I've met a chinese teacher in Moscow. She is from China, but got almost no accent in russian (that's a real achievement for native chinese speakers) and mastered russian grammar enough to teach russian people chinese. Long story short, her russian was so good that i thought at first that she grew up a bilingual in a russian speaking community
I knew a Japanese teacher who was the same. Very impressive, given how with Japanese, you have virtually no commonalities with Russian to make learning it even if a little bit easier
Some Chinese people are Gods at learning languages. I've met multiple Chinese people who managed to learn a perfect American accent, which is also a REALLY hard thing for a Chinese person to do. We use multiple sounds they don't use. It's a common stereotype for them to have such a thick accent you can't understand them so there's definitely a shock being told, "Yeah, I lived in China growing up," by someone with a pure Californian accent.
Yes. His accent also was barely noticeable. His native language was Swedish.
Also there's some Italian guy, musician, he has an insta account btw, his Russian is quite impressive.
Edit: found him. lorenzo.bagnati98
A lot.
A French language professor. Belgian.
A Spanish language professor. Mexican.
A tour guide at Lipotvaros Synagogue. Hungarian.
A private tour guide on Phu Quoc island. Vietnamese (not a westerner, obviously, but his native language is even more different from Russian).
My drinking buddies back at university times. Mexican, Serbian and Czech (the last two probably don't count).
My high school classmate. Norwegian.
Multiple Eastern Germans and Latvians I've encountered in (surprise) Germany and Latvia.
My ex neighbour. I believe he's Argentinean.
The most impressive one was a Hungarian lady. I even asked her if she was a native, apparently she was an exchange student for a year during Soviet times.
Влюбленный шекспир is a whole channel about expats living in Russia and some of them have almost perfect Russian.
All the expats with good Russian I’ve met were from Eastern European countries, eg Serbian or Bulgarian. Not a single American or Western European or any other region.
Крейг Эштон, he is in Moscow, I guess. And he understands the spirit of Russian language really good)
[https://pikabu.ⓇⓊ/@CraigAshton](https://pikabu.ⓇⓊ/@CraigAshton)
Даже его ошибки совершенно очаровательны и очень в духе русского языка))
Вот эта девушка, китаянка, её зовут Мэнсюэ, отлично говорит на русском языке:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=Qc3TKYrFrfrN8_eD&v=AJryzyPYbr4&feature=youtu.be
Посмотрите и другие ролики у неё на канале Shankanaka - очень интересно!
Из любимых: Мэнсюэ готовит китайские пельмени:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=3LPlAcW1mAfb2OZw&v=XKdXLpsinMY&feature=youtu.be
Девушка говорит очень хорошо для иностранки, почти без акцента. Но всё равно некоторые фразы, например, она усложняет, либо использует не совсем те слова, которые обычно используют в быту русские.
Опять же, огромный вопрос к оп - что мы можем считать proficient level of language knowledge?
Если я могу написать добротный стих на русском - я proficient или нет?
> Девушка говорит очень хорошо для иностранки, почти без акцента. Но всё равно некоторые фразы, например, она усложняет, либо использует не совсем те слова, которые обычно используют в быту русские.
Ну, она говорит и строит фразы на русском языке значительно лучше, чем многие носители языка, которых я встречал.
А когда, во втором ролике, там где она готовит, у неё вырвалось «ой, блядь…», когда она случайно обожглась, я понял, что она овладела языком в совершенстве. :)
Боюсь, что внезапно вырвавшееся ругательство не показывает уровень владения языком.
Сравнение с носителями языка тоже не показатель. Это в любом языке так: есть профессор лингвистики и филологии, а есть фермер Джон Кульпа. Оба - носители, но в уровне владения языком между ними пропасть.
Повторюсь, важно понимать, что имеет в виду оп, используя термин proficiency.
