How difficult is it to learn russian

Why is the Russian language so difficult?

The stresses can fall on any syllable in a word and do so in a seemingly arbitrary manner, unlike in languages such as French, in which pronunciation follows a clear pattern. Source: Каterina Lobanova

The first thing that stood out to Japanese translator Mayu Okamoto the first time she saw written Russian was that there were a lot of unfamiliar characters. From the very beginning, foreign students used to the Latin script—most foreign students in Russia know at least some English—immediately realize that Russian is completely different.

Unknown letters

Natalya Blinova, a private teacher of Russian as a foreign language, says her foreign students start fidgeting nervously when they learn that there are 33 letters and even more sounds in the Russian language. Furthermore, sometimes letters are pronounced differently than they are written. For example, Russians pronounce “horosho” (good) as if it were written “harasho.” Some of the language’s letters and sounds exist only in Russian.

Pronouncing the letter “ы” is the biggest challenge for many students of Russian. One English-speaking student described the struggle in an online discussion. “My Russian friend suggested saying the word table and isolating the sound between the b and the l, but it just isn’t working for me.” Once a student manages to pronounce “ы,” there are more challenges lying in wait. For example, the difference between the letters “ш” and “щ.” Blinova says her students are generally unable to differentiate these two letters by sound and are forced to rely on the “tail” in “щ” to tell the difference.

Six cases

Let’s assume a foreign student has mastered the rules of Russian phonetics and learned to pronounce words correctly. The next challenge is grammar. “The most difficult part for me was to memorize the six cases in Russian,” says German student Simon Schirrmacher. It took him a year of living in Russia before he became at least somewhat comfortable with the cases.

Russian cases are particularly difficult for students whose native languages don’t have cases or in whose languages cases do not affect the structure of words. “I simply could not believe that using a particular case means you have to change the words!” Okamoto recalls. “It’s crazy. And then there were the conjugations of verbs. Every time you wanted to say a phrase you had to stop and think how to change every word, which form to choose.”

Difficult verbs

One part of Russian grammar that is particularly difficult for foreign students to understand is how to use perfective and imperfective verbs. “I very much hope that at some point I will understand this topic,” Schirrmacher says politely, but without much hope in his voice. Okamoto, describing her experience with verbs, said, “I remember reading the illustrated textbook over and over again, trying to grasp the difference between ‘prishel’ (arrived) and ‘prihodil’ (used to come). What was the meaning of this? Where was that guy? Had he left or had he stayed? It was terrible.”

Verbs of motion are a challenge in their own right because there are so many of them in Russian, Blinov explains. “For example, the simple Italian verb ‘andare’ (to go) has the Russian equivalents ‘hodit’’ (to go somewhere and back by foot), ‘idti’ (to go by foot but one way), ‘poyti’ (to set off by foot), ‘ehat’’ (to go one way in some sort of vehicle), ‘poehat’’ (to set off in some sort of vehicle) and ‘ezdit’’ (to go in a vehicle both ways).” Solovyova’s personal favorite is the verb “katat’sya,” which can be translated roughly as “to use a vehicle for recreation rather than for transportation.” To make foreign students’ lives even more difficult, various prefixes can be added to all these verbs, changing the meaning in the process.

The bright side

Don’t despair though. In some ways Russian is easier to learn than other languages. The teachers interviewed by RBTH point to the absence of articles and the fact that there are only three tenses, fewer than most European languages.

Solovyeva believes that Russian is no more difficult to learn than, for example, English and says you just need to get used to it. “If foreigners started studying Russian in early childhood, as is the case with English, they would not consider it to be that difficult.” Blinova points out that languages such as Mandarin or Arabic are more difficult than Russian.

“In Russian, almost all of the terrible grammar ends at Level А2,” Blinova notes. “Once you’ve reached that point, you get the freedom of usage and can fully enjoy the great and beautiful Russian language.”

This article is part of the «Why Russia…?» series in which RBTH answers popular questions about Russia.

Read more: ‘Dear Leonid Ilyich’: jokes about Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev>>>

If using any of Russia Beyond’s content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.

How difficult is it to learn Russian for a foreigner?

