Why are you learning Russian?

For a friend of mine, Eric, this is not a difficult question. «Russian is a language of one seventh of the world. Also, I’m doing business there, ”he says. After the destruction of the USSR, Eric has discovered that the market of the former Soviet Union countries is a booming market for his small business. And it really has. In part, it was made possible by his strong will to learn the language of his partners. However, he was lucky because in any old SU country people understand Russian. In many countries, most people also speak Russian and believe that it is their mother tongue.

“Ah well, Larisa’s English isn’t good enough either,” she adds in a dreamy voice. Larisa is his Russian girlfriend. A pretty, smart, educated young woman who just can’t understand everything Eric is trying to tell her. It is good for him that he is not lazy to learn the language instead of asking someone to translate his letters, sometimes too intimate.

Any other reason, Eric?

“I always liked learning foreign languages. So, Russian is not my first. However, French and German are common to English; and I wanted to train my brain more. So I thought the Russian would fill the void. In fact, six cases, tons of endings that vary depending on the case, time, etc. it can train anyone’s brain, ‘Eric continues. “If the Russians had hieroglyphs instead of the Cyrillic alphabet, that would be the perfect language for any brain killer to study,” he laughs. In fact, even Russians sometimes wonder how they can blend all these endings and cases together perfectly. As a big consequence of this little difficulty, they always proudly comment that if you muddle all the words in a sentence, it will still have their meaning only because the words are connected to each other through endings, not through their positions in the sentence.

“It’s also great to read some original Russian book at night before going to sleep,” Eric’s arguments seem endless. The sages say: “The more languages ​​you know, the more worlds you belong to.” Eric also belongs to Russian. He likes Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Tolstoy and others, authors that no Russian adult knows or likes. “Without the Russian classics, I’d be twice as stupid as I am now,” jokes Eric.

It’s okay, Eric. So you learn Russian for your business, for your romance, for your brain, for reading. That’s all?

Well, those are the main reasons. But there are many advantages to at least understanding this language ‘

Some example?

‘Do you know that in the Russian part of the Internet you will hardly find a payment resource? Instead, it is full of the information that I have to pay if I look it up on English websites. ‘

That’s not great news, Russians don’t like to pay a lot. Instead, most of them are altruistic. That is its nature. That’s what the Russian Internet is based on.

‘It’s okay. I see you know everything. So isn’t it time to finish the interview? I’ve already shown enough reasons for anyone to start learning Russian, haven’t I?
Thanks for your time, Eric.

“Ne za chto, tebe spasibo”.