9 Reasons Why Russian Is NOT Hard to Learn (My Experience)

Whenever someone figures out I speak Russian, one of the first questions they ask is “but isn’t Russian hard to learn?”

And my answer is something like this:

“Yes, Russian is more difficult for English speakers than languages like Spanish, French or German. But it’s easier than the Asian languages or Arabic. And besides, Russian has lots of softening factors, such as the flexible word order, no articles, and lack of dialects. These factors make it easy to have conversations in Russian.”

Why is this important? Well, if you think Russian is hard to learn, your experience will reflect that.

But if you know all the factors that make Russian easy to learn, you increase your chances of becoming fluent in Russian.

Watch my video below to learn the 9 most influential reasons why Russian is easy to learn:

Or continue reading if you prefer written content. After reading this article, you’ll be full of motivation to start (or continue) learning Russian!

Is Russian hard to learn? 9 Reasons why it’s not

I started learning Russian in 2016, and went to Moscow the first time after a couple of months of studying.

Even though my grammar was bad, I could still talk about common topics, such as where I was from, what I was studying, and how I liked Russia.

So in my experience (and that of my students), Russian doesn’t need to be difficult if you take the right approach.

But let’s dive into the reasons why Russian isn’t hard to learn:

1) The flexible word order in Russian makes it easy to speak fluently

With English speakers, you would get a weird look if you said “To my mother for her birthday I gave flowers”

In the Russian language this word order is correct:

Моей маме на её день рождения я подарил цветы

• моей маме – to my mother
• на её день рождения – for her birthday
• я подарил – I gave
• цветы – flowers

The Russian language has a flexible word order. That means that you can place words at random places in the sentence, and everything still makes sense.

There are some exceptions to this randomness, but they’re not that hard to learn.

The reason why Russian can do this is because they use cases. 

With cases, you change the ending of a word to indicate its function in the sentence.

While cases are difficult to learn (we’ll talk about this later in the article), it does give you more freedom in creating sentences.

Why does this make Russian easy to learn?

Because you do not have to create the entire sentence in your mind first before you start speaking.

If you have a general idea of what you want to say, you can start already with the first word.

Then, while pronouncing the first word, you can add another word. And while saying that word, you can think about what word will follow next.

The flexible order in Russian frees up a lot of ‘mental RAM’ in your brain. 

The main benefit of this is that you can speak faster. Your sentences sound fluent a lot earlier, since you cannot make mistakes by putting words in the wrong spot.

This allows your speech to flow better, compared to learning a fixed word order language, such as German, French, or Spanish. Those languages have strict word order rules that are similar to English, but not fully.

Which means that German, French, or Spanish native speakers can instantly recognize you’re not a native speaker when you mess up a sentence.

Not with the Russian language. Once you understand cases a bit, you can simply forget about the word order part.

There are a couple of things that you need to take into account though:

• Prepositions are always before the word they are attached to. На работу (to work). Возле дома (around the house). К врачу (to the doctor).
• In general, the last word in the sentence is emphasized. Я купил цветы маме (I bought flowers for my mom), has the implicit meaning that you bought them for your mother, not your grandma. This isn’t a hard rule, as you can emphasize any word by stressing it in your pronunciation.
• If you connect two sentences with a word like “and” (и), “but” (но), “or” (или), the words need to stay in their own subsentence.
• If there are multiple Russian verbs that require a specific case, the noun tends to stay close to that verb. “I like to eat pizza” (Мне нравится есть пиццу)
• If you need more structure, you can always use the English word order: Noun + verb + object + indirect object. “I gave flowers to my mother” – я подарил цветы маме.

2) There are no articles in the Russian language

If you have ever heard a Russian person speak English, you might have spotted this mistake:

“I put pizza in oven”.

We would say “I put THE pizza in THE oven”.

This is one of the giveaways that a person’s native language is Slavic.

“The”, “an”, and “a” do not exist in the Russian language.

This is frustrating for Russian, who are learning English. But it’s great for us, who are learning Russian.

Because it means we cannot not make any mistakes here.

And if you think about it, these words are actually kind of useless in English as well.

The only thing they indicate is specificity:

• Can you give me the cup?
• Can you give me a cup?

In the first phrase, you want a specific cup. In the second example, you just want a random cup to pour your drink in.

In Russian, you can easily solve this specificity problem by adding a form of “это” or “то” before the noun.

• Вы можете мне дать ту чашку? (Can you give me that cup?)
• Вы можете мне дать чашку? (Can you give me a cup?)

So the lack of articles has no impact on communication.

How does this help you learn Russian?

