Russian is one of the most widespread languages in the world spoken by over 280 million people. It ranks with English, Chinese, Hindi and Spanish as a major world language. Russian is the official language of Russia. It is the native language of about 170 mln people. What is more Russian remained the unofficial lingua franca of the former Soviet republics. It is one of the six official languages of the UN. Over a quarter of the world`s scientific literature is published in Russian. Russian easily borrows words from other languages. Words of more than 100 languages expanded its vocabulary.Russian is taught as a foreign language in many countries.