Is Russian Hard To Learn?

So you want to learn Russian, but it's commonly considered to be one of the hardest languages in the world. Taking about ten seconds to look into the basics of the language would seem to confirm this suspicion: the Russian word for "hello", здравствуйте (zdravstvuite) is several syllables long and contains some consonant clusters we don't use in English.

Check for yourself: здравствуйте

Say what you will, that's definitely a step up from hola.

But what is it about the Russian language, exactly, that makes it so hard to learn?

What makes Russian so hard to learn, in a nutshell

We're going to get into the nitty gritty in a second, but what most of these points boil down to is that Russian is a fusional language, whereas English is an analytical language.

This means that whereas English likes to have nice clean words that don't really change shape that much—a duck is a duck is a duck—pretty much all Russian words come with several possible shapes. For example, in Russian, a duck is утка (utka) if it's flying in the air but утку (utku) if you're eating it. This has implications for grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and even how you go about writing the Cyrillic alphabet.

If you want to learn Russian, and you're a native English speaker, I would simply say that the language will feel difficult until you figure out how its logic works. Once you've got that down, many things will click quite quickly.

The Cyrillic alphabet (the Russian alphabet)

The name for the Russian alphabet is the Cyrillic script, named after the Greek monk Cyril. The bad news is that the Cyrillic script is indeed different than the Latin script that we use in English, but the good news is that there's actually quite a bit of overlap.

In fact, even without studying it, you'll recognize about 15% of the Russian alphabet:

And then there's two more letters that you'll probably recognize if you squint a bit:

There's several more letters that look kinda funky, but at least sound very similar to an English sound:

And then there's a handful of letters that are just completely new:

If you want to learn to write the Cyrillic alphabet, or just want to get a bit more practice, you can try writing these words. They're cognates (shared between Russian and English), so if you can work out what the letters sound like, you'll understand what the words mean.

Can you read it?

If not, don't worry! The Cyrillic alphabet may look scary now, but it'll become second nature very quickly, once you start diving into Russian texts.

[Russian grammar] Grammatical case, grammatical gender, and verbs

Generally speaking, when people say that Russian is hard, they mean that Russian grammar is hard. To speak Russian grammatically correctly, you need to be able to use the right form of Russian verbs, Russian nouns, and Russian adjectives... and there are a lot of forms to keep track of. That means a fair bit of memorization for most learners, and also getting familiar with some rather technical grammatical concepts.

Here's the top three things about Russian grammar that, in my opinion, will trip learners up:

Grammatical case (noun declensions)

We won't go into a ton of detail here, but here's a demonstration of what grammatical cases are:

We actually technically have these same cases in English, but we communicate them via word order. In Russian, word order is less important because you change the form of nouns and adjectives to show what role they're playing in a sentence.

For example, here are the forms of the Russian word for face:

And you can see Russian's cases in action here in this excerpt from Letter to a woman by Sergey Esenin, a famous poem:

That's as far as we'll go in this blog post, but cases do unfortunately get a bit more complex than this.

In principle, though, this is how cases work.

Grammatical gender

In Russian, nouns can have one of three possible genders:

You can pretty reliably tell what the gender (type) of a noun or adjective is simply by looking at its last couple letters:

It's important to know a noun's gender because it affects how grammatical case works. For example, the genitive singular form of masculine nouns generally ends in an "ah" sound, but the genitive singular form of feminine nouns generally ends in an "ee" sound.

Additionally, in Russian, the gender of adjectives must match the gender of nouns. Here's the nominative singular form of the adjective хороший (horoshij, "good") for three different words:

And here's all the possible forms of the adjective хороший:

Verb conjugations

The good news is that Russian verb conjugation, relative to other languages, is quite straightforward. Russian only has the past, present, and future tenses.

The bad news is that something called verbal aspect is an essential part of Russian verbs, and this will be new to you as a native English speaker. We'll talk about that in a bit.

Combining those two statements:

All in all, this means that you'll learn two words for most verbs, and you'll also end up learning about ~20 forms/conjugations of each one.

And now let's quickly look at how Russian verbs work.

Russian present tense

Russian has two major types of verbs: those ending in -ать and those ending in -ить.

To conjugate Russian verbs, simply:

So, for example:

(Note: there are a few exceptions, and spelling rules sometimes cause minor changes, such as turning the "I" form -ю into -у)

Russian past tense

The Russian past tense is super easy—the only thing you have to worry about is the gender of the person doing the verb.

Simply remove the -ть from the end of the verb, then add one of the below endings accordingly:

So, the Russian word for "to eat" is есть.

Verbal aspect & Russian future tense

Whereas the past tense was a bit easier, the Russian future tense will present a challenge for learners: to use it correctly, you need to understand what's called verbal aspect. We'll talk about that more in the section on vocabulary, but to speak very roughly, you should know that most Russian verbs come in pairs: one is perfective, the other imperfective.

