Russian is the lingua franca, so wherever you go in Russia, you'll find someone who speaks it. You are in no doubt that Russians are proud of their culturally diverse language. The language is a member of the Slavic language family, with the minor exception being that it is further sub-classified into the East Slavic family, thus being closely related to Ukrainian and Belarusian. Although related to other Slavic languages such as Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, to name a few, they are not mutually intelligible, but still share a slight similarity. Russian is considered one of the most difficult languages for an English speaker to learn, mostly because of a very complicated grammar. However, it is less difficult to learn than its other language neighbors, Ukrainian and Belarusian. You will not learn the language in a short time; concentrate on learning some key "courtesy" phrases, and the Cyrillic alphabet (e.g. "ресторан" spells "restaurant") so you have a chance to recognize street names, labels and public signs.
Many English speakers have found the Russian language quite hard going, but nonetheless, Russian like English shares ancestral Indo-Europen root language, and the script uses a wide range of letters found in English, but a majority of those letters are pronounced differently. The language employs three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), six grammatical cases, and free-fall stress, all of which conspire to make it a difficult prospect for the native English speaker.
Trinity Monastery in Sergiev Posad—the spiritual home of the Russian Orthodox Church
English is becoming a requirement in the business world, and many younger Russians in the largest cities (like Moscow or St. Petersburg) know enough English to communicate, but outside of that English is almost nonexistent even in the tourism business, so you should NEVER go somewhere even the slightest remote without either fluent Russian or a competent guide.
Russia has hundreds of languages and supports most of them, sending linguists to document them and invent (mostly — in 1920-1960) writing systems for them (all Cyrillic, except Karelian) and making them local co-official languages. The southern border is lined with Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic; the northern with Finnic and Samoyed. The southwest corner has a variety of Caucasian languages; the northeast has the few Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages. Although it must not be forgotten that Russian is spoken everywhere and will suffice to you anywhere
The Russian Orthodox religion is one of the oldest branches of Christianity in the world and continues to have a very large following, despite having been repressed during the communist period. The language spoken in Russian Orthodox church services is Old Church Slavonic, which differs considerably from the modern version and Russian itself.
There are several cultural and educational centers of German, French, English, Japanese and other foreign languages across the Russian Federation. French centers belong to Alliance Francaise and are located in Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Perm, Rostov-on-the-Don, Samara, Saratov, Tolyatti, Vladivostok. German is taught at Sprachlernzentern in Barnaul, Yaroslavl, Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Samara, Sergiev Posad, Tolyatti, Tomsk, Vladimir, Volgograd, Volzhsky. IELTS schools are numerous and one can find them in all big and small cities, the number of accredited exams centers, however is shorter but enough. The official centers of Japanese language include Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Nizhny Novgorod, Saint Petersburg, Moscow.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Russia
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Russia - updated Apr 2024
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Russia Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
