JarJarDrinks
45544
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NASA astronauts uniformly report that having to learn Russian is the hardest part of their training.
Jul 17, 2025 1:34 PM
JarJarDrinks
45544
1032
60
NASA astronauts uniformly report that having to learn Russian is the hardest part of their training.
Tolocamp
Yeah, everyone knows. Put the tip of your tongue against the guy in the canoe and repeat that alphabet.
keizo4
Slava Ukraini
thedewser
Does the vodka kick in around the 3rd to last line?
the12thletter
If you know the Greek alphabet, you're already halfway there
LjubljanaJeNajlepseMestoNaSvetu
Russian is realy not a hard language to learn. The spečling is quite phonetic, the grammer makes sense i dont see what would be so hard about it.
literally
нет, спасибо
inthepines
Hello my dear students
jappie348
its actually a pretty staight forward language when it comes to grammar and spelling. it just sounds weird af
treboresque
PocketCleric
as someone who knows a bit about this: These are the NAMES of the letters not the sounds, like how 'double you' is said 'W'. The language is very phonetic and each sound only says one thing and words always read one way. Its one of the easier languages to learn.
spankeyfish
It's not completely phonetic, though. Just enough to trick you.
simplefishy
I’d prefer to learn Ukrainian 🇺🇦
ap592
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
bwittekoekover9000
"put it in H!"
ZiomalZParafii
When I was learning it 35 years ago in a primary school my teacher was nothing like that. красивая
MrHappySmiles
How do they form cohesive words with all those silly sounding letters says the guy speaking English.
MrHappySmiles
Q as in Quba!
shehdbeuebw738373
These are letter names not letter sounds.
Think "double u" versus "wuh"
SergeyPrkl
Those aren't the sounds of those letters, those are the names of them. Like in english U = You. or X = Eks.
zagibu
XLN
EedDaPooPoo
https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTY1YjkxZmJleG5uZXV5OG9wN2M3bXdteTBheXlxMG9lbDVjdXdreWI2anRlMXNraSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/RrVzUOXldFe8M/giphy.mp4
somnif
I love when folks use Cyrillic letters to make an English word look slavic-y, because the actual pronunciation is always hilarious gibberish
harthram
My favorite is 44. "Shieee..."
peddroelm
abbeyrosemama
Already coded. Nifty!
oldernotwiser
I hate to tell you this, but when I studied in Moscow, long story, they would have never printed. Cyrillic cursive to me is the only way to write in Russian.
SamuthNBS
Why yikes? It's just a different alphabet. Most languages don't even say the latin alphabet the same either. I'm not a genius but I taught myself Cyrillic in my free time at 6th form from a book (pre internet) and once you can read words out loud they're much easier to translate.
thebonesofmyancestors
My wife is a teacher and a language specialist. She says Latin needs to make a hard comeback as a possible language option in highschool. It helps understanding language rules and spelling in English much easier.
SamuthNBS
I can see that but it's not hugely useful unless you plan to go in to law or languages - I merely meant the Latin alphabet that western Europe uses, not the language.
PandaPolishesPotatoes
It needs to make a hard come back because it's so pleasant to listen to.
fdlFan
I'd argue that learning _any_ foreign language is going to teach skills that make it easier to think systematically about English. Latin is great, and I'm glad I studied it, but I don't think it's particularly special in this respect, with the possible exception of the substantial amount of Latinate and Latin-influenced vocabulary that English has adopted, particularly in specialist fields.
69Voltage
No wonder Russia’s fucked up
sochilln
Yup
Regeny
Well, it could be worse. Russian is relatively pleasant to listen to (for Westerners) and the fundamentals are the same. Imagine, having to learn Chinese. Rather unpleasant to listen to and completely different from any other language.
rmx256
Listening to eastern european girls talk is soooooo something something.
hyptosis
Exdeath5000
People whose brains can pick up languages like this quickly are amazing
jt42
You mean "children"
vorodar
I mean, to be clear, you're not supposed to actually know Russian after this video.
