The usual answer to this question is "it depends". True, and useless. Wanting to know how long something will take before you start is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask.

There are real numbers. Below you'll find them — and then, more usefully, where the time actually goes for an English speaker, because the difficulty is not evenly spread.

The most solid data we have: FSI

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), part of the US State Department, has been teaching languages to diplomats for decades and keeps records of how long each one takes. It's the most serious data source available.

FSI places Russian in its "hard languages" category, requiring roughly:

1100 class hours · 44 weeks (full-time, intensive instruction)

But that figure has to be read correctly. Two critical qualifications:

  1. It's full-time, classroom, professional training. Five or six hours a day, with a teacher, with no other job. And "professional working proficiency" doesn't mean chatting — it means running a business meeting.
  2. It's a benchmark, not a promise. People arrive with different backgrounds and leave at different points.

So 1100 hours does not mean "learning Russian takes 44 weeks". Your goal is almost certainly more modest than a diplomat's.

A realistic table by level

Most people aren't aiming for C1. Roughly, by the European framework (CEFR):

Level What you can do Estimated hours
A1 Greet people, introduce yourself, ask simple questions, read menus and signs ~130 hours
A2 Handle daily needs, shopping, directions, simple conversation ~300 hours (cumulative)
B1 Sustain a conversation, express opinions, travel comfortably ~650 hours (cumulative)
B2 Converse fluently, follow films and news, work in the language ~1100 hours (cumulative)

These aren't laws, just widely used estimates. But they show one thing clearly: the gaps between levels are not equal. Reaching A1 is comparatively quick; reaching B2 consumes three quarters of the total.

The good news: the level that changes your experience most is A2. You don't need B2 to get around, shop, and meet people in a Russian-speaking place.

What daily study actually buys

Turning hours into a calendar, assuming consistent work:

Daily time ~Hours/year A1 A2
15 minutes ~90 ~1.5 years ~3.5 years
30 minutes ~180 ~9 months ~1.5 years
1 hour ~365 ~4 months ~10 months
2 hours ~730 ~2 months ~5 months

The most important row is the 15-minute one — because a little done consistently beats a lot done erratically, though it does have limits. Fifteen minutes a day works; it's simply slower.

One caveat: these figures assume consistency. Three hours once a week gives the same total as twenty-five minutes daily, but not the same result. Language learning is sensitive to spacing; when you leave a gap, what you learned doesn't wait for you.

Where the time actually goes for an English speaker

The estimates above were measured on English speakers, so they already price in English-specific difficulty. But knowing which parts are expensive lets you plan — and stops you concluding you're bad at languages when you hit the predictable wall.

The four genuinely hard parts

1. The case system. This is the big one. Russian nouns, adjectives and pronouns change form according to their job in the sentence — six cases, each with singular and plural, varying by gender. English abandoned almost all of this; the only trace left is in pronouns (he / him / his, who / whom). That fragment is your hook: you already accept that him and he are the same word doing different jobs. Russian just does it to every noun. Expect this to take months, not weeks. (The Six Russian Cases)

2. Verbal aspect. Nearly every verb comes as a pair — one for process, one for completion — and choosing wrongly changes your meaning. English handles this with tense and context instead, so there's no direct equivalent to lean on. This is usually the last thing to feel natural. (Russian Verb Conjugation)

3. Grammatical gender. Every noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, and adjectives and past-tense verbs must agree. English has no grammatical gender at all, so this is a reflex built entirely from scratch.

4. Unpredictable stress. English stress is irregular too, but Russian stress also moves within a word's own forms (хочу́ but хо́чешь), and an unstressed о is pronounced like an a. This is why words must be learned with their stress and with audio, not from a printed list.

The parts that are easier than you expect

1. The alphabet. Genuinely a few days' work — and several letters are already familiar from maths and science (П pi, Ф phi, Л lambda). (How to Learn the Cyrillic Alphabet)

2. No articles. No a, no the, ever. If you've studied French or German, you know how much friction that removes.

3. Present tense of "to be" is simply absent. Я студе́нт — "I student". One less thing.

4. Spelling is close to phonetic. Once you know the letters and the stress rules, you can pronounce a word you've never seen — something English itself never offers.

The honest summary

Russian front-loads its difficulty into grammar rather than vocabulary or spelling. The alphabet takes days, basic phrases take weeks, and then cases and aspect are where the months go. Knowing that in advance is worth a lot: most people who quit do so at the case wall, believing they've hit a personal limit rather than a well-known and temporary one.

The four things that actually determine your speed

More decisive than any of the numbers above:

1. Consistency. Long breaks are the most expensive thing you can do. Two weeks off is not a two-week loss — you pay extra to get back.

2. A specific goal. "Learn Russian" isn't a goal. "Read a Russian menu", "hold an introduction conversation", "watch a series without subtitles" are goals, and each takes a different amount of time.

3. Active versus passive study. Watching videos is passive; producing sentences is active. Active practice moves you several times further in the same hour.

4. Whether sound is part of it. A word learned only by reading won't be recognised in speech. Anything learned without hearing it stays half-learned.

The honest answer

  • The Cyrillic alphabet: 3–5 days.
  • Your first sentences: 2–4 weeks.
  • A1 (introduce yourself, simple conversation): about 9 months at half an hour a day.
  • A2 (function in daily life): about 1.5 years.
  • B2 (fluency): several years, and usually a period of intensive study or immersion somewhere along the way.

Russian isn't a difficult language so much as a big one. The difficulty comes less from complexity than from volume: there's a great deal to learn, but each piece is logical.

And there's this: after about three weeks you'll be reading signs. That's a reward most people expect much later than it actually arrives.

Glagol is built for splitting that road into 15–30 minute sessions: spaced repetition surfaces whatever you're weakest on, native recordings put sound in from the first day, and the level path orders A1 to B2 so you don't have to.

Source: FSI language difficulty rankings