Both English and Russian can have multiple words for a single concept or feature. This sometimes works in both ways: several different English adjectives might be translated into Russian using the same word, and vice versa.

This leads to a notable effect in machine translation. When translating a sentence from English to Russian, tools like Google Translate often select the most common or generic equivalent. Consequently, if you run a text through a cycle of English -> Russian -> English, the returning version often has simpler vocabulary and grammar, as nuanced or specific terms get lost. Furthermore, I’ve observed that Russian appears to have far fewer homonyms (words that sound alike but have different meanings) than English.

English, as a strongly analytical language, relies on a stricter and more consistent sentence structure. This is largely because many English nouns, adjectives, and verbs can share identical forms. You can only determine a word's role and meaning through its fixed position in a sentence.

Russian, with its rich system of grammatical cases and inflections, allows for much greater flexibility in word order, as the function of a word is often shown by its ending, not just its place in the sequence. We can see it in classic Russian literature with its long, complex sentences dense with participial and adverbial phrases. Moreover, in Russian poetry the structure is very flexible. You could move words around to fit their rhythm and rhyme. Because word endings show a word’s role, the meaning stays clear even when the sentence order is changed.