Автор: Павел 13 Фев. 2014 в Разное

To begin with, let’s ask ourselves: why do Americans and other English-speakers start learning Russian?

Knowledge of at least one foreign language besides your mother tongue has always been a sign of a well educated person. The states allocate a part of budgetary funds for foreign language training in the general education curriculum. One foreign language is included in a set of mandatory subjects in all countries. State decides what language is more useful for its citizens to know. Socio-economic, political and cultural interests lie in the basis

Many foreigners admit that desire to learn the Russian language came after reading Dostoevsky and many other Russian classics in English (Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin). They were so impressed that they started to learn Russian to be able to read these masterpieces of the great connoisseurs of human souls in their native language. Someone works with Russia, someone has Russian roots…So that there are a variety of reasons.

New language is new world view. Knowledge of a foreign language gives you an excellent opportunity to further explore the history and culture of an alien country.

Russian and English are complex, multifaceted modern languages. But Slavic languages in their grammatical structure ​​are much more complicated than the Romano-Germanic language ​​group.

The English Grammar doesn’t know such phenomena as the masculine and the feminine gender, perfective and imperfective verbs, cases, conjugations, etc.

Now phonetics. There are sounds in Russian that have no equivalent in English. English-speaking person finds it difficult to learn to distinguish between «ш» and «щ», and to pronounce such sounds as «ы», hard «ж», soft «л» and «р».

Here is an example of transcription to Russian poetry in the International Phonetic Alphabet:

Ви ́ хри сне ́ жные крутя ́; [ˈvʲixrʲɪ ˈsʲnʲɛʐnɨɪ kruˈtʲa]

The Russian language is studied in many highly regarded U.S. universities. As an example, let’s consider Middlebury Language Schools at the Middlebury College, VT. The current U.S. Ambassador to Moscow John Beyrle and even CIA and FBI agents studied Russian at this school. In addition to Russian many other foreign languages ​​are taught here.

At the first set out students must take the Language Pledge: “I promise to speak only the language I am studying for the duration of all my time in the program. I understand that the breach of this Pledge may result in my exclusion from the School without value or refund.» Since this every student ought to forget his first language and speaks only the language he or she is studying. Even if he or she knows just a few words on it. The essential principle of all learning — immersion in the environment is implemented in such a way.

Moreover, there is a theater circle in the Russian school, which plays are put in Russian.

Russian learning requires a lot of mental exertion and time allocation. Therefore any foreigner can be proud that he or she comprehends one of the most beautiful and the most multiform languages ​​in the world.

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Павел

Автор 1 статей в этом блоге.

У меня юридическое образование. Мечтаю выучить несколько языков и стать полиглотом как Дмитрий Петров.

Is Russian Hard To Learn?

The Russian language has been classified by the Defense Language Institute, a division of the Department of Defense, as Level III (out of four) difficulty for native English speakers.

Lots of factors come into play when determining language difficulty, and most of those factors tend to be subjective to the language or the learner.

For example, your cousin Pete who was class valedictorian and spent a few years abroad in Eastern Europe might find learning to speak Russian a piece of cake. On the other hand, if you are just starting to learn your first foreign language, you might find Russian to be difficult. In this article, we will try to answer the question: How hard is it to learn Russian?

Is Russian the Hardest Language to Learn?

With all the factors that come into play, being objective about whether Russian is hard to learn can be difficult. However, we can look at some facts about learning the Russian language that lends to its appearance of being one of the most difficult languages to learn. First, we will cover what is “hard” about Russian, which is “easy” about Russian and offer some comparisons to other languages that are considered difficult to learn.

How is Russian Hard to Learn?

How hard is it to learn Russian? The following list briefly describes the ways in which Russian can prove difficult to many learners.

Cyrillic Alphabet

One look at a Russian website and it’s already like you’ve been thrown overboard from the Germanic- or Latin-based language ship. The Cyrillic alphabet, though offering some similarities to the English alphabet, has 33 letters, which is a good eight completely new letters to learn.

New Pronunciations

New letters bring about new sounds, and so do new letter combinations. Russian uses quite a few consonants in their words and each consonant has its own distinct sound.

