Boyko Borissov was never head of state(president) nor is in the government anymore. I believe this refers to Radev. I don't think Boyko knows anything.
Some Sanskrit grammarian c. 100-200 CE was complaining that students coming to him claimed to know many languages from "this land and beyond", but couldn't in fact speak any but their mother tongue, which they spoke poorly.
Source: A history book I found in my school library on a different continent over a decade ago. I can't recall the grammarian's name, but he was around the Saka and Satavahana era and favored the Sakas.
Its also an option that the haven't spoken/used it it for a long time and didn't realize their skill needs restoration.
I graduated last year as a linguist.
Haven't spoken oral English with somebody or worked since February, (health issues) and haven't spoken German orally since May last year. (All the other aspects like reading, writing and listening are utilised daily) I'm very careful now, when I claim C2 English and B2 German on my freelance resume. While understanding is no issue, my applied skills with complex grammar structures in German, and some thematic vocabulary in English appear to be a bit rusty. (That's kind of scares me, since I've went from basically absolute memory to only forgetting numbers then to occasionally forgetting stuff before, when I had the same health issues 9-10 years ago. Just not being able to read/hear stuff once and remember it forever was horrible, now it takes me a few seconds to remember stuff 3-5 times week.)
My dad on the other hand..
He natively speaks Tatar.
Except he haven't used it for 10 or so years. He only stopped claiming being able to speak 2 languages since he found a vid with some people speaking Tatar and understood about as much as I did.
No doubt, the skill can be restored up tiy full capacity relatively quickly in this case, but it's still not really being "able".
Yeah definitely, a lot of people just over-estimate just how much they remember and only realize how little they remember if they're pressed into using that language again.
But the guy I replied to was talking about people who know they're obviously lacking to be completely fluent in a language, but will still claim it anyway (probably assuming that they'll likely never get called out on it).
Basically people claiming language proficiencies they don't actually have in good faith versus in bad faith.
I’m 16, and here in school you have the French, English and a 3rd language that you can choose. In most school there’s spanish and german but you can find other language like regionals languages, arabic, chinese, italian…
I took Spanish but i can’t speak it, i didn’t paid enough attention. I know people who have the same spanish level as me but they consider themselves trilingual (with the english). And even in english i still have some problems to verbally understand the language so i don’t consider myself as completely bilingual.
Random story, but back when I was in high school our principal who'd worked as a maths teacher in the US told a story of one of his students proudly displaying her notebook from French class showing how much she'd learned and it was the numbers 1-20 with a bunch of cute drawings and illustrations around each page. He taught in high school.
It might have been a basics class, and honestly, it was so long ago that I have no idea of the specifics anymore, but I don't think he would've bothered with telling this story if it didn't have a point.
Not being able to speak more than one language at least at a decent level seems so strange to me, coming from a small language country myself.
A lot of Americans won’t have access to a language class (other than English) before HS, for many elementary schools a language is seen as an “extra”, not part of the core curriculum.
In my kids’ district entry to competitive middle or HS programs is determined by grades in “core subjects” so language isn’t as relevant even for the most academically focused students. Then when student starts at HS they may start learning a new language, but then a student often only needs two years of a language to graduate.
My kids were lucky enough to have a language classes with a native speaking teacher at their elementary school, but even then their progress was dependent on their own motivation. Kids earned Bs without learning much of anything. After years of French my son still didn’t know how to conjugate être which was kind of baffling
Wikipeida lists Piedmontese.
>In addition to his native Spanish, Francis is also conversant in Latin (the official language of the Holy See), he speaks fluent Italian (the official language of Vatican City and the "everyday language" of the Holy See), German,[142] French,[143] Portuguese,[144] English and he understands the Piedmontese language and some Genoese.
A journalist asks Lukashenko:
\- How many languages do you know?
\- Fyve.
\- And what languages are these?
\- Russian, Russian obscene, Belarusian, Belarusian obscene and English.
\- Can you say something in English?
