Russian Voice Over Agency

Everything you never needed to know about speaking Russian

The Russian language
The Russian alphabet has 33 letters with 20 consonants. The language comes from Old Slavic and is very close to the languages of Belarus and Ukraine

Official language
In Russia, Russian is the official language as well as in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the language is spoken by 260 million people of which 137 million are in Russia.

Get a ride on the longest railway
The Trans-Siberian railway is the longest in the world. It stretches 5,772 miles (9,289 kilometres) from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast. If you made this trip, it would take 6 days to get from Moscow to Vladivostok

Be careful buying flowers
If you buy someone some flowers make sure they are only and odd numbered amount. It is thought to be rude to give a person flowers with an even number as they are only given at funerals in Russia

Let’s play Tetris
Software engineer, Alexy Pajitnov invented Tetras unintentionally in 1984. He was working as an engineer in the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow when he was asked to test a new type of computer. To do so he decided to use a puzzle he had played during his childhood. The game was Tetris and with some modifications and help from another engineer it became the popular puzzle we know of today.

Visit Russia’s oldest village
The oldest village in the world is the village of Vyatskoe in the Nekravosky district of Russia. According to records it was first mention in 1502. The village is now a modern Historical and Cultural Complex with ten museums and over 50 registered architectural monuments, all in a setting of natural beauty which includes 38 rivers and lakes.

Land for sale
Did you know that the American state of Alaska was once Russian territory? In October 1867 the Russians signed the paperwork to sell Alaska to the Americans for the sum of 7.2 million dollars. It didn’t come as surprise to either country, talks about the proposed sale had been going on for decades. But it took a long time for America to recognise it’s bargain purchase, (gold deposits were found in the Yukon in 1896), it didn’t become a state until 1959.

That’s a lot of water
Lake Baikal is located in Southern Siberia, and it is the world’s largest freshwater lake by volume. It contains around 23% of the world’s fresh surface water. That makes it more voluminous than all of America’s great lakes combined. As well as being large the lake is also the deepest and oldest In the world with a maximum depth of 5,387 feet which is 1,642 meters or 898 fathoms and between 25 and 30 million years old.

No mice here!
In the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg there is a press secretary who is dedicated to cats. It days back to the 18th century when the museum, which was then a palace needed cats to control the mice and so a group of cats were brought into the palace and were cared for by the household of Elizabeth of Russia. Now the Hermitage cats are neutered and fed and belong to a programme of cat care. You can adopt a cat from the Hermitage, and they welcome donations. Children can also take part in an annual Catfest which includes scavenger hunts and cat painting.

Too late for the Olympic Games
Because until 1918 the Russian’s were still using the Julian Calendar and the rest of Europe was using the Gregorian Calendar, Russia turned up two weeks late for the 1908 Olympic Games and missed some of the games. They did compete even though they were late and manage to win a Gold medal and two Silver medals.

A short history on the Russian language

Russian belongs to the East Slavic branch of the Indo-European family of languages, along with Ukrainian and Belarusian.

The Slavonic languages derive from dialects spoken by the Slav people, who migrated from Poland to the Balkans in the 6th century. By the 10th century, three Slavonic language groups (Western, Southern and Eastern) had emerged, but they had so much in common that they were able to retain a common written language – known as Old Slavonic or Old Church Slavonic.

During the late 13th to 16th centuries, Russian began to diverge from the other East Slavic languages. Its development was influenced by other languages to the west and south (Greek, Latin, Polish, Dutch, German, French and English) and also to the north and east (Uralic, Turkic, Persian and Arabic).

The standard written language, based on the Moscow dialect, evolved in the 18th century, but the standard spoken language was only used by the elite and urbanites – the country-dwelling peasants used their own dialects. This changed in the mid-20th century, with the establishment of a compulsory education system by the Soviet government.

Which countries have Russian as a national language?

Russian is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. It is still widely spoken throughout the former USSR, and is an important secondary language (though not official) in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

How many people speak Russian as their first language?

It is estimated that around 150 million people speak Russian as their first language, with a further 60 million people speaking it as a second language.

Russian is the 8th most spoken language in the world, by number of native speakers, and the 5th by total number of speakers. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Did you know…

• During the last century, Russian was widely taught in the schools of countries that were members of the Warsaw Pact or satellites of the USSR – like Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Albania, former East Germany and Cuba.
  Spoken Russian is similar to Ukrainian and Belarusian; in some parts of Ukraine and throughout Belarus the languages are often interchangeable.
• A large number of Russian dialects have survived, despite the efforts of the Soviet government. These are usually grouped into Northern (from St Petersburg east across Siberia), Southern (most of central and southern Russia) and Central (the area in between, including Moscow).
• Russian is writing using the Cyrillic alphabet, which is based on the Greek alphabet but with a number of additional letters representing Slavic sounds. The Cyrillic alphabet dates from the 9th century, when it was invented by two missionaries – Cyril and Methodius – who were asked to translate the scriptures into Old Church Slavonic.

The Russian economy

Russia’s economy is the 8th largest in the world by nominal GDP, and the 6th largest in the world by PPP. The country is rich in natural resources; it is the world’s leading oil producer, the second largest producer of natural gas, and holds the world’s second largest coal reserves.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has moved from a centrally planned, globally isolated economy, to a more market-based, globally integrated economy. Most industries have been privatised, and Moscow now has more billionaires than any other city in the world.