Also, the audio quality is not good. I am at least aware of what it should sound like but the mic + the woman turning away when pronouncing the letters makes it harder to understand than it needs to be.
vorodar
But also, Russian pronunciation is quite soft. So even if the audio quality was good or this was in person, it'd be hard to make a good distinction between these sounds.
It's probably worse because the names of the letters don't even have much of an influence on how you use them. Not dissimilar to English - knowing how to pronounce the letter "c" as part of the alphabet, doesn't help you that much with using it.
AR33
большое спасибо
jimhotep
I studied Russian in college and still speak fluently today. Cyrillic is a bitch to learn as an English speaker.
LjubljanaJeNajlepseMestoNaSvetu
Its an alphabet like latin, not realy that hard, imagine silabic scripts or eorse
spankeyfish
Handwritten Cyrillic is bollocks but I never had a real problem with the printed form and I only did evening classes. The biggest problem I had is that the spelling system isn't quite phonetic and they don't usually mark ё, you're just s'posed to rote learn where they are as if it was English.
joesii
I don't think cyrillic is hard to learn; most of the symbols have English equivalents, and the words/letters are quite phonetic too unlike English where spelling doesn't really indicate how to pronounce a word at all without considering all the context cases and exception cases that exist.
Tangurena
I had a coworker who went to divinity school (where he had to study the New Testament in the original language). He was trying to learn Cyrillic in order to do missionary work in Russia. After I explained the history of how Saint Cyril brought Christianity to Russia and he based the script on Greek letters (St Cyril being Greek Orthodox - which is why Russian Christians are also Orthodox), it made total sense to my coworker and he was able to learn the alphabet in days.
frischcode
OverwhelmingSurplusOfDiggity
The best part of that is the two spelling mistakes.
SmashySashimi
mrputter
In 2016 I spent several months in Russia (mostly rural/Siberia) after spending 3 years here in Canada learning Russian first. Whenever I'd walk into a café and see the menu was handwritten in cursive, I'd just want to cry.
(Luckily most cafés there have a lot of overlap in the range of dishes they sell, so I could usually ignore the menu and just ask for things I expected them to have. But still.)
CatThatsNoLongerCurious3
As a Ukrainian who was forced to learn Russian when I was little (decades ago) yeah this is not even exaggerating. I hated it and I hate it even more today.
Tangurena
Generally, cursive only makes sense to people who are fluent in that language. Of the languages that I speak, I can only read cursive in 2. The rest are totally opaque - especially Japanese "cursive" - which is so bad that even Japanese natives have trouble reading handwritten Japanese. .
rbudrick
That said, every Japanese person I've met that I saw write had the neatest handwriting I've ever seen.
spankeyfish
You need to be fluent enough that your brain can run a predictive text algorithm on the scribbles based on context.
StopCallingMeIAmNotYourBrother
I can generally read print, but I don't even try cursive. Especially since it is often written quickly... The only time I tried to write it, I couldn't even read what I wrote. It just looked like morse code of cursive e's and l's.
rbudrick
Neatly written, it's super easy. Messy handwriting is messy no matter what, but messy cursive is certainly harder. Also much easier if you grew up with it.
87cubed
My wife sent me a snap of a post-it note she wrote a couple of weeks ago: "Help, I can't read my own (cursive) handwriting" I had to decode it for her.
diezl97
Old German cursive (kurrent) is also super scribbly. English cursive is downright easy next to that.
JohnSatclaire
1890s steel nib pen has entered the chat
diezl97
Honestly ballpoints didn't help scribbliness: probably made it much worse.
fumptrucker
I have a couple of WWII era German postcards and I think the only way to read kurrent is to know what it says beforehand. (/s, but only a little)
mak10z
TIL my doctor is a Russian?
frischcode
UnaccomplishedWatcherImNotaBot
Underrated joke
FellAsleepInSchool
DwaneDibbley
But wait, theres more!
Chronomechanist
Hah. That's nothing. Just wait until you read a doctor's handwriting in English.
