Russian phrasebook

Russian (русский) is a Slavic language spoken by 300+ million people world-wide. Most people living in Russia use it as a first language, and many people in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe know it as a second language. It holds official status in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the unrecognized Abkhazia, Transnistria and South Ossetia.

In countries lacking official designation for Russian, such as Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic States (where schooling in Russian was mandatory under the Soviet era), a solid majority of residents may speak it as a second language, and there are significant native-speaker minorities. However, due to its association with Soviet oppression, many residents in these countries may find it offensive to be addressed in Russian, and younger people will often prefer to speak English than Russian when communicating with foreigners.

Likewise, a similar dynamic exists in many of the formerly communist countries of Europe such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, in which Russian was a compulsory second language in schools under communist rule.

Russian remains the lingua franca of choice throughout the former Soviet Central Asian states, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova, where it is effectively the language of commerce, government, and travel (despite lacking official status).

It is, to a lesser extent, an important language in Mongolia, where it is a compulsory second language in schools, and is the most widely spoken foreign language. Russian has also become the third most widely spoken language in Israel, owing to a massive exodus of Jews from Russia and other ex-Soviet countries in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Russian remains perhaps the most important Eurasian travel language because English is very rarely spoken throughout the Russophone countries.