Russian is a very useful language. It is considered an “area of need” or “critical language” by the US government, so learning to speak it can open up job opportunities.

 

It can be hard to find formal Russian courses in some regions. This means that, for some people, if you want to learn Russian, learning by yourself is your only real option.

 

Learning Russian opens up a lot of cultural options. You can visit Russia, read classic Russian literature, enjoy Russian movies, watch Russian TV shows or listen to Russian music.

1. Learn the Cyrillic alphabet

The Russian language employs the Cyrillic alphabet. At first glance, it may look intimidating. However, it is actually quite easy to learn.

The Cyrillic alphabet shares several letters with the Latin alphabet that the English language uses. Additionally, many letters that are not the same between the alphabets still look similar. Because of this, the Cyrillic alphabet is relatively easy for English speakers to learn.

 

2. Learn a few basic nouns and adjectives

The next step in the learning process is to learn some nouns and adjectives. This will help you describe and identify things.

It will start to build your vocabulary. Focus on these words at the beginning so you don’t have to worry about grammar. When you start learning verbs, you are also going to need to think about conjugation and sentence building. Not so with nouns and adjectives—at least not to start. And even once you know the rules of the language, vocabulary is still key, so you will continue to use even these basic words once you are fluent.

 

3. Learn present tense verb conjugations

Russian only has one present tense, so conjugating is often simpler than in other languages. Even though present tense is not the simplest type of conjugation, it is the most widely used, so it is important to learn this before other conjugations.

 

4. Put together simple sentences

Putting together simple sentences is one of the most exciting things an early-stage language learner can do. You can finally start to communicate in Russian. Plus, putting together simple sentences is very useful.

 

5. Learn to pluralize words

In the Russian language, whenever a noun is a plural, the adjective must be plural too. Practicing pluralizing both nouns and adjectives together is an important way to ensure your nouns and adjectives always agree.

 

6. Build your verb vocabulary

Now that you are able to put together basic sentences, you will need more verbs in order to more accurately convey your ideas.

 

7. Learn past and future verb conjugations

Good news! Basic past and future tense verb conjugations are surprisingly simple. For many learners, they are actually easier than the present tense. Be sure to send a thank-you note to the creators of the Russian language for this one.

 

8. Study the case system

If you’ve studied German or Latin, perhaps you are already familiar with case systems. If not, they might come as a rude awakening.

Basically, in the Russian case system, the ending of a word might change depending on the role it plays in a sentence.

The case system adds a lot of meaning to sentences without adding actual words, so it is highly efficient, but it can be confusing for new learners.