English and My First Language

The English and Russian language are widely used and share some common characteristics, yet they differ in some important aspects. First of all, they have the same functions in speaking and writing. People use them for verbal and written communication to express themselves. Like the English language, the Russian language has sounds (vowels and consonants) for oral speech. Both languages consist of letters for written speech. People learn the English language using the same process as those who learn the Russian language. Children normally hear a language from their parents since birth and try to reproduce the sounds. However, there are some differences between these two languages. The English language is based on the Latin alphabet, which is more common, whereas the Russian language is based on the Cyrillic alphabet. There are major differences in grammar. For example, the Russian language contains only three tenses, in contrast, the English language has many more. The English language uses articles such as "a", "an" and "the" whereas the Russian language functions without any articles. The word order in sentences is important in the English language, in contrast, there are not specific rules for the word order in the Russian language. Although the English and Russian language have common features, they are different in significant ways.