How do people speak and read Russian? There are seemingly infinite long words that are almost identical or at least similar. I thought Turkish was crazy about this but Russian is another level. Большое спасибо мои друзья

Writer, podcaster, and commentator on foreign affairs and politics. Runs /dropglobalnews

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My wife's (she's married to a Russian-speaker) Russian teacher insists that one needs not to worry about all the pre/postfixes and just say and read the roots and piece meaning together from that. Some meaning is lost but the main idea will mostly be clear. After some comfort with that you can start getting fancy.