How many people speak russian

Russian Speaking Countries 2022

There are many Russian-speaking people all around the world, but there are just four countries where Russian is the official language. These countries are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. There are two countries where Russian is used for official functions. In Tajikistan, it is used in lawmaking and it is also the language of inter-ethnic communication. In Uzbekistan, it is used in registry offices and notary institutions across the nation. In the country of Turkmenistan, Russian is widely spoken throughout the country as either a first or second language. It is typically spoken within the country’s major cities, and it is taught in schools.

Throughout non-sovereign countries and semi-autonomous regions, Russian is recognized as a de jure official language, which is spoken with other languages. In Russia, these regions include: Adygea, Altai Republic, Bashkiria, Buryatia, Chechnya, Chuvashia, Dagestan, Ingueshtia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Kalmkia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Karelia, Khakassia, Komi Republic, Mari El, Mordovia, North Ossetia-Alania, Sakha Republic, Tatarstan, Tuva, and Udmurtia.

In Ukraine, Russian is recognized as a de jure official language in the following regions: Donetsk Oblast, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Sevastopol, and Zaporizhia Oblast. There are other regions that also speak Russian, including Gagauzia, Romania and Transnistria.

Russian Speaking Countries

«Do you speak Russian?»

Russian is an eastern Slavic language native to Russia and Belarus. The Russian language is Europe’s largest native language and the world’s seventh largest language by number of speakers. Approximately 260 million people speak Russian, and out of these, about 150 million are native speakers. Russian is spoken both as a first and second language and is the official language for Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. Some international organizations such as the UN, WHO, NASA, GUAM, SCO, and CIS also use Russian as one of their official languages. The Russian language has endured from early 10th century AD when its earliest known writings were used. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet as its writing system. The use of Russia spread to other nations during the Soviet Era and became ingrained in most of these countries.

Russian Speaking Countries

Russia

Russian is Russia’s only national official language and therefore plays a crucial unifying role in the country. Russian is used in many schools of Russia as the primary mode of teaching. It is used both for formal and informal communication and in conducting government affairs. Russia has the largest population of Russian speakers with 137,500,000 people speaking the language. Out of this, approximately 80% are native speakers.

Kazakhstan

Russian is an official language in Kazakhstan alongside Kazakh. Approximately 16.9 million people speak Russian in Kazakhstan. Russian is used in most spheres of life within Kazakhstan for informal communication and business. The former Soviet Union republic has in recent years initiated moves that appear as a means of distancing itself from Russia. These include the move to introduce the use of the Latin alphabet as a replacement for Cyrillic and the statement by Kazakhstan’s president encouraging the use of Kazakh as the principal language for communication, business, and politics.

Ukraine

Russian is a minority language of inter-ethnic, business and other informal communication in Ukraine. An estimated 8.3 million Ukrainians speak Russian. Russian immigrants in the 17th century played a crucial part in the introduction of Russian into Ukraine. Russian is Ukraine’s most crucial minority language, which during the Soviet reign, was used for government administration and public life. Some areas of Ukraine such as Crimea use Russian as an official language. Where there are many Russian speakers, Russians is used as a mode of learning in both primary and secondary schools. The Ukrainian government has made efforts towards reducing the impact of Russian on Ukraine through banning the importation of books from Russia and removing Russian as a learning language in schools.

Kyrgyzstan

Russian is an official language in Kyrgyzstan alongside Kyrgyz. Russian was designated as an official language in 1997 after a lot of pressure from the Russian community in Kyrgyzstan. Russian is one the most used languages in the country for formal and informal communication. 2.5 million people in the country speak Russian as a first or second language.

Derussification

Former members of the Soviet Union have in the past years made efforts to distance themselves from the use of Russian as a primary language. Since Russian is deeply rooted in these countries, governments have banned its use in areas such as, politics, education, and media, to limit the use of Russian. The replacement of the Cyrillic alphabet with Latin and other alphabets is also contributing to de-russification in these countries.

How many people around the world speak Russian?

