So should you learn the Russian language at the end of 2022 going into 2023 Привет and greetings
from Almaty in Kazakhstan it's actually a city which in which I've been speaking a lot of Russian
over the last few weeks also up in the capital of Astana because Russian is an official language
here in Kazakhstan along with Kazakh and here we have actually the British Kazakh Technical
University behind me and since Russia's February 24th invasion of Ukraine all things Russian,
Russian culture, the Russian language it's kind of been stained quite considerably by this aggressive
action and obviously the atrocities that we've been seeing in Ukraine so a lot of clients have
been reaching out to me who have been learning Russian asked me Conor is it worth learning
Russian anymore? Are we going to get to use it going forward? What's the value should we continue
on our journey? So in this video I'm going to give you actually three reasons why you might want to
consider still learning Russian and working on your Russian but first I'm going to start with a reason
that was given by another YouTuber that was also sent to me by a participant in one of my programs
and I'm going to react to that because I think it's definitely not a reason to learn Russian
but he went into great detail about it so let's get into today's video from Almaty in Kazakhstan
Поехали!
So let me outline my experience for learning languages and geopolitics
for the reasons so you can consider why should you value my opinion in particular I speak Russian
to about I would say a high intermediate level you could say maybe low advanced
B2 on that Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) more or less on top of
that I have been living in this region more or less Eastern Europe for the last 10 years
I actually have a background in international relations with a specialization in strategic
studies and we could call ... it was called the New Eurasia when I studied it but basically former
Soviet Union so Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, here in Kazakhstan and I speak and have learned a lot
of languages over 10 in fact when I started my channel it was actually a really geeky channel
about learning languages it was nothing to do with lifestyle in Eastern Europe and in
the last few years in addition to Russian I've been learning Ukrainian, Belarusian, Romanian
and now I've even dabbled a little bit in Kazakh so I know a good bit about learning languages and
the motivation for learning them or whether it's really worth it whether you're going to get the
value on your investment so that's just a little bit about me and the geopolitics is actually
relevant to the guy I'm about to now react to so we're going to look at a video clip from a
guy called Ari he's from the Netherlands and he has a channel about learning the Russian language he
speaks it to quite a high level as you're going to see let's listen to what he has to say
So they're in effect what he gives us what I call the Esperanto argument now Esperanto is a an
artificial language construct constructed language called a conlang that was created by a guy called
LL Zamenhof and he was from basically the region bordering Poland and modern-day Belarus basically
in a nutshell he believed that the reason why there was so much conflict in his region was
because there wasn't a common language for the people there they were speaking like Yiddish,
Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish I guess Russian as well at the time and he thought if he constructed
a language that everybody would speak it would be easy to learn then there would be
peace amongst the people in that region because they wouldn't have these miscommunications due
to language now as I pointed on that video that I made statistically unfortunately having a common
language doesn't seem to be a big factor in terms of whether there's going to be war between the
people there are not really unfortunate because if it were the case like Zamenhoff believed then
I would be a huge advocate obviously of learning Russian right now because I would think it's going
to be a solution perhaps but unfortunately it is not statistically and if you think about some of
the conflicts that Europe has had in the last say 30, 40 years one afflicted in my homeland of
Ireland in Ireland everybody can speak English so obviously that was not a factor and if you look
at the Balkans those horrible Balkans wars that you know ended up in convictions for attempted
genocide in Bosnia while the people there in effect they did have a common language you know
they were mutually comprehensible variations on on the languages there should we say whether
it's Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrine or Bosnian, Slovenian unfortunately that's just not a good
argument to make in general and in this particular conflict he talks about the West and us all learning
Russian Russia invaded Ukraine as he points out a little bit earlier in his video most people either
speak or can at least understand Russian, the president of Ukraine is a native Russian speaker
it is clearly not because they couldn't understand each other linguistically that they have this war
between Russia and Ukraine and on top of that many of the Russian elite speak very good English so if
he's talking about us learning Russian and having a common language then that isn't really the case
and Putin himself well he was a KGB agent in East Germany in Dresden and he's reported
speak extremely good German and Angela Merkel spoke impeccable Russian when they were dealing
with each other and in fact she along with what this guy advocates actually created very strong
ties between Russia and Germany in the energy sector so that we're kind of mutually dependent
on each other in theory but as we see that is a big achilles heel for German foreign policy and
for EU energy policy the fact that they were so tied to Russia because Russia doesn't care so much
and why is that? Using my geopolitical background in education it's because they have a different
weltanschauung which means worldview Russia doesn't believe that Ukraine has fundamentally
a right to be independent of Russia at least the Russian leadership and a large part of the Russian
population believe that and no amount of us in the West learning Russian unfortunately is going
to change that the the stark reality is that Russia failing to capture Ukraine is actually
going to be the thing that changes that worldview hopefully going forward anyways let's go on to
dovetail that into some of the reasons why you should consider actually learning
Russian right now maybe so I've just learned some Kazakh so
So did you know that Condoleezza Rice the former secretary of state of the US influencial during
that period when the US was invading Iraq she actually speaks extremely good Russian and
the reason is that when she was studying it was still the Cold War and being a Sovietologist was
