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Nicholas Sárközy? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7130 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek | Message 17 of 18 26 December 2010 at 10:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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In the 2004 US presidential election, the Democratic candidate was John Kerry. Kerry
speaks fluent French, according to various French journalists; in fact, he reportedly went to a Swiss boarding school for some time. (Wikipedia is not clear on this: in the introduction to the article it says that he attended private schools in the US and Europe; however, in the section dealing with education it does not mention any non-US schools). His first cousin once ran for the office of president of France in 1981. I mention all of this, because, during the campaign he refused to speak French. He would not speak even with the French reporters who used to interview him in French. He was concerned that speaking French would reflect badly on his campaign. For some reason, uncomprehended by this American, many of my fellow countrymen claim they do not like the French. There was a time when American presidents were respected for their education, but things have changed and a well-educated president can quickly be tarred an elitist by his opposition. Frustrating. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6032 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 18 of 18 26 December 2010 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, it's sad. The Bulgarian prime minister also doesn't speak English, Russian, or anything except Bulgarian. He's making some attempts at English but I wouldn't call it speaking. Having in mind the things he says in Bulgarian perhaps it's better this way... This reminds me of one funny event. Vladimir Putine visited Bulgaria some time ago, and the Bulgarian prime minister gave him a puppy as a present. And then he said in a funny regional dialect: "нéма да остане гладно" i.e. "it won't be left hungry". Edited by Sennin on 27 December 2010 at 3:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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