Countries and languages (русский, английский)

Language Adjectives

Russian names a language with an ADJECTIVE agreeing with язык: русский язык, английский язык. Almost all of them end in -ский, built straight off the country or people:

In everyday speech язык is often dropped — Я изучаю русский is perfectly ordinary.

Speaking a Language: the по- Adverb

To say you SPEAK a language, Russian does not use the adjective at all. It uses a special adverb built with по- and the ending -ски:

Я говорю *по-русски. — I speak Russian. Она читает по-английски.* — She reads English.

This is a different word from the adjective, and it is written with a hyphen. Use по-русски with a verb, русский with a noun. Saying Я говорю русский is a classic beginner error.

Where Are You From?

Откуда asks about origin — where from. It joins где (where) and куда (where to), which you will meet shortly, in a set of three that Russian keeps strictly apart.

Country and Homeland

Страна is a country as a place on the map. Родина is your homeland — the country you belong to — and it carries real emotional weight in Russian.

Иностранный is the adjective foreign.