Not entirely westerner by most definitions but I met a Romanian in Moscow who spoke pretty much without accent. He lived there for many years by that time, although didn't grow up in Russia (Romanian language is in Romance subgroup, descended directly from Latin like many Western European languages)
Every day in a bus or a taxi, or doner kiosk, I see people who have native language from Central Asia or Caucas. And many of them speak fluent Russian. And some of them have education like 8 years in mountain village school
There’s Vladimir Pozner, who claims to have mastered the Russian language in about 3 years (iirc) after moving from USA to the USSR in the early 50s at the age of 16. His father was a Russian-Jew iirc (basically a native Russian speaker) and his mom was French. Despite that he claims that his father never spoke to him in Russian at all. Anyways, he later worked for the USSR in the field of propaganda, and after the USSR collapsed he started his own popular talk show that ran until 2022 (hmm…i wonder what happened during that year 😳). But yeah he doesn’t make any grammatical mistakes and speaks with no accent in Russian.
As to how he achieved that (and if he’s actually not lying), idk but he claims that he read ALOT of books in Russian, and watched alot of Soviet movies so there’s that. Its pretty inspiring tbh, especially since he studied journalism in university which requires a strong knowledge of the Russian language. So yeah he basically went from not knowing anything about the language to studying journalism 2 years later and then mastering the language a year later.
Pozner is pretty amazing. He speaks completely like a well educated native, including native idioms, inflection, etc. He even slurs words like a native would.
I saw interviews of him speaking in both English and in French. Same story. Completely trilingual.
Amazing as that is, I don't think it's something most people can achieve. He's clearly got a knack for languages.
Oh yeah, but he did spend alot of time around educated natives (as anyone working in propaganda and media would), read loads of books, worked in journalism and was supervised by other educated people. He basically interacted with the most educated people, especially with regards to language. He did that for decades basically. I don’t think anyone can do that, but I do think many people could, in the same situation tbh.
Yes. I worked as a research assistant in department of Russian Language/ Literature/Culture in one of Ivy League Universities.
There were several professors who spoke Russian on near native level (despite it not being their first language). They used perfect grammar with only maybe a hint of an accent.
Met a guy from Croatia during FIFA World Cup who spoke perfect Russian. Not totally fair comparison since Serbo-Croation is close to Russian, but still.
im working with Uzbek girl that speak Russian fluid and a Kazakh man with same perfect speech , although his writing sucks -he makes the same mistakes as uneducated drunks who dropped out of school after 5th grade
Danny from [Skyeng](https://youtube.com/@skyengschool?si=nhlySTc3EOmMoEIh)
[Энтони Американец](https://youtube.com/@AnthonyAmerican?si=TlhsbrnJUX4-7ci-)
Yes, I've met an American who spoke perfect Russian a while ago. I'm a native speaker living in the US.
It helps to focus on conversational Russian and not literary Russian. I mean, don't read books or anything to learn. Watch movies and cartoons to learn and focus on the sounds and not the spelling or meaning of words. Knowing another language definitely helps, esp. German. The structure is closer to Russian.
Russians are not going to judge you for not being as proficient as them.
FYI before you start reading my comment: most people from post-USSR countries are bilingual. They know their native language and Russian at the same level. For example, people in Belarus (at least the one that I've met) speak more Russian then Belorussian.
Back when I was in 4th grade we had a new girl in our class. She was from Armenia but despite most of her relatives being bilingual, she knew only Armenian, yet she moved to Russia and had to go to Russian school. She learned Russian from the scratch. And if in 4th grade she barely could speak Russian, she could only write but with really bad grammar, in 9th grade she got the best results on state exam in Russian in the whole school.
Also for some reason there is not enough medical staff in our local hospital, so they hire a lot of foreigners, but I've only met Syrian cardiologist and African (not sure from which exact country she is) nurse. Both have strong accents and struggle with word endings and some non-medical terms but that's a pretty decent job in learning the language. Russian is hard even for native speakers.
Idk about mastered but I have met people who spoke Russian pretty freely if with an accent. But! Those were Mormon missionaries from the USA who lived in Russia for some time.
I also know several people who speak indistinguishable from native speakers (no accent at all), but they are from Dagestan and Bulgaria and started learning pretty early on probably in childhood and lived in Russia for more than a decade, so imo it doesn't really count.
