The Russian Language: Everything They Didn’t Teach You In School 

Learn Russian through the power of story 👉🏼 bit.ly/russianuncoveredlive

- опять ты смотришь видео иностранца, который втирает про русский язык? - не опять, а снова!

If Russian is a sexy language, then learning Russian is hardcore BDSM.

As a Russian native speaker and a linguist I confirm: The modern Russian has no dialects, so you can unterstand everyone speaking Russian wordwide.

Andrei: casually talking about good weather and how is everything is snowy like it should be in the winter. Olly: *russian is a sexy language*

I don't know why people is so scared of Cyrillic. I'd say it's the easiest part of learning Russian.

Cyrillic is honestly the easiest part about Russian, it took me like 2 days to memorize it before giving up on Russian grammar Update: I am now learning finnish, which probably has a harder grammar

These are not dialects. Russian linguists call this "govor", or subdialect. These are minor differences in pronunciation and intonation in general.

I think that "не опять, а снова" would be better translated as "not again, but once more" or something similar. This is a really good video! Even as a native speaker, I learned something new!

I am native English speaker and have spoken Russian now for over 30 years. I was fortunate enough to live in Russia when I was 21 and later in my 40s when I was a bank executive. There are three high mountains to climb to become proficient in this wonderful language. The first is the grammar. Russian has a highly inflected system with six cases just like Latin. This is true in all the Slavic languages with the exception of Bulgarian. This is hard to get used to. The second mountain to climb is free stress. Like English there is no firm rule as there is in Czech or Polish. You have to learn the stress for each new word you learn. Unstressed o become like an a as in "water" and unstressed ye becomes more like an i as in "it". The third high mountain to climb is the vocabulary which is grounded in Slavic roots. For an English speaker, this is not like learning German, French or Spanish. While there are some similar words like " general" and "mashina" for car the vast majority of everyday words are of Slavic origin. As Olly has said Verbs of Motion with all their changeable prefixes are a nightmare at first but they are grounded in logic. Thus the Russian alphabet is the easiest part and it can be learned quickly and is no more difficult than learning the Greek alpahabet. Russian is a very expressive language and probably has some of the most bizarre and creative cursing that I have every run into. It can really curl your hair. Most people will need to devote at least 1 000 hours to get to a high level of proficiency. Russian is not for the easily intimidated.

"Everything is covered with the snow. AS IT SHOULD BE IN THE WINTER." My mood lol 😂

Я китаец и начнал изучать русский яызк 20 лет назад. Я работал и живал в России почти всего 10 лет. Я бы сказать что, могу сообщать по русском языку по человеческому))) Но до сих под, грамматика русского языка все равно мой самый больший кошмар.😅😅 Если сложность грамматики китайского языка - 1, тогда русского языка - 10. Боже, меня так сильно мучала грамматика когда я изучал русский язык в университете. Я вообще не понял, как русские могут говорить, когда все слова почти постоянно меняются. После университа я поехал в Москву и там изчучал и работал, и все стало много проще. Если ты там живёшь, изучение языка стало много проще и интереснее. Просто не изучать все из книги, а побольше из жизни))) Удачи всем, кто старается изучать русский язык!)))😉

На каком-то канале, где иностранцы учат русский два товарища общались. Читают фразы из книги и объясняют поочередно кто как понял. Шикарный диалог, один читает задание: -у неё иссяк запал. -у неё что запало? -иссяк! 😂🤣

Im american, but live in Russia. My Russian is b2-c1 now, after several years of study. The grammar is the kicker. Russian grammar is complex and you can only learn it through lots of listening and reading. If you try to hard memorize the rules you will fail. Your reader Olly was the first book I used to study with. It was a great resource and gave me the confidence to continue. As you advance you can find lots of books because Russia has a rich reading culture. You can find something in every genre that will interest you. Great language to study, amazing country, amazing people!

Так круто описано, что даже мне захотелось учить русский, хотя я и являюсь носителем) Спасибо за такие слова!

Удачи всем, кто пытается выучить русский. Как сказал один комик: если бы не т9, то я бы не выдержал, даже с учётом, что это мой родной язык

It is heart-warming to watch Olly speak about a language with such great respect and admiration. His enthusiasm is infectious.

