UW-Madison Students'
Reasons For Studying Russian
1. Russian is simply a cool language!
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Impress your friends by writing their names in another alphabet.
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The Russian alphabet can be a great tool for writing messages in code.
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Russian is phonetically easy compared to many other languages.
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The alphabet is cool: it's like a secret code.
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The Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet is not difficult at all. By the time
midterm rolls around, students in first-semester Russian can't remember what it was like
not to know the Russian alphabet! It becomes second nature.
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Russian has no articles (words like "a" or "the" in
English)!
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Russian is unique. Everyone studies Spanish or French. Be
different!
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Russian has no present tense of the verb "to be"!
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The letter "Zh" is beautiful -- the way it's written and the
way it sounds!
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Backwards "R"s -- enough said!
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Learn how to correctly pronounce "babushka" .
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Russian language is beautiful to hear and speak.
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Russian literature is among the most beautiful and exciting national
literatures in the world.
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Before taking a test, it's customary in Russian to tell people to go to
hell! (This is actually part of a Russian custom analogous in some ways to telling
an actor "to break a leg.")
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Students in Russian classes report that they make great friends in their
Russian classes.
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With a small program such as Russian, we can take care to attend to the
needs of all our students.
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Only cool people take Russian!
2. Expand your intellect! Get cultured!
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Russian stretches the mind!
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Learning Russian helps you better understand English grammar: you'll
finally learn when to use "whom" and when to use "who"!
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Russian culture is exciting.
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Learn Russian to understand more of the context of recent history with
regard to the Cold War.
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The politics, history, and culture of Russia are extremely
interesting.
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Learning Russian is an exciting introduction to a different
culture.
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Russian is the native language of some of the greatest writers, artists,
musicians, dancers, scientists, philosophers, and filmmakers: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy,
Solzhenitsyn, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Pushkin, Chaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev,
Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Baryshnikov, Pavlova, Medeleev, Pavlov, Sakharov, Hertsen,
Berdiaev, Diaghilev, Chagall, Malevich, Kandinsky, Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Sokurov, just to
name a few. Learn Russian, and you can better understand the world in which these great
thinkers have lived!
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What makes Russia great is the people and you must understand the
language to be able to understand them.
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Learn Russian to read Russian literature in Russian (and understand
Stolichnaya vodka ads!)
3. For the high-class couch potato:
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Watch the X-Files and get a whole lot more out of the scenes in which
characters speak Russian!
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You can laugh at the mistakes in subtitles in TV and movies.
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Revisit some of your favorite films and watch again to figure out what
they are really saying, for example, in Letter to Brezhnev, Clockwork Orange, So I Married
an Ax Murderer, Russia House, Red October, Red Heat, No Way Out, Red Dawn, Air Force One,
The Saint, Dr. Strangelove, Moscow on the Hudson, White Nights, and many of the James Bond
movies.
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Find out for yourself if Sean Connery can really speak Russian!
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Compare the Russian of Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Robin Williams and
Kevin Costner and decide for yourself who can speak it the best! Maybe you too can get a
starring role in a spy-thriller!
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Learn Russian to follow the action in the NHL better and know how to
pronounce the Russian players' names!
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Make more sense of Klingon speech. Russian is the native language of
Lieutenant Worf on Star Trek!
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Russian Rock Music is great!
4. Expand your career opportunities!
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National research has shown that undergraduates who study Russian have a
much higher acceptance rate into graduate and professional programs of study (law,
medicine, business, and graduate programs in literature, history, political science, and
so forth).
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Learn Russian to communicate on the new international space
station!
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Russia is an incredible land of contrasts and will always be a country
of strategic importance to the American economy and global security.
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Russian stands out on a resume; 75% of all students studying a foreign
language in the US study Spanish, French or German.
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Great career opportunities combining Russian and business, law, natural
resources, law enforcement, natural sciences, sociology, social work, nursing,
engineering, psychology ... and more!
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Russia is developing economically quite rapidly and there are lots of
business opportunities.
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Potential employers are impressed when they see you've studied
Russian.
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Russian is useful not only in Russia, but throughout the former Soviet
Union/Newly Independent States: one language: access to dozens of cultures!
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When you apply for a job, you can bet that there will be one hundred
applicants for the job who have studied Spanish or French or German, but very few who have
studied Russian. Studying Russian can help you stand out from the crowd!
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Despite the advent of democracy, Russian government is still a
mysterious entity and the US government will continue to need experts to help us
understand what's going on behind the walls of the Kremlin.
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Russia is a new market with lots of opportunities for business.
5. Travel!
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Moscow and St. Petersburg are happening cities!
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In two years of Russian language instruction, you can acquire the basics
you need to communicate with Russians and prepare yourself to study abroad.
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Visit the north (including St. Petersburg) and experience the romantic
White Nights.
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Despite what you may have heard in the American media, reports of crime
in Russia are grossly exaggerated. The cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg are
significantly safer than the American cities of Washington, DC, Chicago, Milwaukee, Los
Angeles, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia in terms of per capita incidents of violent crime
and non-violent crime. American students studying in Russia should by all means take care
and use common sense about their behavior in a large city, but they need not be unduly
concerned. Moscow is not a Chicago-style gangland from the prohibition era!
6. Increase your chances of getting spoiled!
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Russians are incredibly friendly when they invite you to their homes for
endless glasses (yes, glasses!) of tea and all the sweets they can ply you with, no matter
where you meet them. Americans studying in Russia often find that they make friendships
which last them a lifetime.
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With a small program such as Russian, we can take care to attend to the
needs of all our students.
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Expand your social opportunities!
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Eat at a Russian restaurant & order in Russian!
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Russia is a great place to visit.
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Russia is a huge country: Russian is spoken by hundreds of millions of
people around the world as a first or second language.
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Make Russian friends: Russian friendships last a lifetime.
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Take a look at the beauty and richness of Russia by surfing to a site
with images of Russia.
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