The author argues that traditionally a phraseology reflecting the spirit of the people can be treated as a ‘value’ that is important in the intercultural, including oral, communication. The analyses of the speech material reveals many phenomena of this type that can complicate the understanding of Russian speech. This is a plentiful idiomatic of varying degrees of assimilation by the Russian language itself: classical/typical phraseological units, proverbs and sayings, modified or occasional idioms, precedent texts. Without taking into account these data, which are in many respects ‘negative’, it is impossible for the foreigners to learn successfully Russian in all its functional and semantic diversity.