Dagmar was intelligent. When considering Dagmar for her second son Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Queen Victoria judged that "Dagmar is cleverer Alexandra... she is a very nice girl." When she married, she didn't know how to speak any Russian. However, within a few years, she mastered the language and was so proficient that her husband wrote to her in Russian. She told an American minister to Russia that "the Russian language is full of power and beauty, it equals the Italian in music, the English in vigorous power and copiousness." She claimed that "for compactness of expression," Russian rivaled "Latin, and for the making of new words is equal to the Greek."