Why Do Russians Speak French

Why did the Russians speak French in the 1800s? I am confused with the French phrases in Leo Tolstoy's “War and Peace”.

French was THE international language from 17th century up till the end of the Second World War, when it was replaced by English. It was spoken in all European courts. Catherine the Great (1729–1796) made French the official language of the court. Russian was used to talk to the servants.It reflected the importance of France from a political and cultural point of view, especially because of the Enlightenment. Often the local language was looked down upon by aristocrats in favour of French. Frederick the Great of Prussia favoured French to German, which was more the language of Prussian militarism. He called his château “Sans soucis” (No worries!).The speaking of French in Russia dropped with the Russian Revolution, with many Russia aristocrats emigrating to Paris.

How many Russians can speak French?

To start with, French was a language of aristocracy in Russia until the revolution in 1917. If you start reading Russian classics especially Leo Tolstoy you will see a good part of it is in French, there is a bunch of footnotes on every page…one of the reasons not all high school students could finish his «War and peace» in four volumes:)Some twenty-thirty years ago French was taught in many state schools as a foreign language, now it's mostly being replaced by English. But you can still find it in a few state schools, lots of language schools and at a college/university level.I used to study it for six years at the university and could speak it decently after graduation. This language is SO beautiful, we used to read classics in the original, one of my favorite is «Rouge et noir» by Stendhal. Now as a teacher I have some middle school students who have chosen French as their first foreign language and English as their second and they're quite enthusiastic about both. Recently they performed in a local contest where they recited poems by french writers and one of them won a prize.Getting to the point, you won't probably find too many people speaking French in this country but those who do are truly in love with it.

Why are Russians speaking French when at war with France?

to add to Wesha Wilberg's response, there is a part within that same "War and Peace" where once the war had started, anyone who was speaking French was penalized and had to contribute some amount (substantial by those times), these funds were gathered and sent as donations to the Russian army.

Why do so many Russians speak English? Is it taught there?

Baloney! I am married to a Russian, have spent months there, and am there currently. Here is the scoop:1. Almost no one speaks English,. Maybe one of 10 people know 2 dozen words. 1 in 5 would like to speak English but have no viable way to learn it And no one to practice with. 2. Yes it is taught in schools by non-native speakers who use Russian vowel sounds making words unintelligible.3. Government actively preserved Russian culture. 4. Many travel workers actively are unhelpful to English speakers. Oddly I’ve found security personnel most helpful. 5. Store clerks will try to figure out what you need. Most are motivated. 6. 4 of 5 cab drivers are unhelpful. 7. Russians generally are friendly to Americans. We have a lot in common and respect for each other. 8. Russians are skeptical of change, having been twice burned. 9. Russian is not difficult. But most Russians have no concept of trying to figure out what you are saying without perfect speaking. They have no important minorities speaking other languages. 10. They have no idea of forming a concept from smaller words. They have a word for everything, e. g. no word for “go.” It depends on the method of going. Pick from the following: ходить (walk, play, lead) идти (walk, move, follow) ехать (go by vehicle)11. English as a second language courses are a joke. I looked over my wife’s courses. Most of the fault lies with theoretical methods favored by American teachers that seem elegant to them but are nonsense to foreigners.

Do Russians often speak French daily? I think I heard French in the movie Loveless.

The Russians who spoke French daily either did not survive the Soviets or left before they could be purged. Their descendants did not keep the habit, as this was a matter of aristocratic fashion, and people who flee a country don't tend to remain aristocrats.

How do French people sound when speaking Russian?

In my life, I met only two foreign persons speaking Russian fluently, correctly, and without ANY accent. Like native speakers. Both were French. I don’t know why. Maybe French pronunciation is quite close to Russian, or French people have more talent to imitate it, because of their own complicated phonetic system.The first one was tourist guide in Paris. He told that he started to study Russian three (only 3!) years ago. He chatted with our group and there was a lot of word play in joking and anecdotes, which he understood and used perfectly.Another one was a girl from France working in our city in French-Russian cultural centre. by the way, once I witnessed a dialog which was very funny.I was having lunch in some small cafe. She was sitting at the table nearby, talking to some guy in French (I guess because he was French). At another table, a man was sitting, eating his soup and listening to their conversation. (I guess he had some ideas about French language). In our city, it’s unusual to hear French speaking.After several minutes, he lost patience and asked her: “Where did you study French? ” (In Russian)She was quite surprized and told him: “Why are you asking?” (in Russian, of course)He said: “You have terrible pronunciation”.She started to laugh. Very loudly and very long. And she didn’t tell him the truth. :DYou know, most Russians think that French pronunciation means a lot of nasal sounds, but her speaking manner didn’t stressed them. This is why that man decided that her pronunciation in French was terrible. :)

Why did Russian nobles converse in French?

You are possibly referring to "War and Peace", which has pages in French. "War and Peace" describes the era before Alexander Pushkin, when Russian culture was pretty much non-existent. A sophisticated person is supposed to read - and before Pushkin, that would mean reading in French. Not speaking French was an admission of been a simpleton. I presume that started during the reign of Catherine the Great, who herself was corresponding with Voltaire at some stage. By the time Pushkin was killed in in 1837, Russian culture was booming, with more than a dozen of poets and writers who are read to this day. Words were written that you still want to read, and enjoy their sound. Images were created that still enrich you and give you the power to understand life and emotions. Standing on the platform of this body of literary work, one could allude to them, find the right words, be subtly humorous and unexpectedly deep, control the rhythm and sound of sentences. It would no longer mean speaking "the language of serfs", but speaking the language of Pushkin.Added: if interested, Woe from Wit, set in 1820, shows what happened with the language quite clearly. The older character, Famusov, speaks rather folksy simple Russian, while the younger Chatsky speaks the language of a well-read intellectual. Chatsky was based on real-life Pyotr Chaadayev, who, as the legend has it, once rode 660km on horseback almost non-stop, to beg a well-connected (yet literary insignificant) writer to interfere to save teenage Pushkin from exile.

Did the Russian nobility of the 18th/19th century speak their French with a Russian accent, or their Russian with a French accent?

I know a few things about this, but there's a great deal of this I can't begin to answer. From the top -The Russian nobility of the age were not a homogenous group, things like education and language proficiency varied with one's environment. A nobleman raised in a home with French servants and governesses and educated in one of St. Petersburg's better schools would do better in French than one who was raised and educated differently, and that would vary even more from generation to generation. But there were plenty of the Russian noble and merchant classes who spoke, wrote and thought in French and spoke only enough Russian to order the servants around; there were times during the Romanov dynasty when the nobility was better able to speak with the French than with their own people, and even those fluent in Russian lacked the words - let alone the ability - to speak about many subjects (music, science, philosophy, etc.) in their mother tongue. A Parisian of the day would be able to converse and correspond with a member of the Russian intelligentsia easily, because they'd both have been educated in French and would speak and write almost exclusively in French. There would be differences apparent to both people, much as there would be between Frenchmen from different regions of France. Assuming fluency and literacy in Russian, that nobleman would sound somewhat out of place to an average Russian person, both then and now. Not only would some of the phonics be a little different from years of exposure to foreign servants and teachers, their higher education in Russian would lead them to speak the language differently in a couple of subtle ways - differences in declensions, word choice, verb aspect, even how numbers are expressed. A French person of today would hear a difference in that noble man's French, and it would sound positively old fashioned. Language evolves significantly over time. The same goes for a modern day Russian - over the last several generations, the Russian language has both evolved and been changed by government edict - think of how differently Thomas Jefferson would speak English than you would, and you've got the idea.