What countries in Europe speak and/or understand Russian?
Friday, September 25th, 2009 at
2:58 pm
I started getting into learning the Russian language. I would love to visit Russia one day, but I would also love to visit a country in Europe too.
And I was just wondering if there was ANY countries in Europe that spoke or can at least understand Russian. Just out of curiosity (:
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Tagged with: countries in europe • curiosity • russia • Russian Language
Filed under: Russian - Written and Spoken
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In addition to the previous answer and to give you specific names, I’ve got a Ukrainian friend whose native language is Russian and he says Russian is widely spoken and understood in Estonia and Lithuania. He has Lithuanian friends with whom he speaks in Russian, and yes, a great number of Ukrainians speak or at least understand Russian.
It depends on widespread Russian language education. You’ll find that in former Communist Bloc nations, especially among people over 25-30. Moldova (the Transnistrian breakaway region) and Belarus are the most Russian-friendly nations for political reasons. Ukrainian is for the most part mutually intelligible with Russian, but Ukrainians typically hate being associated with Russia and Russians. That goes for Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia too, although intelligibility is lower than Ukrainian. Hungarian, Romanian and Moldovan languages are not related to Russian at all, but you may find many second language speakers. All the former Soviet Republics have Russian-speaking Russian ethnic populations, but proportions vary.