 One of the most significant stumbling blocks in accepting Anna  Anderson as Anastasia is that she never spoke Russian. Although  there were those who claimed that they heard her speak Russian very  early on before her identity came into question, she seems never  have been willing or capable of speaking it after she initially came  to public attention in 1920. For most of her life Anderson conversed  only in bad German. The Romanov family, it should be noted, usually  spoke French or English to each other, not Russian.