Russian
Russian — Indo-European family, about 255 million speakers, roughly 150 million of them native (estimate, Ethnologue). Script: the Cyrillic alphabet, 33 letters — a new script to learn, but a fully phonetic one.
One phrase, two short checks
Demo language: Russian
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добрый день
dobryy den
good afternoon
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добрый день
dobryy den
- good afternoon
- good morning
- hi
- thank you
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добрый день
good afternoon
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___! Один кофе, пожалуйста
Good afternoon! One coffee, please
- привет · privet
- пожалуйста · pozhaluysta
- Добрый день · Dobryy den
- доброе · dobroe
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добрый день
good afternoon
Two checks complete
добрый день
good afternoon
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Where to start
A young course: the words, the lessons and the recordings are all here, but a native speaker has not read it end to end yet. Spot a rough edge — tell us and we will fix it.
- →Russian alphabetAll letters and how they are read
- →Russian wordsBy topic and alphabetically
- →PhrasebookPhrases ready to use
- →GrammarRules without jargon
- →Reading textsShort texts with translation
- →How to readThe writing course from zero
- →TransliterationThe table, both ways
- →PronunciationWhat you hear and what is hard
- →From scratchWhere to start, and in what order
- →How long to studyAn honest estimate, with caveats
First words
Every conversation starts with them — and so does the first impression: one greeting in the local language and you stop being a stranger within a second.
- приветprivethiThe short, friendly hello for people you know — exactly the slot "hi" fills. You greet a stranger or an elder differently, and it only opens a talk: there is no matching casual bye built on it.
- добрый деньdobryy dengood afternoonThe neutral daytime hello, from about noon to six — fine in a shop, on the phone and in email. Literally "kind day".
- доброе утроdobroe utrogood morningSaid until noon, then handed over to the afternoon greeting. Literally "kind morning"; the adjective agrees with utro, a neuter word.
- спасибоspasibothank youStress it on the end: spa-SI-bo. Turn the volume up with bolshoye spasibo, "many thanks"; among friends it wears down to spasib.
- пожалуйстаpozhaluystapleaseOne word for three jobs: please, here you are, and the answer to thank you. English needs two different phrases; this one covers all three.
- как дела?kak dela?how are you?Literally "how are the things" — the everyday question to someone you know. The expected answer is khorosho: you ask to be polite, not for a report.
- до свиданияdo svidaniyagoodbyeLiterally "until the next meeting" — an of-form built on do, "until". The neutral farewell; among friends it is poka.
- покаpokabyeThe casual bye, said with a rising tone. The same word is also the conjunction "while": poka chay kipit, "while the tea boils".
About the language
| Native name | Русский · russkiy |
| Official in | Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (as a language of interethnic communication) |
| Also spoken in | Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Israel, Germany and the USA |
| How many speakers | about 255 million speakers, roughly 150 million of them native (estimate, Ethnologue) |
| Family | Indo-European family, East Slavic group — its closest relatives are Ukrainian and Belarusian |
| Script | the Cyrillic alphabet, 33 letters — a new script to learn, but a fully phonetic one |
| Writing direction | left to right |
Hard: mobile stress that is never written down: звонИт and звОнит differ by it alone, and ё, the letter that would give the reading away, is left out of most texts.
Easy: no articles, words are read the way they are spelled, and the international vocabulary is recognizable at first sight.
What people most often take it up for: work, family and travel across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, reading Tolstoy and Chekhov in the original.
Curiosities in Russian
The Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language was assembled by one man: Vladimir Dahl spent forty years recording words on military campaigns, at fairs and in letters from correspondents, and the first edition of 1863–1866 printed about two hundred thousand of them — twice as many as the academic dictionary of the day.
V. I. Dal, “Tolkovy slovar zhivogo velikorusskogo yazyka” (Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language), 1st ed., 1863–1866
How lessons work
A lesson is up to half an hour a day, split into three to five short sessions. A word comes back not on the course's schedule but at the moment you are about to forget it: the interval is computed by an algorithm from your own answers.
- The longer you want to keep a word, the longer the gap before reviewing it can be. To hold it for a week, review it after a day or two; to hold it for a year, after about three or four weeks.checked many timesCepeda et al., 2008, Psychological Science 19(11) · Over 1,350 participants, tested after delays of up to a year. The best gap is about 20–40% of the target interval when you need to remember for a week, and 5–10% when for a year.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- A material reward promised for doing a task lowers the wish to take it up of your own accord once the reward is gone. Praise for what was done, on the contrary, keeps that wish alive.checked many timesDeci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999, Psychological Bulletin 125(6) · 128 experiments. A material reward promised in advance and the time later spent on the task by free choice: d = −0.44 for finishing, −0.40 for taking part, −0.28 for performance; a reward unrelated to the task, −0.14, not significant. Praise: +0.33.
Frequently asked
Where to start learning Russian?
With the script: 33 letters are worked through in a week or two, and after that words stop being pictures.
How many people speak Russian?
About 255 million speakers, roughly 150 million of them native — an estimate; source: Ethnologue. Nobody runs an exact census of languages, and sources disagree by noticeable amounts.
Is Russian hard?
Mobile stress that is never written down: звонИт and звОнит differ by it alone, and ё, the letter that would give the reading away, is left out of most texts. At the same time, no articles, words are read the way they are spelled, and the international vocabulary is recognizable at first sight.
Where is Russian spoken?
An official language in: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (as a language of interethnic communication). Noticeable communities: Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Israel, Germany and the USA.