What mistakes do non-native speakers most frequently make in Russian conversations

Common mistakes non-native speakers most frequently make in Russian conversations include:

• Pronunciation errors, especially with Russian sounds that do not exist in their native languages, such as Russian coronal obstruents (sounds produced by placing the tongue against the upper teeth or alveolar ridge). This affects clarity in communication. ^{1, 2}

• Grammatical mistakes involving word order, verb conjugations, and use of cases and prefixes. Non-native speakers often deviate from Russian language norms in these areas. ^{3, 4}

• Mistakes with reflexive verbs and affixes, such as improper use of the reflexive suffix -ся, which has multiple grammatical functions in Russian (reflexive, reciprocal, passive, etc.). ⁵

• Vocabulary gaps and misuse of stylistic and idiomatic expressions, including difficulty with business vocabulary and culture-specific terms. ⁶

• Errors related to Russian punctuation rules and stylistic variants, which are quite complex and differ from English punctuation. ⁷

• Common spelling mistakes and incorrect use of scientific or formal vocabulary, especially among learners at university level. ⁸

• Intonation and stress placement errors in polysyllabic words, which affect the naturalness and comprehensibility of Russian speech. ⁹

Overall, the mistakes reflect difficulties with Russian phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, and stylistic norms that are distinct from many speakers’ native languages. ^{2, 1, 3, 5}

If needed, examples of specific typical errors can be provided upon request.

References

• Common Pronunciation Mistakes in Non-native Speakers: A Review

• An online course of Russian coronal obstruents for non-native speakers

• THE MECHANISMS OF BREACHING THE NORMS IN THE TEXTS OF NON-NATIVE AND NATIVE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE SPEAKERS

• A Language Model for Grammatical Error Correction in L2 Russian

• Nonstandard Use of the “Reflexive” Affix -sʲa in Russian Speech of Bilingual Speakers of Northern Siberia and the Russian Far East

• Issues on Business Vocabulary Acquisition by Russian Tertiary ESP Students

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

• MODERN ASPECTS OF STUDYING RUSSIAN TERMINOLOGY BY INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AT THE PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT IN A TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

• On the possibility of measuring the level of articulatory skills

• Common mistakes in drawing writing for students of Arabic of non-native speakers

• Speaking Skills Problems Encountered By Non-Native Arabic Learners At Universities In Northeast China

• Research on Text Error Correction Algorithm Design in English Writing Aid System for Non-Native Speakers

• A Hybrid Approach for Auto-Correcting Grammatical Errors Generated by Non-Native Arabic Speakers

• Acquiring Reading and Writing Skills among Beginner Learners of Arabic Language, An Applied Analytical Study of the First and Second Books of the University of Jordan’s Arabic Curriculum for Non-native Speakers

• COMMON INTONATION MISTAKES WHEN DEVELOPING ENGLISH AS AN OVERSEAS LANGUAGE FOR LOWER-INTERMEDIATE ADULTS

• Non-native speaker perception of Intelligent Virtual Agents in two languages: the impact of amount and type of grammatical mistakes

• Grammar Error Correction in Morphologically Rich Languages: The Case of Russian

• Russian as Native, Non-native, one of Natives and Foreign Languages: Questions of Terminology and Measurement of Levels of Proficiency

• Barriers Beyond Words: Cancer, Culture, and Translation in a Community of Russian Speakers

• Collocations and near-native competence: Lexical strategies of heritage speakers of Russian

• Overcoming Aggressive Monolingualism: Prejudices and Linguistic Diversity in Russian Megalopolises

• Linguistic creativity in heritage speakers

• RUSSIAN IN GHANA AND STUDENTS’ COMMON ERRORS

• The Use of English, Russian and Tatar Etiquette Words and Expressions in Speech Situations of Greeting and Farewell

• The syntactic complexity of Russian relative clauses

• Russian English and what it is not