Few Cognates

Cognates are words that are spelled similarly in both languages and mean the same thing. For example, the word “technique” means the same thing in both French and English. “Coffee” is considered a cognate for English and Russian (Кофе). As you can see, to even learn cognates, you will need to understand the Cyrillic alphabet.

Case System

Russian uses six cases and each one requires a different spelling of the noun. Each case has its own suffix added to the noun, so the case must be determined before writing or speaking the word.

How is Russian Easy to Learn?

As impossible a hurdle as the above aspects of Russian may seem, there are a few ways in which you might find it to be easier to learn.

No Articles

No articles are used in Russian. Personally, this is a selling point for me. You do not have to memorize whether your nouns are masculine or feminine or whether you need de, het, le, la, etc. to proceed them. Headache averted.

Three Tenses

Russian speaks the past, present and future and that’s it. Forget all that Present Perfect and Past Continuous stuff!

Flexible Word

Order In most languages word order is important, but with Russian’s case system, it matters much less. In fact, it doesn’t matter if you begin sentences with the object or the verb. This makes it easier for new learners to convey their messages from the get-go.

Why are you learning Russian again?

How does Russian Compare to Other Languages?

Chinese is often considered alongside Russian as one of the hardest languages to learn. Again, this will vary depending on the native language of the learner. A native English speaker might have an easier time learning Russian, while a native Japanese speaker might fare better with Chinese. Here are a few comparisons between Russian and Chinese.

Chinese has about 2,400 basic characters. Russian has 33. Chinese words do not change. For example, the verb “go” is the same whether the subject is “He, She,” or “We.” Russian nouns change depending on the case. The Chinese Alphabet is completely different from the English alphabet, whereas Russian uses some of the same characters. Chinese sentences begin with the topic, while Russian sentences can begin with the object, subject or verb.

How long does it take to Learn Russian?

Most experts will agree that to have a sufficient understanding of Russian with intermediate fluency, you will need about 1,100 hours of immersive study. The Defense Language Institute offers Level III Russian as a 48-week course. This means that independent study and class time would need to be about 22 hours per week.

Obviously, learning with an online program or such would grant you a bit more leeway. Ultimately, the length of time it takes you to learn Russian will be determined by your motivation to learn, the amount of time you spend in it, and your desired fluency level.

How long will it take to Speak Fluent Russian?

As with learning Russian, becoming fluent will depend highly on the learner. It goes without saying that the more time you spend practicing something, the better you will become at it. Most experts believe that to become truly fluent in Russian —that is thinking and speaking in Russian— requires 7-10 years of study.

Immersing yourself in the language is often thought the best way to enhance your fluency. This means living in a Russian-speaking community and using the language in daily life. Fluency can be achieved without immersion, but it might take longer. Again, fluency level is highly influenced by the motivation of the learner.

Learning the Russian Alphabet

The Cyrillic Alphabet has some similarities to the English Alphabet. For example, the Russian letters “Aa” and “Кк” both look and sound like their English equivalents. Other letters including the Russian “Нн” look like English letters but sound very different (Нн= “Nn” sound like nine). Still, other Russian letters look and sound like nothing from the English alphabet.

This is an excellent tool for learning the Russian Alphabet complete with cursive form and pronunciations.

The Best Free Resources for Learning Russian

One of the most popular free Russian learning sites has to be Duolingo. It is a fun, colorful program that makes language learning almost feel like a game. There is little grammatical explanations with the free version, but when used in conjunction with other programs, Duolingo can be a great way to break the monotony of traditional study.

Another great free resource to consider is Anki, which is the Japanese word for memorize. This app uses spaced repetition flashcards to help increase your vocabulary.

Memrise is another useful app that works similarly to Duolingo by speaking and reading useful phrases with little emphasis on grammar. This is another app to consider using in conjunction with a more in-depth learning platform or as practice away from the classroom.

Best Paid Programs for Learning Russian

RussianPod101 by Innovative Languages, is — in our opinion — one of the most comprehensive programs for learning Russian. Premium PLUS subscription plans include one-on-one instruction from a native speaking Russian teacher. It offers hundreds of video lessons and podcasts along with interactive learning tools. This is an ideal course with a monthly subscription fee for serious learners who cannot attend a class.