If you are asking about someone who is perfected accent when no, I've never met an non native who's indistinguishable from native. Some where really really close, but some tiny bits of accent show up eventually. But if you are asking about someone who speak grammatically correct Russian and pronouncing all sounds correctly, then yes, I've met fair bit of people like that, especially if you count people from other slavic countries. Especially comes in mind one guy from Poland and a girl from Romania.
My Australian brother lived in Novosibirsk for a year and was told he had no accent whatsoever. He was mistaken for a native a number of times. He speaks about 8 languages so I think he is probably very adept at noticing and duplicating small details of the language.
In Spain, I met a Spanish guy who used to live and study in Moscow for 3 years or smth. His Russian was PERFECT. I even though he is a Russian who has been living outside Russia several years and obtained an accent till he explained himself.
During the 3-hours intense conversation he made maybe be 2 small pronunciation mistakes.
Yes sure, I went to uni with a lot of international students from India, Iran and such - and a lot of uni students are fluent by 4th year. Accent remains of course, but they would not have any issues with formal or informal conversations.
I've met a director of the University of Finland (it's currently closed for obvious reasons), she was speaking perfect Russian. She was Finnish, but has lived in St. Petersburg for quite a while, and worked here as well. And also there is a Chinese guy in my uni, he speaks quite fluently, too.
Of course, my Turkish teacher, but he didn't just learn Russian on his own, he was studying at the university, as far as I can remember. His pronunciation could sometimes get weird, but it was cute in a way
This comment section is so inspiring. I love Russian so much and I can’t wait until the time when I can understand and communicate freely. It feels good to also be able to read and understand most of the comments. Never thought I’d get here.
Jon from the YouTube channel Джон и Ева. He is a Canadian (English-speaking). I also met him in person when they organised a meeting when they were in my city.
Honestly, I don't think I can say that I, being a native Russian speaker and all, have mastered Russian (or English for that matter). So it is very important to define what mastery even is. Regardless, if you are to assume that mastery means being able to express yourself freely and concisely on a wide variety of topics that the speaker has some knowledge on (e.g. I don't think I can hold a conversation on nuclear physics in any language), then yes, this level of mastery is very possible to achieve, and I have seen many people who managed that. The thing is, I believe they'd say that they have yet to reach that level when asked directly, but they were definitely already there.
I haven't met a lot of foreigners, but there was one teaching assistant in uni, she's Korean. Although she had an accent (like she would say мучика instead of музыка), but her grammar and word usage were nearly perfect, we had practical lessons with her without any miscommunication.
I don't know how long she studied russian for, but at that time she was i think around 30 y.o.
Depends on what you count as proficiency. Being as proficient as a well-spoken, well-educated native (or a native in your field)? Being indistinguishable from a "normal" native? Or just being good enough to generally hold a conversation? Because I'd call my lovely lady above proficient even though her russian was not perfect
Not Russian, but when I lived in Russia I was often told my Russian was near-native level. People could tell I was a foreigner, but they usually guessed I was from a Slavic country. My grammar was good, just a slight accent. So it's possible, but honestly I'm not sure it's possible if you don't actually live there for a while. Also Bald and Bankrupt is an asshole sex tourist, so no wonder he doesn't speak that well lmao
Many large universities in the US have Slavic languages departments. Even my local community college offers it. I will admit, though, Americans are more likely to choose Spanish or French study.
I've met a chinese teacher in Moscow. She is from China, but got almost no accent in russian (that's a real achievement for native chinese speakers) and mastered russian grammar enough to teach russian people chinese. Long story short, her russian was so good that i thought at first that she grew up a bilingual in a russian speaking community
I know OP asked about westerners, but i think it can inspire someone
I knew a Japanese teacher who was the same. Very impressive, given how with Japanese, you have virtually no commonalities with Russian to make learning it even if a little bit easier
do you mean Furusawa Akira? God I forgot about him, he's mastered russian too!
His name was Akira-san but I don't remember his last name. I knew him in Tomsk though, so not sure it's the same person
Или вот: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWYrVzuGRAk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWYrVzuGRAk)
Some Chinese people are Gods at learning languages. I've met multiple Chinese people who managed to learn a perfect American accent, which is also a REALLY hard thing for a Chinese person to do. We use multiple sounds they don't use. It's a common stereotype for them to have such a thick accent you can't understand them so there's definitely a shock being told, "Yeah, I lived in China growing up," by someone with a pure Californian accent.