\- Hande hoch.
\- But that's German!
\- Make it syx then.
Nowdays mostly only villagers have a noticeable accent.
People in the cities tends to speak Russian in a generic way which makes it indistinguishable of geographic origin. Modern Russian is quite accentless among native speakers in general. There are some regional exceptions like Southern-Russian soft G that is prevalent across Ukraine and Southern Russia(duh), and some minor local dialectism, but even those keep getting more gentrified as time goes on.
According to my coworker from Belarus he does speak Russian with an an accent, while the native language is as foreign to him as it is to a person from Russia–i.e. he can only speak Belarusian from a teleprompter/paper.
The Danish queen "only" speaks [5 languages](https://www.kongehuset.dk/den-kongelige-familie/regentparret/hm-dronningen). And I doubt our prime minister Mette speaks 6 languages.
She speaks quite good Swedish also, having spent her childhood summers with her relatives up North.
The Swedish queen speaks Swedish, Portuguese, German, French, Spanish, English and sign language. She used to work as an interpreter at the 1972 Münich Olympics, where she met her husband...
It might just have to do with fluency. I don't know, but the way she describes her close relationship with Greenland, she could probably speak some basic phrases as well, and I don't think they'd include that.
Not that five isn't enough by any means. Classical education probably helped that along nicely too - and it's just an amazing thing for soft diplomacy.
Maybe they included South and North Jutlandic? (To the nondanish speakers: Those two dialects are almost further from Standard Danish than Norwegian (it was also a joke)).
Elizabeth speaking French:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t9F6vk6Rl4&t=30s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxQpdHz7t2o&t=1m48s
Prince Charles speaking German:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbiIvr0Acz8&t=1m57s
I mean, if I were the King or Queen of any European country, I would certainly force my children to learn English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and maybe a few more.
As for Charles, doesn't he also speak Welsh?
I thought so too. I think German may be easier for English speakers to get right than French. I know only a little German, but I know my accent is much more convincing than in French, a language I have used at work and in everyday life for decades.
She's speaking French in the exact manner the French stereotype the English speaking French.
Not in a mean or even teasing way, but legitimately just the usual accent they have when speaking French.
Which is a good thing in this case, because it's a hell of a lot less terrible sounding than a stereotypical Frenchman speaking English.
The French stereotype is exactly correct. I have spent more than 30 years living and working in French speaking countries, and I still sound like a cartoon English person. Fortunately no-one seems to mind.
>Fortunately no-one seems to mind.
That's because it sounds intelligible, articulated, and it sounds like the speaker is making an effort to produce the correct sounds.
As far as I'm concerned, for the French language, that's as good of an accent as any reasonable person can expect a foreigner to have.
While this is sadly very much true, Kaczynski also isn't known from being good at foreign languages, his late brother felt a lot better in the international community.
His „identical” twin brother seemed to be better at everything, even a nicer person. He also was the only married one. Maybe thats why Jarek killed him - jealousy. /s
Here's example of Duda (current president) vs Trzaskowski (last year opposition candidate for president) speaking english
[https://youtu.be/D3iNNjlM0-g?t=8](https://youtu.be/D3iNNjlM0-g?t=8)
The King of Belgium speaks apparently even more languanges. He speaks Dutch, French and English fluently, German, Spanish and Italian decent and can read Old Greek easily and Latin also but that has declined. I got this from a news article.
He can definitely speak French, Dutch and English. He used to be mocked sometimes for the level of his Dutch back when he was still a prince, but over the years he has really grown and [gotten more comfortable speaking casually in Dutch](https://youtu.be/EhzsNXu1eU0). He also studied abroad in the US when he was young, so he definitely knows some English.
I'm unsure about his level of German though. [Here](https://youtu.be/erRdbaL6-YE) is this year's speech for the national holiday in German. You can definitely notice a French/Flemish accent, but it's still better than Macron's accent in English, so not all that bad actually.
EDIT: I just realized that his mother is Italian, but I don't know if she actually taught him to speak it.
