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Learn Russian — free and at your own pace

Russian is spoken by roughly 255–260 million people: around 150 million native speakers and more than 100 million who use it as a second language across the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and carries real weight in diplomacy, aerospace, energy, and international journalism. Large Russian-speaking communities also live in Israel, Germany, the Baltic states, and the United States — reach that extends far beyond Russia's own borders.

Russian distinguishes itself from Western European languages in ways that go well beyond the alphabet. The 33-letter Cyrillic script includes vowels that signal consonant softness and two silent signs — the hard sign ъ and soft sign ь — that affect pronunciation without producing a sound of their own. Six grammatical cases change the endings of every noun, adjective, and pronoun; three genders exist but there are no articles at all; and nearly every verb comes as an imperfective/perfective pair encoding whether an action is ongoing or completed. Word stress is free and mobile, unstressed о reduces toward 'a' (аканье), and almost every consonant has a hard and soft pair — yet Russian is not tonal, and its spelling is more phonemic than English.

The U.S. Foreign Service Institute rates Russian Category III: roughly 1,100 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency, versus 600–750 hours for Spanish or French. The six-case system, verbal aspect, three genders, and unfamiliar script are the main obstacles — none of which have direct equivalents in English. That said, Cyrillic itself is quicker to master than people expect: most learners read simple words within a few days and read fluently inside a fortnight. Slavic-language speakers — Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Bulgarian — arrive with shared vocabulary, case logic, and aspect already embedded, while German speakers find the free word order and case endings at least conceptually familiar.

Langula's 80-lesson A1-to-B2 path mirrors how Russian actually layers in: the Cyrillic script and core sound system come first, then the most common cases, then verbal aspect and the full six-case matrix, then participles, gerunds, and abstract vocabulary — with a certificate marking each level. The Leitner flashcard system (five spaced-repetition boxes) drills the case endings Russian demands through distributed practice rather than rote cramming. In-browser pronunciation scoring gives instant feedback on hard/soft consonant pairs and vowel reduction, the features learners struggle most to self-monitor. And because Langula is genuinely free, browser-based, and needs no sign-up, you can start sounding out Cyrillic on any phone or laptop right now.

The Cyrillic alphabet for English speakers

Russian Cyrillic has 33 letters, and you already know more of them than you think: А, К, М, О and Т sound roughly as they do in English. The tricky ones are the false friends – letters that look Latin but stand for a different sound – and a handful of genuinely new shapes. The table covers the letters English speakers mix up most often, each with an everyday example word. Two letters have no sound of their own: the soft sign ь softens the consonant before it, and the hard sign ъ keeps a consonant hard before a vowel. Langula's A1 lessons introduce the whole alphabet in sequence, and you read every new letter aloud straight away.

Your first Russian phrases, with pronunciation

These phrases get you through greetings, thanks and a first short exchange. Stress is shown in capitals: it is not marked in normal Russian writing, and putting it on the wrong syllable is one of the most common reasons beginners are misunderstood. Notice how an unstressed о turns into an 'a' sound, so спасибо is said 'spa-SEE-ba'. Привет is for friends and family; with strangers, older people or in shops, use the formal здравствуйте, whose first в is silent. Пожалуйста does double duty as 'please' and 'you're welcome', and you will hear it many times a day.

What's easy and what's hard about Russian for English speakers

Russian has a reputation for being difficult, and parts of it are – but not all of it. There are no articles, the verb 'to be' is normally dropped in the present tense (Я студент simply means 'I am a student'), and spelling follows pronunciation far more closely than in English. Many modern words are international. The real work lies in the noun endings across six cases, in choosing between imperfective and perfective verbs, in mobile word stress and in the verbs of motion. Knowing this in advance helps you plan: spend little time worrying about the alphabet, and plenty of steady flashcard and speaking practice on endings and stress.

How to teach yourself Russian: a routine that works

A routine you can sustain beats occasional marathon sessions. In the first week, spend 15–20 minutes a day on Cyrillic: read short words aloud until the false friends stop tripping you up. From then on, follow the lessons in order, because each case and each verb form builds on the last. Start every session with your flashcard review – the Leitner boxes decide what is due – and only then move on to new material. Say every word and sentence out loud and use pronunciation scoring to check stress and soft consonants. Once or twice a week, add something real: a song, a short video with subtitles, a children's story. When you reach A2, look for a conversation partner, even for ten minutes at a time.