Howdy everyone, native Russian here. Got a couple of comments for you: 1) Dialects. As a rule of thumb, any Russian can easily understand (almost) any other Russian. However, there’re 2 possible exceptions: --> Regional-talk. But it’s more akin to accents and pronunciation of certain vowels (think Texas-English vs New-Yorker’s) --> There’s still somewhat of a “simpleton-speech” (просторечье/простанародье). It’s a variation of Russian spoken by older people or in some remote villages. With some particularly “thick”-variations it sometimes can get cumbersome to understand. And it’s also worth noting, that whereas “city-dweller” can usually understand a local "babushka", is it’s not always a case the other way around. (“Милок, прикорни на завалинке, что супротив сараю”) So go figure :) 2) As for several words allegedly translating into just one in English. Russian words have some sort of a “deeper-layer” which is reminiscent of older times (Old Church Slavonic language in particular) and are oftentimes can be “decoded” with knowledge of those roots. For instance, the example Olly used for “again”, and the saying “не опять, а снова”. The “second again - снова” can be decoded to “С” + “нов”, meaning “from-the-beginning”, or “from-scratch”. Thus more informative translation would sound like: “Not again, but anew”, implying the inherit expectancy of a different outcome this time around. So, basically, if you wish to become the Pro in Russian, -- apart from the actual language you might also need to learn older versions of the language, to get “a feel” of it. 3) Generally speaking, Russian is simultaneously the language of emotions and logic. On the one hand, you can construct almost any word you need like Legos; on the other, there’re hundreds of shades and overlaps for almost any emotion or feeling. I’ll also leave you with a couplet translation of a famous Russian poet of 19th century A. Pushkin, it does sound rather different from English poetry: > I loved you, and quite possibly this passion Has not extinguished fully from my soul; But you should not take gravely my confession; My wish is not to sadden, but console. I loved you hopelessly and in silent anguish, Distressed by jealousy and timid plight I loved you with such candor, such affection, God bless you find love as true as mine. < P.S. Olly, awesome content, keep at it! :)

Russian grammar is really hard. Even Russians themselves make mistakes in written and spoken language very often. And we learn it in school for 11 years!

Слово "блин", кстати, стало уже универсальным мягким ругательством даже в Европе. Иностранцы, кто был в России очень хорошо используют в дальнейшем это слово и у себя на Родине, причем не задумываясь о переводе 😂😅

Тот случай, когда у создателя этого ролика любви к богоспасаемому русскому языку больше, чем у нас самих. Thanks a lot!

One of the benefits of being a Russian and trying to become a polyglot is that you already know one of the hardest languages out there.

The author voice is so "selling", so he "sold" me the idea to learn cyrillic... but then I remember I'm a native Russian xD

There is one huge advantage of knowing Russian. Once you learn it, you can watch movies dubbed or subtitled in Russian of all around the world, from some exotic Indonesian to English-speaking ones that you can not get on the Internet in English even if you would pay for it! Also, sometimes books in other languages translated in Russian are either not available in English, for example, the Italian children's stories of Gianni Rodari, or poorly translated in English for example, philosophical texts of Julius Evola. Also, some languages are easier to translate in Russian than in English, for example, German, as it has a similar idea of grammar and connected complexity of structure, or pronunciation, for example, Italian opera, which is sung in Russian just fine.

You actually got me with тоска because it was the very first word I thought of when you said about paragraph-long translations 😆 And, well, it's pretty widely considered to be a part of our cultural code and mentality. Russian people excelled at being sad, they refined the very meaning and process of sadness and made it into entirely new concept. So you can't translate it for the full meaning, you can only feel it if you dove deep enough into our culture.

"Do you need to study Cyrillic?" Absolutely yes, no doubt about it! Even if you don't learn Russian - learn Cyrillic, and you'll look so cool in the eyes of your friends.

I’m from the UK. Sitting in my apartment in Moscow feeling unmotivated to practice my Russian. This video has reminded me language isn’t just a list of words and grammar rules. It’s a beautiful, historic, in depth web of culture that exists to be explored and enjoyed. One of the best videos I’ve seen on the subject. Thanks!

