administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7375 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map
| Message 1 of 6 14 September 2005 at 2:07pm | IP Logged |
I read yesterday in Diego Marani's book 'Come ho imparato le lingue' that Marshall Gustav Mannerheim came from a multinational family (Dutch, Swedish and Finnish) and that he used to speak a different language for every day of the week in his family.
He led Finland through the Winter War against Stalin and came to Switzerland in exile when the Russians invaded Karelia. There is a monument to him near to where I live. I know several Finns who were displaced from Karelia during that war, they have great respect for this man.
He spoke Swedish, Finnish, Russian, French, German and English according to www.mannerheim.fi.
Edited by Fasulye on 08 December 2011 at 3:05pm
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cheemaster Newbie Canada Joined 7044 days ago 35 posts - 35 votes
| Message 2 of 6 25 September 2005 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
Which language did he speak twice a week? Perhaps he also spoke Dutch?
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administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7375 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map
| Message 3 of 6 25 September 2005 at 3:37pm | IP Logged |
Who knows, the second source was more accurate than the first. Perhaps on Sunday he spoke in Europanto, after all this was mentioned in Diego Marani's book.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 4 of 6 08 December 2011 at 9:06am | IP Logged |
I was about to open a thread about him but it already exists:) I found this:
Beside his mother tongue, Swedish, Mannerheim spoke excellent German and French, as an adult learned Russian and Finnish, spoke also at some point Polish, Portuguese, Latin, English and Mandarin Chinese.
This "7 days of the week, 7 languages" strategy seems nice... Does anyone practise this? :D
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Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 5145 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese*
| Message 5 of 6 04 February 2012 at 8:59pm | IP Logged |
I´m a great Mannerheim´s admirer: He defeated the Russia twice and kept the Finland free.
And was a nice polyglot...
Edited by Gorgoll2 on 04 February 2012 at 9:00pm
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PaulGlot Tetraglot Newbie Finland Joined 5293 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Italian
| Message 6 of 6 16 February 2012 at 1:37pm | IP Logged |
Mannerheim spoke Swedish at home and Finnish Wikipedia says that he had a private teacher from Switzerland.
In order to successfully join Russian Army he spend some time in Russia to learn the language and all his military studies were in Russian. During the time in Russian army he was in charge of buying horses from Europe and he traveled quite a bit. I assume that learning French was a must for a high officer because it was the primary language for diplomacy. He also conducted a 2-year expedition/spy trip to China.
When Tsar regime collapsed he moved to Finland and were forced to really learn Finnish.
I must also correct that we wasn't in exile in Switzerland because Finland wasn't an occupied country. He had bad health and cured himself in spas there.
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