Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages; Russian alphabet; Russian cuisine; Russian culture; Russian studies; Russian may also refer to: Russian dressing; The Russians, a book by Hedrick Smith; Russian (comics), fictional Marvel Comics supervillain from The Punisher series; Russian (solitaire), a card game
Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language.