Learning to speak Russian well may be the best thing you can do to improve your life and there are a lot of good reasons for learning the Russian language…
That’s right. Do you think it would be fun to have access to information that other people can’t get? Talk and write letters to interesting people that others can’t communicate with? Make big jumps in your career, leaving others miles behind? Impress people around you whenever you opened your mouth?
You can get all of this if you speak Russian well.
If you ask most people who study the Russian language, they will tell you that they became intrigued by the Russian language, fascinated with Russia, and that they fell in love with Russia’s great literature, and that these are good enough reasons on their own to learn Russian language.
Here are some other benefits of learning Russian:
• Russia is a country that spans over one third of the globe (over 6,592,800 square miles), making it the largest country in the world. Within this huge area of terrain there is a dazzling array of geographical and architectural splendours, from the spires of St Petersburg and domes of Moscow, to the mountains of the Caucasus, the waters of Lake Baikal, the seas (Aral, Caspian, Black), the great rivers and forests, the tundra, and so on…
• Russia has been (in its many guises) one of the most significant cultural and political forces of the twentieth century, not to mention earlier times, and will undoubtedly continue to loom large in world politics and twenty-first century history and culture…
• Russian is the primary language of the 150 million citizens of the Russian Federation (as the Russian state calls itself) and is the native language of approximately 30 million people living in the other states that were formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In many if not all of those states (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kirgystan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Estonia, Moldova, Latvia and Lithuania) Russian is widely spoken by people who are not themselves ethnic Russians.
• More companies today are expanding their business to Russia, because nowadays Russia has enormous reserves of valuable natural resources and an extremely well-educated populace – in other words, it has great potential for economic growth. Current indications are that it is becoming increasingly easy and more profitable for western companies to do business in Russia. Over 300 US companies have already opened businesses in Russia, and Western European firms are even more actively investing in the region.
• Russian language looks good on your resume and could make a big difference to your career. Knowing Russian language and culture is both very useful and very appealing to employers and to professional schools, while knowing the language and culture of a major and very remarkable European country indicates that a person can handle all kinds of different and even difficult challenges (although the Russian language is really nowhere near as hard as people who have never learned it tend to think) and can acquire useful knowledge on a very significant part of the world.
• Up to 60% of all of the world’s literature is published in both English and Russian, so that gives you an idea of just how important the Russian language is to the artistic community.
• Russia possesses a centuries-old, rich, fascinating culture, which has had enormous influence on the world. There are the great works of literature, art, and cinema that we’ve probably heard of in passing, from Eugene Onegin and War and Peace to Battleship Potemkin… and then there are the countless and exciting novels, poems, pictures, films, that make up so much of Russian cultural life and that many in the West are barely aware of…
Learning the Russian language offers unique opportunity to experience Russian culture in depth. Russia’s position on the border between Europe and Asia and its unique history have formed a complex and fascinating cultural environment.
There are now many more opportunities than in the past to travel in Russia and experience this society first-hand.
Learning Russian language opens the door to the study of Russia’s rich tradition of literature, art and music. While learning Russian language and culture is an intellectually stimulating and enriching experience in itself, the cultural knowledge and understanding that can be gained also have career implications.
Russian makes you a more powerful, happier person. It is not difficult to imagine some situations where knowing Russian gives you a great feeling.
I hope that, with my Russian lessons, your progress in Russian will soon give you a lot of satisfaction.
Svetlana Astanaeva,
Russian Lessons Online
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I have no idea why?
