How Catherine the Great learned the Russian language
At birth, the future empress was named Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst. She was a German princess, who spoke German and French from childhood. When she was betrothed to the heir to the Russian throne (the future Emperor Peter III), she took her future life in another country seriously. Thus, upon first arriving in Russia at the age of 14, she could already say a few words in Russian.
She studied diligently
“Research into the life and literary activities of Catherine the Great shows that the empress, despite her non-Russian origin, actively engaged in self-education, studying the Russian language and the peculiarities of national culture,” writes Gramota.ru (Грамота.ру), quoting philologist Alena Nikitina, a specialist in the linguistic persona of the Russian empress.
As soon as the princess arrived in Russia, she was provided with a Russian language teacher named Vasily Adadurov, who was also the creator of one of the first Russian grammars.
“To make faster progress in Russian, I got out of bed at night and, while everyone was sleeping, memorized the notebooks Adadurov left for me,” wrote Catherine in her memoirs.
Her language study was also encouraged by reigning Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Catherine recalled: “She began speaking to me in Russian and wished for me to answer her in that language, which I did, and then she was pleased to praise my good pronunciation.”
Catherine: A Russian writer
Catherine wrote her memoirs in Russian and left both an epistolary legacy (correspondence with Potemkin and other statesmen) and a literary one, such as fairy tales, poems and dramas.
She not only spoke Russian well (albeit with a German accent, as contemporaries recalled), but also studied Old Church Slavonic, chronicles, as well as folklore. She could use ancient words and expressions in speech and writing alongside colloquialisms from everyday vocabulary. This was her way of trying to be as close and understandable to the people as possible.
At the same time, she used a creative approach, broke canons and employed linguistic play elegantly. For example, in a letter to her favorite, Potemkin, she jokingly threatened: “Накажу поцелуем прямо в губы” (“I’ll punish you with a kiss right on the lips”).
Language as an element of politics
Catherine believed that philology was inextricably linked with history and politics. And that for the patriotic education of the empire, it was necessary to follow a distinctive path.
She believed that the Russian language needed “purification” both from foreign domination (many at court communicated in French and German at the time) and from overly obscure ancient constructions.
The empress also contributed significantly to the development of the Russian language. In 1783, she founded the ‘Free Society of Scholars and Writers’, otherwise known as the ‘Russian Academy’. While the ‘Academy of Sciences’ dealt with the exact sciences, this one researched the Russian language and worked on a code of rules.
Under her reign, one of the first explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language appeared and the letter ‘Ё’ was introduced into common usage.