Банально, но всё же напишу, что это забавно смотреть видео про русский язык на английском, при этом зная этот язык как родной

Ходить is not walking back or anywhere specific, it's just walking in general, it's the act of walking itself. Now идти - that means there's a destination

From the top of my heart: grammar rules in Russian are horrible even for native speakers, so reading books helps a lot believe me.

Hello I'm a native Russian speaker from Kazakhstan🇰🇿 I would describe the 'dialects' or accents you mentioned more as a difference in manner of speech. In Kazakhstan we speak fluent Russian that any Russian speaker would understand absolutely, but you could tell a Russian from Kazakhstan and a Russian from Russia apart very subtly from the way they speak! Very interesting to see an outside perspective on the language. I always say that I am greatful for my Russian and that it's a great language to know because other than it being beautiful language with a rich history, culture, and great literature, I also love that it connects so many different people from such diverse cultures, and I have a common language and understanding with people from all over the world because of it. Thank you for the video!

Brake the Western mind with mr.Chernomyrdin phrase: "Никогда такого не было и вот опять"

Hi, I’m Russian, and I’m sorry for following mistakes Just wanted to say that it was amazing First of all, I adore when Americans or European aren’t scared of Russian. This fact itself is very satisfying. Secondly, you’re actually a pretty good teacher, ‘cause you’re mixing the information about language with both geography and history. Also, you use some linguistic terms like verb pair, which even I (and I’m pretty sure most of the the Russians except linguists) haven’t known. It may be hilarious, but this video actually made me wanting to learn my own native language. In conclusion, thank you very much! I really hope other nations will stop seeing us as heathens and get interested in our language/history!

I'm learning Russian for 1 month. I can read Cyrillic Alphabet. Mainly I can read & speak a little bit Russian. Hablo español también y estudio japonés. Soy de India 🇮🇳❤️

Hey, a Russian here, we believe we have no dialects as everyone understands everyone across all Russia, although linguists do say we have the three you mentioned. The Russian alphabet is technically called the "modern Russian alphabet" not Cyrillic. Another important thing to know about pronunciation is remembering the stress in words. Also, I strongly recommend Olly's books. I've tried them for German and they are amazing. Cheers from Moscow!

I absolutely got to adore Russian since I started learning it a while back. Since then I don't see it as a rough language anymore, quite the contrary, it's super soft and smooth to pronunce and to listen to. The grammar is very challenging, but that also means things can be said in a super precise way. Grammatical simplicity bears great potential too, e.g. ambigiuous literature or memes. But often enough I find english and also german sentences (which is my native langauge) which can be understood in two forms or directions without further context. So today I wonder why german holds first place for being precise. как говорил лермонтов: пламенно и нежно

I'm Russian and while learning English the easiest way was through songs. While listening to them over and over again not only you memorize the meaning of words but you also get more comfortable with grammar

nah, i'm just a person who speaks the language from their very childhood, and i wanna know what you've got to say about it) cheers to everybody learning it!

I learned cyrilic and now I can read many languages even if I don't understand what I read

Столько восхищения русским языком я давно не встречала даже у носителей языка!

Cyrillic is a great new alphabet to learn and a lot easier than it looks in a day or two you will easily master it.

I never thought about learning Russian but lately I've been binge watching "bald and bankrupt" and Russian started to sound more and more appealing. I just started learning Cyrillic on Duolingo. Such a fascinating script.

What surprised me while learning Russian was how heavily influenced it is by the Old Slavonic Church language. Many forms which I originally thought of as archaic turned out to be words originating from the Southern Slavs (Macedonia, Bulgaria) that entered Russian via the Orthodox Church. Also, there are numerous words from the Tatar and Turkic languages; and from the Dutch as well (thanks to Peter the Great). All these make Russian quite distinct from other Slavic languages.

The best russian expression is "Да нет наверное":) Which literaturely can be translated as "Yes no maybe" but means more "no" than "yes". Amazing!

