Russian is an Indo-European language that is part of the Slavic branch of the family. It evolved over hundreds of years in what is now Russia. According to the eLinguistics.net analysis using specific software modules to assess linguistic relationships, the five languages most similar to Russian are Serbian, Ukrainian, Slovene, Polish, and Belarusian.
- Serbian (93.4)
The Serbian language is primarily spoken in Serbia and parts of Bosnia & Herzegovina, while Russia located further to the east. Despite their geographic distance, they have a lot of similar vocabulary, inherited from their common Slavic ancestry. Serbian and Russian speakers can often understand each other to some extent. - Ukrainian (93.0)
Ukraine border Russia and both were once part of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian is closely related to Russian, both being East Slavic languages. As such, they share a high degree of linguistic similarity. While there are differences in vocabulary and pronunciation, mutual intelligibility between Ukrainian and Russian speakers is relatively high. - Slovene (92.7)
Slovene is the most commonly spoken language in Slovenia. Although they are not as closely related as some other pairs on this list, there are many similarities. Words related to everyday life, family, nature, and basic concepts often exhibit similarities between the two languages. However, one big difference is that Slovene is written in the Latin script. - Polish (91.6)
Polish is a West Slavic language, which means it is more distantly related to Russian compared to Ukrainian and Serbian. There are notable differences in vocabulary and pronunciation, but speakers of Polish and Russian may still be able to understand each other to some extent, particularly with exposure and practice. - Belarusian (91.0)
Belarusian is another East Slavic language, closely related to Russian and Ukrainian. Belarus borders both Russia and Ukraine. Like Ukrainian, Belarusian shares many linguistic features with Russian, including noun cases, verb conjugation patterns, and vocabulary. There is a high degree of mutual intelligence as well.
(to be considered for the list, the language must be spoken by at least one million people)
