Interesting facts
about the Russian language
Russian is the 7th most spoken language in the
world. It is the official language in the Russian Federation, which has a
population of more than 140 million people. Russian is also spoken in Ukraine,
Belarus, Kazakhstan and other republics of the former USSR. Russian speakers thus
have a good chance of being understood anywhere from Riga to Belgrade.
There
are only about 200,000 words in the Russian language. This number
has doubled since the 19th century, when only 50,000-100,000 words were
recorded in dictionaries. This number is very small compared to the English
language, which is made up of over 1,000,000 words. Russians actually use very
few of these words, and you will find that due to this many words have more
than one meaning.
Many
people who are learning to speak Russian agonise over its pronunciation and
grammar. The various endings of the nouns, six cases, two aspects of the verbs
and the correct placement of stress may seem tortuous indeed. But the good news
is that there are only three tenses in Russian and the word order in Russian
sentences is predictable.
It
is compulsory for all astronauts in the international space station to learn
Russian, so we can call it an international language of space.