To those interested in learning Russian, I'd suggest read writers & poets like Alexandr Pushkin, Sergey Esenin, Lermontov; satire writers like Anton Chekhov, who's famous for his short satirical stories; Leo Tolstoy (novels), Mikhail Bulgakov (I recommend one of his greatest novels "Master & Margarita"). One of my favourite plays in poetry form is "Woe from Wit" by Alexandr Griboedov, who was also a diplomat. This is such a terrific satirical creation, making fun of the Russian high society at the time. A lot of Russian idioms, favourite one-liners came from this poem. It's absolutely terrific.

The vast landmass where one can use Russian is truly mind blowing and most Russian speakers don't speak English so it's a very useful language and interesting to learn

I was sitting on the fence, deciding whether or not to learn Russian. After this video you gave me that final push. I like your contagious passion. Thanks

As a native speaker, I admire people who study Russian. It must be so hard to learn it as a second language. Very cool!

I'm a Russian native speaker, Moscow region :-) Ninilchik Russian was pretty hard for me. I understood the main meaning of what he said in third repeat. As for the dialects - yes, Russian language have dialects depending on the regions. Some of them appears from merging several languages like Ukrainian and Russian languages in the southern regions. They are mostly easy to understand, but sometimes you get stuck on words that you can't find any matches in you vocabulary 🙂 About "Не опять, а снова", you can add meaning to the English translation something like "No again, but once again" - I guess, it's a bit different meaning. BTW there is one thing that you didn't mention - using punctuation in sentences. Russian sentences can be heavily loaded with comas, colons, dashes and so on. Take this sentence: "Если вас интересует мое мнение - я выскажусь: настоящая дружба (именно дружба, а не шапочное знакомство или приятельские отношения) проверяется в радости; умение разделить радость другого человека - этим сегодня могут похвастаться немногие…очень немногие «друзья»!". All those punctuation marks adds pauses, definitions and additional meanings to what you say. For example word "Друзья" in quotes changes meaning of the work from positive to negative - figurative sense. I can come up with the sentence where every word will be devided by coma and it will make sence ))) "Кажется, можно, наверное, предположить, что, конечно, запятых, бесспорно, слишком много, но, разумеется, по всем, полагаю, правилам."

As a beginner I can say the most difficult part is how every day things are said in Russian typically in strange ways, not "just" putting the words thatwe would use in a different language, translated and with correct grammar- no, the way of expressing is different, too. It makes the language interesting, though

Regarding the "Dialect - Accent" question. I wouldn't say we have any dialects. There are different accents and some different words pronunciations, but every Russian will understand 99.99% of what another Russian has to say. That tiny 0.01% would be some local words or dishes' names that are not popular in other parts of Russia. For example in Perm, they have these small potato pies they call "shan'ga" (шаньга), which are not so common in other parts of Russia.

I'm Russian, so imo "тоска" - is like a product of "boredom" and "sorrow")

Your fascination with our language brings me a lot of joy. Thank you, good sir!

Years ago, I read a (nonfiction) story about a tourist whose luggage got lost in Russia. After taking some basic information down, the desk clerk asked, "Are you familiar with our Russian term 'the resignation of the soul'?"

- Does Russian have dialects? - ОФ КОРРРРЗ!

In the movie “Love and Doves”, the way she talked was more village style.

Russian is the most beautiful language I think. And I speak french.

If anyone is thinking of learning Russian, it's plain silly not to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, seeing as you can actually do that in about a day. I've taught it in a couple of hours even, just by thinking of words and getting my friend to figure it out. True, we were in Moscow, so he was using it already on the Metro and on the street the next day, so was unlikely to forget it. I have a file somewhere; you just read it, you can figure out the words, (мама, лама, лампа, план, планета ...) and you've learned the alphabet by the time you finish it. Just reading the names of places in an atlas is one simple way (Америка, Антарктика, Африка,..., Лондон, Берлин, Мадрид,...).

I have almost finished reading Crime and Punishment in Russian, which was one of the reasons I started learning Russian 6 years ago - stories can be great motivation to learn, not just a great method! Learning Russian has been a great journey, and I loved jumping headfirst into the complexity. Also by the way, Mongolia is also changing from Cyrillic alphabet to the traditional top-to-bottom script!