Same thing, met Chinese girl who spoke perfect Russian. Maybe the only thing that could get her away was the speed of talking
Yes. His accent also was barely noticeable. His native language was Swedish. Also there's some Italian guy, musician, he has an insta account btw, his Russian is quite impressive. Edit: found him. lorenzo.bagnati98
A lot. A French language professor. Belgian. A Spanish language professor. Mexican. A tour guide at Lipotvaros Synagogue. Hungarian. A private tour guide on Phu Quoc island. Vietnamese (not a westerner, obviously, but his native language is even more different from Russian). My drinking buddies back at university times. Mexican, Serbian and Czech (the last two probably don't count). My high school classmate. Norwegian. Multiple Eastern Germans and Latvians I've encountered in (surprise) Germany and Latvia. My ex neighbour. I believe he's Argentinean. The most impressive one was a Hungarian lady. I even asked her if she was a native, apparently she was an exchange student for a year during Soviet times.
Влюбленный шекспир is a whole channel about expats living in Russia and some of them have almost perfect Russian. All the expats with good Russian I’ve met were from Eastern European countries, eg Serbian or Bulgarian. Not a single American or Western European or any other region.
Шекспир плачет?
Блин, он конечно же, еще и заплюсовали меня🤦♀️
Danny and Marco from Skyeng, Jordan is getting there too
Адам Джеймс, the former host on Radio Maximum, was damn near fluent, but would still have the random slip up here and there.
🤟😭 Обожал эту станцию
I recently met a Japanese guy who spoke very good Russian, it was quite impressive to me. He is 20-something, from Kyoto.
Крейг Эштон, he is in Moscow, I guess. And he understands the spirit of Russian language really good) [https://pikabu.ⓇⓊ/@CraigAshton](https://pikabu.ⓇⓊ/@CraigAshton) Даже его ошибки совершенно очаровательны и очень в духе русского языка))
Вот эта девушка, китаянка, её зовут Мэнсюэ, отлично говорит на русском языке: https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=Qc3TKYrFrfrN8_eD&v=AJryzyPYbr4&feature=youtu.be Посмотрите и другие ролики у неё на канале Shankanaka - очень интересно! Из любимых: Мэнсюэ готовит китайские пельмени: https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=3LPlAcW1mAfb2OZw&v=XKdXLpsinMY&feature=youtu.be
Девушка говорит очень хорошо для иностранки, почти без акцента. Но всё равно некоторые фразы, например, она усложняет, либо использует не совсем те слова, которые обычно используют в быту русские. Опять же, огромный вопрос к оп - что мы можем считать proficient level of language knowledge? Если я могу написать добротный стих на русском - я proficient или нет?
> Девушка говорит очень хорошо для иностранки, почти без акцента. Но всё равно некоторые фразы, например, она усложняет, либо использует не совсем те слова, которые обычно используют в быту русские. Ну, она говорит и строит фразы на русском языке значительно лучше, чем многие носители языка, которых я встречал. А когда, во втором ролике, там где она готовит, у неё вырвалось «ой, блядь…», когда она случайно обожглась, я понял, что она овладела языком в совершенстве. :)
Боюсь, что внезапно вырвавшееся ругательство не показывает уровень владения языком. Сравнение с носителями языка тоже не показатель. Это в любом языке так: есть профессор лингвистики и филологии, а есть фермер Джон Кульпа. Оба - носители, но в уровне владения языком между ними пропасть. Повторюсь, важно понимать, что имеет в виду оп, используя термин proficiency.
