Russian

About Russian

Russian is the official language of Russia and an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, with about 154 million native speakers. Tens of millions more use it as a second language across the countries of the former Soviet Union, where it is still widely understood.

Russian has two words for "you". Use vy with strangers, older people and anyone you do not know well, and ty with friends, family and children. Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, and several letters look like Latin ones but sound different: Р is r, Н is n, В is v and С is s. Stress can fall on any syllable and is not marked in normal writing. An unstressed o sounds like a, so moloko (milk) is said "malako".

FamilyIndo-European, East Slavic
Native speakersabout 154 million (2019)
Second-language speakersabout 110 million (2010)
Official inRussia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan
ScriptCyrillic alphabet, 33 letters
Codesru (ISO 639-1), rus (ISO 639-3)

Speaker numbers: Ethnologue (2019 and 2010), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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