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🇬🇧 → 🇷🇺

How easy is Russian for English speakers?

Going from English to Russian (Русский) has a composite linguistic distance of 80% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

80% distance FSI Cat III — ~1,100 hours
Lexical similarity
4%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance
41%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity
0%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match
0%

Latin → Cyrillic

Genealogical kinship
40%

Indo-European ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇬🇧 English
The international scientific experiment uses modern technology and special equipment.
🇷🇺 Russian
Международный научный эксперимент использует современные технологии и специальное оборудование.
🇬🇧 English
My sister studies mathematics and physics at the university.
🇷🇺 Russian
Моя сестра изучает математику и физику в университете.

Other easy languages for English speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from English:

Think you can tell them apart?

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