Learn Russian from Italian for Free at PBC Languages

Italian gives you a head start with the rolled r and with clear, pure vowels, but Russian throws in sounds Italian never asks for: the ы vowel (nothing like anything in Italian, sits between i and u), the х sound (a hard, throaty h that doesn't exist in Italian phonetics), and palatalized consonants like ть, дь, нь, which make words like учитель or день sound softer than any Italian consonant cluster. Add consonant pile-ups such as здравствуйте or взгляд and the first weeks are mostly about training your mouth, not your grammar.

Where Italian speakers get burned fast is false friends: фамилия looks like famiglia but means surname, магазин looks like magazzino but means shop, бисквит looks like biscotto but is a sponge cake, and сервиз looks like servizio but is a dinner set. On top of that, Italian speakers try to bolt articles onto Russian (there are none) or translate prepositional phrases word for word instead of using the case Russian actually wants — vado a casa di Maria becomes a genitive ending, not a preposition plus di.

What moves fast: Italian already drops subject pronouns because the verb ending tells you who's speaking, and Russian works the same way, so you skip the habit English speakers have to unlearn. Verb aspect (perfective vs imperfective) also has a rough parallel in the passato prossimo vs imperfetto split you already use in Italian, which gives you a mental hook instead of starting from zero. Cognates from theatre, music and science (театр, музыка, паспорт) read almost like Italian once you know the alphabet.