Learn Russian

Why learn Russian?

Russian is one of the major world languages. It is the official language of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and Gagauzia - as well as being one of the six official languages of the United Nations. With Russia's markets open for trade now, more and more business globally is being conducted in Russian.

If you are doing business with Russians, it is, of course, a huge advantage to speak their language, but there are also many other incentives to learn it. Russians are fascinating people and the best way to get to know them is to be able to converse with them in their own tongue. It's great to be able to understand their songs, get their jokes and, ultimately, to be able to read the wonderful wealth of Russian literature in the original.

Not only is Russian a useful language to know, it is also a beautiful language. I studied it for four years at Manchester University (1986-90, an exciting time in Russia's history) and very much enjoyed the challenge. It is difficult at the beginning but it soon starts to make sense and I loved both getting my mouth around the new sounds and the feeling of writing sentences in what looked to my friends like a secret code.

As part of my course, I spent two months in Russia in the summer of 1989: two weeks in Moscow, a month in Kalinin (now Tver), a few days in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and two weeks in Novosibirsk in Siberia. This was the most amazing experience! The countryside and a lot of the architecture are extremely beautiful but what struck me most was how great the people are. I was impressed by the deep knowledge of their own culture of everybody I spoke to, as well as by how much they knew about Britain and the West. And don't they know how to enjoy themselves?! Apart from the freely flowing vodka, the singing and the dancing, they laugh so much.

I'm happy to say that the Russians I know in Manchester now are just as much fun as the ones I met out there.

I would definitely recommend learning Russian as the way to get into a stimulating and perhaps surprising culture.

Georgie

If you have never studied a language before, Russian is a tough challenge to start with. This is not to say you can't do it, of course, but you will need a good teacher to explain how it all works.

However, if you have some knowledge of other European languages, this will be a great help with Russian. If you have studied German or Greek, the Russian case system won't be difficult to master; if you have studied French, you will recognise a lot of the vocabulary; if you have studied Greek, this will also assist you with the Russian alphabet. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, developed in the ninth century by a monk called St Cyril. It has 33 characters, many of which are the same as the Greek.