Russian is an East Slavic language mainly spoken across Russia. Besides Russia itself, Russian is an official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is considered an unofficial lingua franca in Ukraine and many former Soviet countries. These include Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. There’s also a notable contingent of Russian-speakers in Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, China, the United States and Israel.

Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide and 155 million native speakers which is around 2.4% of the world’s population. It is the world’s seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers, and the world’s eighth-most spoken language by total number of speakers. In addition, Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Only around 5% of the Russian population can speak English. Once you learn Russian, the way you experience travel to Russian-speaking countries will never be the same. Knowing the Russian language lets you sympathize with the people who speak it – both Russian speakers in Russia and in your own city. <

Lastly, Russian is not difficult to learn. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet and contains only 33 letters, while English uses the Latin alphabet and contains 26 letters. Besides this, the Russian language does not contain articles and realize English has 12 tenses while Russian, on the other hand, has only three tenses: the past, the present, and the future.

Learn the most widely spoken Slavic language and come across Russian learning online at the Tobian Language School!