How much Dutch can a Walloon (60) learn? (Philological Room) Language Learning Forum

How much Dutch can a Walloon (60) learn?
Tags: Psychology \| Belgium \| Political Leaders \| Press Article \| Dutch
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Fasulye
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12 December 2011 at 5:10pm | IP Logged

I would like to present this interesting press article written by Michael Erard (= the author of the upcoming book "Babel No More") here to have a discussion on this topic.

Press Article in "Psychology Today":

How much Dutch can the 60-year-old politician Elio Di Rupo learn?

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 12 December 2011 at 5:15pm
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iguanamon
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12 December 2011 at 5:32pm | IP Logged

I wouldn't say that age is as limiting as the availability of his time. One can assume that being Prime Minister of a country is quite time consuming in itself, especially so in a country involved in such political turmoil as Belgium. Let's put it this way, I doubt that he'll be doing a TAC anytime soon or immersion by refusing to speak French.

How does Switzerland handle this type of situation? Are Swiss Prime Ministers fluent in the three major official languages of the country? I would assume that French/German would be the most common combination, with Italian getting short shrift and Romansh not even appearing on the radar screen.
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vonPeterhof
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12 December 2011 at 8:43pm | IP Logged

iguanamon wrote:

How does Switzerland handle this type of situation? Are Swiss Prime Ministers fluent in the three major official languages of the country? I would assume that French/German would be the most common combination, with Italian getting short shrift and Romansh not even appearing on the radar screen.

Switzerland does not have a Prime Minister. Its "head of state" is a 7-member federal council with a 1-year rotating presidency. There's also the position of federal chancellor, but it's not the same as in Germany - the Swiss federal chancellor is not even a member of the government, just the head of the Federal Chancellery. Naturally, the council is linguistically heterogeneous, although there has only been one native Romansh-speaking member in the council's history. However, the current chancellor Corina Casanova speaks two dialects of Romansh, along with five other languages. I'm assuming Romansh is her native language, since it's listed first on her website.

Edited by vonPeterhof on 12 December 2011 at 8:44pm

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