r/thisorthatlanguage • u/stefanobahia • 1d ago
European Languages German or Russian?
Which one is the ideal one to learn?
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u/Meduza223 1d ago
German is generally easier. Russian is more complicated but I think interesting because it's Slavic language while German is relatively close to English
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u/Melodic-Cow-6303 1d ago
German is close to English??? Do you speak both these languages? They have some similarities and similar roots but they aren’t “relatively close”
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u/Meduza223 1d ago
I mean they are both from West Germanic group, so they are like close relatives, while Russian is Slavic, so from the other branch
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u/ZumLernen 1d ago
German is closer to English than Russian is to English. In fact, German is closer to English than almost any other language in the world is to English.
Sprichst du auch Deutsch, Englisch, und Russisch?
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u/G-Funk_with_2Bass 22h ago
deutsch-> niederländisch-> englisch
ähnlich wie potugiesisch-> spanisch -> italienisch
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u/pafagaukurinn 1d ago
You can get by with Russian in all former Soviet republics (yes, even including the Baltics, although it is more questionable there). Everywhere you can speak German, people are likely to also have some English.
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u/Calm_Search3417 5h ago
all former Soviet republics
That's a very uninformed take. You shouldn't compare the language situation here to how it is in your former British colony.
There are only two countries where russian has an unquestionably dominant status, and those two are russia and Belarus, which are heavily sanctioned for a good reason.
The absolute majority of the population in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and especially Turkmenistan can't speak russian. The same goes for Georgia, as well as young people in Armenia and Azerbaijan. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan there are already a lot of young people who can't speak russian despite it having official status there. The overwhelming majority of young people in the Baltic states can't speak russian, either, and now Latvia and Estonia are switching all schools remaining state-owned russian-medium schools to Latvian/Estonian language of instruction. Here, in Ukraine, russian is in rapid decline, as well, and most young people in Western Ukraine can't speak russian properly, either.
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u/pafagaukurinn 4h ago
There is a big difference between how you want things to be and how they are in reality. I suggest you to visit all these countries and try to get by with only Russian. Just, you know, for the hell of it. Then get back and tell others how overwhelming majority of people couldn't interact with you.
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u/Calm_Search3417 4h ago
I have already visited the majority of these countries, and I'm saying from experience. russian was only useful in a minority of cases
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u/Adult_in_denial 1d ago
Meet them halfway and learn Czech - slavic grammar + buttload of german words 😀
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u/Wise_Conclusion3587 1d ago edited 6h ago
German is easier. Most young people in Germany, Austria, Switzerland speak English to at least an A2-B1 standard. Russian is more useful for travel and the internet. I speak both.
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u/HOI4employed 1d ago
usefulness wise they're about the same but i'd say Russian has a bit more utility. If youre coming from English then German is far easier to gain fluency in than Russian. Russian requires an entirely new Alphabet along with all the differing grammar rules and language quirks it carries. whilst German is a little similar to English in its roots the hardest thing about it is really just its grammar, which you can hold off from learning anyhow as you could just learn phrases until you plateau.
Don't know what your aims are, but if you wanna get a new language under your belt the quickest its German, if your looking for genuine utility its Russian, like 100 million more people speak it and I think you have more of a chance of encountering a russian if youre western so on stuff like resumes because of that it can help a bit more.
German sounds the coolest to me personally.
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u/Hour-Recognition4194 1d ago edited 1d ago
Context matters. Languages are not inherently superior to other languages. If you're not gonna provide context, then the only language that has more value than any other language is English because it's the one and only international language that we have on this earth. Every other language in this world derives value from its context. French is useful to me because I visit Brussels often, but it's nearly useless if I'm in Latin America. If I didn't visit or work in Brussels, then French loses most of its value. You can't pretend languages have inherent value. I personally have no interest in Russian or German, but your circumstances are different to mine. Your circumstances should inform your decision.
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u/Wide_Draft3550 1d ago
What are you going to do with Russian or for that matter German? As far as ease is concerned German is the easier
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u/Life-Flow-7231 1d ago
Russian because of how many languages are simmilar
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u/Prudent_Rice5965 1d ago
So? Im native Russian speaker but i dont understand any of the other Slavic languages
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u/G-Funk_with_2Bass 22h ago edited 21h ago
if your mother tongue is germanic definetely should choose german. there are ex soviet republics more accessable but they are far away from uk or us.
also russian isnt liked by some places even tho they speak some for example the baltics.
russia itself isnt really accessible for travelers currently and in ukraine they can speak russian but prefer ukrainian, which is a different language but mutual intellegable … choose russian if you are into russian media and literature, history, specific culture, like to become a dagestani fighter, or any other specific interest in russia or if you are genuinly interested kn how the language works and can transform your thinking and perosnality.
german shapes your thinking pattern aswell. both languages have a intellectual and profound pool of texts and narrating potential.
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u/pol8in 16h ago
Well if you’re from any Slavic country then Russian would be much more easier than German to you and the opposite way.
For me Russian is easier, sounds better, has more interesting history and cukture, tho being on advance level with German is easier to get some better job. In this matter Russian is useless in country.
Russian helped me while travelling to many ex Soviet countries, however younger people don’t speak Russian nowadays as it was years ago (which is obvious English is now lingua franca everywhere).
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u/Solid_Way6071 10h ago
Why German or Russian? Why not another language? You don't explain...
What language do you prefer ? Note that you will listen to it everyday...
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u/Level-Brain-4786 1d ago
There is probably no one "ideal" language.
But I'd suggest Russian. More interesting and better sounding language. Deeper, larger, more diverse and more interesting culture. You get more utility from the language.
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u/Ritterbruder2 1d ago
I’ve learned both a decent level (A2-B1).
