Is Russian a Good Language to Study?

Foreign languages can be difficult and rewarding to tackle, and in our current school and university system, many students are required to study at least one language that is foreign to them. Often in such circumstances, there are several choices at hand, and it can be challenging, especially for a novice linguist, to decide which language will be most engaging and suitable.

I have personally studied several foreign languages to varying degrees, and have discovered that one of the most exciting, captivating, and simple languages to learn is, surprisingly, Russian! Many new language learners will likely be turned off by Russian's foreign alphabet, variety of new sounds, and lengthy alphabet, but Russian is astonishingly easy to pick up, and the study of Russian has several unusual advantages to the average student, that make it a very intelligent choice.

So... just what makes studying Russian so rewarding?

It improves your handwriting
In Russia, all hand-written communication is done in what Americans know as cursive writing, so in your Russian class, you will be expected to write everything, literally everything, in cursive Cyrillic. At first, this may seem like a daunting task: Americans simply aren't used to cursive, we stop using it almost altogether after the third grade and never look back. This is why studying Russian is so amazing! You learn to write this language in cursive, and only in cursive, and you'll be surprised at how skilled and legible your writing becomes. What's the benefit of amazing Cyrillic handwriting? All of the fancy cursive writing you do in your Russian class will improve your handwriting in English, because, by comparison, English cursive will come very easy to you! Practicing Cyrillic writing may seem like a painful exercise at first, but it pays off, and you'll be using cursive in English too before long!

It broadens your mind to learn a new alphabet
The Cyrillic alphabet can help an American student to unlock the mysteries of alphabets in general, because studying Cyrillic requires knowledge of sounds and symbols from both latin and Greek. While the average Russian student obviously won't be studying Latin or Greek simultaneously, if you take a classics course later on, or spend a lot of time hanging around fraternities and sororities, you will make cognitive similarities between the Greek, Roman, and Cyrillic alphabets, which will broaden your understanding of all three, and improve your understanding of language in general.

It improves your spelling
As you begin your study of Russian, you will probably first be introduced to the myriad of Russian words that are English cognates, to help you to familiarize yourself with the new alphabet. Learning in this way is extremely beneficial, because it makes you pay attention to both the sound and the letter that you're using, so even though you already know how a word is spoken, you are also learning to write and read it in a new language, while keeping your prior knowledge of the word in mind. What does this mean? This means that you will end up over-thinking words that you already know and can already pronounce, and as a result you'll learn how to spell the Russian words amazingly well, and this new knowledge will vastly improve your English spelling as well!

Russian is surprisingly simple!
If you've ever studied languages before, you know that a complicated web of cases, declensions, and tenses can be a confusing mess. You'll be pleased to know that Russian is a fairly simple language, with only three tenses, no articles, and the way many things are phrased is much simpler than English conventions. Russian is a great language to focus on if you're not very familiar with the study of language, and if you're willing to put in the effort, do your homework, and memorize the sounds of the new alphabet, you'll find the study of Russian to be uniquely rewarding!