MimicMethod is the brainchild of polyglot, Idahosa Ness. It focuses on “learning by ear” and mimicking what is heard like a young child does. MimicMethod offers three-part courses including over 6 hours of video lectures with Ness, training exercises and learning tools like flashcards. This is an ideal system for those who excel in audio learning.

Mimic Method Founder Idahosa Ness with Conor Clyne Tsar Experience

Conclusion: Russian is Difficult, but not Impossible!

While the Russian language can prove difficult for some and easy for others, ultimately the answer to this question depends on the student, their native language, and how much time they can devote to learning Russian. Is it impossible? No way! With the above-listed resources, you can start learning to speak Russian today.

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

14 Unexpected Reasons Why Russian Is NOT Hard to Learn

Most people think Russian is hard to learn.

Is it because of the unusual Cyrillic alphabet? Or because Russian pronunciation differs so much from English? Or is it because Russia itself is such a mysterious country?

I’ve spent the last 5 years learning Russian. And during that time I’ve learned that Russian is actually not that hard to learn.

You can watch this interview I did a while ago with Steve Kaufmann to hear how my Russian is now after 6 years of practicing:

But: if you believe it’s difficult, it will be difficult for you.

So let’s discuss the 14 reasons why the Russian language isn’t actually that hard to learn.

So is Russian hard to learn?

No, if you’ve got the right resources, and take a good approach, you’ll find that there are plenty of reasons why Russian is actually quite easy to learn.

If you prefer to watch a video where I answer the question “is Russian hard to learn for English speakers?”, check out the video below. If you prefer to read, continue after the video.

Here’s a short summary of the article:

Is Russian hard to learn?
The Foreign Service Institute says it takes around 1100 hours to learn Russian for native English speakers. Many learners struggle with pronunciation, cases, and verb conjugation. However, other aspects of the Russian language are easy, such as articles, word order, and the lack of strong dialects.

Let’s go a little deeper and discuss one of the most important reasons:

1) Russian people are happy you want to learn Russian, so it’s easy to stay motivated

When I was in the South of Russia having lunch on my first trip to Russia, a guy came up to me and said: “Хорошо что ты учишь Русский.” (It’s good that you’re learning Russian).

I smiled and asked “Ага, почему?” (Aha, why?)

Then he replied “Потому, что скоро вся Европа говорит по-русски!” (Because soon whole Europe speaks Russian)

It’s an extreme example of Russian patriotism with a bit of humor.

But it shows a part of a reaction I’ve gotten everywhere.

It’s likely because few foreigners are learning the Russian language. Especially when comparing it to the more popular languages, such as French, German and Spanish.

Why does this help you learn Russian?

When you get a positive reaction to something you’re doing, you want to do it more often. So if you say a couple of words in Russian to a native speaker, and this person talks back, smiles, and encourages you to continue, you’ll want to speak more often.

This causes a positive feedback loop where you speak more, and thus practice more. Then you get more positive feedback in conversations, and you’ll want to speak more.

My girlfriend has the opposite problem here in the Netherlands. She wants to speak Dutch with Dutch people.

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But our level of English is good, and everyone tends to be in a hurry. So whenever she tries to speak Dutch with someone, they tend to quickly switch to English. It’s easier, right?

So she doesn’t have this positive feedback loop. This makes it difficult for her to practice and be truly motivated to learn Dutch. After all, 7 out of 10 times she starts speaking, people switch to English.

In Russia, you’ll be greeted with enthusiasm 7 out of 10 times when you try to have a conversation in Russian. And likely even more often.

2) The flexible word order in Russian makes it easier to speak fluently

With English speakers, you would get a weird look if you said “To my mother for her birthday I gave flowers”

In the Russian language this word order would be completely fine:

Моей маме на её день рождения я подарил цветы

The Russian language has a flexible word order. That means that you can generally place words at random places in the sentence, and still have everything make sense.

There are some exceptions to this randomness, but they’re not that hard to learn.

The reason why Russian can have this randomness is that they use cases.

