Why Learn the Russian Language?

Even if it seems like Russian is already a dying language because the interest in this once great country has waned, there are still people who would like to learn the language. This tiny spark of interest that remains could be attributed to the fact that Russia still plays a crucial role in politics worldwide. This makes the demand for people who speak the language as a constant everywhere. Aside from this, the world of economy still needs people who speak Russian. There are also people who just wish to learn the Russian language because it represents a great nation that once had great power all over the world.

An Important Language

One of the Slavic languages, Russian is spoken as the first language of an estimated 170 million people and as a second language to more than a hundred million others. Considered as one of the major languages being used all over the world, Russian is a language that is used officially by the United Nations. It is also important when it comes to understanding many works of literature and scientific writings. There are 30 other countries aside from Russia that use the Russian language because of the great number of Russian immigrants there. These countries include Bulgaria, Armenia, China, Finland, Germany, Israel and Estonia, among others.

The Link between English and Russian

Although Russian has been reputed as a language that is quite difficult to learn, you would make great progress if you have the determination to do it. The Russian language may not sound as closely related to other European languages like Spanish, German or French, but there is actually a relation between the two. Russian just like English is linked to the Indo-European languages and both have root words and words that are quite common. Once you are able to recognize these common root words, learning the Russian vocabulary would be so much easier.

Russian Words Borrowed from the English

It also has to be noted that the Russian language has recently started to borrow quite a number of words from the English dictionary. If you get to look at these Russian words such as stereo and video it is not that difficult to gather what they are.

Russian Sentences

The word order of Russian sentences is more free compared to that in English. This is because the «subject» in a Russian sentence could be put in the start, the end or in the middle of the sentence. This type of flexibility is offered in Russian sentences because of the case system of the Russian language. The case endings of the Russian language will signal which among the words in the sentence is the subject and which is the object. The pronunciation of a letter in Russian is also dependent on its position within a word, on where the stress is located and on the letters that surrounds it.

Learn Russian on the Net

There are now many sites on the Internet that offer courses on foreign languages including Russian. These courses are usually offered for free in beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. These sites have multimedia files where you could learn the languages from. You would only need to register at the site for free and you are ready to learn a language of your choice.