(f) Slavonic branch Russian
                     Polish }
                     Lettish } Baltic states of Russia
                     Lithuanian }
                     Old Prussian (dead)
                     Czech (Bohemian [pronounced Check])
                     Slo vak’ (northern Hungary)
                     Serbian
                     Bulgarian
                     Slove’nian (southwestern Austria)
                     Croa’tian (southern Austria)
                     Ruthe’nian (northeastern Austria-Hungary, and
                             southwestern Russia)

(g) Greek

(h) Alba’nian

The main source of the present trouble in Europe is that kings and their ministers and generals, like their ancestors, the feudal lords, never considered the wishes of the people when they changed the boundaries of kingdoms.  Austria-Hungary is a good example.  The Austrians and Hungarians were two very different peoples.  They had nothing in common and did not wish to be joined under one ruler, but a king of Hungary, dying, left no son to succeed him, and his only daughter was married to the archduke of Austria.  This archduke of Austria (a descendant of the counts of Hapsburg) was also emperor of Germany and king of Bohemia, although the Bohemian people had not chosen him as their ruler.  The Hungarians, before their union with Austria, had conquered certain Slavic tribes and part of the Roumanians.  Later Austria annexed part of Poland.  In this way, the empire became a jumble of languages and nationalities.  When its congress is called together, the official announcement is read in eleven different languages.  Forty-one different dialects are talked in an area not as large as that of the state of Texas.

We must remember that besides the literary or written languages of each country there are several spoken dialects.  A man from Devonshire, England, meeting a man from Yorkshire in the north of the same country, has difficulty in understanding many words in his speech.  The language of the south of Scotland also is English, although it is very different from the English that we in America are taught.  A Frenchman from the Pyrenees Mountains was taught in school to speak and read the French language as we find it in books.  Yet besides this, he knows a dialect that is talked by the country people around him, that can not be understood by the peasants from the north of France near the Flemish border.  The man who lives in the east of France can understand the dialect of the Italians from the west of Italy much better than he can that of the Frenchman from the Atlantic coast.