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Che Guevara? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6493 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes  4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 10 02 February 2008 at 3:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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From the looks of this video, Che Guevara, knew French as well as Spanish:
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=y5X0L_SPgoE 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Palmettofighter Newbie United States Joined 5934 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 10 10 February 2008 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wouldn't call him a polyglot for learning 2 languages in the same language family. I did do a report on him for my Spanish class.
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| Gilgamesh Tetraglot Senior Member England Joined 6044 days ago 452 posts - 468 votes 14 sounds Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French Studies: Polish | Message 3 of 10 11 February 2008 at 5:06am | IP Logged | |||||
French as well as Spanish? I believe Spanish was his mother tongue, so that's not such a big surprise. The man had to know how to speak in at least one tongue. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6493 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 10 12 February 2008 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
I didn't mean it like that. I was just posting that he knows more than one language besides his native Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 5 of 10 22 February 2008 at 5:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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French was a popular language with the Argentinian middle class when he was growing up. In his book "Episodes Of The Revolutionary War", describing the guerrilla conflict in Cuba, he mentions talking to a Western reporter (an American of Hungarian origin) in French, saying that at that time nobody in the guerrilla band spoke English.
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| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6467 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 6 of 10 22 February 2008 at 8:21am | IP Logged | |||||
It still seems to be relatively popular. When I gave a seminar talk at the University of Buenos Aires last year, I said that my Spanish wasn't good enough but that I could talk in English or French or German. I mentioned the latter two as a joke, not expecting that anyone would know them, but it turned out that among the 12-15 people in the audience, only two didn't speak/understand French. And the ones who spoke French all spoke it very well (in most cases much better than English). Even outside the university, I meet surprisingly many French speakers, more than in most other countries I've been to. PS: By the way, there was only one who understood German... Edited by Marc Frisch on 22 February 2008 at 8:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Palmettofighter Newbie United States Joined 5934 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 10 04 March 2008 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that is mainly because of the language similarities. I'm sure if you gave a speech at a University in the Netherlands you would find a lot more German speakers than French speakers(Excluding English as an option). Most of the French exchange students that came to my high school couldn't really speak English, but they could speak to the Mexican immigrants in Spanish just fine.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6074 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 8 of 10 23 May 2008 at 10:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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The YouTube confirms that he spoke French. Some other bits of evidence - Raul Castro made a diary entry during the guerrilla campaign in the Sierra Maestra that on that particular day, he was going to learn French from Che, so Che must have known the language. Later, after overthrowing Batista, Che was visited in his office by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and at least one photo exists of the meeting. There does not seem to be an interpreter present, and as far as I know, the French visitors did not speak Spanish so it is likely that Che spoke to them in French.
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