreign origin and it is only natural that they appear in an indeclinable form in Russian, yet the author does not deem it necessary to explain that proper names ending in -enko, since they are of Ukrainian origin, are also indeclinable in Russian.

The paragraph on the use of capital letters in Russian, p. 2, is not exhaustive. Nothing is said about whether the names of nationalities, or adjectives formed from proper nouns are capitalized or not. Also it is not mentioned whether the English usage of capitalizing the inflected words in

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