Top Five Reasons to Study Russian

1. Russia is the world's largest country: almost double the size of the United States . There are about 300 million speakers of Russian. That puts Russian in fifth place on the list of the languages spoken worldwide after Mandarin, English, Hindi, and Spanish. Also, Russian along with English, French and Spanish is an official UN language.

2. According to the 2000 census the Russian-American population is estimated between 4.0 and 5.5 million. California has one of the major concentrations of Russian speakers: over 16% of the U.S. population of Russian speakers of diverse ethnic origin, or 756,107 live in California . The Bay Area is home to about 10%, or 75,000 members of this linguistic community. Another 80,000 live in Sacramento .

3. Russia is currently engaged in a great experiment in political, social, and economic transformation. Russia also has extensive natural resources. As a result, it will continue to be a major player in world affairs.

4. Russian writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsin, Nabokov and composers such as Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninoff are known all over the world and have become a part of the cultural repertoire of major U.S. cultural centers.

5. Russian is cool! Knowing and using Russian alphabet increases your brain capacity. Tell your friends (or mention in your resume) that you study Russian – and everybody will be immediately impressed with how high your IQ is! Seriously, though, studying Russian will enhance most majors and will improve your marketability in the work force.

More Reasons to Study Russian

Russnet http://www.russnet.org/why/

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The Russian Program Web Site was developed by Catherine Siskron and Christopher Clark with a grant from the Northern California Center for Interinstitutional Collaboration. Special thanks to Ronald E. Breininger, David P. Earwicker, Nick Fesunoff, Mary Ann Lyman-Hager, Sasha Makarova, and Elizabeth Westfall.

Last updated June 16th, 2005.