[ptaipale]

I don't even really know Russian, I've never studied it; but I have learned the alphabet, and I can typically understand some part of newspaper articles etc simply because there are so many loan words from languages I know (English, German, Swedish and Finnish).

There is a movement to "purify" Russian language of loan words, which sounds silly: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/20/russia...

[ommunist]

Yup, silly it is. I made a survey of preferential by understanding term for "widget" in Russian among Russian businessmen this January, and got about 90% "pro" votes for using the borrowed English term. Practical people do not care for "purity".