Is Russian a useful language to learn in the United States?

Comments ( 8 )

1. Rae says

   Russian is on the critical languages list for the US government (meaning it is an important language to know and they want people to be learning it). So, while there may not be many Russian speakers (though that depends on where you are-there are a lot in Portland), it is a good language to learn.

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2. Dream Web Designs says

   I love Russian and speak it at home. I've spoken it for 12 years. But unless you are in a major city with a Russian population or travel to the former Soviet Union, you probably will not use it much. The same goes with French or any other language. If you don't live where it's used, you will lose it.

   There are 3-4 million Russian speakers in the US. The major places where Russian is spoken (and where it will be useful) are:
   1) The New York City metro – The most speakers in the US. Perhaps 1 in 4 Russian speakers in the country are in this large metropolitan area. Many in Brooklyn, especially Brightan Beach, Bensonhurst.
   2) Chicago metro – probably 500,000 Russian speakers
   3) Los Angeles – third in the US
   4) Miami – 70-100,000 speakers
   Other areas:
   Atlanta – 50-60,000, Sacramento – over 50,000, Philadelphia, Seattle, Spokane, Twin cities, Detroit, Boston.
   Most cities have a Russian-speaking population.

   Spanish speakers I know have learned Russian much faster than those who know only English. Many sounds are similar.

   Translation jobs are limited as quite a few Russian speak fluent English.

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3. me says

   In the united states it’s not that useful unless you happen to know a lot of russian people or live in an area where they make up a significant portion of the population. in international business and affairs, however, learning Russian can be very useful. russia’s economy is growing and countries like ukraine, belarus, etc where russian is spoken are still developing. if you don’t plan on working on the international level or traveling to eastern europe, then you would find little or no use for it in america

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4. Justin T says

   I studied Spanish in high school and then served a two-year Mormon mission around Moscow and Minsk.

   In college I majored in Russian and also studied Spanish, French, and Chinese.

   Your easiest language to study as a Spanish speaker will be Portuguese and then French. They are Romance languages. Russian is a distant cousin to these languages. It's in the Slavic family of languages. All the languages of Europe and India have a distant, distant common ancestor called Indoeuropean so Russian will have some ancient cognates with English and the Romance languages. In addition, about half of the Russian language lexicon is borrowed from other languages like Norwegian (early contact with Vikings), Greek (through the Byzantine Empire), Latin (through Polish Catholics), English, French, and German, but that's mostly in scientific and political terms.

   Grammatically speaking, Russian is much more complex than Chinese even. Chinese doesn't differenitiate between past, present, and future tense. Russian is fairly simple in terms of tense (4 compared to English/Spanish's 12), but to make up for that Russian has 6 forms for every noun depending on whether the noun is the subject performing the action, direct object, indirect object, in a prepositional phrase, the instrument of the action, or the genitive. This makes it so word order can be fairly loose in Russian. No matter where the word is in the sentence you know exactly its role.

   Russian will require a lot more effort to learn.

   Usefulness… English, French, and Spanish dominate the western hemisphere. Russian dominates a HUGE portion of the eastern hemisphere. Have you noticed Russia is the biggest country in the world? Also, the Soviet Union was only 15 countries but covered 1/6 of the world's land mass. Not only this, but the Russian culture and language had influence even further than just the Soviet Union. Half of Mongolia today knows Russian.

   Once you know Russian, other Slavic languages will come much easier to you like: Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Croatian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Yugoslavian, Bulgarian, Serbian.

   So if you want to travel in the Eastern Hemisphere, yes Russian is useful.

   In the past, and even today Russia is a powerful force in space engineering, military engineering, nuclear technology, mathematics, etc. If you're going into any of these fields it might be impressive to employers that you can what Russia is saying.

   If you want to work in US intelligence, Russian is on the list of top 10 languages needed STILL for CIA, FBI, and NSA. They especially want people who know Russian AND another in demand language. Lots of my friends who like me were Mormon missionaries in Russia returned home and studied Arabic. That's a powerful combination for US intelligence.

   If you're interested in using Russian here in the States, there are pockets of Russian populations in different cities: New York, Chicago, Portland, Sacramento (200,000 right now). The older people don't speak much English, but the next generation all speak English and are going to college and blending right in with the rest of Americans.

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5. Erik Van Thienen says

   Only if you plan a career in the oil or natural gas business or in Russia. Brazil is the emerging economy of the moment, so (Brazilian) Portuguese would be more useful.

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6. Brooke says

   You should take french
   Im learning french and russian now but i think french is more useful in the US than russian
   plus russian is kinda hard to learn and french is easy especially if you know spanish

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7. Dónde Est&aac says

   No. Almost no one in U.S. speaks Russian, and the ones that do probably speak English better than you speak Russian.

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8. sindel says

   Not unless you wanna live in Grand Theft Auto 4.

   I suggest taking French. If you know Spanish fluently then French should be a doddle.

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