Learn the Russian Language. A brief overview about Russian to give you a start point to learn the Language.
The Russian Language
History
The history of the Russian language dates back to the sixth century AD, with the migration of Slave people towards the Balkans. This phenomenon gave rise to three different language groups which had some common features and used a common written language called Old Church Slavonic. Russian originated from the Western branch of the Slavonic Language. This was a gradual and slow process, as Russian took its modern appearance only in the 20th century, with the spelling reform carried out in 1918. From now on, political and technological successes of the Soviet gave more and more prestige to the Russian language, a prestige that grew even more in the following years. With the end of URSS in 1991, Russia was the biggest and most important of the 14 Republics which had originated from the break. This importance was reflected also from a linguistic point of view, since Russian was recognised as the Official language in all the Republics, where it was spoken together with local languages. Of the 250 million of people who speak Russian nowadays all around the world, 180 million live in the territory of the former URSS.
Russian dialects
Due to the territorial extension of Russia, a large number of dialects exist in the region. A primary distinction has been made between "Northern" and "Southern" regional groupings, depending on their location with respect to Moscow. The most striking difference between the two is "okayne", a phenomenon for which the unstressed /o/ is pronounced clearly only in the North. The remaining dozens of sub-dialects differ from standard Russian for pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary and grammar and some of them show antique forms now excluded from modern language.
Russian grammar
Studying Russian is undoubtedly a fascinating task, but also a hard one. The first difficulties arise with the alphabet: Cyrillic consists of 33 letters: 21 consonants, 10 vowels, and two letters without sound - soft sign and hard sign. It would take at least a month to start reading (which is different from reading fluently). But don't give up! The alphabet is only the starting point, as the grammar might deserve unexpected surprises. Nouns decline according to six different cases, articles don't exist and in sentences the verb "to be" is not used. So, to say "Mark is a boy", you have to say the equivalent of "Mark boy". But verbs can complicate things even more: if you consider the verb "to go", you can have up to six different forms, depending on the quality of the action: if it is uni-directional (in a single direction), multi-directional (to and from), if you go on feet, by public transport or by train. Almost any means of transport is associated to a different form of "to go"!!! With patience and a trained memory, if you resist three more months, you might be able to understand the difference between going to work on feet or by bus...a quite satisfactory achievement, isn't it?
Russian slang
After having worked hard with grammar, let's have a good time with some colloquial expressions which will help you to feel more at ease in the cold and inhospitable Russia. In order to fight against the Siberian snows, you probably will drink vodka. If someone asks you: "How did you drink yesterday?", say "Ostuhuitel'no", it means "excellent" and you will show you perfectly understood Russian life-style. If you are enjoying your stay in Russsia and someone asks you "Kak Dela?" (How are things with you?), answer "Pizdato" (Fantastic). And finally, some advice against bad luck. If you buy something, for instance in a market, and the seller is not completely honest with you, use "Ty zalupnul!", a quite strong expression meaning "You cheater!".
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