With cases, you change the ending of a word to indicate its function in the sentence.

While cases are difficult to learn (we’ll talk about this later in the article), it does give you the freedom of creating sentences much more freely.

Why does this make Russian easy to learn?

This makes Russian an easy language to learn because you do not have to create the entire sentence in your mind first before you start speaking.

If you have a general idea of what you want to say, you can simply say the first word.

Then, while pronouncing the first word, you can add another word. And while saying that word, you can think about what word will follow next.

The flexible order in Russian frees up a lot of ‘mental RAM’ in your brain.

The main benefit of this is that you can speak faster. Your sentences will sound ‘fluent’ a lot faster, since you almost cannot make mistakes by putting words in the wrong spot.

In the end, this allows you to sound fluent faster, than if you were to learn a fixed word order language, such as German French, or Spanish. Those languages tend to have many word order rules that are difficult to grasp.

Not with the Russian language. Once you understand cases a bit, you can simply forget about the word order part.

There are a couple of things that you need to take into account though:

3) The Russian language does not have articles, so you cannot make mistakes there

If you have ever heard a Russian person speak English, you might have spotted this mistake:

“I put the pizza in oven”.

We would say “I put the pizza in THE oven”.

This is one of the giveaways that a person’s native language is Slavic.

“the”, “an”, and “a” simply do not exist in the Russian language.

That means that you can also not make any mistakes here.

And once you think about it, these words are actually kind of useless in English as well.

The only thing they indicate is specificity:

In the first phrase, you want a specific cup. In the second example, you just want a random cup to pour your drink in.

In Russian, you can easily solve this specificity problem by adding a form of “это” or “то” before the noun.

So the lack of articles does not make communication any more difficult.

How does this help you learn Russian?

This makes Russian one of the easier languages to learn in the world because it simply eliminates an opportunity for mistakes. In almost every other European language, you need to think about the following things all the time:

The last one is the worst. Languages such as French and Dutch have seemingly random rules that dictate whether a noun is feminine, masculine, or neuter. And this affects whether you say “le” or “la”. Or “de” or “het”.

In the Netherlands, we have plenty of immigrants, and a lot of them have been living in the Netherlands for decades. If it weren’t for the mistakes in articles, you wouldn’t even guess that Dutch isn’t their native language. But since they do make these mistakes, it’s easy to spot them as non-native speakers.

Eliminating this in the Russian language gets rid of an enormous headache for you.

And since fluency in Russian is mostly a matter of getting rid of potential mistakes, the lack of articles makes it easier to achieve a high level of fluency.

4) There are so many Russian learning resources, it’s impossible to run out

The Russian language is at place number 7 in the list of top spoken languages in the world.

153 million people speak it as their native language. And 258 million in total.

In general, the more people speak a language, the more people will want to learn that language.

More people in the world want to learn Russian than Hungarian.

The natural result of this is that there is a magnitude more Russian learning material available to learn Russian, than for many other languages.

By Russian language learning material I mean resources you can consume to improve your Russian level:

That means that however you learn best, you can find resources for that.

If you learn the most effectively by hearing and seeing words, you can watch Russian TV shows or movies with Russian subtitles.

Or read a book. Or listen to an audiobook. Or listen to an audiobook while reading the book at the same time for more engaged learning 🙂

If you learn best by talking with someone, then you can sign up for real-life classes. Or have weekly sessions at one of the online language learning platforms that people use to learn a new language.

The Russian language is large enough that you can find almost too much material to learn the language.

You can be specific and find a course that works best for you.

Because I’m a Dutch guy and have a YouTube channel in Russian, I tend to get a lot of questions from Russians about how to learn Dutch.

When I tell them I spent a large amount of time watching Russian TV shows with English subtitles in the beginning, they ask me where to find Dutch TV shows with Russian subtitles.

There is just a small problem.

These do not exist.

Just the fact that they do not yet exist (since Dutch is only spoken by about 30 million people in the world), means that students miss a large opportunity to practice.

If you want to learn Russian, you do not have this problem. You’re in a luxury position. You even get to choose which types of movies or TV series you prefer. You can find plenty of shows to watch with English subtitles.

