Dissecting Russian: The Art of Formal and Informal Language

Formal vs informal Russian is largely distinguished by the choice of pronouns, verb forms, tone, and vocabulary, and is determined by the social context, relationship, and level of respect between speakers.

When to use formal Russian:

• Used in professional, official, or business settings
• When addressing strangers, elders, superiors, or people you don’t know well
• To show politeness and respect
• Formal “вы” (vy) form of “you” is used, along with polite verb conjugations and more respectful language

When to use informal Russian:

• Used with family, close friends, and peers
• Among children or younger people when addressing one another
• When the relationship is informal and familiar
• Informal “ты” (ty) form of “you” is used, with simpler verb forms and more casual speech

The choice between formal and informal is important because it reflects social hierarchy, politeness, and cultural norms in Russian-speaking communities. Incorrect use can be perceived as rude or overly distant. Formal speech is generally preferred in official communication and public settings, whereas informal speech suits private and casual interactions.

References

• Use of Embedded Clauses in Heritage and Monolingual Russian

• Demonstratives in heritage Greek, Russian, and Turkish in Germany and the United States

• Heritage Speakers as Part of the Native Language Continuum

• Formal vs. Informal Institutional Distances and the Competitive Advantage of Foreign Subsidiaries in Latin America

• USE OF NON-FORMAL EDUCATION ELEMENTS IN THE ORGANISATION OF STUDENTS’ INDEPENDENT WORK

• Reality vs Regulation: Informal Practices of Spatial Development in Krasnodar, Russia

• Teachers’ Attitudes towards Teaching in Formal vs. Informal ELT Contexts

• Innovation, formal vs. informal R&D, and firm size: Some evidence from Italian manufacturing firms

• Reflexives and politeness: possessive pronouns in Russian imperative sentences

• FORMAL AND SEMANTIC MODIFICATIONS OF RUSSIAN BORROWINGS AS MATERIAL FOR FORMING COMPLEX LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

• Formal and Informal Russian Invitation: Context and Politeness Strategies

• Russian Official Reflection in Russian Language Winged Units

• ‘Official Tears’: Signs of Sociocultural Type ‘Official’ According to the National Corpus of the Russian Language

• Communicative Value of Stylistic Variants in Russian Punctuation: A Guide for English Speakers

• Russian English and what it is not

• Olá, Bonjour, Salve! XFORMAL: A Benchmark for Multilingual Formality Style Transfer

• Machine Translation to Control Formality Features in the Target Language

• Politeness as a feature: so important and so rare.

• Popular Culture and Language Etiquette: The Use of Formal and Informal ‘you’ as Address Forms in Selected Russian and Hungarian Films

• Translation as a tool in linguistic analysis