Latin vs. Cyrillic
Let’s jump right in. These two scripts have two different origins, one from the latin and the other one is the cyrillic. On perhaps the most basic level, there is one very obvious difference between English and Russian: the alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet alone can be one powerful dissuader for English speakers who are thinking about learning Russian. With languages like Spanish and Italian, English speakers can at least guess the pronunciation or meaning of a word. Russian words, on the other hand, look very cryptic.
English to Russian
I find the Cyrillic alphabet quite beautiful – what about you?
But take a closer look… I bet there are some letters you recognize. In fact, six letters look and sound almost exactly the same as in English: А, Е, К, М, О, and Т. That’s about 18% of the 33-letter Cyrillic alphabet that you already know! We recommend the Russian to English dictionary (and vice versa) OpenRussian. For one, because it has a handy keyboard for typing in Cyrillic and looking up Russian words. Of course, Russian letters aren’t nearly as difficult to remember and write as, say, Chinese or Japanese characters. Once you learn the rest of the Cyrillic letters, and you train your brain to switch over from English to Russian, their pronunciation is actually quite simple. And there is no way to confuse it and affect your english skills.
Stop – Grammar Time!
Now that you’re probably convinced that Russian and English aren’t that different, let’s throw a wrench into things. A big wrench. Introducing: Russian grammar. I won’t go into all of the gritty details here. There are some short Russian grammar lessons included in the Mutibhashi app and plenty of other online resources if you want to get an in-depth look! And check out the two point below too-
1.Cases
Russian has fewer tenses than English, but it has more cases than english. These change the ending of a word depending on its function in a certain sentence context. To give you an idea of the complexity of this aspect of Russian grammar, English has 8 personal pronoun variants. (I, you, he, she, it, we, you, and they.) How many do Russian have? It has 48. So you need to figure out how to learn and remember it.
2.Word Order
Word order doesn’t matter as much grammatically in Russian as it does in English. That means that you don’t always have to follow the strict subject-verb-object rule. You’d think this would make constructing sentences in Russian easier, but it just gives the language more subtleties. Russians use different word order to emphasize certain points. Beginners might not pick up on this when simply trying to understand a sentence’s basic meaning from the words present.
When you know the above details carefully, there is know way the two languages will be mixed up and create confusion. There is no possibility that the two languages drag each other down. It will only add up to your ability of knowledge.