5) The verbs of motion are not that difficult, once you realize how they work

One of the things that Russian students tend to complain about is the Russian verbs of motion.

Instead of just 1 word for “to go”, Russian has 4:

They all mean “to go”.

So how do they differ from each other?

There are 2 distinctions:

Now, this can be difficult to grasp when you’re learning Russian. Especially since you also need to learn them in the past, present, and future tenses. But it’s actually easier than you think.

If you’re walking somewhere, you say идти or ходить.

If you’re going somewhere by car, you say ехать or ездить.

If you’re talking about how you’re going somewhere now, or you’re not planning on going back, you say идти or ехать.

If you’re talking about how you go on a specific route often (more than once), or you’re just going in random directions, you say ходить or ездить.

There are some nuances, but if you get this, you know 80% there is to the verbs of motion.

The rest will come with time, practice and interaction.

And the best thing? Even though it’s a difficult part of learning Russian, you can make mistakes and still be perfectly able to communicate.

The first time I went to Russia, I told my girlfriend: “я иду в Москву!” (I’m going to Moscow on foot!) She replied “Ты правда идёшь в Москву?”(Are you really walking to Moscow?).

I then remembered the Russian verbs of motion and said “А, я еду в Москву!”

So even though you technically say something incorrectly, it doesn’t matter much. As people will understand what you mean in 95% of cases.

6) Once you cut large words into small words, you’ll be better able to say and remember them

Russian is known for its long words, and multiple consonants following each other.

That’s a long difficult word for such a simple greeting.

Instead of trying to learn the full word at once, it’s better to split it up:

Try pronouncing the first part several times. And then repeat the second part. Now try saying them after each other.

Doesn’t that make the process much easier, than if you would be trying to say the complete word at once?

Whenever you encounter long words, just take out a sheet of paper. Or write it in a note app on your phone. Split up the words.

You’ll find that it makes long difficult Russian words easier to pronounce and remember.

7) The Russian alphabet is easier than you think because it shares a common ancestor with our alphabet

Whenever I tell someone that I know how to speak Russian, they tend to say the following:

And I get where they come from. If you’ve never learned a different alphabet, then the Cyrillic alphabet looks intimidating.

The name ‘Cyrillic alphabet’ means the same as the Russian alphabet by the way. It’s just a different name.

Because if you’ve never learned the Russian alphabet, it’s impossible to distinguish any word.

But in reality, the Cyrillic alphabet is one of the easiest parts of learning Russian.

All you need to do is sit down, and spend an hour focusing on the Russian letters.

If you take the time to slowly read the letters, listen to how they’re pronounced, and how they’re used in a couple of example words, you’ll find that it’s actually quite easy to learn.

After all, the Cyrillic alphabet only has 33 letters.

Of those 33 letters:

That’s it. The first 3 categories are not hard to learn. You either already know them, or they are familiar letters in a different form.

Only the last category of the Cyrillic alphabet takes some time to get used to. But those letters also tend to be less common than the first 3 categories.

Also, learning a couple of new letters is a piece of cake, compared to learning a new alphabet like the Japanese Kanji or Chinese characters.

The Russian alphabet and our Latin alphabet both come from the Greek alphabet, so they’re more similar than different. Keep that in mind when learning Russian.

8) Pronunciation becomes better with time, even if you don’t focus on it

A Dutch friend married his Russian girlfriend 2 years ago. A couple of months before the wedding he decided he wanted to learn the Russian language.

So he signed up for classes in the neighborhood and started going there a couple of times per week.

When I asked him about his experience, he said that he didn’t really like it.

I asked why, and he said that the teacher put a lot of focus on perfect pronunciation.

So whenever they’d learn a new word, they needed to repeat it often, and make sure to pronounce it correctly from the start.

Then when they would be practicing a conversation, she would stop people and tell them to repeat the word, but with better pronunciation.

After a couple of weeks, this friend quit the course. Even though he’s a smart guy, and would’ve been able to be successful in language learning if he’d followed through.

So while I understand the viewpoint of the teacher, I disagree with her methods. Yes, it’s good to aim to pronounce words well. But it’s also a skill that comes with time.