This makes Russian one of the easier languages to learn because it eliminates an opportunity for mistakes. In almost every other European language, you need to think about the following things all the time:

• Should I say an article in front of this noun?
• Should I say a specific or nonspecific article?
• (For languages such as German, Spanish, French, Dutch, and more): Which gender is this noun?

The last one is the worst. Languages like French and Dutch have random rules that dictate whether a noun is feminine, masculine, or neuter. And this affects whether you say “le” or “la”. Or “de” or “het”.

In the Netherlands, we have plenty of immigrants, and a lot of them have been living in the Netherlands for decades.

They speak Dutch well, except for some mistakes in the articles. And this makes it easy to spot Dutch isn’t their native language.

Eliminating this in the Russian language gets rid of an enormous headache for you. 

And since fluency in Russian is mostly a matter of getting rid of potential mistakes, the lack of articles makes it easier to achieve a high level of fluency.

3) There are so many Russian learning resources, it’s impossible to run out

The Russian language is at place number 7 in the list of top spoken languages in the world. 

153 million people speak it as their native language. 258 million total speakers. 

The more people speak a language, the more people will want to learn that language.

More people in the world want to learn Russian than Hungarian.

The natural result of this is that there is much more Russian learning material available to learn Russian, than for many other languages.

By Russian language learning material I mean resources you can consume to improve your Russian:

• Textbooks
• Online Russian courses
• Video games
• Movies
• TV shows
• Books
• Real life classes or tutors
• Music
• And much more…

That means that however you learn best, you can find resources for that.

If you learn best by hearing and seeing words, you can watch Russian TV shows or movies with Russian subtitles.

Or read a book. Or listen to an audiobook. Or listen to an audiobook while reading the book at the same time for more engaged learning.

If you learn best by talking with someone, then you can sign up for real-life classes. Or have weekly sessions at one of the online language learning platforms.

The Russian language is large enough that you can find any type of material to learn the language.

You can be specific and find a course that works best for you.

Why is this important? Let me give you an example:

Because I’m Dutch and have a Russian YouTube channel, I get a lot of questions from Russian speakers how to learn Dutch. 

When I tell them I spent a lot of time watching Russian TV shows with English subtitles, they ask me where to find Dutch TV shows with Russian subtitles.

There is just a small problem.

These do not exist.

Just the fact that they do not yet exist (since Dutch is only spoken by about 30 million people in the world), means that students miss a large opportunity to practice.

If you want to learn Russian, you do not have this problem. You’re in a luxury position. You even get to choose which types of movies or TV series you prefer. You can find plenty of shows to watch with English subtitles. 

4) The Russian alphabet shares a common ancestor with our alphabet

Another question people ask after learning that I know how to speak Russian, is this:

“Isn’t the Russian alphabet super difficult to learn?”

And I get where they come from. The Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet looks intimidating.

Because if you’ve never learned the Russian alphabet, it looks like a bunch of weird characters.

But in reality, the Cyrillic alphabet is one of the easiest parts of learning Russian.

All you need to do is sit down, and spend an hour or 2 learning the Russian letters.

If you take the time to slowly read the letters, listen to how they’re pronounced, and how they’re used in a couple of example words, you’ll find that it’s easy to learn.

After all, the Cyrillic alphabet only has 33 letters. 

Of those 33 letters:

• The same as in English: к о т а м 
• A little different: д б 
• Familiar sound, different letter: й е н г з х ю и с ф в п р л э у
• New letters: ц ш щ ъ ж ь ч я ы ё

That’s it. The first 3 categories are not hard to learn. You either already know them, or they are familiar letters in a different form.

Only the last category of the Cyrillic alphabet takes time to get used to. But those letters are also less common than the first 3 categories.

Also, learning a couple of new letters is a piece of cake, compared to learning a whole new alphabet like the Japanese Kanji or Chinese characters. 

The Russian alphabet and our Latin alphabet both come from the Greek alphabet, so they’re more similar than different. Keep that in mind when learning Russian.

5) It’s impossible NOT to speak Russian in Russia

Necessity is the mother of learning.

Since the level of English in Russia is low, you must know the Russian language when you’re in Russia. 

There’s nothing to fall back on. In many countries you find that there are lots of English speakers. But this is not thecase in Russia.

If you have planned a trip to Russia, and you want to have a good time, you must learn Russian. 

This is frustrating if you just want to go to Russia once as a tourist. But for us who are learning Russian, the lack of English speakers is a blessing in disguise.

An example: in the Netherlands, most foreigners struggle to learn Dutch. Because all Dutch people speak English there’s no need to learn Dutch.

In Russia, we have the opposite situation. When you’re in Russia, there is no English to fall back on. Language learning is a necessity.

This is great, as it means your motivation and discipline will increase. After all, you MUST learn it, otherwise it will be impossible to communicate in Russia.

