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Robert Maxwell | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6084 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 1 of 1 07 November 2007 at 6:26am | IP Logged |
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The controversial businessman and newspaper owner claimed to speak nine languages. He came from a Jewish family in a multilingual corner of pre-1938 Czechoslovakia, now in Ukraine. He may have exaggerated, but he certainly learned English inside a year during WW2, spoke fluent German while wheeling and dealing in postwar occupied Germany, and towards the end of his life apparently used fluent Hungarian while negotiating to bid for a Hungarian tabloid. Yiddish, Slovak, Hungarian, Ukrainian and perhaps other languages were widespread in the place he grew up.
A little more information: according to a biographer, he was assigned liaison tasks in the Occupation period because it was unusual for British officers to speak German, much less other languages like Russian that Maxwell knew and apparently used for liaison with Soviet personnel in Berlin. Maxwell is said to have made the claim that he spoke nine languages when another officer mentioned knowing English and German. Maxwell scoffed at the other man for only knowing two. Edited by William Camden on 11 November 2007 at 2:45am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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