About Russian & Other Central / Eastern European Languages

(Adapted from the book, Why You Need a Foreign Language & and How to Learn One by Edward Trimnell)

Russian

The language of the former Soviet Union received a great deal of attention during the Gorbachev era. With the prospect of Russia being open for business, students filled Russian-language classes across the United States and Western Europe.

The reality of economic reforms in Russia has been more sobering. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has been battered by mafia turf wars, attempted coups, rampant drug abuse, and a declining population. In 1998, there was a run on the Russian ruble, creating even more chaos.

But Russia has been down in the past, only to bounce back in later years. In this century alone, Russia has survived catastrophic war casualties, dictatorship, and famine. And in the most recent few years, the news from Russia has brightened considerably. The banking system has recently recovered from the 1998 Ruble crisis. There have also been more broad-based economic improvements. In 2004, the major sectors of the economy posted a 4.1% improvement against the previous year. Russia has abundant natural resources, and a well-educated population that is struggling to ascend the learning curve of free enterprise.

Russian is not an easy language, but it is not nearly as difficult as Chinese, Arabic, or Korean. Although the Cyrillic alphabet looks intimidating at first, it is among the easiest of the non-Latin scripts. Russian grammar, however, is quite difficult.

Non-Russian Central and Eastern European Languages

Prior to the 1990s, countries like Poland and Bulgaria were the enemy. This is not the case anymore. I recently spoke with a colleague who is a buyer at a major automotive manufacturer in Great Britain. When I asked him, “Where are most of your suppliers located?” his answer—“Poland”—was a surprise. However, it is no longer unusual for a product to be manufactured in Poland, Romania, or the Czech Republic. The countries of the old Warsaw Pact are seeking greater integration with Western Europe (such as membership in the European Union), and they are aggressively pursuing capitalism.

The Central and Eastern European region is extremely diverse linguistically. The Slavic languages share significant amounts of vocabulary and grammar with Russian. About half of the Slavic languages—Polish, Czech, etc.—use the Latin alphabet, while the other half, which includes Bulgarian and Serbian, use the Cyrillic alphabet.

The Romanian language is thought to be descended from the Latin spoken by Romans who colonized the area near modern Transylvania in 106 A.D. The Roman colony, known as Dacia, dispersed around 275 A.D. due to repeated barbarian incursions. The Latin-speaking population dwindled to small settlements deep in the Carpathians. The legacy of the Dacian Romans is a close resemblance between Latin and modern Romanian. In addition to elements of Latin, the Romanian spoken today also reveals strong Slavic and Greek influences.

Hungarian is often described as a “linguistic island.” Hungarian is a difficult language, with numerous verb and noun inflections. It is not similar to any of the Western European languages, nor is it similar to Russian. The only modern relatives of Hungarian are Finnish and Estonian, two languages with which you are unlikely to be familiar.