How Hard is Russian to Learn? | An Honest Guide for English Speakers

One advantage of Russian over English is that words are spelled as they sound most of the time and you can read just putting letters together. In English you need to learn every single word with transcription.

TLDR: yes

It is COMPLICATED and hard.even some russian students say they find it hard learning russian language/rules in school.

Me, a Brazilian that natively speaks Portuguese, watching a dude explain the Russian language in English

Dla Anglików rosyjski może być trudny. Dla Polaków, Czechów czy innych Słowian to język całkiem prosty i łatwy do nauczenia, bo podobny do innych języków słowiańskich. Odmiana słów jest taka sama, gramatyka też bardzo podobna, wiele wyrazów brzmi podobnie, chociaż czasem mogą znaczyć coś innego (np po polsku niedziela (sunday) a po rosyjsku niedielia (week)). Niemniej nawet bez żadnej nauki jest w pewnym stopniu zrozumiały.

Although Russian is a "Category 4" on the US Goverment's list of 1 = easy for English speakers to learn and 5 = Hardest for English speakers to learn, there are many things that made it easier for me that @storylearning confirmed my observations: 1) Russian grammar is consistent. 2) Russian verbs only have 3 tenses: past present and future.3) Russian is extremely precise in its phoenetics. 4) Russian is largely derivative from Latin and Greek (something else I noticed because I have studied both).

In Russian the conjugation of verbs in the past depends on the gender of the subject who performs the action. In English you say 'I was' no matter who you are. In Russian you say 'я был' if you are a man and 'я была' if you are a woman.

dont waste a time for russian language, learn istead Java or Python

What is the point to learn that language? Russia is moving away from a civilized side of the world and her inhabitants are proud of it. Of course the exception confirms the rule, however there are not many exceptions. There is a war and learning that language won't help to end it.

A good video but some things are just missing like the perfective and imperfective aspect, the stress of words and the unpredictable way plurals are formed.

Nonsense. I respect your channel a lot, but these video just triggered me. People still speaking about ruzzia and “that hard language” despite all the massacre,terror and genocide they are making in Ukraine.

How did this guy make a viral language chanel knowing only the one language English

Und aufeinmal kennt mich jeder sie nennen mich august auch wen ich sie nie gesehen hab

Восхитительный чувак!

You simplified matters in two instances. Russian is phonetic provided you know on which vowel the accent is placed and accents are very rarely included by editors unless the absence of the accent would trip up even native speakers. A case in point: Unaccented "o" is pronounced "a." Consider the word потом. If accent is one the first "o," then we have "potam" meaning "with sweat." If on the second "o," we have "patom" meaning "then." Another good example is "Я хочу писать." Focusing on писать, a big difference in meaning obtains where we place the accent over the "и" or over the "a." In terms of verbs, you have oversimplified as in almost all instances, two forms each verb must be learned: cовершенный и несовершенный вид. For example, there is no point to learn говорить (н.в.) without сказать (c.в.). On the other hand, I would not say that overly long sentences is a key factor complexifying the process of learning to read Russian. Try reading Arabic where run-on sentences are common even in popular magazines -- not high literature. The problem of reading Russian literature is the immense richness of the vocabulary both in terms of word numbers and in terms of nuances in meaning of words often rendering word for word translation nugatory. That is you use a dictionary to look up the words you don't know but then you struggle getting the meaning of the sentence. (However, I would say that that difficulty is even more prevalent in Arabic than Russian.)🎉

Has nothing to do with how pretty or ugly Russian is, it had to do with Romanovs themselves. They were European Vassals who spoke European language. Russian was foreign to them.

To summarize: English language has a few rules and lot of exceptions to each whereas Russian has a lot of rules and very few exceptions to each. Russian non- native English speakers find this sort of vagueness in English language frustrating. and I'm sure English non-native Russian speakers find learning so many rules about the language also frustrating because of its rigidness.

Спасибо за подробное объяснение.

The Russian language is not as logical as English due to the conflict of rules from Old Church Slavonic, pre-revolutionary Russian, and the norms of the Russian language introduced during the Soviet Union. However, it's entirely possible to learn it, and if you take it step by step, it's not difficult at all.

As a native speaker and teacher, I'll give you some advice:

1. Start with the basics and work on them until the rule or aspect of the Russian language is fully understood.
2. Don't just copy, make sure you understand what you're saying and learning.
3. Repeat, repeat, and repeat.
4. Immerse yourself in the language, use different ways of perception: watch movies, listen to radio, read and write.
5. Act systematically; one Russian language rule follows another, and if you miss something, you won't understand everything else.
6. Don't be afraid of cases; start learning them as early as possible to understand how to construct sentences.
7. Structure each task with a scheme: phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, in any order that suits you.
8. Don't read classic literature in the early stages of learning Russian. It's written in complex language and can be challenging even for native speakers. Start with simple texts designed for elementary school.

