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US presidents who knew a foreign language | ||
Tags: Political Leaders | United States | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 9 of 28 24 May 2010 at 5:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Of course, we could also say that the lack of a classical education (i.e. Latin and Greek) in modern presidents could be related to the fact that people from less privileged classes are, at long last, starting to become more involved in politics. Which I don't really see as a bad thing.
Language learning is normal for Europeans because of proximity. If you travel 300km in any direction you'll likely bump into another language as the dominant, official tongue. In the U.S. you can drive 3000km in a straight line and hear nothing but English. Outside of immigrant groups, foreign languages are seen by many working class folks in the U.S. as nice hobbies for rich people with free time and money to travel. Not something that affects everyday life. So it's not surprising that they'd tend to vote for monolinguals to represent their interests (though Spanish is definitely challenging this paradigm). 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5677 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 10 of 28 24 May 2010 at 6:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree and with robsolete and would go further to say that speaking a foreign language
is quite an accomplishment in the English-speaking parts of the New World (including Oceania). The effort and drive required to learn a foreign language is greater there than it is in the rest of the world. Edited by Paskwc on 24 May 2010 at 6:11am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6439 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 11 of 28 24 May 2010 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My point wasn't necessarily that everyone should be classically educated, in fact I agree fully with you on that score. But I think that most should at least have a passing knowledge of Spanish, given that it's apparently extremely prevalent in the USA (apparently because I don't know how widely dispersed Spanish speakers are in the USA, which I hope someone might be able to inform me?).
Outside of Irish, I could say the same about Ireland, all tourists and most tourist places will speak some English, as will the major nations we have contact with, the UK, USA and Australia. Nevertheless, it's pretty common that most people will have some words of Irish to excellent proficiency, as well as another European language, most people basically and some to a very good conversational level. We are equally distant from other cultures, in fact, I would say more so due to a tiny minority population. That said, there are only about 4 or 5 TDs (that's MPs out of 166) who are fluent in French, and I know another who is fluent in German, as well as one in Esperanto, but I'm sure some more speak foreign languages to some degree of proficiency, that's excluding Irish. It's pretty common in Ireland for journalists and politicians to have degrees in the Arts, often English and a language, Law and a language, or that sort of thing. Maybe it's uncommon elsewhere? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 12 of 28 25 May 2010 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Fine. I assumed my link didn't work because it fell foul of anti-spamming software. Anyway, it isn't hard to type the title into Wikipedia. The decline in Latin and Greek is noticeable - the last president to have decent command of Latin being Herbert Hoover. On the whole, US presidents seemed less likely to know an L2 as the 20th century wore on - a reflection of the English language's domination, I think. Further note: knowledge of languages doesn't seem to coincide closely with success of the individual president. John Quincy Adams, a good linguist, was an effective diplomat, and a rather ineffective president, though not a disastrous one. He seems to have been too high-minded an intellectual to get a party machine going, for example. Edited by William Camden on 25 May 2010 at 2:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6949 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 13 of 28 25 May 2010 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
This information is readily available online, but I will happily obilge. According to this Wikipedia article, 12% of Americans speak Spanish. But it is common knowledge that the bulk of these Spanish speakers are concentrated in places like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, and New York, and even then mostly in the big cities (I have friends from small towns in California who have told me that non-Caucasians were very rare in their public schools). If you take a state like Tennessee (chosen off the top of my head as a typical midwestern state), you get the following demographics: People who speak a language other than English at home 5.8% People who speak Spanish at home 3.3% I also recommend you check out this enlightening and handy compilation of American language demographics. Here I have found that in Montana, which is quite on the opposite side of the country from Tennessee, the population over 5 years old is 847,362. The number of this group that can speak any foreign language is 44,331 (or 5.2%), and the number of Spanish speakers is 12,953 (or 1.5%). Of these Spanish speakers, a little less than half can 'speak English less than very well', which presumably would mean that half of 1.5% (roughly 0.75%?) of people over age 5 in Montana are monolingual Spanish speakers (or should I say non-fluent English speakers - some of this number undoubtedly speak English only 'somewhat well'!) This appears to be the greatest-represented foreign language speaking group in Montana. Now, think of a language that is spoken by 1.5% of the people in your country (and don't forget that half of them speak English 'very well' or better), try to convince your fellow countrymen and countrywomen that this language is necessary for them to study this language in school, and see how successful you are with that! Of course Montana might be an extreme example (although I think Tennessee is not), but the point is that you should try to understand the reasons behind why other countries do things the way they do, instead of throwing around subtle implications that they are lazy or ignorant or somehow inferior because they aren't like Europe. Edited by Lucky Charms on 25 May 2010 at 5:02pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6439 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 14 of 28 25 May 2010 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5385 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 15 of 28 26 May 2010 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Declan, I think the difference again is proximity. Ireland is a "de facto" monolingual island, yes. But it's small, and geographically surrounded by other countries that speak other languages (except the UK, of course). So if an Irish person ever wants to leave the island (and doesn't want to go to Britain) they of course will encounter another dominant language. So they have a more immediate interest in learning one.