For imperfective verbs, conjugate the verb быть (to be) into the present tense, and attach the infinitive/normal form of your desired word:

So, the imperfective form of "to watch" is смотреть (smotret'). To say "I will be watching...", that would be буду смотреть (budu smotret').

Now things get tricky.

Perfective verbs can't exist in the present tense: an action either is done (meaning past tense) or isn't done (meaning future tense). This means that when you conjugate a perfective form into the present tense, it actually has a future-tense meaning: something will be done.

The perfective form of the verb "to watch" is посмотреть (posmotret'). To say "I will watch...", you'd simply follow the present tense conjugations above to get посмотрю.

Russian participles

While beyond the scope of this blog article, know that participles are very important to Russian sentence structure.

In English, we have two participles:

And Russian takes this to a whole new level:

It's a beautiful system when you get it down, but it'll take a lot of practice.

Here's the most practical explanation of Russian participles I've personally found, if you'd like to explore the topic further.

[Russian vocabulary] Word formation, verbs of motion, and verbal aspect

When you think of learning vocabulary, it probably doesn't seem all that complicated: you see a word, you learn the word, and then you're able to use the word. Learning vocabulary is hard because you need to learn a lot of words, but it's not complex or confusing.

And then we have languages like Russian.

Verbal aspect

Let's quickly contrast tense and aspect:

Tense and aspect come in pairs in English: the present progressive/continuous tense (as in "I'm eating") actually means present tense (happening now), progressive/continuous aspect (in progress).

In Russian, tense and aspect are entirely separate concepts:

And this means that, whereas we often just see one word in English (to watch), Russian will see the necessity for two verbs: смотреть (smotret') to say that you watched something but didn't finish watching it, and посмотреть (posmotret') to say that you watched something and finished it. For example, you'd say смотреть if you watched 20 minutes of a movie, but посмотреть if you watched the entire movie.

Verbal aspect presents a grammatical problem in the short term, as you'll have to disentangle it from tense. From that point on, it's a neverending vocabulary problem: in addition to learning what a Russian word means, you'll also have to know if it's perfective or imperfective to use it correctly.

Vocabulary formation with prefixes

At first glance, Russian vocabulary seems like it shouldn't present many challenges. Looking at Russian and English's lexical similarity, we see a score of 24%. To put that in perspective, French and English have a similarity of 27%. So this shouldn't be that much harder than French, right?

Not quite.

Remember how, way up above, we said that Russian was a fusional language (it likes to smash a bunch of words into one long word) whereas English was an analytical language (it likes to have many separate/unique words)?

This extends to vocabulary, too.

Russian has a rich series of prefixes that attach to words and slightly change their meaning. For example, conider the below example, where English has four very different words but Russian has four flavors of one word:

There are 23 such verbal prefixes, and as a beginner, it'll take some time to get used to the idea of seeing "to arrive" as just another form of "to go".

Verbs of motion

So, in the above section we said that ходить (khodit') meant "to go".

That's true... but there's more to the story than that.

Russian verbs that involve movement (usually) come in pairs:

ходить (khodit') is the multidirectional version of "to go"—you might think of it as something like "to wander". Its undirectional counterpart is идти (idti).

So, for example:

But wait! There's more!

Both ходить and идти refer to movement by foot. If you're driving straight somewhere, you'd use the verb eхать (yekhat'); if you're talking about your regular commute you'd use the multidirectional verb eздить (yezdit')

Furthermore, these verbs are all imperfective. When you add a prefix to them, as with выходить (vykhodit') or подходить (podkhodit') from above, they become perfective.

Whereas we can get away with just saying "go" or "take" in English, regardless of context, Russian requires you to be much more specific. This will take getting used to.

[Russian pronunciation] Palatalization, lexical stress, and new sounds

Russian grammar is hard, Russian vocabulary is hard, and Russian pronunciation contains several challenges of its own, too.

While it would take several dozen pages to talk about all of the sounds in Russian, we can cover a lot of the key problems with just three issues:

Palatalization

Palatalization is a way of modifying the way a consonant sounds, and it's a super important aspect of Russian pronunciation.

Skipping the technical linguistic details, do me a favor:

And here's what you should notice:

In a nutshell, all palatalization means is that you modify a sound by raising the middle of your tongue toward the roof of your mouth. Having said that, there are different types of sounds, and this "lift the middle of your tongue" may come more naturally to you with some sounds than others. For example:

In Russian, Palatalization is indicated in a few ways:

So this effectively means that you need to learn two versions of most Russian consonants:

Compare:

These sound very similar to native English speakers, but they are very different sounds to Russian speakers... and they're everywhere.

Lexical stress

In a case of poetic justice, English speakers learning Russian get to enjoy a taste of the medicine that everybody learning English is forced to swallow.

Take a moment and say these three words:

Notice that they have a kind of rhythm:

All lexical stress means is that one syllable in a word gets a bit more oomph than the other syllables.

