If this short and meagre sketch is hardly sufficient to give the reader an idea of the richness, precision, and general perfectibility of the Slavic languages, it will be still more difficult to reconcile his mind to their sound; against which the most decided prejudices exist among all foreigners.  The old Slavic alphabet has forty-six letters; and from this variety it can justly be concluded, that the language had originally at least nearly as many different sounds, although a great part of them are no longer to be found in the modern Slavic languages.  It is true, that all the dialects are comparatively poor in vowels, and, like the oriental languages; utterly deficient in diphthongs.[17] They have neither the oe nor ue, which the Germans consider as the best sounds of their idiom:  nor the Greek,[Greek:  ei], [Greek:  ui], [Greek:  au], [Greek:  eu], and the like; still less the variety of pronunciation of one and the same vowel, peculiar to the English.  The Poles, Russians, and Bohemians, possess however a twofold i, [18] a finer and a coarser one; the latter of which is not to be found in any other European language, and is unpleasant to the ear of foreigners.  The Poles, besides this, have nasal vowels, as other languages have nasal consonants.[19]

It is a striking peculiarity, that Slavic words very seldom begin with a pure a,[20] hardly ever with e.[21] There are in the whole Russian language, only two words of Slavic origin, which have an initial e, and about twenty foreign ones in which this letter has been preserved in its purity; in all the rest the e is introduced by y; e.g. Yelisaveta, Elizabeth; yest’, Lat. est, it is; Yepiscop, episcopus, bishop; yeress, heresy, etc.  The initial a is more frequent, and is especially preserved in most foreign proper names, e.g.  Alexander, Anna; or in other foreign words, where they omit the H, as Ad, Hades, Hell, Alleluya, Hallelujah.  But the natural tendency of the language is to introduce it likewise by y; thus they say yagnya, in preference to agnya, Lat. agnus, although this last also is to be found in the old church books:  yasti, to eat, yakor anchor, yavor, maple, German ahorn.[22] The o in the beginning of words is pure in most Slavic dialects, i.e. without a preceding consonant.  In Russian it sounds frequently more like an a than an o; e.g. adin, one, instead of odin; atiotz, father, instead of otetz.  But the Vendes of Lusatia pronounce it vo; as also the Bohemians in the language of common life; although in higher style they have a pure initial o.  The Croats, on the other hand, have no pure initial u; they say vuho ear, instead uho or ucho.