Russian is the most widely spoken language of Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages.

Russian belongs to the group of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Irish. Written examples are attested from the 10th century onwards.

While it preserves much of its ancient synthetic-inflexional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian exhibits a large stock of the international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of great political importance in the twentieth century, Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations. Although the international prestige of the language has waned since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the positions of Russian as the lingua franca of much of eastern Europe and northern Asia has only strengthened.

We have compiled a list of russian phrases for you to help you understand the Russian language, and to better help you cominicate on your trip to russia.

Source: http://www.russia.com