The other European languages are much more similar to each other than the Slavic languages and one thing that is new to me is the situation where you absolutely couldn't even guess what something might mean. Even accumulating a basic vocabular takes time!
That's a piece of news. Of course, Germanic languages are similar, but Basque, for example, is completely different. You know, I'm studying a Western European language (Irish) and it is not closer to English than Russian. Well, there are three big groups of Indo-European languages in Europe: Germanic, Romance and Slavic. There are also Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithvanian), which are close to Slavic, Greek, Albanian, Brythonic languages (Breton and Welsh) and Goidelic (Irish and Scottish Gaelic). These are all Indo-European. There are also Finno-Ugric languages (Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish) and Basque, which is an isolate. I-E languages of different groups differ approximately as Russian and English. Languages of different families (Hungarian and Basque) are completely different. You always need to study basic vocabulary, if you study a language from another group. When you studied French, didn't you have to learn basic vocabulary? There are much more similarities between English and Russian than you think. For example, Passive voice in both languages is formed with the verb "to be" and past passive participle.
Sorry, Hanna, that I'm always arguing with you.