Global Look Press

It’s hard to give an exact number of those who speak any language, especially those who consider a certain language to be their second one. According to Web Technology Survey, in 2013, Russian was the Internet’s second most popular language after English, utilized by 5.9 percent of all users.

So, how many exactly?

Russian is native for 154 million people (data from Ethnologue: Languages of the World for 2017), and Russia’s population is less than this number by at least 9 million. At the same time, Russia has more than 190 nationalities who speak more than 100 languages, and eight of these each tally more than 1 million native speakers. Several republics in the country, those that have another dominant ethnos, have also declared their national language as an official one, alongside Russian.

And worldwide?

Russian is included in the list of global languages, which means that it’s widely spoken around the world. According to Ethnologue, around 265 million people speak Russian, and it is especially popular in 17 countries besides Russia. They are:

Some countries even recognize Russian as a second official state language, such as Belarus, as well as those states with limited recognition such as South Ossetia, Transnistria, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic. This means that Russian is officially recognized and used in business, the state sector, media, education and culture; and it’s used by the political elite and among younger people who plan to enroll in Russian universities.

Russian also has official status in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but there are limits. In Kazakhstan a court trial must be held in Kazakh, while in different regions of Kyrgyzstan there are various situations when Russian can be used officially.

Are most countries that speak Russian in the former Soviet republics?

In the USSR there was a policy of Russian hegemony, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union the number of Russian-speaking people outside Russia proper remained significant until the 2000s when a new generation that learned mostly national languages, and/or English, began to appear.

Still, even in the Baltic countries and Ukraine, where the authorities legally restrict the use of Russian, there are still many Russian-speakers. According to the only Ukrainian census in 2001, 29.6 percent of the nation (14 million people) considers Russian as their native language. A Gallup Poll in 2008 showed that 83 percent of 1,000 respondents preferred to take the survey in Russian.

Participants of the rally in Riga (May 1, 2018) oppose the full translation of school education into Latvian and the «optimization» of schools.

Victor Lisitsyn/Global Look Press

In Latvia a school reform has increased the share of instruction in the national language since 2004, which led to a series of protests. According to the 2011 census in Latvia, 37.2 percent of the population considers Russian as their primary language.

And beyond the former Soviet Union?

Russian is also an official language for several major international organizations such as the CIS, United Nations (including IAEA, UNESCO, WHO and others), Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Antarctic Treaty Secretariat and many others.

By the way, in New York State all documents regarding elections in cities with a population of more than one million must be translated into Russian (as well as Spanish, Korean, Chinese and a few others).

According to the 2000 census about 706,000 Russian speakers resided in the U.S, and after the 2010 Census this number increased to almost 900,000. The language is now in the top 10 in the U.S., with the largest concentration of speakers in Alaska – about 3 percent of the state’s population. Moreover, Alaska’s Russian community is the oldest in the U.S. because the state was a part of the Russian Empire until 1867 when Alexander II sold it. (Read about why he did it here).

According to different sources, there are between 250,000 to 500,000 Soviet and Russian émigrés in Israel who speak Russian. Forbes calculated that in 2017 there were as many as 1.5 million Russian-speaking residents in Israel, whose total population is about 8.6 million. Russian is also widely spoken in Germany (as the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported in 2003), with around 6 million Russian speakers, half of who are Soviet-era émigrés.

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Russian speaking countries

Russian is the official language in Russia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan and is spoken in 19 more countries as monther tongue by a part of the population. The Russian language (native name: русский) has its roots in the Indo-European language family.

With a share of around 82%, it is most widespread in Russia. A total of about 156.6 m people worldwide speak Russian as their mother tongue.

Russian is considered a world language and is spoken as a second language by about 60 million people in addition to native speakers. Russian belongs to the East Slavic languages of the Indo-European language family. It is widely spoken in all countries of the former Soviet Union and numerous neighboring regions. In Germany, it is the second most spoken language even before Turkish with about 3 million native speakers.

