Russian Language Quiz: Test Your Knowledge of Russian Grammar and Vocabulary

Russian is an East Slavic language and one of four living East Slavic languages, mainly spoken in Russia. It is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages and belongs to the Indo-European language family. Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide, making it the most spoken Slavic language and the most spoken native language in Europe. It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers and the world's eighth-most spoken language by total number of speakers. Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script, which distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, which arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter the Great. Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages. Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station, as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian has remained an official language in independent Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel.The Role and Status of the Russian Language

Russian is the official language of Russia and one of the official languages of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
In Tajikistan, Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under the Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation.
In Turkmenistan, Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996, and primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent.
In Uzbekistan, Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication and the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite.
Russian is widely used in government and business in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Russian is the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006.
Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017, and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in the country.
Russian is spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan, and has been added to the elementary curriculum in Vietnam.
Sizable Russian-speaking communities exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, Spokane, Toronto, Calgary, Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, Denver, and Cleveland.
Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States in 2007.
Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations, and one of the official languages aboard the International Space Station.
The Russian language is rather homogeneous, with a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages.
The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters, and Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet due to technical restrictions and unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad.Overview of the Russian Language
The Russian language has a complex syllable structure with up to four consecutive consonants and five or six vowels. Stress marks are optional but sometimes necessary to distinguish between identical-sounding words.
Russian has a palatalization distinction in its consonants, with hard and soft pairs, and some fricative sounds. The language also has six cases for nouns and three tenses for verbs, with each verb having two aspects.
The language has undergone considerable leveling of its Indo-European synthetic-inflectional structure, but still retains many characteristic forms.
Russian has a rich vocabulary, with loanwords from other languages such as French and German, and a significant portion of the gentry speaking French daily in the 19th century.
The literary language of Russian developed under the influence of Church Slavonic until the 17th century, when the influence reversed. Alexander Pushkin revolutionized Russian literature in the 19th century by rejecting archaic grammar and vocabulary in favor of the spoken language of the time.
Political upheavals in the early 20th century and the spelling reform of 1918 gave Russian its modern appearance. During the Soviet period, Russian had a privileged status over other ethnic languages, but since the break-up of the USSR, other native languages have been encouraged.
The Russian language has declined since 1991 but has since been reversed due to an increase in the population of Russia.The Decline of the Russian Language
The Russian language is losing its position globally and in Russia.
A study by A.L. Arefyev confirms the trend of weakening of the Russian language after the Soviet Union's collapse.
The Russian language is being replaced or used in conjunction with local languages in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
The number of speakers of Russian in the world depends on the number of Russians and the total population in Russia.
The decline of the Russian language is due to the increasing popularity of English.
The Russian language is losing its position in the scientific world, with more scientific publications in English.
The decline of the Russian language is also due to the lack of modernization in Russian language teaching.
The Russian government is taking measures to promote the Russian language, including funding for language programs and language competitions.
The Russian language is still widely spoken in certain regions, such as Central Asia and parts of Eastern Europe.
The Russian language remains an important language for international diplomacy and trade.
The decline of the Russian language raises concerns about the preservation of Russian culture and identity.
The decline of the Russian language also has implications for the global balance of power and the dominance of English.