One of the most frequent Russian-related questions found on Reddit, Stack Overflow, Quora, and similar platforms is: “изучать, учить, учиться – what’s the difference?” In Russian, the nuances in describing how one acquires knowledge and information are remarkable. What Russian learners experience when internalizing all these words is often frustration and confusion.
Russian isn’t the only language that likes to confuse its learners with endless lists of synonyms. English isn’t my mother tongue, and if you ask me about the difference between studying and learning, I’d be puzzled. Dictionaries don’t help much because the definitions of these two words overlap and are just as confusing as similar words in Russian. I think I use both words correctly, not because I know all their definitions, but because in my language-learning journey, I’ve seen them in use so many times that my mind somehow figured out how to use them. However, I’m still not ready to provide a concise and accurate summary of the actual difference between the two words.
Many Russian learners eventually master all those “изучать,” “учить,” “выучить,” “учиться.” Nine out of 24 who took my quiz didn’t make a single mistake (and believe me, I tried to make the questions not so easy!), with another 5 people having only one or two wrong answers. Yet as many as 10 people would fail the test if my quiz were a formal school test. That convinced me to write this article and explain the nuances in the meaning and usage of the most common Russian words for learning.
Starting Simple: Знать and Узнать
Let’s start with an easy word: знать (to know). I have never seen any Russian learner who would struggle to use this word correctly. Now let’s add a prefix у- to it: узнать, and it’s already confusing. Узнать is used to say that you learned or got to know something new, added a new piece of information to your knowledge. Mind you, this is a perfective verb, so it can only be used in the past tense to report the fact of learning something new or in the future as an intention to do so.
Examples:
- В этом видео вы узнаете, как правильно мыть кота. (In this video you’ll learn how to bathe your cat.)
- Сегодня я узнала, что кошки не любят мыться. (Today I learned that cats don’t like bathing.)
This word has another meaning: “to recognize,” but let’s not get too distracted.
- Я тебя не узнала! (I didn’t recognize you!)
Учить: To Study or To Teach
For studying as in “I study Russian” or “He’s studying irregular verbs” – what students do at school when taking classes, doing exercises, and memorizing things for tests – use the verb учить followed by a noun in the accusative case.
Examples:
- Зачем ты учишь русский язык? (Why do you study Russian? This is what I keep asking my students.)
- Он учит таблицу умножения. (He is learning the multiplication table.)
As you probably already know, another meaning of this word is “to teach.” Note that in this meaning, the object of studies goes in the dative case, and the learner goes in the accusative:
Examples:
- Она учит детей английскому языку. (She teaches English to kids. детей – accusative, английскому языку – dative)
- Он учит студентов философии. (He teaches philosophy to students.)
You may also find millions of examples with verbs:
- Он учит сына плавать. (He teaches his son to swim.)
- Вы учили меня думать своей головой. (You taught me to think for myself.)
Учиться: To Receive Education
What if we add that annoying -ся to the end? How would that change the meaning?
The word учиться in Russian means to receive education, to attend a school, college, or university.
Example:
- Он не учился в университете, он самоучка. (He did not attend university; he is self-taught.)
Also, учиться may mean “to receive knowledge or skills,” but usually it refers to something useful and practical.
Examples:
- Я учусь водить машину. (I am learning to drive a car.)
- Он учился баскетболу на улице. (He learned to play basketball on the street.)
It’s possible to use this word with academic subjects too, just don’t forget to put the noun into the dative case:
- Я училась морфологии у профессора Голева. (I studied morphology with Professor Golev.)
- Он научился латинскому сам. (He taught himself Latin.)
Учить vs. Учиться: When to Use Which?
I can hear you asking: “Wait a minute, so when exactly is it ‘Я учу’ and when ‘Я учусь’?”
Here is something that you have to accept about languages: there is more than one way of saying something correctly. You can use both “учить” and “учиться” to say the exact same thing, but you have to build your sentences differently, using different grammar structures.
Imagine you are taking biology at a university. You can say:
- Я учу биологию в университете. (биология is in the accusative case)
- Я учусь биологии в университете. (биология is in the dative case)
Both sentences are correct and 100% natural, though the first one is a bit more colloquial.
Изучать: Academic Study and Research
Another word that would fit into this context perfectly is изучать. This verb is mostly reserved for academic studies (unlike учить, which feels great even with babies learning to talk or to walk). Изучать also means “to research,” as in lab experiments, scientific research, and such:
Examples:
- Я изучаю биологию в университете.
- Он изучал психосоматику у горилл. (He studied psychosomatics in gorillas.)
- Мы недостаточно хорошо изучаем диалекты Сибири. (We do not study Siberian dialects well enough.)
A Real-Life Example: My Bulgarian Story
To illustrate to you the difference between изучать, учить, and учиться, let me tell you the story of how I studied Bulgarian in university. I took a Bulgarian class for my bachelor’s degree. The professor taught us the Bulgarian grammatical system, but we never got to the point where we would be able to say a sentence in Bulgarian. I knew what properties of Southern Slavic languages Bulgarian possesses, but I couldn’t ask for directions to a bathroom if I needed to. So I can say “Я изучала болгарский язык,” and it would be absolutely true. I can possibly say “Я учила болгарский язык,” since it was a part of my curriculum. But saying “Я училась болгарскому языку” would be an exaggeration because I didn’t acquire any language skills during that class. I only “узнала” some specific details about Bulgarian.
Perfective Verbs: Научить and Выучить
Speaking about results, let’s take a look at научить and выучить, another two confusing verbs.
When you taught somebody how to do something, you can use научить:
- Я научила его пить водку. (I taught him how to drink vodka.)
When you master a skill, you can say научиться:
- Ты научился пить водку. (You learned how to drink vodka.)
But when you talk about classes and school studies, that would be выучить:
- Ты выучил уроки? (Did you study your lessons?)
- Я выучил правила дорожного движения. (I learned the traffic rules.)
- Я выучила правила дорожного движения и научилась водить машину. (I learned the traffic rules and how to drive a car.)
Final Thoughts
I hope you feel a bit more confident about using these words in your conversations with your Russian friends. But if you still feel a bit confused, I made a cheatsheet for you – a quick guide that will help you choose the right word and build a correct sentence with it.
Remember, understanding is important, but fluency in any language only comes from hours and hours of active exposure. Do not expect to выучить русский overnight, and keep practicing!