The analogy between the Slavic and the Sanscrit languages consists indeed only in the similar sound of a great many words; the construction of the former is purely European, and it has in this respect a nearer relation to the Greek, Latin, and German; with which idioms it has evidently been derived from the same source.[13] The Slavic has three genders. Like the Latin, it knows no article; at least not the genuine Slavic; for those dialects which have lost their national character, like the Bulgarian, or those which have been corrupted by the influence of the German,[14] employ the demonstrative pronoun as an article; and the Bulgarian has borrowed the Albanian mode of suffixing one to the noun. For this very reason the declensions are more perfect in Slavic than in German and Greek; for the different cases, as in Latin, are distinguished by suffixed syllables or endings. The Singular has seven cases; the Plural only six, the vocative having always the form of the nominative. As for the Dual, a form which the Slavic languages do not all possess, the nominative and accusative, the genitive and local; the dative and instrumental cases, are always alike.
For the declensions of adjectives the Slavic has two principal forms, according as they are _definite_ or _indefinite_. The Old or Church Slavonic knows only two degrees of comparison, the positive and comparative; it has no superlative, or rather it has the same form for the comparative and superlative. This is regularly made by the suffix _ii_. mostly united with one of those numerous sibilants, for which the English language has hardly letters or signs, _sh, tsh, sht, shtsh_, etc. In the more modern dialects this deficiency has been supplied; in most of them a superlative form is made by prefixing the particle _naï_; e.g. in Servian, _mudar_, wise, _mudrii_ wiser, _naïmudrii_, the wisest. The Russian, besides this and several other superlative forms, has one that is more perfect, as proceeding from the adjective itself: _doroghii_ dear, _doroshe_ dearer, _doroshaïshii_, dearest. Equally rich is this language in augmentative and diminutive forms not only of the substantive but also of the adjective, a perfection in which even the Italian can hardly be compared to it; of which however all the Slavic dialects possess more or less. Almost all the Russian substantives have two augmentatives and three diminutives; some have even more. We abstain with some difficulty from adducing examples; but we are afraid of going beyond our limits. It deserves to be mentioned as a peculiarity, that the Slavi consider only the first four ordinal numbers as adjectives, and all the following ones as substantives. For this reason, the governed word must stand in the genitive instead of the accusative: _osm sot_ (nom. _sto_), eight hundred. In all negative phrases they employ likewise the genitive instead of the accusative. A double negation occurs in Slavic frequently, without indicating an affirmation; for even if another negation has already taken place, they are accustomed to prefix to the verb the negative particle _ne_ or _nje_.