Russia is taking centre stage at the Langauge Exhibition just opened in Paris. President Putin's wife is a Guest of Honour, helping to launch the beginning of the “Year of the Russian Language in the World.”

Russian First Lady Lydmila Putina is a linguist by education. And now she has come to Paris to promote her mother tongue internationally.

The key idea is to boost mutual interest and friendliness between Russia and other
countries. Any visitor of the exhibition can be taught the 33 letters of the Cyrillic alphabet or the six noun cases.  Russian teachers here say it is not that hard to learn.

“I think people think have preconceptions about how hard it is to learn the [Russian] alphabet,” says  Sorbonne Professor Veronique Jobert. “There are certain peculiarities. I think it’s always a challenge to speak a foreign language to a really high level but Russian’s not really anymore difficult than German.”
 
And some add slyly, a glass of vodka can help make your Russian much more fluent.