Russian

FACT FILE:

Official language in: Russia

Co-language in: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Krgyzstan, Tajikistan

Minority language in: Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Poland, Romania

Spoken by: 150 million (native)

Language family: East Slavic – Slavic – Balto-Slavic – Indo-European

Writing system: Cyrillic (Russian alphabet)

Fun Fact: Russian is known as the language of space. If you want to become an astronaut, you need to learn Russian. Other than NASA, Roscosmos is the largest space agency in the world. To get to the International Space Station astronauts need to hitch a ride on the Soyuz docking craft, where half of the components and systems aboard are in Russian.