Basic Russian ain't hard, and it's easy to get yourself understood. Some are scared by Cyrillic letters, but that's essentially a fusion of Latin and Greek, and there's nothing special about it - it's not hieroglyphics or something. Many, if not most, letters are same as in Latin scripture. Some are a catch though, and designate entirely different sounds - like "c" letter actually meaning "s", "B" actually meaning "V" etc.

Advanced Russian is a bloody meat grinder. Grammar is such a pain in the ass locals struggle with it, and there's a LOT of synonymic words to learn if you expect to be fluent or understand what we're talking about.

On a positive side, despite the huge size of the country, most Russians speak roughly the same standard Russian. There are some regional words, but nothing I would call a dialect is popular anywhere but deep rural areas. You don't have to learn all that to be fluent.

[–] humbletightband@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 months ago

I'm native Russian speaker and I often reflect on what I'm saying and how I say things. This is very counter-intuitive.

Do you know the joke that 'flammable' and 'inflammable' mean almost the same things? Guess what, in Russian I can give you a dozen of such pairs, some of them are essential in a casual conversation.