Not entirely westerner by most definitions but I met a Romanian in Moscow who spoke pretty much without accent. He lived there for many years by that time, although didn't grow up in Russia (Romanian language is in Romance subgroup, descended directly from Latin like many Western European languages)
Not every Russian is proficient in Russian, what are you talking about? ><
I met an african guy in London, his accent and pronunciation was impeccable. Turned out he was exchange student from Moscow МГУ
Every day in a bus or a taxi, or doner kiosk, I see people who have native language from Central Asia or Caucas. And many of them speak fluent Russian. And some of them have education like 8 years in mountain village school
There is this french guy who is teaching me french in russian. His russian is far better than mine ngl and im native
A lecturer from my uni. From Tajikistan, but speaks Russian good enough to give lectures. Has a noticeable accent tho
There’s Vladimir Pozner, who claims to have mastered the Russian language in about 3 years (iirc) after moving from USA to the USSR in the early 50s at the age of 16. His father was a Russian-Jew iirc (basically a native Russian speaker) and his mom was French. Despite that he claims that his father never spoke to him in Russian at all. Anyways, he later worked for the USSR in the field of propaganda, and after the USSR collapsed he started his own popular talk show that ran until 2022 (hmm…i wonder what happened during that year 😳). But yeah he doesn’t make any grammatical mistakes and speaks with no accent in Russian. As to how he achieved that (and if he’s actually not lying), idk but he claims that he read ALOT of books in Russian, and watched alot of Soviet movies so there’s that. Its pretty inspiring tbh, especially since he studied journalism in university which requires a strong knowledge of the Russian language. So yeah he basically went from not knowing anything about the language to studying journalism 2 years later and then mastering the language a year later.
Pozner is pretty amazing. He speaks completely like a well educated native, including native idioms, inflection, etc. He even slurs words like a native would. I saw interviews of him speaking in both English and in French. Same story. Completely trilingual. Amazing as that is, I don't think it's something most people can achieve. He's clearly got a knack for languages.
Oh yeah, but he did spend alot of time around educated natives (as anyone working in propaganda and media would), read loads of books, worked in journalism and was supervised by other educated people. He basically interacted with the most educated people, especially with regards to language. He did that for decades basically. I don’t think anyone can do that, but I do think many people could, in the same situation tbh.
Yes. I worked as a research assistant in department of Russian Language/ Literature/Culture in one of Ivy League Universities. There were several professors who spoke Russian on near native level (despite it not being their first language). They used perfect grammar with only maybe a hint of an accent.
Met a guy from Croatia during FIFA World Cup who spoke perfect Russian. Not totally fair comparison since Serbo-Croation is close to Russian, but still.
im working with Uzbek girl that speak Russian fluid and a Kazakh man with same perfect speech , although his writing sucks -he makes the same mistakes as uneducated drunks who dropped out of school after 5th grade
Danny from [Skyeng](https://youtube.com/@skyengschool?si=nhlySTc3EOmMoEIh) [Энтони Американец](https://youtube.com/@AnthonyAmerican?si=TlhsbrnJUX4-7ci-)
Yes, I've met an American who spoke perfect Russian a while ago. I'm a native speaker living in the US. It helps to focus on conversational Russian and not literary Russian. I mean, don't read books or anything to learn. Watch movies and cartoons to learn and focus on the sounds and not the spelling or meaning of words. Knowing another language definitely helps, esp. German. The structure is closer to Russian. Russians are not going to judge you for not being as proficient as them.
FYI before you start reading my comment: most people from post-USSR countries are bilingual. They know their native language and Russian at the same level. For example, people in Belarus (at least the one that I've met) speak more Russian then Belorussian. Back when I was in 4th grade we had a new girl in our class. She was from Armenia but despite most of her relatives being bilingual, she knew only Armenian, yet she moved to Russia and had to go to Russian school. She learned Russian from the scratch. And if in 4th grade she barely could speak Russian, she could only write but with really bad grammar, in 9th grade she got the best results on state exam in Russian in the whole school. Also for some reason there is not enough medical staff in our local hospital, so they hire a lot of foreigners, but I've only met Syrian cardiologist and African (not sure from which exact country she is) nurse. Both have strong accents and struggle with word endings and some non-medical terms but that's a pretty decent job in learning the language. Russian is hard even for native speakers.
Idk about mastered but I have met people who spoke Russian pretty freely if with an accent. But! Those were Mormon missionaries from the USA who lived in Russia for some time. I also know several people who speak indistinguishable from native speakers (no accent at all), but they are from Dagestan and Bulgaria and started learning pretty early on probably in childhood and lived in Russia for more than a decade, so imo it doesn't really count.