No one that starts learning Russian has perfect pronunciation. You develop it over time.

Now, I often get compliments that my Russian sounds like a native speaker. Some people assume that my pronunciation was good from the beginning, but it wasn’t always like that.

When I listened to myself speaking several years ago, my accent was much thicker than it is now.

It’s something that became better the more I spoke Russian

If you consistently practice speaking Russian and aim to listen to correctly spoken Russian every day, your Russian accent will improve.

It’s the same principle many people experience when they move to a different part of their country to study. If you surround yourself with people speaking in a specific way, you tend to unconsciously copy that.

So aim to speak correctly, but don’t let your imperfect pronunciation stop you.

It will get better with time, even if you don’t specifically focus on it.

9) It’s impossible NOT to speak Russian in Russia

Necessity is the mother of learning.

No one knows where that quote came from, but the Greek philosopher Plato said in one of his fables “our need will be the real creator”.

Since the level of English in Russia is low, you simply must know the Russian language when you’re in Russia.

So there’s nothing to fall back on. While in many countries, you find that there are quite some English speakers, that is not the case in Russia.

If you have planned a trip to Russia, and you want to have a good time, you simply must spend time learning Russian.

While this is annoying if you just want to go to Russia once as a tourist, the lack of English speakers is also a blessing in disguise.

It brings us back to what we discussed earlier about people struggling to learn Dutch in the Netherlands. Everyone speaks English so well that there’s no need to learn Dutch.

In Russia, we have the opposite situation. This means that when you’re in Russia, there is nothing to fall back on. Language learning is a necessity.

This is great, as it means your motivation and discipline will increase. After all, if you’re not going to learn, it will be impossible to communicate in Russia.

So is Russian hard to learn? It all depends on the perspective you want to take. The number of Russian speakers will make it actually easier to learn the language.

10) You can make mistakes with cases, and no one will care

As we’ve seen before, Russian words change their ending depending on their function in the sentence.

This is difficult.

Arguably it’s the most difficult part when you are learning Russian.

You will need to learn:

While this may seem like a lot, there’s a lot of overlap between the cases. Feminine adjectives are the same in the prepositional, genitive, instrumental, and dative cases.

But it’s still a lot of work to learn all these cases.

However, there’s one thing many complaining Russian students tend to overlook:

You don’t need to speak with perfect Russian grammar if you want to be understood.

In fact, if you would not use cases at all, you would likely still be understood in most day-to-day conversations.

You wouldn’t sound too smart, but hey, you’re a foreigner who’s learning a new language. Russians won’t judge you for making some mistakes.

They make mistakes themselves sometimes with the cases.

And if you observe Russian people speak, you might also notice that they often tend to swallow the endings.

They often don’t emphasize the ending of the word, and quickly move on to the next word.

That means that it’s difficult to exactly pinpoint what case the noun had.

Example: Marina likes to go to restaurants.

If you say the wrong case, but quickly move on to нравиться, few people will even hear that you said the wrong case.

And even if they heard the wrong case, it’s obvious what you mean.

So don’t take this as an excuse to completely forget about the cases. They are important if you want to learn Russian grammar. But people tend to overvalue perfect grammar and undervalue normal communication. It’s better to communicate normally with mistakes, than to try to speak perfectly, but make your conversation partner bored.

11) There are barely any dialects, so you only need to learn one pronunciation

It’s fascinating that Russia is the largest country in the world, but they barely have any dialects.

Sure, there is a difference between Moscow pronunciation, and how people speak in the south.

But it’s mainly in how they say the “о” and “г”. The rest is largely the same.

Compare that to native English speakers: even in a country like Britain people in the south speak completely different than a couple 100 kilometers more north.

And in a country like the Netherlands, it’s even worse. I’m a native speaker, but I can barely understand how people speak in the north, even though they’re only 200 kilometers away.

Russia spans 9000 kilometers, and people speak almost the same in the most western part, as in the most eastern part.

Why is this great for native English speakers who want to learn Russian?

It means that you can just learn one accent, and you will understand all Russian speakers equally well.

Whenever you meet a Russian speaker, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to understand their accent.

