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Which country is the worst at languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5956 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes  Studies: French | Message 9 of 72 12 April 2012 at 2:18am | IP Logged | |||||
I expect you are referencing Huntsman and Romney. I recall all the flap in the media - odd and disappointing.
Without taking a position at all on your main point, I believe there are more US presidents who had foreign language skills. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5956 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 10 of 72 12 April 2012 at 2:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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wikipedia link - US presidents
The article is an interesting read. I came across this sometime ago from a thread on this forum started by William Camden on the topic: previous thread re: US presidents Edited by Spanky on 12 April 2012 at 2:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5832 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 11 of 72 12 April 2012 at 2:48am | IP Logged | |||||
I expect you are referencing Huntsman and Romney. I recall all the flap in the media - odd and disappointing. [QUOTE=tanya b] That's rather disappointing to hear. How exactly were they mocked? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5956 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 12 of 72 12 April 2012 at 3:03am | IP Logged | |||||
It would represent an interesting sociological project to examine it all, and I do not want to wade into what is a divisely-polarized landscape down south by delving too much into US domestic media (plus I am still at work and youtube is blocked here), but here is a humorous taste from a british source, commenting on an actual political ad of one of Romney's opponents, Newt Gingrich: In the Republican moral universe, there are various things that are pretty much automatically Evil. One of these is having anything to do with Massachusetts. Another is speaking a foreign language. If that foreign language is French, then you might as well already give up, you cheese-eating surrender monkey. This ad seeks to paint Romney as guilty on all counts. So guilty, in fact, that Romney's name should be changed to John Kerry. It begins with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the skull. "What has Massachusetts given us?" it asks before showing pictures of famed Democratic presidential candidate failure Michael Dukakis looking like an idiot in a tank and John Kerry windsurfing in an elite manner. Then, it switches straight to Romney saying something critical about Reagan (another hideous crime for any Republican). "Romney donated to Democrats," the ad informs us before mentioning his Massachusetts healthcare reforms and, obviously, claiming he raised taxes. "Now, he tells us: trust me I'm a conservative," says the voiceover man. "He'll say anything to win," the voice then chides us. But then we get the kicker. And what a kicker it is. "Just like John Kerry, he speaks French, too." This last phrase is uttered with the sort of visceral, foreboding horror that is usually reserved for announcing plagues of locusts or the births of two-headed goats. Romney himself pops up (he was shooting a video for the Salt Lake Winter Olympics) and says: "Bonjour, je m'appelle Mitt Romney." In the ad's moral universe, that is the equivalent of Romney jumping forward and saying: "Hi, I'm Mitt Romney and I want to eat your babies." Edited by Spanky on 12 April 2012 at 3:05am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4778 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 13 of 72 12 April 2012 at 7:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Serpent, dorogaya maya, ya dumala shto vo Finlyandii vse grazhdane facticheski tryoxyazichnie, poluchiv pol'notsennoe obrazovannie na rodnom Finskom, Shvedskom i Angliskom yazikax. K'sozhalenniyu, u menya netu Russkovo shrifta, nado spravitsa s moei Latinnitsoi!
Spanky, you read my mind. Huntsman and Romney are both Republicans and both members of my church. If you live on Prince Edward Island, maybe you could introduce me to Anne of Green Gables. Edited by tanya b on 12 April 2012 at 7:30am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 14 of 72 12 April 2012 at 7:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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You're actually contributing to a troll posting like this. Somehow... sad.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 72 12 April 2012 at 10:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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A thread like this one will inevitably be close to touching upon political themes which isn't allowed according to the rules of this forum. However it is difficult to be totally impartial when the issue in question is languages and language politics, because the one thing which the members of HTLAL would be expected to have in common is a positive attitude to language learning.
I have of course not seen the political advertisements which have been quoted here (and I feel no inclination to go hunting for them), but given that they apparently express a vicious hatred of precisely the thing we as a group stand for - namely language learning and knowing several languages - such utterances must be seen as a relevant theme here, as long as it doesn't develop into a bitter discussion about the US American election in general between factions within that country. And so far I haven't seen that happen. Edited by Iversen on 12 April 2012 at 10:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5831 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 72 12 April 2012 at 11:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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I believe Americans find their politicians speaking foreign languages questionable because many Americans believe in "American exceptionalism", whereby the US is unquestionably the greatest nation on earth, always will be, and as English is the main language of the USA, why on earth would you need to speak another?
For a US politician to apparently spend hours toiling over learning a stereotypically "hard" language like Mandarin is very questionable to the average American, as it brings up the question "just where do your loyalties lie?", and it also suggests that they do not believe in American exceptionalism because they're learning Mandarin, which in the American mind suggests you feel that it will be more important than English. Likewise, language learning simply isn't what most Americans do as a hobby, nor identify with on any level. To most Americans, language learners are just wimpy, left-wing, psuedo-intellectuals and not fit to be running the USA. Edited by COF on 12 April 2012 at 11:41am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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