For a friend of mine, Eric, it's not a hard question. 'Russian is a language of a 1/7 part of the world. Besides, I'm doing business there,' he says. After the USSR has been destroyed Eric has found the market of former Soviet Union countries a booming one for his small business. And he's really succeeded with it. Partly, it became possible because of his strong will to learn the language of his partners. He was lucky, however, because in any former SU country people understand Russian. In many countries the most people also speak Russian and think it's their native language.

'Ah well, Larisa's English is also not well enough,' he adds in a dreaming voice. Larisa is his Russian girlfriend. Pretty, smart, polite young woman who just can't understand everything Eric tries to tell her. It's good for him he's not lazy to learn the language instead of asking anybody to translate her/his sometimes too intimate letters.

Any other reason, Eric?

'I always liked to learn foreign languages. So Russian isn't my first one. However, French and German are common to English; and I wanted to train my brain harder. That is why I thought that Russian would fill the gap. Indeed, six cases, tons of endings varying due to the case, tense etc. can train anyone's brain,' Eric continues. 'If Russians had hieroglyphs instead of Cyrillic alphabet, that would be perfect language for any brain killer to study,' he laughs. Indeed, even Russians sometimes wonder how they can merge all these endings and cases together seamlessly. As a great consequence of this little difficulty, they always proudly remark that if you mess all words in a sentence, it will remain its meaning nevertheless just because words are connected with each other through endings, not through their positions in the sentence.

'It's also great to read some original Russian book in the Evening before going to sleep,' Eric's arguments seem endless. Wise men say, 'The more languages you know, the more worlds you belong to'. Eric belongs to Russian as well. He's fond of Dostoyevsky, Bulgakov, Tolstoy and others, the authors not any Russian adult knows and likes. 'Without Russian classics I would be two times stupid than I am now,' Eric jokes.

All right, Eric. So you learn Russian for your business, for your romance, for your brain, for reading. Is it all?

'Well, those are the main reasons. But there are lots of advantages of at least understanding this language'

Any example?

'Do you know that in the Russian part of Internet you will hardly find a paid resource? Instead, it's filled with the info I'm required to pay for if I search for it on English websites.'

That's not big news, Russians don't like to pay much. Instead the most of them are altruist. That's their nature. That's what Russian Internet is built on.

'All right. I see you know everything. So isn't it time to finish the interview? I've already showed enough reasons for anyone to start learning Russian, haven't I?' Thank you for your time, Eric.

'Ne za chto, tebe spasibo.'

Al Polonski is an administrator and chief-editor of a free online Russian language tutor, Learn Russian Easily, based on the method of extensive reading. He can be reached through the website http://learnrussian.hut1.ru

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