In the U.S., we have Mexico and Canada, two very large countries, on our borders. Canada is primarily English speaking, and while Mexico is Spanish speaking, 90% of Mexicans working in the tourist areas will speak decent English. So unless you want to go to a small village in Mexico (or rural Quebec) you more or less have to leave the CONTINENT, not the country, to find a place where English is hard to come by (and where people will not automatically switch over to English if you speak to them). I think the problem with the "America obsessed American" comment is this: America is big. Geographically it's the size of the EU by itself, with 300,000,000 citizens and 50 independent states. So even if you only follow American politics, there's a lot to know. I'm sure you know many Irish people who are well versed in EU politics: are they as well versed in the African Union? ASEAN? Indian? OPEC? South American? Central Asian? Am I defending ignorant people who live in their "middle class bubble" and ignore what goes on outside their own home? No. But these people live everywhere. We may have a few more due to our geographic isolation, but it's not a solely US phenomenon. I think that Americans tend to seem obsessed with the US simply because there's a lot here, and you have to leave the continent (and usually cross a major ocean) before other things really start to personally affect you. Due to this, our news coverage is admittedly worse regarding the "other half" of the world--we mostly only get local news, Middle Eastern news, a smidge of China/Japan, and some coverage of Latin America. Anyway, with regards to Spanish in the US, it's a complicated situation. Spanish speaking populations are largely concentrated in southern border states or large metropolitan areas. The Latino groups have pretty strong family and community networks, and (keeping in mind that all generalizations have exceptions) tend to create their own communities and populate one or two certain neighborhoods of any major city. This is why many Latino immigrants can come to the US and live here for 30 years without learning English--they speak Spanish at home, at the store, at the bank, to their landlord, to their boss, etc. etc. Similarly, unless you have a direct relationship to the local Latino community, you'll get surprisingly few chances to practice Spanish if you're not a native speaker. I've gotten some funny looks from Latinos in my city when I start speaking Spanish to them--it's really more of a cultural barrier than a linguistic one. Some people take it as an insult (because you think they're "uneducated" and can't speak good enough English) and some people just have a hard time speaking Spanish to you because it doesn't "feel right." I've also heard that there's a Mexican saying, "Never trust a politician with a cigar or a Spanish-speaking gringo." So while I wouldn't say there's any resistance from the local Spanish speaking community regarding the Spanish language, there's a certain element of cultural awkwardness and diplomacy involved. People who've lived immersively in a Latin American country for a few months or years tend to have an easier time with this (they're fluent and they know more of the social cues), but not always. So while learning Spanish is definitely very important in the U.S., it's not as simple a process as it could be. 11 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6439 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 16 of 28 26 May 2010 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It seems there are fewer differences between us than we thought. As I say, I'm not castigating Americans (and as I say, I know plenty of Americans who are not remotely stereotypical), I fully understand how if you live on one side of the USA, the other half is almost another country, particularly travel-wise. I just find it interesting how the knowledge of a foreign has fallen so dramatically among presidents.
That's what I was wondering about Spanish in the USA. I always find that demographics can be misleading, it's often very hard to find good information about how insular Spanish speaking groups are, and whether they view their language as a badge of identity that they proudly speak with Americans (and I mean English-speaking ones obviously), or one that they keep among themselves at home. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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