Is Learning Russian Worth It?

If you are living in U.S the answer would be no. As Russian language is not used in daily living in U.S but if you are learning because you wanted to study literature, culture and many more then yes, it’s absolutely worth it.

It would clearly depend on what your goal to learn; why you are eager to learn; how firm your motivation; how much effort and time you put into your goal; and what level you want to achieve.

Do you want to know Russian for the purpose of only reading street signs or in depth reason?

Learning the Russian language is not easy, it is hard as the German language. If you have in mind learning Russian earlier and for using while staying in Russia, and you opt to master it then go for it.

Secondly, the answer relies on – if the concept of the word ‘worth’ is strongly personalized. Entirely, a thing is worth doing if the Benefits or Pros of learning Russian are heavier than the Disadvantages or the Cons.

To begin with let me answer these questions supporting to the answer above.

Why the Russian language isn’t is not as significant as other languages?

Russian was much importance in the past, but today it has diminished a lot. Most learners can prove that it is declining since they started learning it as it’s much less pertinent compared to English now.

Since nobody speaks it, it serves no function except in Russia country. Generally, everyone understands the crucial significance of knowing English, it’s improbable to ever have a ‘non-state sponsored’ purpose too.

Despite being claimed to be the hardest language, it’s also described as unessential language today, however, the Russian culture has a wide winning in many different fields. That is why I’ve mentioned it earlier that when you are interested in learning this language with a goal of studying or knowing its culture, literature and many more this somewhat worth it to learn.

For more information see The Russian Language:

How beautiful is the Russian Culture?

The Russian culture has a lot of achievements in different fields along with the cultures of various ethnicities particularly in ballet, architecture, painting, politics, traditional folk and classical music, and others.

It had a big impact on world culture and has a substantial material culture and technology.

Let’s dig a little about their culture, history and literature.

The origin of Russian literature can be discovered in the middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were created. By the Age of education, literature had progressed in significance, and in the early 1830s, Russian literature endured an outstanding golden age in poetry, prose and drama.

A lot of Russian fairy tales and bylinas too, were modified for Russian animations and feature popular movies by directors such as Aleksandr Rou (Morozko, Vasilisa the Beautiful) and others.

In the year 1917, after the Revolution, Russian literature divided into “Soviet and white émigré parts.” Such, the end of the 20th century was a tough era for Russian literature, with fewer different voices.

Russian authors have notably presented to a lot of literary genres. Russia has five Marvellous Prize in literature laureates. From the year 2011, Russia ranked the 4th largest book producer in the whole wide world when it comes of published titles.

As a famous folk saying affirms Russians are “the world’s most reading nation.”

All the achievements of Russian culture and language, literature, is worth learning as these allow you to know their culture in a deep and profound way.

Above all, you’re learning Russian to the excellent level would be a vast amount of investment in higher fees, but it is worth the cost. If you are staying in Russia or any post-Soviet states such as Armenian, Azerbaijani and many others, the Russian language is very useful.

Pros of Learning Russian Language

Russian is the sole official language at the National level. In different regions in Russia there are 100 minority languages spoken today and 35 varieties of languages which are declared official languages accompanying Russian language.

Learning Russian brought many benefits and opportunities. Listed here some Pros of learning the Russian language;

  • Russian language is widely spoken languages all over the world. It is the spoken language used by over 260 million people in the globe.
  • Russian ranked 6 of the world languages in the United Nations, it helps you to roam in any part of Eastern Europe because of the soviet coalition’s influence.
  • Also, it is beneficial to learn the foreign languages as they aren’t widely spoken among Russian people, so you may have a problem in conversing in English people in the street.
  • You can able to watch Russian movies without subtitles.
  • The language is spoken and understood in all the Post-Soviet states.

So, if you like to spend a vacation in those states it will be very useful.

