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Political Leaders and Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Grammaticus Hexaglot Newbie Norway Joined 5751 days ago 36 posts - 40 votes Speaks: FrenchC2, Norwegian*, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, Russian | Message 81 of 142 29 March 2009 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
As far as I've read, Hitler was totally monolingual and hardly knew a word of any other language. He had a very good interpreter. Edited by Grammaticus on 29 March 2009 at 1:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Grammaticus Hexaglot Newbie Norway Joined 5751 days ago 36 posts - 40 votes Speaks: FrenchC2, Norwegian*, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, Russian | Message 82 of 142 29 March 2009 at 1:00am | IP Logged | |||||
Churchill was conversant in french. Hitler was monolingual. Lenin spoke many languages quite indifferently. Stalin only spoke russian and georgian but still wrote a book on language theory. Don't know about Mao. Napoleon spoke french and Italian indifferently (being a native corsican). I guess it partly explains his popularity in Italy at the time. He was also taught German at the military academy (compulsory) but did poorly. Edited by Grammaticus on 29 March 2009 at 1:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6270 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 83 of 142 29 March 2009 at 1:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Stalin spoke Russian with a noticeable Georgian accent (obvious from recordings). He could pick through written texts in German with the help of a dictionary but was not fluent. Unlike many leading Bolsheviks, he did not spend extensive time in exile outside the Russian Empire.
Lenin had some exposure to Latin and Greek at school, and could read English, French and German but sometimes had trouble understanding and speaking the colloquial languages when in exile. He gave a talk on the Russian February revolution in Zürich in Hochdeutsch not long before returning to Russia in 1917. He also had a reading knowledge of Italian. He spoke to Anglophone visitors in the Kremlin in English, like H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and others, though an interpreter was on stand-by in case one was needed. Mao's native language was the dialect of his native Hunan province, called Hsiang, I believe. Mandarin was a second language and I don't think he knew any non-Chinese language. Napoleon's native language was indeed Corsican Italian. Even the quality of his French was sometimes called into question. He tried to learn English on St Helena but gave up the attempt, writing a letter in extremely garbled English trying to explain how difficult he found the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6146 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 84 of 142 29 March 2009 at 6:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Mao never spoke Mandarin fluently;even in his speeches he used mostly his native Xiang "dialect" albeit with baihua grammar and vocab. It seems he also took the same attitude to learning English.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6270 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 86 of 142 21 May 2009 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Lenin liked to read dictionaries of foreign languages and had his secretary order them for him from Moscow's main library when he was in the Kremlin. Indeed, they seem to have been bedside reading for him. He blamed late-night sessions reading dictionaries for cases when he failed to wake up early the next morning.
When drafting speeches and articles, he sometimes used Greek letters to mark headings. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5836 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 87 of 142 24 May 2009 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Queen Silvia of Sweden is considered by some to be a polyglot.
She is a native speaker of German and Portuguese. She also speaks Swedish, Spanish, English and French. Personally I can't recall ever hearing her speak anything other than Swedish and German. However, she grew up in Brazil, so her Portuguese has to be very good. She met the Swedish king when she was working as a Spanish -> German interpreter, so her Spanish has to be good too. I don't know about the other languages at all. A lot of people in Sweden complain about her making grammatical mistakes, like mixing up prepositions and definite articles. She also has a quite noticeable German accent which is understandable since she learnt Swedish as an adult. She doesn't speak in public very often anyway. I think she is more of an "accidental" polyglot than somebody who made a conscious effort to be one. I am not a big monarchist, but I think it's fairly common that these heads of state speak three or more languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6270 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 88 of 142 25 May 2009 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hitler was rather poorly educated and had a xenophobic reaction to hearing foreign languages being spoken around him, especially in Vienna, a rather cosmopolitan place in his youth and disliked by him for that very reason. He also seems to have regarded knowledge of foreign languages as a "Jewish" trait, and so something to be avoided. Edited by William Camden on 25 May 2009 at 7:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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