Чтобы говорить по-русски свободно, нужно прилагать усилия каждый день.

Чтобы here means “in order to / so as to” and introduces a purpose clause.

Pattern in this sentence:

• Чтобы + infinitive: Чтобы говорить по-русски свободно – In order to speak Russian fluently
• Main clause: нужно прилагать усилия каждый день – it is necessary to make efforts every day

Key points:

• Чтобы + infinitive is used when the doer (subject) is the same in both parts, and the sentence is impersonal or generic.
• It’s one word: чтобы, not что бы (which is a different construction).

You can often flip the order:

• Нужно прилагать усилия каждый день, чтобы говорить по-русски свободно.
  You need to make efforts every day in order to speak Russian fluently.

Because this is an impersonal, general statement about what one needs to do; it’s not about I/you/he specifically.

Two things are happening:

1. Чтобы + infinitive:

   • Чтобы говорить… = In order to speak…
     This is a standard purpose construction.

2. Нужно + infinitive:

   • нужно прилагать усилия = it is necessary to make efforts / you need to make efforts
     Russian often uses нужно/надо + infinitive instead of an explicit subject like “you”.

So instead of:

• You need to make efforts every day…
  Russian literally says:
• It is necessary to make efforts every day… (with infinitives).

Grammatically, there is no explicit subject. This is an impersonal construction:

• нужно = it is necessary (impersonal)
• прилагать усилия = to make efforts

Semantically, it usually means “you / one / we (in general)” need to do this. English chooses a pronoun (“you”), but Russian leaves it implied.

If you want to make the “person” explicit, you can add a dative pronoun:

• Тебе нужно прилагать усилия каждый день. – You (sg.) need to make efforts every day.
• Вам нужно прилагать усилия каждый день. – You (pl./formal) need to make efforts every day.

All relate to necessity/obligation, but with nuances:

• нужно – it is necessary

  • Slightly more neutral/formal than надо.
  • Used impersonal with an infinitive: нужно прилагать усилия.

• надо – need to / have to

  • Very common and colloquial.
  • You could also say: Чтобы говорить по-русски свободно, надо прилагать усилия каждый день. (same meaning, more conversational).

• должен – must / be obliged to

  • Stronger sense of duty or obligation.
  • Agrees with the subject:
    • Я должен прилагать усилия. (male speaker)
    • Я должна прилагать усилия. (female speaker)

In this sentence, нужно makes it sound like a general rule, not a personal moral duty.

Both are possible, but they’re slightly different constructions:

• по-русски (adverb) – literally “in a Russian way” → “in Russian” (language)

  • Very common for languages in speech:
    • по-английски – in English
    • по-французски – in French
  • In the sentence, говорить по-русски = to speak in Russian.

• на русском (языке) (preposition + adjective + noun)

  • More literally: “in the Russian language”.
  • Often used when we emphasize the language as a noun:
    • Он пишет на русском (языке). – He writes in Russian.
    • Книга на русском языке. – A book in Russian.

In your sentence, говорить по-русски is the most natural, everyday way to say it.
You could say говорить на русском, but по-русски is smoother and very idiomatic.

Свободно is an adverb, formed from the adjective свободный (“free”), and it modifies the verb говорить:

• говорить свободно – to speak freely / fluently

Compare:

• свободный человек – a free person (adjective)
• Он говорит свободно. – He speaks freely/fluently. (adverb)

Using an adjective like свободным wouldn’t fit here, because adjectives agree with nouns, not verbs.
We need an adverb to describe how the speaking is done → говорить свободно.

Прилагать усилия is a very common idiomatic phrase meaning “to make efforts / to put in effort”.

• прилагать (imperfective) – literally “to apply / to attach”
• усилия – “efforts” (accusative plural of усилие, effort)

So прилагать усилия = to apply efforts → to make efforts.

You’ll often see:

• прилагать усилия к чему-либо – to make efforts toward something
  e.g. Он прилагает усилия к изучению русского языка. – He is making efforts to study Russian.

This is the imperfective aspect vs perfective aspect contrast:

• прилагать – imperfective (ongoing, repeated, process)
• приложить – perfective (single, completed action)

The sentence talks about regular, repeated effort over time:

• нужно прилагать усилия каждый день – you need to be making efforts every day / keep making efforts every day

So the imperfective infinitive прилагать is appropriate.
If you used приложить усилия, it would suggest a single, completed effort at some particular moment, which doesn’t match “каждый день” (every day).

Усилия is in the accusative plural, functioning as the direct object of the verb прилагать:

• Base form (nominative singular): усилие – effort
• Nominative plural: усилия – efforts
• Accusative plural of neuter inanimate nouns = same as nominative plural → усилия

Structure:

• прилагать (что?) усилия – the verb answers “what?” → accusative.

Каждый день is an accusative time expression meaning “every day”.

• каждый – “every” (masculine accusative singular)
• день – “day” (masculine accusative singular = nominative singular form for inanimate nouns)

Russian often uses bare accusative noun phrases to express frequency or duration:

• каждый день – every day
• каждую неделю – every week
• весь день – all day

So:

• прилагать усилия каждый день = to make efforts every day, no preposition needed.

Because Чтобы говорить по-русски свободно is a subordinate clause of purpose, and нужно прилагать усилия каждый день is the main clause.

Rule of thumb in Russian:

• Subordinate clause introduced by чтобы is separated from the main clause by a comma.

Structure:

• [Чтобы говорить по-русски свободно], [нужно прилагать усилия каждый день].

If you reverse the order, you still keep the comma:

• Нужно прилагать усилия каждый день, чтобы говорить по-русски свободно.

Yes. Russian word order is relatively flexible, especially with adverbs.

All of these are acceptable and natural, with only slight changes in emphasis:

• Чтобы свободно говорить по-русски, нужно прилагать усилия каждый день.
• Чтобы говорить по-русски свободно, нужно каждый день прилагать усилия.
• Чтобы говорить по-русски свободно, каждый день нужно прилагать усилия.

Core constraints:

• Чтобы must start its clause.
• The infinitive(s) must stay in that clause: Чтобы (что делать?) говорить…
• Нужно stays in the main clause with its infinitive прилагать.

Everything else (placement of свободно, каждый день) is somewhat flexible and used for rhythm or emphasis.