To see what I mean, say the word banana. Notice how these the A sounds underlined here (banana) sounds different than the middle A sound (banana).

The reason those As don't all sound the same is lexical stress.

And Russian does the same thing.

So you can't just remember what a Russian word means—you also need to remember its rhythm.

New sounds

Russian presents six main new sounds:

[Cultural differences] Resources, friendship, and communication style

While Russian is a challenging language, some of what makes it difficult has to do with the culture surrounding it, rather than the language itself.

Lack of modern resources

Duolingo has a Russian course for beginners.

If you stray beyond that, though, you'll find your options surprisingly limited: books of practice exercises written in typewriter fonts that look like they indeed may not have been updated since people used typewriters.

For example, here are the Russian resources I got the most use out of as a beginner, personally:

And that leaves me feeling conflicted.

On the one hand, I did appreciate these resources.

Friendship

I moved to Moscow after having dated a Russian girl for three years. Despite going into Russia with an ally, and having already adjusted to life in three countries, it was the first time I really experienced culture shock.

You see, I'm from America's rural midwest. My default facial expression is a smile, and I make smalltalk with anybody I'm standing next to for more than six seconds. In my hometown, we wave at cars when they go by, even if we don't know who is driving.

Russia is very much not like that. What you'll immediately observe after stepping off the airplane is that Russians don't smile—in fact, everybody probably looks like they're about to go do something they don't really want to do. Despite the stereotype, this doesn't mean that Russians are cold—it's just that smiles are reserved for moments of actual joy. It takes a bit of work to turn a Russian acquaintance into a friend, but once you do, you'll find that they are much warmer than they first appeared.

This leads to a somewhat weird dynamic that's uncomfortable for both parties:

There's not anything wrong with this, but it can make it a bit difficult to find your footing when you begin trying to communicate with Russian people.

Communication style

While you can't reduce an entire culture down to a single adjective, I think there's a fundamental difference in US and Russian approaches to communication:

And this leads to rubbing elbows in all sorts of places, without either party necessarily realizing what's going on.

My first encounter with this dynamic came on my first day in Russia, back in 2017, when I met my ex's mother: I asked how she was. She informed me that her feet had been bothering her and that, while she had moved to Moscow to be closer to her daughter, she disliked her job here and generally missed life in Ulyanovsk. I wasn't sure how to respond to this: to me, "how are you" is quite synonymous with "hello"—it's just how you greet somebody.

In Russia, if you ask how someone is, they will tell you. If you see them again on the same day, and ask them again, they may be offended: they already told you how they were, and you cared so little that you're asking again just a few hours later.

Suffice it to say that, even after you've made it over the "friend" hurdle, there will still be learning and growth that needs to happen on behalf of both you and your Russian friend or conversation partner.

Some silver linings for English speakers who want to learn Russian

As difficult as Russian is, the journey isn't entirely uphill. If you pursue through these initial challenges, you'll be rewarded.

A lot of Russian content is available for free

While there isn't much for beginners of Russian, if you can make it to the intermediate level, you've basically got it made. Russian is the fourth most common language on the internet, meaning that there is literally tons of content waiting for you.

And a lot of it is free, too.

For example, MosFilm (the leading Russian film industry) has uploaded literally hundreds of classic Soviet movies to YouTube. Here's one you can probably understand even if you don't speak any Russian:

Similarly, all six seasons of Kuxnya, one of the most famous Russian TV series, is also (officially) available for free on YouTube. (Yes, this is a 48-hour long YouTube video.)

Of course, many books are available to read online for free, too.

Russians appreciate people who learn Russian

If you spend some time browsing r/LanguageLearning on Reddit, you'll see a story come up pretty consistently: people study a language for awhile, finally travel to a country where it's spoken, and then find that everybody just speaks English with them.

For better or worse, this is not an experience you'll have with Russian.

Whether abroad or in Russia, Russians I've met seem genuinely surprised that I'm interested in their language, and back that up by making a point to speak it with me. Many of my friends back in Moscow spoke English better than I spoke Russian, but I never spoke English unless I was at work.

Finding opportunities to exposure yourself to the language is important, no matter what language you want to learn, and this is something that wll be very easy for learners of Russian.

What makes Russian hard to learn, in a nutshell:

Russian just operates on a different system of logic than English does.

Each aspect of the language presents challenges. Learning Russian grammar will require you to learn about new linguistic concepts, and learning Russian vocabulary will require you to think about words in ways you aren't used to. Nevermind overcoming those problems—simply finding good resources to learn Russian can be difficult.

Nevertheless, if you're interested in learning Russian but are put off by its difficulty—don't be. Russian is really hard... but each language presents its own challenges. The only real difference is that Russian is very transparent about its complexities.

So, go for it! And заходи, если че (zakhodi, yesli cho; "call if you need anything.")

(If you decide to try finding Russian conversation partners on Tandem, use that as your tagline. You'll be pleased with the results.)