Never knew you had a RU-vid channel. I've read the beginner version of your book so many times. So excited to see there is a new one. I'll buy any book you write for Russian. It's such a nice change of pace from Дорога в Россию and other textbooks. Thanks for your work.

😍😍😍 omg omg learning russian , this video motivates me a lot ! thankyou !!! спасибо ☺️

Coincidentally I’m learning russian because I am visiting on december. I am a Spanish/Romanian native speaker and I am loving this language plus I feel so dope writing and reading in Cyrillic.

"Не опять, а снова" - "Not again, but one more time"

I love your charisma!) Thank you for this video)

I just watched it and realized that I need to think more about my own language) or, perhaps, try to rethink ordinary things I do everyday. Video is great! I am so happy if you enjoy your journey in the world of expressive words and emotional visualization of the language.

oh, "Love and Pigeons", such a beautiful film 😁 thanks for this little piece of classics

I am Russian from the South West (the g-region) and in my humble opinion there are no dialects, just some differences in pronunciation. In that respect Russian is one of the easiest languages to learn! :)

I'm from a big Russian city and when I first time heard my bf's mother speak I really could barely understand her. I felt like a word-tornado came across, so fast was her speech. Nowadays I can understand her, but it is still hard sometimes. And another "dialecting" part in Russia, that I myself found was about white and black bread naming in different cities

"Do I really have to learn Cyrillic?" Guys its just matching the letters to the sounds I had the hang of it in like my first week and you just progress naturally from there. The Alphabet is the easiest part of any language. I would go as far as to say you don't have a choice. If you're trying to become conversational, you will see it enough and pick up on enough to absorb it naturally.

I'm native and I'm so happy that there's someone who tells others about Russian in such an interesting way!

As a Russian I can say that this video is awesome and it's hard to find something this good

Excellent work. It is wondrous to listen to you through the whole video. спосиба вам болшое.

It's so interesting to hear perspective of perception of your native language from people from other countries :)

Learning Cyrillic wasn’t hard. However, I’m still much slower reading Russian than Spanish (another language I am learning). This is despite the fact that I am a native Polish speaker so I am familiar with a slavic language. My brain just swallows up the Latin script whereas I do have to do some mental gymnastics with the Cyrillic and thus read it a lot more slowly. Hopefully this will improve with time. I’m eager to try Olly’s Russian book when I can read more effortlessly.

I'm from Moscow, but I have friends from different parts of the country. We have some differences in speech, the most noticeable one is of course the sound "g", we all pronounce it differently, some as "h" some and "gh" and so on. Also, an interesting difference that I've recently noticed is that we conjugate verbs differently sometimes, it occurs very rarely but still. All in all, our differences are to small and insignificant to call them "dialects", and I don't think we have accents either.

There's a good story about the last word you talked about "тоска" when Vladimir Nabokov was translating Yevgeniy Onegin written by Alexander Pushkin he encountered a big problem, he couldn't translate that word literarily therefore he had to add a paragraph to explicitly explain what that word mean.

Man, you are so passioned!!! Thank you for the video, it's fun, has lots of cool facts and stuff! Keep going on your path! Молодец!

An important thing to know about Russian is that almost every noun has a «ласково» version, which is basically a slightly modified version of the word. For example; книга/книжка. Both mean the same so just be careful.

In my opinion, the question "Do I have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet in order to learn Russian", despite being quite common, doesn't have any sense. I mean, many people, even my colleagues from the US, speculate that Russian is difficult because they use different alphabet. But that's an enormous fallacy! You can master Cyrillc for a couple of hours, even in a plane of your way to Russia - but it may take years or even decades for mastering the language. So, if you want to learn Russian (or my Ukrainian), the Cyrillic alphabet should be the last thing to worry about.

I'm 7 months into learning Russian and to me the part I struggle with the most is reading and pronouncing it's pretty much the same issue with my Mandarin (which I studied for 13 years in school mostly memorizing things any dialogue is confined to classroom situations between teacher and student) so now I just translate stuff I want to say and repeat it daily.

Great video, well done !