You don’t need to spend extra time listening to a specific accent. In many other languages, you need to spend much more time listening, as you’ll need to be able to understand different accents.

12) Russian words are pronounced as they are written

Another benefit of the Russian language is that all words are basically pronounced as written.

That means that you don’t have to guess how to say a word.

Once you’ve spent a couple of months learning Russian, you’ll have plenty of experience to say the most common words correctly.

There are a few ambiguous letters, like in English that can have multiple sounds.

The only Russian letter that tends to give problems is the “о”. That’s because in the Moscow accent (the one everyone learns), an unstressed “о” becomes an “а”.

But for the rest, you can simply read words as they are written.

There is one downside though: Russian words have their stresses in random places. So you need to learn this by heart. Here are my 3 tips to learn Russian pronunciation:

13) Russians are everywhere, so you can practice anywhere in the world

Another reason why it’s not hard to learn Russian is that you can find Russian people everywhere.

That means that you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice.

I live in Amsterdam and I hear Russian virtually every day on the street.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union (and already during), many Russian people emigrated to other countries.

And since they still love their country, despite their reasons for emigrating, most emigrants still taught their children Russian.

Now I don’t encourage randomly hitting up Russian people on the street, and using them as practice dummies to learn Russian. That can be rude. There’s a fine line between having an interest in people and the Russian culture and annoying them.

But there’s a big chance you’ll have a Russian colleague or someone on your sports team that speaks Russian.

So in those cases, it will be quite easy to regularly see this person and practice some Russian with them.

In the end, your ‘fluency’ in Russian largely depends on how many hours you’ve practiced speaking.

So the more opportunities you have, the better your Russian will become.

14) You either love or hate Russia anyway

Let’s face it. If you’re reading this article you have a borderline obsession with Russia. Or maybe with another Russian-speaking country, such as Ukraine or Belarussia.

Or at least a healthy fascination with the largest country in the world.

Maybe it’s the people. Maybe the mysteriousness of the country. Or maybe it’s the famous Russian literature.

Almost everyone I meet either loves or hates Russia.

People either seem to be fascinated by the country, or they seem to be afraid of Russia.

A large factor in how well you can learn a foreign language is your intrinsic motivation.

And for some reason, Russia seems to hit that sweet spot of intrinsic motivation incredibly well.

So it’s not a matter of how hard it is to learn Russian, but a matter of when you will speak Russian.

So is Russian hard to learn?

If you come from a native English-speaking country, Russian is not one of the hardest languages to learn. People expect Russian to be a difficult language, as the Russian alphabet differs from the Latin alphabet. But in reality, this is a small hurdle for serious language learners.

If you are serious about learning, Russian can actually be easy to learn. As there is flexible word order, lack of articles, and Russians, in general, are very happy to hear you speak Russian.

Russian Language FAQ

Below you find answers to common questions regarding the Russian language:

Is it hard to learn Russian from English?

Hard depends on your perspective. If you’ve learned other (Slavic) languages before, it will be much easier to learn Russian. But for most native English speakers it won’t be ‘easy’ to learn Russian.

Is Russian easy to learn to speak?

It’s not easy to speak Russian. But if you focus your efforts in the beginning stages on learning new vocabulary and practicing speaking, you can reach a conversational level in Russian rather quickly.

Is Russian worth learning?

Yes, learning Russian will broaden your horizons. You’ll be able to communicate with over 300 million Russian speakers. Learning Russian will also help you train cognitive functions such as memory, pattern recognition, and discipline.

Which is harder Russian or German (or any other language)?

Since most western languages such as German, French or Spanish are closer relatives to English, Russian is harder to learn. However, there are things such as the absence of articles, or the easy tenses that make Russian easier to speak.

P.S. Do you struggle making daily progress on your Russian skills? I’ve got a 7-day coaching program that gives you a step-by-step system to follow to speak Russian well. Get more information about the program here.

About the Author

My name is Ari Helderman and I help people learn Russian through videos and blog posts where I share my experience. I have been learning Russian since 2016. I often get mistaken for a native speaker these days, so I’ve learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t if you want to speak Russian well.