Time course of the distribution

The Russian language originates from Alto-East Slavonic and was first used by a few intellectuals in the area of today’s Western Russia, Ukraine and Belarus from about the 9th century onwards. In the following centuries, different dialects and variations developed in the territory of the Old Russian Empire.

Russian only experienced a significant increase in its spread after the Second World War, when the Soviet Union extended its power to other areas and subsequently gained greater political importance internationally. Until the end of the 1970s, Russian was taught as the first language in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries influenced by it. With the later dissolution of the USSR, interest in the language also declined and the number of native speakers outside Russia has been steadily decreasing ever since. Russian has become increasingly popular as a second language in the last 2 decades.

With 5.9% in 2011, Russian was the second most used language on the entire Internet. German only followed at an insignificant distance in 3rd place.

Cyrillic alphabet

Based on the Glagolitic or Old Cyrillic alphabet that originated in Bulgaria in the 9th century, the Cyrillic alphabet (also called «Kyrilliza») was designed in the 10th century. The original letters were taken from Glagolitic and Greek. Cyrillic characters are used in many Eastern and Southern Slavic languages, which are mainly spread in Eastern Europe and Asia. The most commonly spoken languages with Cyrillic alphabet today are Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Macedonian.

A simplification was made in 1708 by Peter the Great, in the course of which several characters were discarded and the letters of the Latin alphabet were aligned. A further reduction took place in 1918 with the Russian spelling reform.

The present Cyrillic alphabet has 33 letters. Of these, 10 are vowels and 21 are consonants. Another 2 letters are used for accentuation. While the length of a spoken vowel in Russian does not change the meaning of a word, there is a significant difference when the emphasis of individual syllables is different.

How many people really speak Russian?

Updated August 11, 2022

Did you know that Russian is the seventh most spoken language in the world? With roots in the prehistoric Indo-European migration of the late Neolithic era, the evolution of the language is a lengthy one. Drawing from the Eurasia nations and greatly impacted by the Balto-Slavic languages, Russian has evolved to great prominence as a language, one which is spoken the world over today.

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How many people really speak Russian?

According to the 2019 edition of Ethnologue, an American-produced language reference guide, there are approximately 258 million Russian speakers worldwide. 153.6 million of those speak Russian as a first language, helping to rank it as number seven in the world. 104.3 million speak Russian as a second language. Altogether, this makes Russian the eight most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers.

It is the official language of Russia, of course, as well as several other states, including Belarus, Kazakhstan & Kyrgyzstan. It is considered the unofficial lingua franca in Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine and many other former Soviet countries. There are approximately 144 million people speaking Russian in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

The impact of Russia and the Soviet Union

Due to the extensive reach and lengthy existence of the Soviet Union, the language has greatly impacted many eastern European countries. In fact, Russia was the official language of the union right up until its dissolution in 1991. Russian is still used in official capacity and public life in many post Soviet Union nation states, however, countries like Latvia and Ukraine are moving towards reducing the presence of Russian in their everyday lives.

With that said, the East Slavic language is still widely used throughout eastern Europe, the Baltic States, the Caucasus and Central Asia. And many Russian speakers can be found today in countries like the US, Israel and Mongolia. There is even said to be a noteworthy number of people speaking Russian in Finland, Hungary and Cyprus.

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The Russian language in literature

If you’d like to learn more about the language, first learn about the culture. Great composers such as Tchaikovsky can tickle your ears with renowned Russian classics. Then you can dive into a trove of fantastic writers. From Tolstoy to Dostoevsky you will spend many days and nights enjoying the words of Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment, an historical insight into Russian culture. Of course once you’re ready to try and master this complex language, these books in their original tongue will be a great help.

Fun facts about the Russian language

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Ciara Gillan is an Irish writer living in Berlin. An avid storyteller with a Masters in Creative Writing and love for crime fiction podcasts, she currently works as a copywriter for Lingoda. In her spare time, she writes audio fiction scripts, is brushing up on her high school German and is currently learning Spanish. You can find her on LinkedIn, Twitter and on her side hustle website, Reckless Fascination.