Good luck.

Пушкин это отец современной русской ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ, а не языка. Он один из первых, кто создал литературные произведения на обиходном языке. До него в России был отдельный "высокий" литературный стиль, отличавшийся от разговорного.

Being native Czech speaker helps a lot with Russian!

Russian is difficult for sure. 6 Padezhi. 3 genders. 2 alphabets. Although it's a wonderful language and has taught me so much. It's great fun though using English and russisn together in conversation and there is so much incredible russian language music from many countries. The old Soviet films too are beautiful. Learning russian has opened up my mind and world. PS please save the letter ë!

Seems like multi day drinking binges seen like a very common occurrence is Russia. They seem very fond of alcohol.

Im sorry, but being nativ russian i disagree we only have 3 tenses. we got at least 10.

That's Freddy Fazbear!! Hawr hawr hawr hawr hawr hawr hawr hawr hawr hawr

When travelling Turkey and the Caucasus region, it's handy to learn Russian than the local languages.

от иностранца узнал, что у Толстого были предложения из 229 слов

I learned by staying abroad and immersion. Having excitement and curiosity is really all it takes to overcome any strange aspects. Listen to music and sing along to practice pronunciation. Listen to native speakers daily.

The Russian nobility refused to learn and speak Russian because it was "an ugly language"? Then why did Catherine the Great (a Prussian princess by birth) decide to learn Russian? If you mention Golitsyn, then why don't you mention Fonvizin? To ignore the whole phenomenon rooted in the reforms of Peter the Great (and, by the way, noted not only in Russia) by labeling he language “ugly” is an amazing simplification.
If you are not interested in a topic, do not make a video on this topic. And if you hate a language or a country, just say so directly.

What an interesting and motivational video! If you could add udareniya (stress marks) to the words and explain the simple rules that a non-stressed O is pronounced like an A and that the Ë is always where the stress in the word is when the word has a Ë, I think it would be perfect and people will sound more Russian when they speak. Also, which one means Castle and which is lock: Замок or Замок? Transliterated Zamok and Zamak will make it easier but I do agree why you wouldn’t transliterate the stories. Hope this is helpful.

I'm learning Russian and German but both languages are hard I can't even pronounce Russian words right,
Me learning German:🤔
Me learning Russian:...... 😐

Wouldn't запой be translated as bender?

For the under elbow thing, I thought of a crelbow (what I call the other side of the elbow

It helps if you speak (some) Polish. That language has the same "hard" parts (verbs of motion, excessive declension of numbers, noun cases) but you have a lot of familiar vocabulary.

It’s true that Russian sentence construction is not rigid and though different words order doesn’t change the core meaning, it changes what the speaker stresses on. The order of the words would underline what’s more important: the object, the object characteristics, or action. That allows Russians to imply in order to avoid redundancies and ultimately shorten the sentences by dropping either noun or verb, or both.

Been a year now since I started, ain't that hard compared to my native tongue 🙂

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I bought an old Russian Linguaphone course because I'd like to go to Eastern Siberia, if the country opens up in the next couple of years. But I have a question: is Russian still used as a lingua franca throughout former Soviet states? Is Russian widely spoken in Mongolia? If I do learn basic Russian, how useful is it outside Russia? Is the situation comparable to French in North Africa? I went to Morocco in the 1990s where most people seemed to speak far better French than English. In fact I found myself in quite a few situations where without A Level French I would have been totally lost.
PS I wish I could have done Russian at school. But the most exotic language on offer was German!

I hate the Russian keyboard because it's like плвщвькткщыдцьвлвдвьвьвьуьу

Итс пизда брат, фор сам факин ризон, ин фёрд спряжение родительниш кейс ворд "drug"
трансформ инто "druzey"
(drug итс лайк фрэнд, нат лайк драг ор mefedron)

Хеллоу, гай или лучше гей? Демократией от вас заразился...Но на мужиков не тянет. Ты пытаешься понять не объятное для демократа. Но я не об этом. То что Пушкин знал 16 или больше языков - для меня в этом нет чего то удивительного. Мой прапрадед и сам не знал сколько он знает языков, но что то около 30 - он был купцом второй гильдии, а стало быть ходил от Китая через всю Империю и то место которое вы называете Европой. Дед знал восемь языков, да и в купцы он не стремился. Так вот - во времена Александра Сергеевича Пушкина, знать 16 языков, если ты не дворянин или купец, считалось невежеством! Я уверен, что даже Обломов знал не меньше 16 языков.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love your story method but your program is so much more expensive