Is Russian a world language?

When travelling around the world, many people would expect to survive exclusively on English, maybe some French and Spanish, but probably not Russian. This would be an error. Native Russian speakers are spread throughout the world - you never know when you would bump into a fourth generation Russian Empire emigre in San Francisco (with an accented Russian you would no longer find in Russia itself), a Russian-speaking taxi driver in New York or Wellington or an engineer from Belarus or Ukraine in Nigeria or Sri Lanka. Being one of the most spread-out linguistic communities in the world, Russian speakers can be found in Eastern and Central Europe, Middle East (just think of the huge diaspora in Israel, for example), South-East Asia, Australia, Latin America. Many of these people would be speaking Russian as their second native language, others would have learned it as their main foreign language. Russian is one of the most studied languages on Earth today, both for its allegedly challenging character and the opportunities that it can open worldwide.

Would you like to join the community of Russian speakers? Learn Russian today!