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Pope John Paul II | ||
Tags: Polyglot | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| souley Senior Member Joined 7240 days ago 178 posts - 177 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 9 of 24 05 April 2005 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
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I read through a page of potential successors of the pope, and it had a description of each, and on one it had "Multilingual".
I think Italian is the minimum for becoming pope, and most of the potential successors have lived in the Vatican for a very long time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bradley Groupie United States Joined 7222 days ago 55 posts - 56 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 24 07 April 2005 at 11:38am | IP Logged |
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I've heard from various sources that John Paul II could speak upwards of 16 languages, but unfortunately I have not been able to find a single site to confirm this. Has anyone else heard this high of a number before?
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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 11 of 24 10 April 2005 at 11:12am | IP Logged |
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I just read an entire issue of 'Paris Match' about the late pope. This French weekly magazine runs well documented stories on politicians, current events and celebrities of the day. One of their journalist has been received many times in private audiences by the Pope. I think this is a very credible source in this matter.
According to Paris-Match, the Pope spoke: Polish - his mother tongue German - taught to him by his father and which he spoke very well and with a slight Austrian accent French - he spoke it very well, with a lot of vocabulary. He conducted private meetings with both French Presidents Mitterand and Giscard d'Estaing entirely in French. Not only small talk but actual political discussions, namely to oppose French liberal abortion laws and to express concerns about the possibility that French private catholic schools could be terminated by the Socialist government of Mitterand. His Polish accent would increase as he grew tired. English Italian Latin Russian - they say he also spoke Russian but do not give any more details Spanish - they say he spoke some Spanish but not fluently The most important information I found in this article with regard to our discussion is that John Paul II carefully prepared his trips with the help of native speakers so that he could say both small talk and read speeches in the local languages with very little accent. He was very skilled at this and some people perhaps assumed that he was actually fully fluent in those languages, so small was his accent. If anybody has access to an MP3 files of the Easter polyglot greetings of the Pope, I'd be glad to post it here for reference. I hope this helps! Edited by administrator on 10 April 2005 at 11:12am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mello Groupie Brazil mypolyglot.com Joined 7053 days ago 48 posts - 48 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English | Message 12 of 24 04 August 2005 at 1:43pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know exacly but, I've heard from one of my old teachers that the last pope,didn't know many languages, he only could read the texts using the phonetics [ ], somebody writes (or translates) for him, put in the TRANSCRIPTION of the phonetics symbols, and he read.
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| jradetzky Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom geocities.com/jradet Joined 7206 days ago 521 posts - 485 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, GermanB1 | Message 13 of 24 04 August 2005 at 4:18pm | IP Logged |
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Pan Wojtyla spoke Spanish rather well as I heard him serveral times improvising short speeches whenever he visited México (he was and still is a big star here due to these speeches). Edited by jradetzky on 04 August 2005 at 4:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| randy310 Senior Member United States Joined 7064 days ago 117 posts - 117 votes Speaks: English* | Message 14 of 24 13 August 2005 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
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I think that all heads of state should be able to speak and understand English. jradetzky, you rate yourself a 10 on all four aspects of communication. Does that mean you consider yourself the equal of the average educated native speaker of English in all four aspects of communication? Your writing is excellent. Better than a lot of native English speakers here in America!
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| Vespasian Bilingual Triglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 6918 days ago 55 posts - 55 votes Speaks: German*, Swiss-German*, English Studies: Italian | Message 15 of 24 17 May 2006 at 9:15am | IP Logged |
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When Karol Józef Wojtyła died I watched some of the documentaries and interviews about and with him on television. His German was excellent. Edited by Vespasian on 17 May 2006 at 9:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| joeyayoub Tetraglot Newbie Lebanon Joined 5609 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English, Arabic (Written) Studies: Esperanto, French*, Spanish Studies: Italian, Japanese | Message 16 of 24 23 April 2011 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
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I was told that he spoke Esperanto as well
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