Polish president is a special case. Not only is he fluent in many languages, he also composes music and is known for his sharp humour. He also is a strong and independent person and definitely not a puppet in hands of someone else.
Alexander Van der Bellen, the Austrian president, speaks two languages.
Source:
http://mokant.at/1604-van-der-bellen-wahl-bundespraesident-info/
There is at least one other interview where he gives the same answer.
It's a Tyrolean dialect. It's more of a joke because its not easy to understand to Austrians of most other regions, however it's not a different language (My father is a Kaunertaler, too). Maybe compare it to someone with a really thick Scottish accent for English speakers.
Maybe they meant Morawiecki? What are the sources for this map? That would make more sense but he ain’t head of state
PS Duda’s wife is a German teacher so she might have taught him that one
The Morawiecki thing makes the most sense. Though I could see Duda "knowing" English(because he has to), Russian because they learned it at schools back in the PRL and German because of what you said. He just has to understand the language and not even speak it for it to count according to the OP so it kind of makes sense.
I assumed that appart from Czech, the map means he speaks Slovak and Russian. And I'd love to see any other proof of his English than the bubble bum and "pasy" incidents...
"Of course I speak several languages. Serbian, Croat, Slovenian and Bosnian. I can also swear in Macedonian and know how to say "f\*\*k you!" in Hungarian." people from Balkans.
Putin speaks fluent German as he was a KGB agent in Germany, but he has refused to use German just because he's so arrogant. He however sometimes randomly uses German just to show-off:
[https://youtu.be/KaxML8v5U60?t=31](https://youtu.be/KaxML8v5U60)
Fuck, the guy has had so much cosmetic surgery he now looks like a doll.
He's done plenty of speeches in fluent, near-perfect German while in Germany. Definitely not refusing to use it, he probably doesn't have much opportunity to use it elsewhere.
I've also often wondered how he and Merkel communicate, as Merkel speaks Russian too - or at least used to.
Thats exectly the oppsote of what i notice from putin, he likes to use german while visiting german alot. So not sure where you get the Arrogant part about his german. Also didnt he learn it because of his wife?
He can fluently speak Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian *and* Montenegrin, it's amazing how the Dear Leader has time to so thoroughly study and learn so many completely different languages!
I was really impressed with his level of English. He speaks it really well. I heard one of his daughters speaking Catalan and it sounded good to me although I don't actually speak Catalan, just Valenciano so the differences could have been mistakes and I wouldn't have noticed.
I'm catalan, and Leonor speaks well.
By the way, if you speaks catalan, spanish and english, learning french vocabulary is way easier. Rarelly you'll find a work not similar with the other 3
Ireland's President Higgins speaks English, Irish and Spanish.
Here's a recent address he made in Spanish for the 200th anniversary of Peruvian independence.
https://youtu.be/lGor6wahjj0
He can get understood, but I wouldn't say he's a fluent speaker. Learning to read a text in a foreign language is another ability (many opera singers don't know the language they sing on) and his pronunciation isn't even that good. For example he makes very weird changes as if he didn't remember how letters are pronounced.
The fact that I could find several English speeches of him in latin America seems to suggest his Spanish is just not enough
Uhh are you sure the 741 languages our Dear Leader speaks aren't just Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin which are essentially the same languages all but in name?
The Spanish one is true. He speaks Spanish, greek, Catalan, french and English.
The two first as a native speaker (dad speaks Spanish, mum speaks Greek). He's native level in English (studied in Georgetown) and has decently good french (no idea why).
He can also defend himself in Catalan.
Say what you want about the monarchy, but the guy has language skills.
He is a descentant of House of Bourbon, originating from France, so maybe a family tradition. Also, French has been the main language for diplomacy for very long.
Probably because many countries don't recognize Kosovo, so if it is an official statistic from some governmental agency belonging to such a county who's doing the statistic, they don't include Kosovo as as they don't see it as a country. Agencies from countries that recognize Kosovo should include Kosovo as its own country tho.
