10 Reasons For Learning Russian

Given the astronomic scale of my duties during this last week of my third semester at Michigan State University, my time has unfortunately been siphoned away from Russian into the much more mundane activities of studying and exam-taking.

A few days ago, as I was studying for my Music History final, I was taking a study break and thought of what I could talk about on my blog, since I haven't made much progress in my Russian project recently. After a few moments of mental meandering about random topics, I suddenly had a wonderful idea. If I don't have the opportunity to learn Russian at the moment, I should at least cultivate my motivation towards learning it! Recalling a suggestion I read in a Facebook group, I sat down and scribbled out ten reasons I feel compelled to make this commitment and attempt to learn the Russian language.

Looking back, I should have had this list made months ago. Motivation ebbs and flows, and it would have been so helpful to have a short list of reasons to remind me why it is important that I persevere; that I press on. Hopefully these reasons will help me stay committed in the future, when I am tempted to give up, or even worse, spiral unconsciously into an abyss of apathy, half-heartedly studying but never learning.

Here are my reasons:

1. The language has an inexplicable, aesthetic appeal to me.

This is probably not the best reason out there, given that it is based entirely upon how I feel. After all, a year ago, I thought Russian sounded gnarly, spiky, and uninviting, and I had absolutely no desire to study it. That has changed, obviously, and now when I hear it, I hear beauty, passion, deep feeling and emotion, and conviction. The phonology which at first sounded so hostile now sounds warm and noble. The grammar and syntax, while endlessly and bafflingly complex, is eternally and irresistibly interesting. This may not be a very concrete reason to study Russian, but I feel that without this attraction to the language, learning and studying would be much harder.

2. Russian is a Lingua Franca.

Lingua Franca
/ˌliNGɡwə ˈfraNGkə/, n.
A language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.

Russian is spoken not only in Russia, but across Eastern Europe, and Russian is the predominant second language in countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakstan, etc. Because of this, Russian is the 8th most spoken language in the world by native speakers, and 7th by total speakers, and though the number of native speakers is estimated at between 150-170 million, the total number of Russian speakers in the world is estimated at around 260 million. Thus, Russian is not only a window into Russia, but a gateway language into multiple other nations and cultures. 

3. There is a wealth of literature in Russian, and much of it is untranslated.

"Noble efforts to translate and promote Russia’s contemporary literature persist, but today in the United States, only about 4.6 percent of books translated into English were written in Russian, placing the language far behind French, Spanish, and German. “Great books are being written in Russia today,” Dmitry Bykov, Russia’s leading contemporary critic and a biographer of Pasternak, said in a radio interview. “But not nearly enough get translated.” (http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/24/is-russian-literature-dead/)

Keep in mind while reading that quote that literature in translation only makes up 3% of the literature on our stores' bookshelves here in the US. Again, this reason is only what you make of it. I don't have a true need to read those books, given the amount of books written in English that I feel I will never get to. Nevertheless, it is a comforting thought to think that I am unlocking new literature by learning a language, and that's what counts.

4. Learning Russian promotes needed and valuable communication.

This is a really, really big one for me. This one doesn't just go for Russian, but for many other languages as well. In our increasingly global society, misunderstandings and strife are advancing just as much as technology and innovation. One of the most inspiring personalities in the polyglot community, Tim Doner, has remarked on how revolutionary learning Arabic, Hebrew, and Farsi was in his understanding of countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and the entire Middle East conflict. There are always misconceptions from culture to culture, and when people from both sides are working towards a mutual understanding by learning each other's languages, that helps bring knowledge and understanding greatly. Even on a personal level, learning a language even in a small way can help you start to see into another way of life and get a glimpse into another facet of humanity that you will never regret.

5. The population and monolingualism of Russia.

One thing about Russian as opposed to, say, Swedish, is the sheer numbers involved. Sweden has a population of about 9 million people, and over 80% of them can speak at least some level of English. Now look at Russia. 144 million people by contrast. And only 5.5% of the population can speak English. Therefore, by learning Russian, you are giving yourself a tool to communicate to another 130 million people that you previously had no way of speaking to. (Random, digressive fun fact: Did you know that though Russia has an area 116 times the size of Bangladesh, Russia's population is only 85% of the population of Bangladesh? Interesting...)

6. Russian film history.

Battleship Potemkin. 'Nuff said.

Funnily, the film I mentioned is dialogueless. Yet I don't see how anyone can watch that without wanting to know more about Russian filmmaking. I don't know if this is a good reason or not I guess, because I haven't actually really delved into this world. My Russian History professor has, and he's obsessed though, so I think it's good. Anyway......

7. Russian music culture.

My viola professor is from Russia. I have music friends from Russia. I hear conversations about music in Russian daily. Shostakovich. Prokofiev. Stravinsky. Tchaikovsky. Rimsky-Korsakov. Etc. Etc. Etc.

8. Accessibility  of resources/abundance of speakers

I. e. at least I'm not learning Greenlandic.

9. Traveling.

I really do want to go to Russia. I want to see St. Petersburg and Moscow. Lake Baikal. The Ergaki mountains. Karelia. Kamchatka. Everything.

10. To be able to see the world through a different lens.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

- Mark Twain

Said about traveling, but no doubt applicable to the effects of language-learning as well. Fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. We need less of those things. I'm all for that.

Let's learn some Russian.