DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING RUSSIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Learning Russian as a foreign language (RFL) presents unique linguistic, phonetic, grammatical, and cultural challenges, particularly for speakers of Turkic languages such as Uzbek. These difficulties stem from fundamental typological differences between the two languages: Russian is a fusional Indo-European language with rich inflection, while Uzbek is an agglutinative Turkic language relying on suffixes and postpositions. This article examines the primary obstacles faced by Uzbek learners, including mastery of the Cyrillic alphabet, pronunciation of non-native sounds, complex case system, verb aspects, gender agreement, and vocabulary interference. Drawing on comparative linguistic analysis and empirical observations, the study highlights how these structural mismatches affect acquisition at phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical levels. The findings underscore the necessity of contrastive teaching methods, multimedia resources, and communicative approaches to enhance proficiency. Recommendations are provided for educators in Uzbekistan and similar multilingual contexts. The relevance of the topic is heightened by Russia’s role in Central Asian education, trade, and diplomacy, where Russian remains a key lingua franca despite the dominance of Uzbek and growing interest in English.