Привет! This is Mirari, from MosaLingua. If you're watching this video, you may be
thinking of embarking on a new adventure with the Russian language.
If so, you don't want to miss this video. Today, I will give you 10 reasons why
Russian is not as hard as you think. Давайте начнем! Let's get started!
Before we get started, pause this video and subscribe to our channel.
The best way to make sure you never miss
a video is to subscribe and then turn on your notifications. Done? Great! Now let's
get back to today's topic then. Russian is a language that is often perceived as
difficult. This reputation comes in particular from the Russian alphabet,
which is different from the modern Latin alphabet that you're probably used to.
However, learning Russian is much more than just learning the alphabet – which, by
the way, is much easier than people think. This language has at least 10
peculiarities that you need to know about, since they will smooth out your
path to success. The first one is that Russian pronunciation is regular and
clear-cut. Believe me: it's even easier than English pronunciation. Once you
know the basics, you don't have to worry about it anymore.
Russian vowels are a great example: there are 10 vowels in Russian, but don't panic
because they go in pairs: а - я (a - ja), э - е (e - je), о - ё (o - jo), у - ю (u - ju) and then a special pair: и - ы (i - y).
As I said before, lots of people think that Russian is difficult
to learn just because it uses the Cyrillic alphabet. But this difficulty is
overestimated. Even if the alphabet is different, it's just an alphabet.
Unlike the Japanese or Chinese alphabets, you will not need to learn ideograms or
symbols that represent entire words or phrases. The Cyrillic alphabet is made up
of letters just like the Latin alphabet. In addition, if you apply some easy rules,
you can learn to read the Cyrillic alphabet
in less than 3 hours. But we will talk about it in another video.
French, Italian, and Spanish, among other languages, use articles to
give information about nouns. In Spanish, for example, students must know the
gender of a word in order to use the correct article: "casa" is feminine, so we
should say "la casa." Good news! In Russian, you don't have to worry about articles.
No need to struggle to memorize them or learn how to use them, because they don't exist.
If you want to say "the house" or "a house," you just say "dom," which is "house."
Easy, right? The order of words in Russian
sentences is much freer than in other languages. You can change the position of
words in a sentence depending on what you want to stress. Knowing how word
order can add nuance on your sentences is helpful for advanced learners, but when
you're first getting started, just worry about getting the words right.
To be polite in Russian, you can add one simple word to any sentence. This word is
"пожалуйста" (pazhálusta). It can mean "please," and it can also be
used as some other polite set phrases. No need to learn a bunch of sentences by heart.
One word covers it all.
The Russian language only has 3 verb tenses: the present, the past and the future, and then
2 aspects: the imperfective and the perfective. The imperfective aspect is
used to stress that an action is not finished, and the perfective aspect is
used to stress that an action is finished. Another peculiarity of the Russian
language is that there is no present tense for the verb "to be," which is one of
the most common verbs. Let me give you a few examples. To say "I am happy" we will
just say “Я счастливый (ja shzastlívy)” = I happy.
"I am English" would be “Я англичанин (ja anglichánin)” = I English, if the speaker is a boy.
"This book is big" would be “Эта книга большая (eta kn’iga bolsháia)” = This book big.
This particular aspect of the language
will definitely make your life easier, since you won't have to worry about the
person, the gender or the number to use to conjugate this verb. Again, there is
only one word to make a sentence negative. To make a verb, noun, or adjective
negative in Russian, simply place "не" (nje) in front of it. For example: the
affirmative sentence "Я иду в кино" = "I go to the cinema" becomes negative by
adding “не” = "Я не иду в кино" = "I don’t go to the cinema."
The adjective "Он терпеливый" = "He is patient" becomes negative by adding the prefix
“не”: "Он нетерпеливый" = "He is impatient." The same happens with nouns and pronouns:
"Это она" = "This is her" becomes negative by adding “не”: "Это не она" = This is not her."
Learning Russian is easier once you know that many Russian words are
similar to their English translations.
Do you want to know some examples? "Center," "class," "film." So, you don't have to start
from scratch! Like I said before, in Russian, word order is not important. So
to ask a question, you just have to stress the most important word by
changing your intonation. In the question "Are you going home?" you can stress any of
these 3 words to formulate your question. You can say “Ты домой идёшь?” or
"Ты домой идёшь?" or "Ты домой идёшь?" depending on the information you want to
ask about: "you," "home," or "go." This makes communication a lot easier! Last but not
least, and based on my own experience, Russian speakers will be happy to see
you striving to learn their language. They will be proud to share their
language and culture, and they will be ready to help you. So don't hesitate to
talk to them even if you're just a beginner! You will fall in love with the
language and the country it comes from, just as I did. Well, that's all for today.
I really hope this video has encouraged you to learn Russian!
Don't forget to take a look around our channel for other videos about the Russian
language, and subscribe because we have more videos coming soon. You can also
start learning Russian right away with MosaLingua Web: activate your free
trial to test our platform and taste the beauty of this language. Take care and
happy learning. До свидания! See you soon!