  • Having the skills in speaking Russian enhances more opportunities.
  • You have the opportunity to know its culture, literature and language. As Russian has a big part and has a vast amount of expressions that you can’t find it in English language.
  • Russian is nearly related to Slavic languages where a lot of its roots come from Old Church Slavonic, all Slavic languages originated from Old Church Slavonic like Ukraine, Belorussian and others. If you learn, you have the edge to learn one of the Slavic languages in the future.
  • Knowing Russian can widen your social circle which is very beneficial in dealing business. It enables you to communicate with many Russian people, especially in economic industry, and many others.
  • The language appears to be the most fitting for literature and poetry, and it also has that fancy where you will able to converse using distinct variations of the same indecent word, even use it for each part of the sentence and still it make sense. That’s the sequence of flexibility.
  • It opens many opportunities to learn something new and unique.
  • The Russian vocabulary is much wider. So, if you like to reuse it again as much vocabulary as possible, you have a head start to some of the other Slavic languages like Czech.
  • The beauty of Russian language is the creativity in its language. Once you have control of the Russian prefixes and morphology, you are able to produce an infinite number of non-prevailing words that mostly native tongue speakers of Russian will understand.
  • You can able to talk to Russian girls as they are really beautiful.
  • If you are trying to speak with them using their spoken language, Russian people won’t criticize or neither laugh at you.

If you have the interest to learn Russian, don’t let anything block your way!

Cons of learning Russian Language

When there are Pros there are Cons in Russian language. As this language claimed to be the hardest language. See below the some Cons of learning Russian.

  • Depending on what part of the world you are, as a lot of people may not speak Russian.
  • Russian grammar is difficult.
  • Russian is enormously profound language, because of the nature of grammar, and Russians people initiated new words even without discerning it.
  • In everyday life a very wide vocabulary is utilized, it isn’t applicable for daily living. So, it is very hard to begin your day using these skills in real life particularly if you are not staying in Russia.
  • You will spend more time and years learning it to achieve fluency.
  • Russian phonetics is very unique to English. Most of the consonants are softer and harder compared in other European languages. So, it is very tricky to understand and learn the accent.
  • Has many grammar rules exceptions the same to English and has unique alphabet and funny phonetics.
  • Most corner cases in grammar where contrasting and grammatical concepts are just conflicting thus results gaps.
  • Understanding of Russian oral speech is also an important skill that needs to be practiced and developed.
  • If you are residing in the United States, it is wholly not used from your daily life in the US.
  • With Russian you have to maintain you into learning it, constraint yourself even does not last long.
  • Learning Russian to the fluency, range would be a great risk with very high maintenance expenses.
  • Russian people might not care enough to speak with you, meaning you have a problem in learning Russian during interactions with them. Unlike any other foreigners, they are willing to help you to learn their native tongue.
  • If a Russian speaker likes to outcast you from the conversation, they can simply fall back on slang accent, as easily.
  • The Russian language is not fit for technical and formal documents, because of the innate sort of inaccuracy which roots for higher flexibility. Due to the fact that technical documentation will be utilizing longer or detailed terminology, it will be difficult to understand by most people, and it is quietly become the reader board.

To learn Russian or Slavic language is an intimidating task compared than learning French for an English speakers.

Related Questions:

What are the difficult aspects in learning Russian?

Learn the Top 25 Must-Know Russian Verbs to get you started:

Naturally, a Slavic language is hard to learn unlikely English, Norwegian, and any other simple languages.

The difficult part in Russian language are;

The Grammar structure– it’s unbearable to conjugate and practice all cases correctly in real time. Even Russian speaker cannot explain how the rules work rather they based it on sounds.

Pronunciation– A word is closely often stressed on the second last syllable.

The pronunciation is a mystery even learners, cannot understand how to pronounce a word unless you hear a Russian speaker pronouncing it.

Verb Conjunction– there are many aspects which English find weird particularly the verbs. It has explicitly expressions and the “Conjugation” of the verbs must agree with the subject. Unlike in English it is simple and oftentimes you are aware when changing the ending verbs. You will figure out that Russian conjugation rules are enormously complicated.