DoctorWookie
One doesn't read a doctor's handwriting in English, one just FEELS the intent behind the scribble.
BerryButcher
I don't understand 1st and 6th only, and it's not because of the how it's written but because i don't remember the word it represents
TocinoATX
More like cursedive.
jaggcomputing5
And there I was looking at the * like character and thinking you couldn't write cursive with that.
Groose
Fuck that
pan069
Now it makes sense. Of course they can't win wars.
rbudrick
This is a carefully chosen extreme example tho.
HelikaformerNubisKnight9
Hehe, this almost looks like Süterlin, Script variant of German. (Picture says "Sütterlin Kalender 2025).
lujotu
Had a teacher make me learn this in high school, comes in handy at the weirdest of times. Also very helpful at museums.
HelikaformerNubisKnight9
I'm not fluent in reading it, I need to learn it too! I want also to read the texts in Museums!
DwaneDibbley
The thing with russian cursive is that bunch of different letters looks same-ish. So you can write 5 different letters but end up with something that looks like 8 "u" in a row. Even russians has sometimes problem to read it as the have to guess whats written.
HelikaformerNubisKnight9
Same with Sütterlin, most Germans can't read it anymore. But I have to say the Russian kursiv looks worse to decipher!
serleth
When it's actual penned cursive instead of a typeface, it's easier. Not much, but still easier.
onepinksheep
Depends on the kind of cursive.
serleth
True enough
rajyeruh
Ah, the page I use to test if the pen has ink.
Lucallia
Is this... a doctor's note?
glovelyday
ProjectDA
hangul a dyslexics worst nightmare
zagibu
Gollum looks wrong. The rattlesnake is only supposed to sound like an L when it's at the end of a "syllable", right?
JustUsLeagueUnlimited
20 years later I can still phonetically read out Korean. Poorly, but I can do it. If it looks like C it's D. Learned that listening to a CD. G sound looks like the inner part of a G in a fancier font. If it looks like L it's N, Ellen taught me that. If it looks like E it's T, saw that on ET. The Tree stands up and the brook lies down.
Salticido
I saw this a long time ago and still remember some of the mnemonics (gun, nose, & tree in particular). I would add ㄱ ㄷ & ㅂ to the list of ones that make a different sound at the end of the syllable, add that with certain vowel sounds ㅅ sounds like sh rather than s, and ㅐ & ㅔ don't sound different from each other (both sound kinda like they rhyme with neigh, though I have heard historically they used to sound different).
Salticido
Some sites with audio examples that helped me learn the sounds: https://www.90daykorean.com/ko">iation/">https://www.90daykorean.com/korean-pronunciation/ https://www.howtostudykorean.com/unit0/
UnattendedDeviant
Half of those sound the same to me.
mikeatike
And the other half are mislabeled, H is N? Fuck.
royce32
B,c,d,e,g,p,t,v (and z) if your american all sound the same
HandoB4Javert
Try using your other ear.
mikeatike
Your rear ear.
shehdbeuebw738373
These are the letters names, not their sounds
MaleekTheFreak
Names still have sounds.
shehdbeuebw738373
Shore do... But... Not as relevant
MaleekTheFreak
I think it’s what the original poster meant… that the name of the letters sound the same to them.
kerms
It's admittedly not the best audio quality.
Also it's not like English or other languages' letter names are super distinguishable either, that's part of why the NATO phonetic alphabet was made.
Blacktusk
Half are the same, except they assigned half of those Greek characters to mix things up while using the familiar characters for different sounds.
nezo
B,C,D,E,G,P,V,Z
ProjectDA
russian is no worse than using english, if anything slightly less problematic? o/a can blend like in english, ш/щ too and ы placement to be hard to get right for me.
NotFromFlorida
It’s way more phonetic than English, and sentence structure is much simpler. Even the cases are fairly intuitive imo. The verb system is a raging bitch
bustyalexa
IMO she is enunciating a little too hard the eh sound at the end of the letter's pronunciation. In my experience, it's a sort of drop off at the end. Idk like maybe this is how a valley girl would say the English alphabet?
