Medium–Hard: stress, cases, and aspect take time; pronunciation is regular once rules click.
Movable stressVowel reduction
Quick Overview
Russian is an inflected East Slavic language with six core cases, grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter),
and a powerful aspect system (imperfective/perfective). Word stress moves and affects vowel quality, so listening matters as much as reading.
Sound & Spelling Tips
Stress is king: unstressed o sounds like [a]; e often reduces toward [i]. Dictionaries mark stress.
Hard vs soft consonants: front vowels е ё и ю я + soft sign ь palatalize the preceding consonant.
Final devoicing & assimilation: word-final б/в/г/д/ж/з devoice; consonants assimilate across word boundaries.
Seven-letter rule: after г к х ж ч ш щ write и (not ы) in many endings (книга → книги).
-ого/-его: often pronounced -ово / -ево in adjectives and pronouns.
Ё vs Е:всё / все are different (vsyo “everything” vs vse “everyone”). Some texts omit the dots.
Aspect pairs: imperfective (process/habit) vs perfective (completed result): читать/прочитать.
Verbs of motion: one-direction vs multi-direction (идти/ходить; ехать/ездить) with perfectives (пойти, съездить).
Word order: pragmatic; cases carry grammar, order carries emphasis.
Dialects & Variation
Standard Russian is largely uniform, with regional pronunciation traits (e.g., “аканье/оканье”). Vocabulary shifts by region and register,
but media and education keep a strong standard norm.
History (Very Short)
Old East Slavic + Church Slavonic layer → Early Modern literary Russian.
18th–19th c. standardization; 1918 orthography reform fixed modern spelling.
Sample & Breakdown
Сегодня я читаю книгу в библиотеке. сегодня я чита-ю книг-у в библиотек-е today I read-PRS.1SG book-ACC in library-PREP
Вчера мы купили свежий хлеб. “Yesterday we bought fresh bread.” — perfective past for a completed purchase
Меня зовут… (My name is…) • Где метро? (Where is the metro?) • Извините (Sorry/Excuse me)
Interesting Notes
T/V distinction:ты (informal) vs вы (formal/plural).
Patronymics: common in formal address: Иван Иванович.
Genitive of negation: objects under negation often appear in genitive: у меня нет времени.
Case Wizard (Singular, core patterns)
Type a noun (NOM.SG), choose gender + case + animacy (for masculine). The wizard applies common endings and a minimal set of spelling rules.
Note: Lightweight model for high-frequency patterns (e.g., стол, герой, книга, неделя, окно, море).
It won’t capture every alternation (день → дня), stress shifts, or special locatives (в лесу).
Aspect & Motion Helper (Quick Pairs)
Give an infinitive; get a common perfective partner (or motion-verb set). Uses a small dictionary + simple heuristics.
Heuristic hints: many perfectives add prefixes (на-, по-, про-, с-). Motion verbs pair like идти/ходить → пойти/сходить, ехать/ездить → поехать/съездить.
Learning Tips
Memorize case “jobs” with prepositions: в/на (+ACC motion / +PREP location), с (+GEN from), к (+DAT to).
Drill the top 50 aspect pairs with example sentences; listen for stress and reduction.
Shadow native audio to feel soft/hard consonants and devoicing.
Numbers (1–10)
один, два, три, четыре, пять, шесть, семь, восемь, девять, десять
Common Borrowings
French: магазин, шоссе • English/German: вокзал, компьютер, смартфон • Turkic/Persian via history: караван, сарай