About all I remember of my two semesters of college Russian is the alphabet—which I naively thought was going to be the big hurdle in learning the language! I still use it to jot down things I don’t want others to read—like my ideas for Christmas gifts for my wife–drives her nuts.
But the language itself, after a comparatively easy language like Spanish, is incredibly complex. I never mastered the grammar, which to a learner seems hopelessly complicated. So, I’ll take your word for it—shto it is.
> So, I’ll take your word for it—shto it is.
Well, that’s how they pronounce it in the Slavic Baptist churches I’ve visited.
The alphabet is an adaptation of the Greek alphabet, given to the slavic nations by Cyril the monk in the 9th century.
The western Slavic nations got stuck with the Latin alphabet, I surmise, because the Baltic Mohammedans separated them from their Eastern brethren.