6) There are barely any dialects, so you only need to learn one pronunciation

It’s fascinating that Russia is the largest country in the world, but they have no real dialects. 

Sure, there is a difference between Moscow pronunciation, and how people speak in the south.

But it’s mainly in how they say the “о” and “г”. The rest is the same.

Compare that to native English speakers: even just in Britain people from some regions get subtitled when they’re on TV because otherwise no one would understand them.

And in a country like the Netherlands, it’s even worse. I’m a native speaker, but I cannot understand how people speak in the north, even though they’re only 200 kilometers away.

Russia spans 9000 kilometers, and people speak the same in the most western part, as in the most eastern part.

Why is this great for native English speakers who want to learn Russian?

It means that you can just learn one accent, and you will understand all Russian speakers well. 

Whenever you meet a Russian speaker, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to understand their accent. 

In many other languages, you need to spend more time practicing listening, as you’ll need to be able to understand different accents.

7) Russian words are pronounced as they are written

Another benefit of the Russian language is that all words are pronounced as they are written. 

That means that you don’t have to guess how to say a word. 

Russian does have a few ambiguous letters, like in English, that can have multiple sounds.

But the only real Russian letter that tends to give problems is the “о”. That’s because in the Moscow accent (the one everyone learns), an unstressed “о” becomes an “а”. 

But for the rest, you can simply read words as they are written.

There is one downside though: Russian words have their stresses in random places. So you need to learn this by heart. Here are my 3 tips to learn Russian pronunciation:

• Use audio when learning a new language, so you hear right away what the correct pronunciation is.
• Spend time watching Russian movies and TV shows.
• When you read Russian texts, try to find a resource that has the stressed part underscored.

8A) Russian people are happy you want to learn Russian, so it’s easy to stay motivated

When I was in the South of Russia having lunch on my first trip to Russia (2016), a guy came up to me and said: “Хорошо что ты учишь Русский.” (It’s good that you’re learning Russian). 

I smiled and asked “Ага, почему?” (Aha, why?)

Then he replied “Потому, что скоро вся Европа говорить по-русски!” (Because soon whole Europe speaks Russian)

It’s an extreme example of Russian patriotism with a bit of humor.

But it shows a part of a reaction I’ve gotten everywhere.

Russians are genuinely happy when a foreigner is learning Russian.

It’s because few foreigners are learning the Russian language, when comparing it to the more popular languages, like French, German, and Spanish.

Why does this help you learn Russian?

When you get a positive reaction to something you’re doing, you want to do it more often. So if you say a couple of words in Russian to a native speaker, and this person talks back, smiles, and encourages you to continue, you’ll want to speak more often.

This causes a positive feedback loop where you speak more, and thus practice more. Then you get more positive feedback in conversations, and you’ll want to speak more.

My girlfriend had the opposite problem here in the Netherlands. She wants to speak Dutch with Dutch people. 

But as I said before, our level of English is good. And everyone is in a hurry. So whenever she tries to speak Dutch with someone, they switch to English. It’s easier, right?

So she doesn’t have this positive feedback loop. This makes it difficult for her to practice and be motivated to learn Dutch. After all, 9 out of 10 times she starts speaking, people switch to English.

In Russia, you’ll be greeted with enthusiasm 9 out of 10 times when you try to have a conversation in Russian.

8B) Russian speakers are everywhere, so you can practice anywhere in the world

Another reason why it’s not hard to learn Russian is because you can find Russian speaker everywhere. 

That means that you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice. 

I live in Amsterdam and I hear Russian every day on the street. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union (and before), many Russian speakers emigrated to other countries. 

And now after Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian speakers are everywhere in Europe (and many other places in the world).

So there’s a big chance there are native speakers in your vicinity if you live in a medium to big city.

Maybe you have a Russian-speaking colleague or someone on your sports team speaks Russian.

Or you meet someone in your daily life and can have a chat in Russian.

In the end, your “fluency” in Russian depends on how many hours you’ve practiced speaking. 

So the more opportunities you have, the better your Russian will become.

9) You either love or hate Russia anyway

Let’s face it. If you’re reading this article you have a borderline obsession with Russia.

Or at least a healthy fascination with the largest country in the world. 

Maybe it’s the people. Maybe the mysteriousness of the country. Or maybe it’s the famous Russian literature.

Almost everyone I meet either loves or hates Russia. 

People either seem to be fascinated by the country, or they seem to be afraid of Russia.

A large factor in how well you can learn a foreign language is your intrinsic motivation.

And for some reason, Russia seems to hit that sweet spot of intrinsic motivation incredibly well.

So it’s not a matter of how hard it is to learn Russian, but a matter of when you will speak Russian.