Of all the European languages a native English speaker can learn, Russian is among the most difficult. The Germanic and Romance languages have a lot of the same core because they both have roots in Latin. Russian is from a completely different language branch called the Slavonic branch, which includes Czech and Polish.
The Russian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet and the English language uses Latin. Russian pronunciation generally follows pretty clear rules, while English, of course, does not. Russian actually has fewer tenses than English. Word order doesn't matter as much grammatically in Russian as it does in English.
Unlike the Romance languages to the west, the Russian language is distinct in both sound and structure. Whereas many European dialects are based on Latin, Russian is unique and has twice as many vowels and some extra consonants, endowing it with a melody all its own.
Many Russian speakers have difficulty pronouncing the English consonant sounds /w/, /v/, /r/ & 'th'. Russian has a quarter of the vowels that English does so many English vowels are challenging. Word stress is often flatter and more even than an English native speaker.
Translating between any two languages can be difficult, and translating between Russian and English is no exception. Due to certain grammatical differences, some meanings within the languages can be difficult to translate.
Thus, words such as thin, then and the are very difficult for Russian speakers to pronounce. The differentiation between the sounds /w/ and /v/ is not easy, so Russian to English learners often pronounce words like /vest/ and /west/ the same.
Many studies have suggested that learning a new language improves brain function, providing better memory, more mental flexibility, and creativity. Learning a language from a different language family from your native language – for example, Russian – is a great way to maximize these benefits.
Russian is widely believed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn. This is mostly true, if you have no knowledge of other Slavic languages (e.g. Bulgarian or Czech). The grammar rules in Russian are very complex and have numerous exceptions.
Ukrainian and Belarusian are the closest languages, as together with Russian they form the East Slavic group of languages. These three languages have an 86% lexical similarity; that is, they share 86% of the same words.
Russian is intensely lyrical
In spite of this, complex as it might be, Russian is an incredibly beautiful and lyrical language.
The Cyrillic alphabet is closely based on the Greek alphabet, with about a dozen additional letters invented to represent Slavic sounds not found in Greek. In Russia, Cyrillic was first written in the early Middle Ages in clear-cut, legible ustav (large letters). Later a succession of cursive forms developed.
Compared to other source languages, English contains few words adopted from Russian. Direct borrowing first began with contact between England and Russia in the 16th century and picked up heavily in the 20th century, with the establishment of the Soviet Union as a major world power.
Because Russian makes use of prefixes and suffixes to build words rather than using several separate words. And this is just prefixes. In a word like королевство, kingdom, you have корол+ев+ство king-relational-domain. It's similar to the way Latin builds words.
Runglish is formed by adaptation of English phrases and words into Russian-style by adding affixes, with the purpose of using it in everyday communication. Runglish is a neologism used to represent at least two different combinations of Russian and English: pidgin and informal latinizations of the Cyrillic alphabet.
The Foreign Service Institute of the United States has determined that it takes about 1100 hours of study to reach fluency in Russian. If you're willing to study 3 hours every day, it could take you a year to reach that level.
For native English speakers, Russian is categorized as taking 44 weeks to learn (or 1,100 hours), while Japanese takes 88 weeks (2,200 hours). It literally takes double the time to learn Japanese as it does to learn Russian.
Of all the European languages a native English speaker can learn, Russian is among the most difficult. The Germanic and Romance languages have a lot of the same core because they both have roots in Latin. Russian is from a completely different language branch called the Slavonic branch, which includes Czech and Polish.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Of these, Spanish and Italian are the easiest for native English speakers to learn, followed by Portuguese and finally French.
The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.