Russian is part of the Slavonic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is closely related to other Slav languages such as Polish, Czech and Serbo-Croatian. Russian is spoken as a mother tongue by about 150 million people in Russia and the former republics of the USSR.

English and Russian are quite different in some aspects. In particular the grammar systems show significant variations. English has a fairly fixed word order. Meaning is expressed through the addition of words (for example auxiliaries) and movement of words within limited boundaries. Russian, on the other hand, conveys meaning largely through changes in the composition of words (e.g., by inflections or the addition of prefixes and suffixes). Its word order is very fluid. Because of these differences English-speakers may often find learning Russian word order confusing. Word order in Russian largely depends on what a person is willing to make an emphasis on.

Due to differences in the phonological systems, it is to a certain extent challenging for Russians to acquire native-speaker-like standards of pronunciation and intonation. Russian consists of 5 vowel sounds, with no differentiation between short and long vowels. This contrasts with English which has 12 vowel sounds (5 long, 7 short), plus 8 diphthongs. Possibly the most significant vowel difficulty for Russians is the sound in her / cur. This sound seems to cause especial difficulties in words beginning with /w/, such as were / work / worth. Other vowel problems include a difficulty discriminating between the sounds in sat / set or sit / seat.On the other hand, the main challenge for English speakers in learning Russian represent such letters as: “э”, “й”, “щ” and  especially the letter “ы” along with the “soft sign” (ь) and the “hard sign” (ъ). The latter do not designate any sounds but make the preceding consonant sound either softer or harder. Another phonological problem which potentially may cause learning difficulties with English-speakers is a “strong” Spanish-like sound “r”. This is due to the fact that “r” in English is reduced.