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Political Leaders and Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6060 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 65 of 142 26 September 2007 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Churchill spoke some French. I am not sure it was good. He certainly had little interest in Latin and Greek while at school, but a fascination with English. Hitler used a few French words from gambling, like va banque. He seems to have scorned ability with languages, seeing it as Jewish. I am surprised Ribbentrop knew Russian - one book I read described the Baltic-born Rosenberg, also hanged at Nuremberg, as being the only leading Nazi who knew Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6060 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 66 of 142 07 October 2007 at 8:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Lenin seems to have been fond of dictionaries, often foreign-language ones, asking his secretary to import some and also asking the biggest library in Moscow if he could borrow some from the reference section, promising to return them the next day. He seems to have read them to help get to sleep.
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| Zorrillo Pentaglot Groupie United States Joined 6172 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, French, Sign Language, Spanish, Polish Studies: Greek, Georgian, Indonesian | Message 67 of 142 07 October 2007 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Apparently Ho Chi Minh was an amazing linguist. He could speak Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Russian, English, and was at least able to read German. His skill in these languages was apparently quite advanced, since his library was filled with books in all of these languages, and he left behind letters and articles written in them.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6060 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 68 of 142 10 October 2007 at 8:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Che Guevara spoke French - it was a popular language among the Argentinian middle class. It is noticeable that in a photo of him talking to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, there is no sign of an interpreter, and I don't believe the latter spoke Spanish.
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| jirpy100 Diglot Newbie South Africa Joined 6050 days ago 31 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Afrikaans*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 69 of 142 11 October 2007 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Jan Smuts, two time prime minister of South Africa, was quite a genius and linguist. He knew Afrikaans, English, High Dutch, German, Latin, and Ancient Greek. He translated German poems by Goethe and shared this interest with his wife. Read his Wiki entry, he was quite remarkable.
"The Matriculation exam tested candidates on five subjects: Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Science, and English Literature.[31] By exam-time this dedication to his studies had paid off spectacularly; the 1887 Cape lists placed Jan third overall, with the highest marks in the Colony in Greek.[32] In what had been by any standards a year of tremendous success the latter achievement was especially outstanding; a misunderstanding at the start of the year led Jan to believe that he would be exempted from the Greek exam – as a result it was a subject which he largely disregarded. Six days before the exam this potentially devastating oversight was exposed – there was now less than a week in which to catch up with a year’s study. Jan immediately shut himself away in his rooms, spending the next days in total seclusion, working from sunrise to sunset in the attempt to master the grammar and vocabulary upon which he was shortly to be tested. By the time of the exam this hard work had paid off. Within a relatively short period Jan had largely memorised his books and had mastered the Greek language to a remarkable degree." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_of_Jan_Smuts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Smuts Edited by jirpy100 on 11 October 2007 at 5:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6060 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 70 of 142 15 October 2007 at 6:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Tomas Masaryk, the first president or prime minister of independent Czechoslovakia, was an impressive linguist. He knew English (I think his wife was American) as well as most if not all of the other major European languages.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6060 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 71 of 142 03 November 2007 at 7:10am | IP Logged | ||
There is a photo of him with Kim Il-Sung when the latter visited North Vietnam in 1958. The latter is saying something while Ho Chi Minh listens. There does not seem to be an interpreter, which suggests they shared a common language. Most probably Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6060 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 72 of 142 03 November 2007 at 7:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Mátyás Rákosi (Hungarian Communist leader) and Enver Hoxha (Albanian) both seem to have been good linguists. The former spoke English and several other languages. He worked in London for a time as a bank clerk, in his youth, and also spent time in Russia/the USSR, first as a WW1 POW, later on as a political exile.
The latter studied in France for a time, on an Albanian government scholarship, and later worked in Belgium. Besides Albanian and French, he seems to have had at least some command of Italian, Russian, English and Serbo-Croat. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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