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Russian language facts
- Over 160 million people speak Russian as first language.
- Russian is a Slavic language with Ukrainian and Belarusian as
closest relations.
- Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which is based on
the Greek alphabet with some Hebrew letters to represent sounds
alien to the Greek writing system.
Some characteristics of Russian language
- Russian pronunciation
Russian is mostly phonetic. Most complications arise from its
complex stress system.
- Stress is mobile and flexible and does not follow strict
rules. The correct placement of stress is one of the major problems
when learning Russian language.
- There are 6 different cases in Russian language, inflection
and declination are important features of Russian language.
- Word order is flexible, as Russian is highly inflected.
- In addition to tense and mood Russian verbs possess a feature
called aspect. They can be perfective or imperfective indicating
if the action is completed.
- Formal/informal address
Second person plural vy is used to show deference. Familiar
second singular ty is only used when invited to do so or
when speaking to a small child.
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