The Awful German Language (1880)

> Kindergarten

Don't know about that. Garten, garden, a nurturing environment for raising delicate flowers. Children's Garden. Kindergarten.

Garten / garden derive from garte / yard, which just meant an enclosed outdoor space.

I find it really interesting that in Russian they clearly took the same concept but just made it out of Russian words instead. Kindergarten in russion is детский (children's) сад (garden).

There are other words that are straight from German, for instance бутерброд (sandwitch).

iirc at least 3 Russian empresses (and also Russian duchesses) started out as German princesses. The court spoke French. And Russia looked to the West as a role model and source of expertise for modernization and development. It could have been one or the other but France post revolution didn't have princesses to spare, so there is also the political aspect in terms of an absolute monarchy.

Would be interesting to know when these words entered Russian vocabulary: before or after Napoleon.

"From its inception, Russia has desperately needed foreign professionals—to teach Russians about governance, manufacturing, military, mining, and other trades. The Dutch, Swedes, Brits, and French were among the foreigners who came to Russia. But Germans certainly dominated, becoming a privileged nationality in Russia.

"The ruling Romanov dynasty, which shared a lot of the German bloodline, became a branch of the Oldenburg dynasty under the name of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. Many of its members were born in Germany and spoke Russian with an accent. Germans, especially the Baltic ones, rapidly advanced through the ranks of the Russian society thanks to their talents, persistence, discipline, and loyalty to the throne (as of 1913, approximately 2,400,000 Germans lived in Russia)."

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/08/27/russias-lov...

Isn’t “сад” more like orchard?

Not in my experience. One might use the word огород (vegetable garden) for the kind of garden many have in an American residential backyard. But in my experience сад is used generically for many kinds of gardens.

> iirc at least 3 Russian empresses (and also Russian duchesses) started out as German princesses.

That would be incorrect. Ekaterina II was one, yes. Anna Ioannovna and Elizaveta Petrovna were both Russian. Ekaterina I was probably born in a mixed Baltic German/Polish family, but decidedly not a princess - her early life in general is very murky but the earliest that we know of her for sure, she was a scullery maid. Her ending up as the Russian empress is a truly fantastic story and was probably only possible because Peter I was so quirky yet so dominating, he could actually make someone like that his wife and have it stick.

However, Peter III was German through and through, so between him and Ekaterina II and their son Pavel I, Romanovs were effectively a German dynasty in all but name from there on, although culturally they were thoroughly Russian after Pavel.

Under Alexandr III, who was very stereotypically Russian in both looks and manners and promoted a nationalist domestic policy, there was a political joke that went thus. Okhranka (the secret service) gives him a report that says that after a thorough investigation, they've conclusively determined that Pavel's dad (and thus Alexander's great-great-grandfather) was actually Catherine's lover Sergei Saltykov and not Peter III - which was a very popular rumor even at the time Pavel was born, with some corroborating evidence. Alexandr calmly reads the report and crosses himself, "well, praise the Lord, we Romanovs are actually Russian!". The next day, the same department submits another report saying that the previous one was based on information that was ultimately found to be incorrect, and therefore Alexandr is in fact a descendant of Peter III. He again calmly reads the report and crosses himself again saying, "well, praise the Lord, we Romanovs are actually legitimate!".

> Would be interesting to know when these words entered Russian vocabulary: before or after Napoleon.

Before. In general, Russian words that are clearly derived from German, Swedish, or Dutch entered the language at the time when Peter initiated his Westernization campaigns, as that were his primary sources (him being interested more in things like warfare, shipbuilding, and manufacturing, rather than high culture). At the time of Napoleon, French subsumed German as the primary source of borrowings for new terms, but that process has also started much earlier, and was already underway under Ekaterina II.

LOL, that was a good one. +Thanks for the deep background!