How Hard Is It to Learn Russian?

What most obviously sets it apart from other European languages, is the fact that Russian does not use the Latin alphabet. Instead, the Russian alphabet in the Cyrillic script is used. This, combined with the existence of “soft” and “hard” sounds has given Russian the infamy as being a very difficult language. Indeed, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) classifies Russian as a Category IV language and estimates it would take an English-speaker around 1,100 hours to learn.