This Indo-European language is the 8th most spoken language in the world. It is the official language in four countries. It is also spoken in many communities outside of these countries which testifies to the effects of its influence.
Like Ukrainian, Czech, and Polish, the Russian language is a Slavic language. The earliest Russian texts used Old East Slavic and date from the Kievan Rus’ era in the 10th century. Old East Slavic was significantly influenced by Church Slavonic and was the liturgical language of the Easter Orthodox Church used.
As time passed, Russian evolved into a unique language with distinct characteristics that distinguish it from other Slavic languages. Today, it’s spoken by more than 250 million people across the globe and is the official language of Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. It is the unofficial language in several former Soviet countries such as Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine also using the language.
Russian has a storied history spanning several thousand years. The 14th and 15th centuries were markedly significant milestones in the evolution of the language, especially as the Moscow Principality emerged as a dominant political force. It influenced the emergence of present-day Russian which is a blend of Old East Slavic and the Moscow dialect.
By the 16th century, the era of the rule of Ivan the Terrible provoked a political and cultural explosion. The result was the spread of the language outside the borders of Moscow. By the 18th century, the language was standardized and modernized by individuals like Peter the Great and Mikhail Lomonosov. In the 19th century, Russian literature was revived by the works of Dostoevsky, Lermontov, Pushkin, and Gogol.
An English speaker should expect to learn Russian in 1100 hours.
Russian is a challenging language to learn. However, a quick introduction can be gained through learning some common words and phrases. Simply start with learning to say “hello” in the Russian language. However, if you need content writing in Russian, you might need a professional to help you out!
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If you’ve ever dreamt of going to space or becoming an astronaut, you may need to learn Russian. Due to Russia’s extensive and prolific space program, Russian is known as the language of space.
In Russian, a word’s stress pattern can dramatically change its meaning. For instance, я плачу could mean “I’m paying” or “I’m crying” depending on which syllable is stressed.
About 10% of Russian words share similarities with English words, which many people may not know. For example, кофе (pronounced “Kofi”) is “coffee.”
Popular belief is that Russian is a difficult language to learn, especially if you are not familiar with other Slavic languages. It has complex grammar rules and exceptions to the rules.
For speakers of Western languages, such as Spanish, French, and German, English is easier to learn because these languages are closely related. However, simple tenses and the lack of articles make Russian an easier language to speak.
Although complete fluency will take years of practice and experience in Russian-speaking communities, it’s possible to understand the basics of Russian grammar, common words, and the Cyrillic alphabet in six months.
The vocabulary of an advanced speaker covers about 4,000 to 10,000 words. Knowledge beyond these limits will put you in the class of fluent or native-speaker.
The Russian language boasts a unique structure and sound that differs from the Romance languages. Russian also contains twice as many vowels and more consonants than Latin-based languages. This gives Russian a particular melody.