The Gladiator by Harry Turtledove

to learn it. She grinned. It sure was a chance she hadn’t had when she was studying Latin!
    The Russian teacher looked at his watch, then at the clock on the wall, then at his watch again. “They’re supposed to be here now, in fact.” He sighed. “But one thing I found when I studied in Moscow—Russians are often late. I know the Germans say the same thing about us … .”

    Everybody laughed. Germans had made fun of Italian inefficiency even when the two countries were allies against Russia in the Great Patriotic War. The next time an Italian cared about a German opinion would be the first.
    â€œBut Russians are often really late,” Comrade Montefusco went on. “What do you suppose this has to do with the way the Russian verb works?”
    Along with the rest of the class, Annarita blinked. That wasn’t the kind of question they usually got. Almost everything was right or wrong, true or false, yes or no, memorizing. With those questions, deciding what a student knew was easy. This? This made her think in a way she wasn’t used to doing in school. Some of the kids looked horrified. They didn’t like anything different from what they were used to. A little to her own surprise, she found she did.
    Hesitantly, she raised her hand. It was the first one up even though she hesitated. The teacher pointed at her. “Comrade, isn’t it because the Russian verb isn’t so good at describing when something happened in relation to now or in relation to some other time? There’s just finished action or unfinished action. The Russian verb to be doesn’t even have a present tense. You can’t say I am in Russian, only I was or I will be .” She’d been amazed and dismayed when she discovered that.
    Comrade Montefusco didn’t wear a smile very often, but he beamed now. “ Sì ,” he said. “Very good! That’s just right. Ever since the glorious October Revolution, the Russians have tried to run more by the clock, the way Western Europe and America do. I have to say it hasn’t worked too well. Their own language fights against them.”
    â€œComrade, why is it the glorious October Revolution when
it happened in November?” a boy asked. “Did their verbs make the Revolution late, too?”
    The students laughed. Comrade Montefusco didn’t. “No,” he answered. “The Tsars were so reactionary, they were still using the old-fashioned Julian calendar, and it was out of phase with the sun and with the rest of the world. The Soviet Union brought in the Gregorian calendar and even improved it, though no one will see a difference between theirs and ours till the year 2700.” He paused. “Since our distinguished guests aren’t here, let’s get on with our regular lessons.”
    They’d just got well into the homework on prepositions when the two Russians breezed into the classroom. They didn’t apologize for being late. They didn’t seem to notice they were. They both looked old to Annarita’s eyes. The man had to be past forty, and the woman wasn’t far from it. But they had on Italian clothes not much different from those Annarita and her classmates wore when they weren’t in uniform. It made him look stupid and her look cheap. She wore too much perfume, too.
    And the way they talked! Comrade Montefusco taught the class proper grammar and the best Moscow pronunciation. If they were going to learn Russian, he said, they should learn it right. The two real, live Russians couldn’t have set things back further if they were trying to do it on purpose. The man’s accent made him sound like a mooing cow. He stretched out all his O’s and swallowed most of the other vowels. The woman sounded more like a Muscovite, but her mouth was so full of peppery-sounding slang that Annarita could hardly follow her. And some of what Annarita couldn’t understand made the