Здравствуйте.
Zdrastvuit'e
Hello.
Russian is an east Slavic language spoken in a vast geographical area by about 260 million people as a first or second language mostly in Russia and the ex-Soviet countries.
Large Russian speaking communities can also be found in Israel and Mongolia.
Russian came from the language that was once spoken in Kievan Rus, a confederation of Slavic tribes ruled by the Scandinavian dynasty of the Rurikids.
The dynasty was founded by Rurik ,a Varangian (Viking) prince from Scandinavia.
It is closely related to Ukrainian, Belorusian and the Rusyn language in Eastern Europe.
Basic Russian phrases.
Below follows a list of some basic Russian phrases you might find useful.
First goes the phrase written in Russian then the transliteration in English letters followed by the English translation.
Many of these phrases are accompanied by audio files.
You might not be accustomed to the Cyrillic alphabet so the English transliteration combined with audio can be very useful.
Christmas and New Year wishes in Russian.