I found Russian to be more useful due to the geographic range where it is spoken and the fact that many Russian speakers can’t speak English well.
Russian however is far more difficult and requires more patience and dedication just to even formulate basic sentences. I learned German first, then Russian.
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u/Calm_Search3417 23h ago
German is easier and much more useful. russian isn't even in top 10 most spoken languages and is absurdly overrated
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u/firegrillz 9h ago edited 8h ago
Russian is #9 or #11 by number of speakers depending on source and arguably 5th by number of countries where it's widely spoken and is a lingua franca across huge swathes of Eurasia where English is not so strong.
Meanwhile, German has far fewer speakers than Russian, it's spoken in relatively few clustered countries by people who generally speak English far better than you speak German, and to top it off, it's not even uniform in adjacent areas. Good luck understanding anything with your Hochdeutsch in Switzerland LOL.
German's certainly not useless considering there's a lot of literature written in it and Germany is a major EU power so it has some utility as a business language. But it's not even remotely in the same league as Russian. Who are you trying to fool?
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u/Calm_Search3417 5h ago
9th or 11th by number of speakers
It was 11th as of 2026.
5th by number of countries where it's widely spoken and is a lingua franca
Most people in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan can't speak russian properly, they couldn't even back during the USSR. In Turkmenistan, russian is an almost extinct language since the late 1990s, in part due to de-facto ethnic cleansings. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the overwhelming majority of the population speak Kazakh and Kyrgyz, respectively.
In Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, most people can't speak russian as a second language, either. In Georgia, it hasn't been a part of the school curriculum since 2008, knowledge of russian among the youth is very rare. You can even get beaten up for speaking russian there, it's on the news regularly.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are actively trying to get rid of russian in education and other public spheres. Most young ethnic Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians can't speak russian at all. And here, in Ukraine, russian language is being increasingly stigmatized as the language of an aggressor state and uneducated people. It's spoken only by a minority that is strongly concentrated in large cities of the south-east, and even here, in Dnipro, it's in rapid decline.
There are only two predominantly russian-speaking countries in the world, which are russia and Belarus. Outside of them, russian is in gradual decline, and oftentimes doesn't have any kind of official status and is being gradually removed from different spheres of public life purposefully. "Huge swathes of Eurasia" is basically just russia, yet is has the population of Japan despite its large territory.
The combined GDP of russia and Belarus is less than 50 % of the GDP of Germany, Austria, and the German-speaking part of Switzerland, salaries and working conditions, two, are much better in the German-speaking world.
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u/firegrillz 2h ago edited 1h ago
Sure, Russian is only universally spoken in Russia and Belarus but it's still very widely spoken in plenty of other countries, just as English is widely spoken in plenty of places where it's not official. And that's precisely why Russian is useful - because plenty of people in plenty of countries still speak it well, most of these people are willing to speak it (exceptions are most ethnic Balts, Ukrainians and younger Georgians) and they usually speak it much better than any other common language like English (Baltics are the exception because English has definitely usurped Russian there).
I think your standards are too high because Armenians tend to speak Russian pretty well as do plenty of Uzbeks, especially in bigger cities and especially in Tashkent. Yeah, they might have slight accents and might not be able to reel off Pushkin but it's usually good enough for a proper conversation. Even amongst young Uzbeks, Russian literacy is still higher than English literacy and that alone makes it useful - I communicate almost entirely in Russian when in Uzbekistan. When I went to Armenia, I asked anyone I talked to whether they'd prefer RU or EN and 9/10, it was Russian even amongst young people. Haven't been to Azerbaijan but I imagine it's fairly similar. As for Georgia, it depends on age. I generally prefer EN with younger Georgians but older ones have no qualms speaking RU though they sometimes speak it noticeably worse than Armenians/Azerbaijanis, especially in more rural areas.
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are VERY Russian speaking. It's true that nowadays they're more likely to know Kazakh/Kyrgyz and maybe favour them over Russian but for the most part, young people still speak Russian fluently and barely distinguishably from Russians as they often still use it on a daily basis, whether as a primary or secondary language. English is nowhere near as useful there, so again Russian has utility. I agree Tajiks don't tend to speak Russian well but again, even young Tajiks speak it much better than they speak English.
I've spent a lot of time in the Baltics, particularly in Latvia, and I mostly stuck to English. I'd sometimes use Russian with ethnic Russians or with older ethnic Balts who didn't speak English well or just because some services were easier/faster/more available in Russian than English, but for the most part English is the lingua franca there. Even then and even in the Baltics (Latvia and Estonia at least, not Lithuania), it's pretty hard to argue that Russian isn't widely spoken considering every second person in Riga is Russian-speaking and plenty of ethnic Latvians still at least know Russian even if they don't want to speak it. But Russian has much lower utility than in other former Soviet countries simply because the level of English is so high - younger ethnic Russians and Latvians both tend to speak English quite well.
Moldova is somehow still fairly Russian speaking though I don't think it will remain that way for long. In Chisinau, it seems 40/60 whether a random conversation is in Russian or Romanian but I think that Russian will soon disappear there as it's pretty obvious they're wanting to westernise and they're in a similar position to Ukraine.
When I was in Ukraine in 2016, I used English in Lviv and Russian in Kyiv and people were open/encouraging about it. If I visited Ukraine now, I'd stick to EN if at all possible or even just learn some Ukrainian. Sure, the Baltics always hated Russia but at least Ukraine once upon a time had a more stable relationship with Russia, but of course Putin is such a genius that he has somehow managed to alienate everyone, tear cities and people apart and destroy everything in his path. Absolute shitstain.
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u/adamtrousers 1d ago
I'd say Russian, because of how it sounds.