a pretty good profession to get into and for that to understand the Soviets well speaking Russian
was really important it's kind of a dovetailing on what Ari said but it's not because there's going
to be necessarily peace it's because while the Soviet Union was an adversary of the United States
I think that's a good key as to one of the strong reasons unfortunately it doesn't fill me with any
joy to say this that to learn Russian might be useful for people who are looking for a career
with the prospect of a new Iron Curtain forming in Europe and it will be formed further to the
east than it was during the Cold War it's a bit like when 9/11 happened in the US and they had
to search for Arabic speakers and learning Arabic became quite lucrative if you were looking to work
for the US government and I think we're going to have something similar if you're going to be a
Russologist I guess as opposed to Sovietologist or you want to work in military analysis maybe
business analysis as well going forward then probably going to be some good career prospects
so number two type of person who might consider still learning Russian is what was typically my
clients before this war and that is guys from the West who want to move for three to 12 months a
year to Eastern Europe to dramatically increase their lifestyle and standard of living that video
clip that I played from Ari was actually sent to me from a guy who participated in one of my
programs Slavic Utopia Secrets: Ukraine and had been considering moving to Kyiv
and his question to me was should he still learn Russian because his current girlfriend from
Ukraine actually only speaks in Russian with him and speaks with everyone else today in Ukrainian
so the question is if you're looking to move to this region is it worth learning Russian? So
really depends on which country you're considering now moving to Russia and it's in this situation
I'm not going to advise it so we'll just eliminate that same for Belarus but many of you
because I actually launched last night my program for guys who want to move here to Kazakhstan
if you were considering moving to Kazakhstan then Russian and learning Russia is going to
be indispensable because Russian is an official language here in Kazakhstan it's one of the two that
are being Kazakh and in reality it's the most widely spoken language here in Almaty and
in the capital Astana is Russian so definitely it is going to be a huge value to you if you decide
to come to Kazakhstan and spend some time here now the other locations the guys were considering
obviously we got Moldova it's not an official language but it is widely spoken but I would say nowadays
we were going to spend a lot of time Moldova I would say that you'd be better off learning
Romanian the actual official language because younger people their level of Russian is not
as strong as the previous generations and yeah you're there beside Romania you could also speak
I guess Russian in Odesa and Ukraine nearby but probably on the whole you'd be better off learning
Romanian now Ukraine assuming post-Ukrainian victory are Ukrainians going to still speak
is so much in Russian in a lot of those cities that historically have been Russian speaking so
you know Kyiv already had been basically switching and I would say that actually in the six
months before the war I actually thought that it was becoming more Ukrainian-speaking than Russian-
speaking anyways and with this war that's only going to accelerate so if you're moving to Kyiv
never mind Lviv where it's definitely the most spoken language anyways I would say you're better
off learning Ukrainian because it is the official language and obviously with this war of aggression
by Russia, they've also been decimating primarily the Russian-speaking cities like if you look what
they did in Mariupol where the Russian forces just absolutely razed that city we will not
know how many people they they killed who are it was a 95% Russian-speaking city half a million
people possibly tens of thousands of native Russian-speakers they actually killed so learning Russian
to speak in Ukraine after this war it's not going to be particularly cool I think unless
you're planning to live in an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city after this war you're
better off learning Ukrainian so in grosso modo learning Russian for actually moving
it's unfortunate but yeah that's the reality you're probably going to end up learning a local
language as opposed to the broader traditional lingua franca in the region Russian
Let's get into the main reason the main group that I think still should consider learning the
Russian language and that is what most of my clients are which is single guys from the West
and basically the main reason I think being very blunt about it and candid in late 2022 early 2023
to learn Russian is for romantic purposes either you have a girlfriend, a wife, a partner who is
Russian-speaking native Russian-speaking wants to continue using that as the main language of
communication Russian is just spoken by so many people probably over 300 million worldwide and
on average the region with the most beautiful women in the world is Eastern Europe so you're
going to have just a lot of women who either speak Russian as a first language or a second language
and to paraphrase Nelson Mandela "if you speak to a woman in a language she understands it goes to her
brain you speak to her in her native tongue it goes to our heart" so in conclusion I definitely
don't regret having invested a lot of time into learning Russian it typically takes about three
times longer as a native English speaker than learning something like Spanish which is a lot closer
to English but I definitely got my return on my investment several fold over the years in terms
of amazing experiences here in Eastern Europe but the sad reality is that on this current trajectory
it's not really looking like it's the best language to invest your time into learning
unless you fall into one of the categories that I outlined in this video it's a bit like learning
German in the 1940s probably wasn't yeah the best idea to invest your time depending where
you are of course but if you're from the West I just don't really see the overall reason I
mean you're always going to have people who just love learning languages for the sake of learning them
or want to read Dostoevsky in the original but I don't think most my viewers fall
into that category so yeah I hope that's giving you some guidance as to why you might still consider
learning Russian or focusing on learning Russian but yeah that is sadly the state of affairs and
I would be delighted if things improve in the next year or two and there is a change in Weltanschuung in
Russia and we can restore some sort of normality so from an absolutely cracking early November's
evening in Almaty I am absolutely boiling no need for my jacket whatsoever it's ridiculously hot so
I bid you a сау бол or goodbye from amazing Almighty Almaty Kazakhstan!