Aspects of Russian that English speakers can be unprepared for and how to deal with them

Russian has long had a reputation of being a complex language to learn.

The Foreign Services Institute uses 5 categories to rank languages by difficulty from an English speaker perspective. Russian is classified as a Category IV language as it’s quite different from English. The institute estimates it would take an English speaker around 1,100 hours to learn Russian. If it’s of any comfort to you, Japanese and Mandarin are Category V languages. As a learner of Japanese, I can confirm it’s no walk in the park but doable if your motivation is high.

Does Russian truly deserve this illustrious reputation? What are the key aspects of Russian that set it apart from English, and what’s the best approach to tackle them?

Let’s have a closer look.

Unnecessary Sexual Differentiation

In no sane world is a newspaper (газета) feminine and a magazine (журнал) masculine, the plural of человек (person) люди, or something that is good and masculine хороший and something that is good and feminine хорошая.

In Russian, like in French, Spanish and German, each noun, pronoun and adjective has a gender – either feminine, masculine or neuter. Even English had its own gender system until partway through the middle ages. From the Russian perspective, the English “it” which refers to everything is just cold and heartless. When we, Russians, talk about cats, we want to know whether it is “кот” (tom cat) or “кошка” (pussy cat).

Although gendered words seem like an extra feature to learn, in Russian it’s very easy to determine the right gender – you just have to look at the last letter of any word. Creating plurals is also governed by simple rules.

Convoluted Case System

Grammatical cases in Russian usually frighten English speakers. They look through the rules and do a quick calculation: 6 cases, 3 genders with both singular and plural options to account for - that’s 36 possibilities to consider for a noun each time it appears in a sentence.

Don’t despair too quickly, there’s only 6 cases in Russian compared to 15 in Finnish and 18 in Hungarian.

Why does a language need cases at all? English seems to do just fine without them.

Check these English sentences:

This is a student

I saw a student

There is no student

I gave it to a student

I walked with a student

I talked about a student

Now, compare them with their Russian translations:

This is a СТУДЕНТ

I saw a СТУДЕНТА

There is no СТУДЕНТА

I gave it to a СТУДЕНТУ

I walked with a СТУДЕНТОМ

I talked about a СТУДЕНТЕ

This is an example of 6 different cases of the masculine, singular noun “student” in Russian. Each case shows the role that the word “student” plays in a sentence: who or what performs the action, where the action takes place, or the means by which the action is performed and etc. If the noun is feminine or neuter, singular or plural, it has an entirely new set of endings to choose from. Also, adjectives will change form so that they agree with the noun they modify.

Cases can be confusing at first but there is an intuitive quality to them, and eventually the right endings will appear at your lips without you having to rack your brains. To get to this desired level, my recommendation is to build your knowledge of cases step by step. For example, spend a week or two practicing the Accusative case with masculine, singular nouns. Don’t move onto the Genitive case until you are comfortable with the word endings and uses of the Accusative case.

For a deep dive into all 6 cases, check this article.

Verbs of Motion - Really?

Russian verbs poses all sorts of challenges for English speakers. As in Spanish and French, Russian verbs change based on who or what is performing the action (this is called conjugation). In addition, each verb can represent either a completed or uncompleted action.

But it’s the verbs of motion (walk, go, fly, run, etc.) that are by far the trickiest. One describes a single motion in a single direction and another describes a repeated motion or a habitual action. You also use two different verbs depending on whether you’re “going” by transport or on foot.

As with the cases, the advice here is to approach Russian verbs of motion in digestible chunks, working with one group at a time. You may want to practise the verb “walk” first before you start with the others in the group.

These Cases and Verbs of Motion may be the two principle grammatical obstacles to speaking good Russian but the use of incorrect endings won’t stand in the way of your communication with Russians - you will be still perfectly understood and even admired for learning their native language.

You may wonder why the Russian alphabet is not on this list. Well, it certainly is written in a different script, we call Cyrillic, but you only need an hour or 2 to learn it. Try my Russian Alphabet course to see for yourself.

If there are other hurdles that you wish you didn’t have to deal with in Russian, mention it in the comments, and I’ll address them in my next articles.

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