Yesterday I was speaking with one of my students. He has a son in Russia and as soon as pandemic finished he bought a tickets and going to travel in October.
It seems like it’s clear why him (for example) learn Russian. He is going there, because of his kid. But I’ll tell you – his son is not russian, he is from Italy. So far a child is in Russia and he wants to speak the language while he visits his son.
And you know what? In some moment he understood that he likes Russian language. Cause it’s not easy. It’s a challenge. It gives him incomparable feeling of satisfaction when he conjugate verbs correctly, when he knows which case use in this phrase or declaine words.
Another of my students is russian technically. He was born in Russia, his mom is russian. He used to speak Russian until 5 y.o. But after his family immigrated and he stopped to speak Russian language. And now he wants to know the language of his mother.
I’m working a teacher of Russian as a foreign language already 7 years and I had lots of students from different countries. This experience is amazing and exclusive. I can define following reasons why people decided to learn Russian language:
One of the biggest reasons is “Russian is difficult. It’s a challenge. If I could speak Russian I could do everything”. True, Russian is not easy, but not impossible. While you learning this language you became a courageous. You understand so many new things and you really realise that the world is full of difficult and interesting languages.
- You want to know about Russia as a country (culture, people, mentality). So many myths and stereotypes people heard about Russia that they just want to know what is true. Why russians seems sad and angry? Do they? Why russia is the most large country in the world? What do they have there? How they are living? And winter. Is it really cold so much there? How can you survive this coldest winter? You see. A huge amount of questions.
2. You have to learn russian. Because you are going to study there. Or you have family. Or you going to work in Russia.
3. All of these different reasons always have a common point: in some moment you falling in love with the Russian language. You never planning this, never expecting. But one day you just realise that you fell in love and you want to continue understand and speak Russian. Be honest. Russia is not like France or Italy or another romantic and beautiful place where everybody in the world wants to go. And Russian language sounds not so sweet like others. But believe me, and believe my students: once you decided to know Russia and Russian language you already will never want to stop.