Verbs in Russian Stage One and Two

[AATSEEL Exec Director]

In _Nachalo_ we call them the "-esh'" and the "-ish'" conjugations.  (In a
footnote we mention that other textbooks may refer to them as the first and
second conjugations, respectively.)  We happen to present the "-esh'" verbs
first because that type of verb crops up first in our ongoing soap opera;
but the "-ish'" verbs come immediately thereafter, and we make a point of
*not* suggesting any kind of abstract hierarchy.

When I was studying Spanish in high school (40 years ago!) our textbooks
referred  to "-ar, -er, -ir" conjugations (basically without hierarchy),
and referred to the phenomenon of stem-changing verbs (such as "-ie-" and
"-ue-" types) just that way, i.e., empirically.  No one worried about
underlying forms; instead we were learning to speak Spanish.  The empirical
terminology didn't change the language a whit, but surely helped make the
verbs and the references to them accessible for us high schoolers.

Subsequent to cutting my foreign language teeth on Spanish I encountered
German and French.  Practitioners of those languages, too, long ago found
ways to present their grammar without getting into forbidding abstractions.
 

For a variety of reasons it is doubtful that Russian will ever have the
popular appeal of Spanish, French and German.  But perhaps if we in Russian
who teach and write textbooks can move to a broadly accepted pedagogical
grammar, we can help dispel the notion (still held by far too many) that
Russian is a foreign language only for the elite.

Jerry Ervin