This article presents a summary of the reports and transcripts of the discussion held on October 24, 2020, at a panel on the functioning of foreign languages in 18th-century Russia, which took place during the international conference "Müller Readings-2020." The attendees discussed different approaches to the subject using various historical examples, such as the language of the manuscripts presented to Peter the Great and Catherine I; the languages of Russian-Turkish diplomacy in the reign of Peter the Great; the problems of the horizon of the translator and the genre conditionality of the use of languages; their use in the initial period of the existence of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences; and the problems of publishing foreign language sources. Several reports were devoted to the history of teaching foreign languages among various social strata, as well as to the methods of teaching languages in the 18th century.