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Political Leaders and Languages

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
142 messages over 18 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 12 ... 17 18 Next >>
Rout
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
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326 posts - 417 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Spanish
Studies: Hindi

 
 Message 89 of 142
26 May 2009 at 10:48am | IP Logged 
We're forgetting someone.. One of the greatest Americans to ever live.

Thomas Jefferson spoke English, Old English, french, Spanish, Italian, latin, and greek, and was suspected to have known quite a bit of German as well.

George W. Bush's Spanish sounds pretty bad but Jeb Bush's Spanish is pretty good. I think his wife is Hispanic. He's so different than his brother, I think he's catholic too. Haha, W. ruined his political career though.

Mitt Romney's French sounds pretty American to me.

If you consider William F. Buckley a politician - his first language was Spanish, then he went to school in france (I think) THEN he learned English at the age of 7 and his mother was Swiss-German so maybe he knew a little. Maybe that's why he sounded like that. He wrote the introduction to a Latin book I have so he must have been good in that as well. Probably explains the sesquipedality of his English (Yes I know they're not world leaders, but they could have been.)

Edited by Rout on 26 May 2009 at 11:04am

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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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1936 posts - 2333 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 90 of 142
26 May 2009 at 3:55pm | IP Logged 
I read somewhere that Jefferson was even aware of the differences between classical Greek and modern Greek, and speculated about the causes for the differences. He was almost certainly the most intellectually powerful of US Presidents.
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paparaciii
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Senior Member
Latvia
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Speaks: Latvian*, Russian
Studies: English

 
 Message 91 of 142
26 May 2009 at 5:36pm | IP Logged 
William Camden wrote:
I read somewhere that Jefferson was even aware of the differences between classical Greek and modern Greek, and speculated about the causes for the differences. He was almost certainly the most intellectually powerful of US Presidents.
Just because he knew so many languages?
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Luso
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Portugal
Joined 5821 days ago

819 posts - 1812 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish
Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical)

 
 Message 92 of 142
26 May 2009 at 7:03pm | IP Logged 
Linas wrote:
andee wrote:
And like patuco kindly pointed out, I was using it as a comparison to Brazil.


It would be better say "Iberian Portuguese" against "Brazilian Portuguese" or "Angolan Portuguese".
However I prefer to say simply "Brazilian" when I speak about Brazilian Portuguese. As far as I know, Brazilian and Iberian Portuguese are practically mutually unintelligible, so they apppear to be rather two different languages sharing common name "Portuguese"


Actually, it is the same language and, apart from the odd expression, we understand each other quite well.


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Rout
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5472 days ago

326 posts - 417 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Spanish
Studies: Hindi

 
 Message 93 of 142
27 May 2009 at 2:47am | IP Logged 
paparaciii wrote:
William Camden wrote:
I read somewhere that Jefferson was even aware of the differences between classical Greek and modern Greek, and speculated about the causes for the differences. He was almost certainly the most intellectually powerful of US Presidents.
Just because he knew so many languages?


No, because he was a scholar and brilliant statesman.
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Fasulye
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Winner TAC 2012
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Germany
fasulyespolyglotblog
Joined 5607 days ago

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Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto
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 Message 94 of 142
27 May 2009 at 6:53pm | IP Logged 
cordelia0507 wrote:
Queen Silvia of Sweden is considered by some to be a polyglot.

She is a native speaker of German and Portuguese. She also speaks Swedish, Spanish, English and French.

Personally I can't recall ever hearing her speak anything other than Swedish and German.

However, she grew up in Brazil, so her Portuguese has to be very good. She met the Swedish king when she was working as a Spanish -> German interpreter, so her Spanish has to be good too. I don't know about the other languages at all.

A lot of people in Sweden complain about her making grammatical mistakes, like mixing up prepositions and definite articles. She also has a quite noticeable German accent which is understandable since she learnt Swedish as an adult. She doesn't speak in public very often anyway.

I think she is more of an "accidental" polyglot than somebody who made a conscious effort to be one.

I am not a big monarchist, but I think it's fairly common that these heads of state speak three or more languages.


Very interesting message, Cordelia! I knew that Queen Silvia is a polyglot and I heard her speaking Portuguese fluently in a docu on German TV about her charity work in Brasil. When I saw this docu some years ago, I asked myself how many languages she speaks, but in that time I got no answer. I assume that if she speaks foreign languages, she does it on a very high level.

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 28 May 2009 at 6:06am

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William Camden
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United Kingdom
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1936 posts - 2333 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 95 of 142
27 May 2009 at 8:31pm | IP Logged 
With Jefferson, the linguistic knowledge was only a part. He was a definite product of the Enlightenment and wrote extensively on all kinds of scholarly matters, including society, politics, science and other subjects.


This extract from Wikipedia gives an idea:
"A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as, among other things, a horticulturist, statesman, architect, archaeologist, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia. When President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, 'I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.'"

Edited by William Camden on 27 May 2009 at 8:35pm

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lecorbeau
Diglot
Senior Member
Croatia
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113 posts - 149 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Turkish

 
 Message 96 of 142
19 June 2009 at 2:39pm | IP Logged 
Besides his native Croatian, the prime minister of Croatia studied in Rome, has a PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Innsbruck (Austria), and speaks fluent English, German, French, and Italian, and is alleged to have rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, Czech, and Greek.

I just YouTubed a speech of his made in English. Heavily accented, but correct (but then again, he was reading it off a piece of paper)


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