Why Russian Is Not As Hard As You Think

Why Russian is not as hard as you think

Some people say that the Russian language can be hard to learn but this is not really true. The main difficulty for a lot of people is learning the new grammar structure. However, if you have learnt other languages before you will already be familiar with some of these grammatical concepts, such as gender and cases.
Here are some things that make Russian easier.
1. Russian does not use complicated sentence structures like English, you can normally say exactly what you want with just a few words. For example, in English to be polite we would say something like “can you please pass me the salt”, however in Russian we would say something simpler like “give salt please”. Speaking so directly may feel unusual for an English speaker, however it is perfectly normal, just add the word ‘please’ to be polite. 
2. Russian uses the case system. Instead of having a strict sentence word order like in English, you just need to change the ends of the nouns. This makes Russian a very expressive language because you can emphasise a point by changing the order of the words in a sentence. 
3. Russian does not use articles. (Like “a” and “the”)
4. Russian has fewer tenses than English. Russian does not bother with the difference between “I was running”, “I had been running”, etc.