Interesting facts about the Russian language and its peculiarities in the BRICS countries

Russian is one of the most amazing languages in the world, with its many synonyms, colourful epithets that can accurately express emotions. Many great classical works were written in Russian.

Nina Kozlovtseva, Deputy Head for Research and International Activities, Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication, Faculty of International Economic Relations, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, said that Russian is among the top five most popular languages in the world.

Here are a few more interesting facts that you may not have been aware of:

- the expert said Russian is mandatory for all foreign astronauts who intend to go into space. Given the Russian Federation's extensive presence on the International Space Station, knowledge of Russian has now become a requirement for cosmonauts;

- the letter "Я" (Ya) used to be the first letter in the Slavic alphabet, not the last. And the "!" sign was used as a point of surprise;



- the letter "Ё" (yo) was not used in Russian words until 1873;

- there is no special addressing words for men and women in modern Russian. The words "Sir" and "Madam" are only used in very formal situations. In other cases, they say something like 'excuse me, please'.

- Russian has the most feminine nouns, accounting for 43 per cent of the vocabulary. There are slightly fewer masculine nouns, 40.5 per cent, and only 16.5 per cent of neutral nouns.

- the characters in the novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess speak in a fictional jargon called nadsat. Most nadsat words are of Russian origin - for example, droog (friend), litso (face), devotchka (girl).

Nina Kozlovtseva also mentioned that there is an isolated dialect of Russian language in Alaska. In the village of Ninilchik, which was founded in 1847 by workers of the Russian-American Company, there are 20 people who speak this dialect. It has no neutral and feminine nouns. 

Russian in BRICS countries

At present, Russian is still popular in various countries, especially those with which Russia closely cooperates. For example, in the BRICS states of Brazil, China, India and South Africa.

The Russian language in BRICS is at an active stage of development: specialised courses are opened, academic conferences and symposiums are being held. Russia is paying a lot of attention to the BRICS organisation. An example is the fact that on the basis of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Inter-Faculty Coordinating Council was opened to study the problems of the BRICS, in particular, to identify the problems of teaching the Russian language in these countries.

Photo: istockphoto.com