🇧🇾 → 🇷🇺

How easy is Russian for Belarusian speakers?

Going from Belarusian to Russian (Русский) has a composite linguistic distance of 11% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

11% distance FSI Cat III — ~1,100 hours

Lexical similarity

80%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance

98%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity

67%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match

100%

Cyrillic → Cyrillic

Genealogical kinship

100%

Indo-European ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇧🇾 Belarusian

Весна приносит тепло и свет после долгой зимы.

🇷🇺 Russian

Вясна прыносіць цяпло і святло пасля доўгай зімы.

🇧🇾 Belarusian

Студент читает книги и учится в университете каждый день.

🇷🇺 Russian

Студэнт чытае кнігі і вучыцца ва ўніверсітэце кожны дзень.

Curated cognates between Belarusian and Russian

Word pairs that share a common etymological root — instantly recognisable across both languages:

water

вада (vada) ↔ вода (voda)
house

дом (dom) ↔ дом (dom)

Other easy languages for Belarusian speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Belarusian:

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between Belarusian and Russian. No signup.