I studied in Minsk, Moscow and Leningrad (St.Petersburg) and never felt any difference in dialects, however I could tell immediately that someone came from the "stans" as they had strong accent. Russian like other languages has registers and the terms and grammar used in official, scientific, legal etc. is very different from the everyday Russian.

12:11 the correct translation for - Не опять, а снова: - Again? - Not again, but once more 13:14 - "Надрыв" also means when you overwork or overdo something for no reason. Чего ты надрываешься? 13:36 - I would say that "Тоска" more like melancholy

Wow thanks for the video story about Russian! Makes me so proud to speak it 😊

I'm really happy with my progress in learning Russian over the past year. With that said, I still have an insane amount to learn. I'm super determined, which can sometimes be very overwhelming. I just want to know everything NOW. This is one of the languages of my ancestors. I have no living relatives who speak it. :(

A Baltic speaker here. Russian, or any Slavonic language for that matter, to me is like French to an English speaker. Morphologies of these language are vastly different, almost nothing in common, but the syntax (the way how sentences are structured) is mostly the same.

..at one moment, I imagined I had to learn it. A second later I remembered I'm a native speaker, what a relief 😄

Очень достойная подача материала. Вас приятно слушать.

Thank you for this video =)

Тоска - can be translated as longing, homesickness and yes,spiritual anguish. The verb «тосковать» means to long for, to miss somebody, etc

quite some comments here, being a Russian I really enjoyed the material. It's always very interresting to see the 'otsider's' feeling of your language. Though there was a small factual mistake in the vid. ь and ъ are used not exactly in a way that Olly described. In both Russian words "family" and "seed" the last м' is softened. in first case by Ь, the second time by the soft vowel Я. But in the word Семья (family) the Soft sign marks, that the last vowel is not the part of the syllable, but forms a syngle sign diphtong (ya). Same works for the Hard sign. It affects the vowels' behaviour much stronger than that of a consonant.

I am a native speaker. There are no dialects in Russian, but there are some tonal differences in sentences and pronunciation depending on what part of Russia you are in.

Thanks for a great video! It's very nice to see a deep detailed story about Russian language, its history and main traits. And this one is not even the first I have seen on your channel, it seems that you have dived deep in it. I think learning Russian is not very popular around the world, I hope your great story will make it a little more attractive for those who finds it interesting and mysterious. I used to work some time in language exchange summer camps for kids. Those were quite popular before the situation with foreign politics of current regime started to go really sad. We had kids from different countries and even US that arrived to Russia for a month. It was fun, good times and a great overall experience. I met and I had an opportunity to talk to a lot of interesting people from different parts of the world, it was very exciting, and that helped me to learn more about different cultures, languages, countries and improved my English too. I have seen quite a lot of people learning Russian, and I see that it can be really tough to get a decent level of it if you are out of natural language environment. So in theory, Russian should be really hard to learn, however, I have seen a lot of cases when once a person has immersed into a Russian speaking environment, he or she progressed incredibly fast in it, I couldn't even believe it myself. Russian is expressive language, it becomes much easier to learn when you can see emotions of those who speak it and can use some nonverbal part of language yourself. So if you doubt - please don't, it's not as hard as it seems and I hope it will be a really fun adventure for you.

As a russian speaker I can say that learning grammar is a great pain in the ass even for natives.

“Снова” comes from the word “новый” - new. That’s why it has a positive conotation, it’s “not (to repeat the same) again, but again (as a new experience)”. “Я опять приеду в Москву в следующем году” (I'll go to Moscow again next year) - neutral, repeating the visit. “Я снова приеду в Москву в следующем году” - positive, I wait to do it.

Love this video!! I study Russian in university, and it was great to learn more about language’s history & culture😊 And I agree, learning in context and immersion in both the language and the culture is so helpful when learning a new language

Isn't тоска just longing? Also, another Russian here, heaving a great time watching video about his own language

I became fluent in Russian during my childhood, and I can tell that some of our words have +20 inflections!

Russian is a very deep language. You can learn it for many years but if you want to reach such a level that even Russian didn't get that you are not native speaker you should spend on it whole your life.

Olly, Great video. I have some subscribers and patreon people I have been teaching. Its definitely a hard language to pick up. Thank you for the video and tips