Breakdown of Говорить по-русски сложнее, чем просто читать книгу.
Questions & Answers about Говорить по-русски сложнее, чем просто читать книгу.
Russian often uses the infinitive to talk about actions in a general, abstract way, similar to English to speak, speaking.
In this sentence, Говорить по-русски is used in a general sense: speaking Russian (in general) is being compared to just reading a book (in general). No specific person is meant.
You could think of the structure as:
- Говорить по-русски – (To) speak Russian / Speaking Russian
- сложнее – is more difficult
- чем просто читать книгу – than just reading a book
You could add a pronoun and conjugate the verb:
- Мне сложнее говорить по-русски, чем просто читать книгу.
It’s harder for me to speak Russian than just to read a book.
But then the focus shifts from a general truth to a personal statement. The bare infinitive keeps it general and impersonal.
По-русски is an adverb meaning in Russian / in the Russian way. It’s very common when talking about speaking, writing, or understanding a language.
Both are possible:
- говорить по-русски
- говорить на русском (языке)
Differences:
по-русски
- Short, everyday, very common in speech.
- Feels slightly more informal and natural in many contexts.
на русском (языке)
- Literally in the Russian (language).
- Slightly more formal or neutral; common in writing, teaching contexts, etc.
In this kind of sentence, говорить по-русски is the most natural-sounding everyday choice.
Сложнее is the comparative form (short comparative) of the adjective сложный (complex, difficult).
- Base form: сложный – difficult
- Comparative: сложнее – more difficult
In this sentence, it functions as a predicative word, similar to English is more difficult:
- Говорить по-русски сложнее, чем...
Speaking Russian is more difficult than...
In Russian, short comparatives like быстрее, лучше, хуже, сложнее can describe how something is, and they don’t need extra words like есть / является (is) in everyday speech.
Russian has two ways to form comparatives:
Synthetic (one-word) comparative
- сложный → сложнее
- быстрый → быстрее
- красивый → красивее
Analytic (two-word) comparative with “более”
- сложно → более сложно
- красиво → более красиво
In this specific sentence:
- Говорить по-русски сложнее, чем... sounds natural and idiomatic.
- Говорить по-русски более сложно, чем... is possible, but feels heavier and less natural in everyday speech.
Native speakers overwhelmingly prefer the one-word сложнее here.
Чем introduces the second part of the comparison, like English than:
- сложнее, чем просто читать книгу
more difficult than just reading a book
Russian punctuation:
- In comparisons with чем, a comma is normally placed before чем when what comes before and after are clause-like or phrase-like units being compared:
- Говорить по-русски сложнее, чем писать по-русски.
- Учиться дома легче, чем работать на заводе.
So the comma is simply following the standard rule of separating the main statement from the чем-comparison phrase.
Russian strongly prefers infinitives to express general activities, especially after comparatives:
- Говорить по-русски сложнее, чем читать книгу.
- Писать по-русски легче, чем говорить.
Using a noun like простое чтение книги would sound stylistically heavy and unnatural in everyday language. It might be acceptable in very formal or philosophical texts, but even there, the infinitive is typically preferred.
Functionally, читать книгу here is an infinitive phrase acting like a noun (an activity) and is directly parallel to говорить по-русски:
- Говорить по-русски ↔ читать книгу
speaking Russian ↔ reading a book
Просто here means simply / just. It adds the idea that reading a book is easier / less demanding compared to speaking.
- просто читать книгу – to just read a book / to simply read a book
It modifies the whole action читать книгу, softening or downplaying it.
If you remove просто:
- Говорить по-русски сложнее, чем читать книгу.
The basic meaning (the comparison) stays the same, but you lose the nuance that reading a book is merely or only what you are doing, implying it’s the less challenging activity.
Читать is a transitive verb and takes a direct object in the accusative.
- читать книгу – to read a book
- книга (dictionary form, nominative)
- книгу (accusative, singular, feminine)
In this sentence, книгу is the thing being read, so it must be in the accusative case as the direct object of читать.
Yes, you can change the word order:
- Сложнее говорить по-русски, чем просто читать книгу.
- Говорить по-русски сложнее, чем просто читать книгу.
Both are correct and mean the same in context.
Subtle differences:
Говорить по-русски сложнее...
– Starts with the activity, then tells you it is harder.Сложнее говорить по-русски...
– Starts with the idea of it is harder, then specifies what is harder.
In normal speech, both variants sound natural. Russian word order is relatively flexible, and intonation will do much of the work.
The sentence talks about skills / activities in general, not about one specific completed event. In Russian, general repeated or ongoing actions are expressed with the imperfective aspect:
- говорить – to speak (imperfective)
- читать – to read (imperfective)
Using the perfective would sound wrong here:
- *сказать по-русски сложнее, чем просто прочитать книгу – this sounds unnatural; it focuses on single completed actions (to say once, to read through once) and doesn’t express the idea of the general activity or skill.
For comparing how hard skills are (speaking vs reading), the imperfective is the right and natural choice.