StopCallingMeIAmNotYourBrother
There are ten vowels and half of them are slight variations on e.
mksu
English has roughly 20 vowels depending on accent, even if only five (and sometimes six) letters are used to represent them. If you can speak English, you can probably manage this.
justfiguredoutimc4azyanddumbb
Well if the English speakers i know are your standard you are trying to lie to people. Why.
Tangurena
That is the reason that Soundex was created to analyze census data - eliminate the vowels and it makes spelling names easier. Some states use Soundex for part of your driving license number (Florida did, might still be doing it).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex
Meowsma
The recording setup is not great to catch the differences; you'd probably have the same difficulty if it were the English alphabet (how many of the letters end in an -ee sound?), especially with the voiced-versus-unvoiced forms.
JackieTreehornProductions
imagine how it sounds over a very compressed audio range in radio transmission and crappy speakers/headphones... yikes
ThisUsernameWasntTakenIGuess
AEE BEE SEE DEE EEE EF GEE EHSH EYE JAY KAY EL EM EN OH PEE QUEUE ARE ES TEA YOU VEE DOUBLEYOU EX WHY and ZEEE (or sometimes ZED)
ProjectDA
also russian splits out more vowels into their own letter. english just goes 'this letter can make 5 sounds, 2 sould similar to this letter, 1 like this letter, but makes this sound when mixed with this letter). we need accents above letter in english soo damn bad.
wannasee
Bruh, "vordeznach" and "merkeznach" got me jacked up!!!!
rrlyrae
hard sign & soft sign. note how half of the vowels sound like they have an english "y" in front ("a" vs. "ya"). these signs modulate that.
waldugar
this are weird letters too, like they don't do much but they're very important for some reason
wannasee
Like Y = "eegaryega" in Spanish. Very important letter!
StopCallingMeIAmNotYourBrother
Russian was easier than Finnish, still working on that one.
Verisankari
Why would You want to learn russian?
BerryButcher
You need to know language of your enemy, it's the most imporant rule of how to win, everyone knew German during WW2, Americans, Russians, British.
zagibu
So that you can correctly insult russian kids in online video games of course.
1Administrator
Vittu
OregonComputerGuy
Mitä tarkoitat?
StopCallingMeIAmNotYourBrother
Trying to learn, Grandfather was Finnish and have been working on it for a couple decades. I learned enough Russian to get by in Kyrgyzstan over one summer. I learned some Turkish and could understand a lot of Kyrgyz pretty quickly too. The romance languages were cake compared to all of those.
MaleProstateMilker88
It's OK, not all Finnish speakers do well either.
spankeyfish
Finnish has the easiest number system I've ever seen and the easiest pronunciation system (due to the writing system only being 300yrs old) but everything else is ludicrous.
icouldntthinkofabetterusername2
I learned Finnish when I was a kid! https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTY1YjkxZmJlaDFmbHE0MHA5Mmkyb3Rka2FuMnFremJ1MWhoOXU1YjY3N2N6cDEwaCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/w0mylo7p4OXUQ/giphy.mp4
StopCallingMeIAmNotYourBrother
So did my cousin, that's the best time to learn.
SergeyPrkl
Me too. And still cant. Just turning 51, born and raised Finn.
DJWienerSoup
Finnish and it's ridiculous fucking Excel chart of inflecting and conjugating EVERYTHING.
TyphoonMuscles
You can replace many of them with adpositions.
neverwrong
Can you give an example?
EedDaPooPoo
It’s okay, you still have plenty of time to Finnish.
EedDaPooPoo
Seriously though, which parts of Finnish do you find the hardest?
Jack0d
If I'd have to guess, the part where you can make up entire words with entire information content of a full sentence by just adding or slightly changing it. Just say Oravanvaraoravana quickly a few times.
Evenmoreuselessname
*Gestures vaguely*