Dealing Nouns Gender

When learning Russian for English speakers your major problem will be hard to deal with the noun’s gender modified form of connected adjectives and verbs. These features are not contained in English language.

Formal and informal form of speech

Russian have formal and informal form of speech, where very confusing to use. The word ýou’ is a polite way in addressing people regardless of the people involved. This is not as hard as the Japanese, but English do not have this attribute.

Phonetics

The other struggle in learning will be phonetics, Russian consonants can be distinguished as “soft” or “hard”, which may be presented with letters and it is not present in the English language. Some of the phonetic sounds are quite different, like “rolling r” and “ы.”

Entirely speaking, people are understanding about the way you speak, so oftentimes you’ll be comprehended by people around even if you pronounced the words incorrectly.

What are the tips on how to get rid the complexity of the Russian language?

Here are 50 COMMON PHRASES IN RUSSIAN: BASIC RUSSIAN to get you started:

Knowing Russian is like learning a programming language with which you can establish as much as your imagination enables you to. You can produce any small shade of emotional statement with an ordinary sentence without exclamation marks even. Like studying art which you are holding brushes to where you can use it for painting any picture.

English sentence structure can be compared to a sketch drawn with a pencil while Russian is like a pastel colour painting. You can get the notion from the sketch, but the painting is much more emotional and depth.

In other words, Russian is a depth and complex language, but it has beauty of it. Here are the & tips on how to get rid the complexity of the Russian language;

  1. First forget about the grammar

Don’t focused thoroughly in internalizing the Russian grammar. Even Russian speakers don’t realize how the rules work.

  1. Listen to the Phrases used

Omit Grammar initially, rather listen the Phrases used. Russian language speakers realize the conceptual root on sound not on rules. This might be hard to express accurately, but firstly, it’s likely learning a song, relatively than understanding an equation.

When you neglect the grammar instead concentrating on phrasing, it became enjoyable. So, it is not fairly scary to learn Russian.

  1. Understanding the Cyrillic alphabet

Some people perceive that reading Russian must be intolerable because of the Cyrillic alphabet. In truth, this is strongly straightforward and you will surely master reading the Russian words rapidly.

Russian language is fully phonetic. No contain silent letters like English or French.

  1. Don’t ignore the Russian Morphology

Russians are creative on its morphology, its fun and it establishes a pliable thinking. You can convey the definition in English translation, but nonetheless you have to lose a lot.

  1. Invest a lot of time

Learning a Slavic language or Russian language is barely difficult and it requires time and effort. You need to be committed and spend a ton of time in mastering this language. If you have no enough time to focus your probably ending with losing this language not only the money you spent will be lost but the time and chances as well.

  1. Better to visit or stay in Russia

If you want to learn quickly and you are very interested to learn the Russian language, you can stay in Russia or any other post-Soviet States to grasp quickly the language. While learning tries to listen closely to how it sounds, ignore the grammar and try to love the language as it will keep your ground stay motivated.

  1. Keep watching Russian movies

Russian movies simply enhance your learning process as it refresh your memory in remembering certain words in Russian. Experts conclude that watching movies or visual effects are the best way to teach people without struggling complexity on a particular aspect.

If you do your mind will pictograph the certain word by watching the movie in which you can remember it anywhere and anytime of the day without looking or consulting your learning materials.

Conclusion:

Learning a Russian language might at risk not only in investing a higher cost, and the complexity of the language requires a ton of effort, focused and time.

But, if you have the dedication and the interest rest assured you will fall in love with it and it will keep you inspired when things get harder.

Many people learned the Russian language because they badly need it, some use it on an everyday basis and they moved or migrate in Russia or in some places speaking Russian language.

However, the greatest purpose to learn Russian is definitely up to you and if you find it reasonable to learn the language every aspect will flow naturally.

Therefore, it holds a remarkable try to master Russian. If you don’t extend your horizons in mastering it, it will be just any other language which is used only to communicate, but, if you strive to master it, you will be able to open a beautiful world.

To sum up, Russian is assuredly a language worth learning, it may be worth less than studying other languages.

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