How to learn Russian when I am already 30 years old?
Russian is an East Slavic language native to the Russians in Eastern Europe with over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages alongside, and part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch.
Russian was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 26 December 1991. Russian is used in an official capacity or in public life in all the post-Soviet nation-states. Russian is the largest native language in Europe, and the most geographically widespread language in Eurasia. Large numbers of Russian speakers are residents of other countries like Israel, Tajikistan, Moldova, Gagauzia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and Mongolia.It is also recognised as a minority language in Romania, Finland, Norway, Armenia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Russian is the seventh-most spoken language in the world by a number of native speakers, the eighth-most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers, and one of the six official languages of the United Nations! Russian is also the second-most widespread language on the Internet, after English.
Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus’ in approximately 1100 leading to the emergence of medieval Russian on the territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine that became distinct (since the 13th century) following the division of the land between, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Poland in the west, and independent Novgorod and Pskov feudal republics, plus numerous small duchies (which came to be vassals of the Tatars) in the east.
The official language in Moscow and Novgorod, and later, in the growing Muscovy, was Church Slavonic, which evolved from Old Church Slavonic and remained the literary language for centuries, until the Petrine age, when its usage became limited to biblical and liturgical texts. The main languages written on them in an early version of the Cyrillic alphabet were Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic. Russian developed under a strong influence of Church Slavonic until the close of the 17th century; afterwards, the influence reversed, leading to corruption of liturgical texts.
The political reforms of Peter the Great (a.k.a. Peter I) (1672-1725) were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe and by 1800, a significant number of people started speaking Russian daily, and German sometimes. Many Russian novels of the 19th century, e.g. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, contain entire paragraphs and even pages in Russian with no translation given, with an assumption that educated readers would not need one.
The ‘Moscow dialect’ was used as the basis for written Russian. The modern literary Russian language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin in the first third of the 19th century when Pushkin revolutionized Russian literature by rejecting archaic grammar and vocabulary (so-called — “high style”) in favour of grammar and vocabulary found in the spoken language of the time. Even modern readers of younger age may only experience slight difficulties understanding some words in Pushkin’s texts since relatively few words used by Pushkin have become archaic or changed meaning. In fact, many expressions used by Russian writers of the early 19th century, in particular Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Gogol, Aleksander Griboyedov, became proverbs or sayings which can be frequently found even in modern Russian colloquial speech.
Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following:
- United Nations
- International Atomic Energy Agency
- World Health Organization
- International Civil Aviation Organization
- UNESCO
- World Intellectual Property Organization
- International Telecommunication Union
- World Meteorological Organization
- Food and Agriculture Organization
- International Fund for Agricultural Development
- International Criminal Court
- International Monetary Fund
- International Olympic Committee
- Universal Postal Union
- World Bank
- Commonwealth of Independent States
- Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
- Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
- Eurasian Economic Community
- Collective Security Treaty Organization
- Antarctic Treaty Secretariat
- International Organization for Standardization
- GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development
- International Mathematical Olympiad
- Warsaw Pact (defunct)
- Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (defunct)
The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to the Apollo-Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975.
In March 2013, it was announced that Russian is now the second-most used language on the Internet after English. People use the Russian language on 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian is used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su. The websites of former Soviet Union nations also use high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian is the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese.
With this, I hope I am able to express and help you realize the extent and value of Russian and know how/why it can prove beneficial for a learner!
They say that children learn languages the best. But that doesn’t mean that adults should give up?