What motivates foreigners to learn Russian? 10 reasons
One of our Russian language teachers almost always asked her students the same question “what motivates you to learn Russian?”. And for all my time of work she received many different answers to it:
In this article, we list the most popular answers collected from many surveys.
1. Scientific texts
Some people studied Russian to learn scientific texts in Russian language. By the way, at the beginning of the 20th century, all Sinologists studied Russian, because Russia had the best Sinology schools in Europe.
2. Work purpose
Others enrolled Russian language courses to be able to work in Russia.
3. Roots
People with Russian roots were interested in revealing their origin.
4. Friends/relatives
Some students learned the language because they interacted with native Russian speakers or with people living in Russia.
5. Book Lovers
Book lovers said they just needed to learn Russian in order to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol and Bulgakov.
6. Politically motivated
Political leftists said that Russian was the language of Lenin, Trotsky and other great men of the revolution.
7. Political attitudes
Conservative-minded people say that Russia is a stronghold of conservatism.
8. Pragmatists
Pragmatic people said that Russian is spoken by 300 million people and that it is one of the working languages at the UN.
9. Movie lovers
In many cases, interest in Russia and the Russian language was caused by cultural material – the film “Doctor Zhivago” or the cartoon “Anastasia”. One of our French students started to learn Russian language because he liked the Russian-influenced gangster conversation in “A Clockwork Orange”. Now this guy speaks Russian better than most Russians, and being tall, chubby, bearded and kind, he is often mistaken for a Russian priest.
10. Weird motivations
One person told her that the best thing about learning Russian was being able to distinguish colors better. In most languages, the colors cyan and blue are perceived as the same color. The same is true for other colors. In Russian, colors have shades that are not so easy to render in other languages.
As you can see, the answers and motivation are very different, but all these people have one thing in common – the desire to learn Russian.
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