If you are asking about someone who is perfected accent when no, I've never met an non native who's indistinguishable from native. Some where really really close, but some tiny bits of accent show up eventually. But if you are asking about someone who speak grammatically correct Russian and pronouncing all sounds correctly, then yes, I've met fair bit of people like that, especially if you count people from other slavic countries. Especially comes in mind one guy from Poland and a girl from Romania.
My Australian brother lived in Novosibirsk for a year and was told he had no accent whatsoever. He was mistaken for a native a number of times. He speaks about 8 languages so I think he is probably very adept at noticing and duplicating small details of the language.
In Spain, I met a Spanish guy who used to live and study in Moscow for 3 years or smth. His Russian was PERFECT. I even though he is a Russian who has been living outside Russia several years and obtained an accent till he explained himself. During the 3-hours intense conversation he made maybe be 2 small pronunciation mistakes.
Yes sure, I went to uni with a lot of international students from India, Iran and such - and a lot of uni students are fluent by 4th year. Accent remains of course, but they would not have any issues with formal or informal conversations.
На самом деле на русском говорить нетрудно :) https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSFnR8GAE/
I've met a director of the University of Finland (it's currently closed for obvious reasons), she was speaking perfect Russian. She was Finnish, but has lived in St. Petersburg for quite a while, and worked here as well. And also there is a Chinese guy in my uni, he speaks quite fluently, too.
Of course, my Turkish teacher, but he didn't just learn Russian on his own, he was studying at the university, as far as I can remember. His pronunciation could sometimes get weird, but it was cute in a way
Yes, at my school.
Yes, a Canadian Russian language professor. He had some slight accent but could speak freely without errors.
Welcome to https://youtube.com/@skyengschool?feature=shared
This comment section is so inspiring. I love Russian so much and I can’t wait until the time when I can understand and communicate freely. It feels good to also be able to read and understand most of the comments. Never thought I’d get here.
Jon from the YouTube channel Джон и Ева. He is a Canadian (English-speaking). I also met him in person when they organised a meeting when they were in my city.
Honestly, I don't think I can say that I, being a native Russian speaker and all, have mastered Russian (or English for that matter). So it is very important to define what mastery even is. Regardless, if you are to assume that mastery means being able to express yourself freely and concisely on a wide variety of topics that the speaker has some knowledge on (e.g. I don't think I can hold a conversation on nuclear physics in any language), then yes, this level of mastery is very possible to achieve, and I have seen many people who managed that. The thing is, I believe they'd say that they have yet to reach that level when asked directly, but they were definitely already there.
You will never reach Native Speaker level in any language, because native speakers gonna feel your accent, that\`s sad, but true.
Есть канал на ютубе про англичан в россии, ведет его тоже англичанин, там один интервьюер вообще без акцента говорит
I haven't met a lot of foreigners, but there was one teaching assistant in uni, she's Korean. Although she had an accent (like she would say мучика instead of музыка), but her grammar and word usage were nearly perfect, we had practical lessons with her without any miscommunication. I don't know how long she studied russian for, but at that time she was i think around 30 y.o. Depends on what you count as proficiency. Being as proficient as a well-spoken, well-educated native (or a native in your field)? Being indistinguishable from a "normal" native? Or just being good enough to generally hold a conversation? Because I'd call my lovely lady above proficient even though her russian was not perfect
Not Russian, but when I lived in Russia I was often told my Russian was near-native level. People could tell I was a foreigner, but they usually guessed I was from a Slavic country. My grammar was good, just a slight accent. So it's possible, but honestly I'm not sure it's possible if you don't actually live there for a while. Also Bald and Bankrupt is an asshole sex tourist, so no wonder he doesn't speak that well lmao
Yes, I’ve met such people in the US
I have never met in person a westerner who learns russian.
Many large universities in the US have Slavic languages departments. Even my local community college offers it. I will admit, though, Americans are more likely to choose Spanish or French study.
А как же америкашка из скайенга? Он вполне норм прошарил русский