Essentially the same with the Malo-Russian is the idiom of the
_Russniaks_ in Red Russia, in the eastern part of Galicia, and the
north-eastern districts of Hungary; and the few variations which occur
in it have not yet been sufficiently investigated. Comparatively
little attention has been paid to this branch of the Slavic race; and
their beautiful national songs, scattered among a widely extended
people, have only recently become the object of curiosity and
examination.
3. The _White-Russian_ is the dialect spoken in Lithuania and a
portion of White Russia, especially Volhynia. The situation of these
provinces sufficiently accounts for its being full of Polisms. All the
historical documents of Lithuania are written in this dialect; and
several Russian writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
employed it in preference to the Old Slavonic. The first Russian
translation of the Bible was written in it. It is the youngest of the
Russian dialects.
What first strikes us in considering the Russian language as a whole,
is its immense copiousness. The _early_ influence of foreign nations
appears here as a decided advantage. The German, in the highest degree
susceptible for foreign _ideas_ and forms of _thought_, repels
nevertheless all foreign _words_ and forms of _expression_ as
unnatural excrescences.
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