What has to be done is to have Russian taught at first in a Western phonetic type.  Then it becomes a language not very much more difficult to acquire than, say, German by a Frenchman.  When the learner can talk with some freedom, has a fairly full vocabulary, a phraseology, knows his verb and so on, then and then only should he take up the unfamiliar and confusing set of visual images of Russian lettering—­I speak from the point of view of those who read the Latin alphabet.  How confusing it may be only those who have tried it can tell.  Its familiarity to the eye increases the difficulty; totally unfamiliar forms would be easier to learn.  The Frenchman or Englishman is confronted with

  COP;

the sound of that is

  SAR!

For those who learn languages, as so many people do nowadays, by visual images, there will always be an undercurrent toward saying “COP.”  The mind plunges hopelessly through that tangle to the elements of a speech which is as yet unknown.

Nevertheless almost all the instruction in Russian of which I can get an account begins with the alphabet, and must, I suppose, begin with the alphabet until teachers have a suitably printed set of instruction books to enable them to take the better line.  One school teacher I know, in a public school, devoted the entire first term, the third of a year, to the alphabet.  At the end he was still dissatisfied with the progress of his pupils.  He gave them Russian words, of course, words of which they knew nothing—­in Russian characters.  It was too much for them to take hold of at one and the same time.  He did not even think of teaching them to write French and English words in the strange lettering.  He did not attempt to write his Russian in Latin letters.  He was apparently ignorant of any system of transliteration, and he did nothing to mitigate the impossible task before him.  At the end of the term most of his pupils gave up the hopeless effort.  It is not too much to say that for a great number of “visualising” people, the double effort at the outset of Russian is entirely too much.  It stops them altogether.  But to almost anyone it is possible to learn Russian if at first it is presented in a lettering that gives no trouble.

If I found myself obliged to learn Russian urgently, I would get some accepted system of transliteration, carefully transcribe every word of Russian in my text-book into the Latin characters, and learn the elements of the language from my manuscript.  A year or so ago I made a brief visit to Russia with a “Russian Self-Taught” in my pocket.  Nothing sticks, nothing ever did stick of that self-taught Russian except the words that I learnt in Latin type.  Those I remember as I remember all words, as groups of Latin letters.  I learnt to count, for example, up to a hundred.  The other day I failed to recognise the Russian word for eleven in Russian characters until I had spelt it out.  Then I said, “Oh, of course!” But I knew it when I heard it.