Russian Language Guide

Official language in
Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
Also spoken in
Tajikistan
Script
Cyrillic

Where it's spoken

Russia's constitution makes Russian the State language on the entire territory of the country. Several neighboring countries' constitutions also give Russian a formal role. Belarus's constitution names Belarusian and Russian as the official languages of the country. Kazakhstan's constitution makes Kazakh the State language and provides that in state institutions and local self-administrative bodies, Russian is officially used on equal grounds along with Kazakh. Kyrgyzstan's constitution makes Kyrgyz the State language and provides that Russian is used as the official language. Tajikistan's constitution makes Tajik the State language and names Russian as the language of communication between the nationalities — a status distinct from being an official language.

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Script & pronunciation

Russian is written in the Cyrillic script, which — like Latin — is one of several scripts ultimately derived from the Greek script; the Cyrillic script was developed in the ninth century. Cyrillic has traditionally been used for writing various Slavic languages, among which Russian is predominant, and, as with Latin letters, Cyrillic letters have separate uppercase and lowercase forms, with spaces used to separate words. The modern Russian alphabet has 33 letters. Two of them, ь and ъ, make no sound of their own: ь (the "soft sign") indicates that the preceding consonant should be pronounced "soft," while ъ (the "hard sign") is used to separate a prefix from a root beginning with a й sound. The romanization on this app's cards follows this kind of letter-by-letter transliteration rather than a phonetic respelling: under the BGN/PCGN system used by the US and UK geographic-names authorities, ь is romanized with an apostrophe and ъ with a double prime, and this app's cards write both with a plain apostrophe. For example, the card Где находится подъёмник? ("Where is the chairlift?") romanizes подъёмник, which contains ъ, as pod'yomnik, and the card Рад(а) познакомиться ("Pleased to meet you") romanizes познакомиться, which contains ь, as poz-na-ko-mit'-sya.

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Grammar essentials

Russian nouns, pronouns and adjectives change their endings to show their grammatical role in a sentence, a system of six cases. This app's card Вода ("Water") notes that its headword is in the nominative, the dictionary case, and that prepositions and verbs change the ending, as in the accusative воду or the genitive воды; the nominative is also the case of the "doer" of an action, and the accusative is the case that marks the direct object receiving it. Because case endings, not word order, mark these roles, Russian word order is flexible and can be rearranged without changing who is the doer and who is the recipient, unlike English, where word order itself carries that information. A time phrase can take a case other than the nominative even outside a full sentence: this app's card Каждую неделю ("Every week") uses the accusative of неделя, the case used for time phrases that express repetition, rather than the nominative dictionary form. Russian verbs also come in one of two aspects: imperfective verbs focus on an action's duration or repetition, as in this app's card Как долго жарить стейк? ("How long should the steak be fried / cooked?"), which uses the imperfective жарить; perfective verbs focus on an action's completion or result, as in the card Где купить свежие продукты? ("Where can fresh produce be bought?"), which uses the perfective купить.

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Politeness & etiquette

Russian distinguishes an informal and a formal way of saying "you." The informal ты is used with a family member, a close friend or peer, or a child; the formal вы — always used for more than one person — is used with a person in authority, a stranger, or someone you don't know well. This app's cards show both forms in the same question: the card Как тебя зовут? ("What is your name? (informal)") uses тебя, the informal accusative of ты, while the card Как вас зовут? ("What's your name?") uses the formal accusative вас and notes that тебя is used instead with friends. When addressing an adult you do not already know, starting with the formal вы is the safer choice.

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