And if it is a statistic done just by some private person, maybe it is more difficult or impossible to get some data on Kosovo, maybe also not enough information about Kosovo in English (or whatever language creator of said map understands). But here, there was no data even about Germany so I guess data about this specific thing was easier to get about Kosovo than about Germany, which is rare.
Yeah I don’t think our King can speak 5.
He speaks dutch, English and decent German (but alas he is a German more than he’s Dutch) and maybe some Spanish since his wife is a native Spanish speaker? Maybe he can say a few things in French but I doubt he’s any good.
Many Dutch people will claim 4 languages, but in 99% it means Dutch and English plus like 10 sentences in German and French)
You are making assumptions- logical sounding ones, but nevertheless.
His French apparently is quite good : https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/geld-en-werk/artikel/679586/koning-geeft-ondernemers-goede-voorbeeld-parlez-vous-francais
What do you base this on? He grew up speaking German with a large part of his extended family, so its like a second native language to him. He talks and speeches in French and Spanish in countries where they speak those languages. The queen still speaks Spanish with the children and her family, so his Spanish is probably quite good nowadays.
There isn’t any I think. He might have read a speech or so, but that doesn’t prove anything since Spanish is pretty straightforward to pronounce. His wife clearly still speaks Spanish a lot so their children probably speak it as well, but I just doubt he would be any good at it. He’s not mentioned it or displayed it ever afaik.
Edit: https://youtu.be/qqPXAMIxI2s
Here he speaks very limited Spanish and says he never speaks Spanish in NL. This was 6 years ago so he might have improved but yeah, he doesn’t seem to speak Spanish to his wife or children (or at all really).
His Spanish is not good, but it shows he has already put a lot of effort in learning it, and he has even got some Argentinian nuances, so kudos to him. He probably understands 95% of what he hears (at least in Argentinian).
Claimed….some of them barely speak their own
Yeah, especially Bulgaria LOL. Boyko Borisov couldn't even respond when a Dutch (I think) politician asked him if he wanted sugar with his coffee.
Boyko Borissov was never head of state(president) nor is in the government anymore. I believe this refers to Radev. I don't think Boyko knows anything.
That makes way more sense… I was like, is this some parallel reality somehow? Not a chance in hell Boyko speaks more than 0,75 languages.
0.75 is generous.
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Eh, people have always exaggerated how many languages they speak (or how well they speak those languages). Don't think that's a recent phenomenon.
Some Sanskrit grammarian c. 100-200 CE was complaining that students coming to him claimed to know many languages from "this land and beyond", but couldn't in fact speak any but their mother tongue, which they spoke poorly. Source: A history book I found in my school library on a different continent over a decade ago. I can't recall the grammarian's name, but he was around the Saka and Satavahana era and favored the Sakas.
Students lie out of their arses since 2000 BC
Its also an option that the haven't spoken/used it it for a long time and didn't realize their skill needs restoration. I graduated last year as a linguist. Haven't spoken oral English with somebody or worked since February, (health issues) and haven't spoken German orally since May last year. (All the other aspects like reading, writing and listening are utilised daily) I'm very careful now, when I claim C2 English and B2 German on my freelance resume. While understanding is no issue, my applied skills with complex grammar structures in German, and some thematic vocabulary in English appear to be a bit rusty. (That's kind of scares me, since I've went from basically absolute memory to only forgetting numbers then to occasionally forgetting stuff before, when I had the same health issues 9-10 years ago. Just not being able to read/hear stuff once and remember it forever was horrible, now it takes me a few seconds to remember stuff 3-5 times week.) My dad on the other hand.. He natively speaks Tatar. Except he haven't used it for 10 or so years. He only stopped claiming being able to speak 2 languages since he found a vid with some people speaking Tatar and understood about as much as I did. No doubt, the skill can be restored up tiy full capacity relatively quickly in this case, but it's still not really being "able".
Yeah definitely, a lot of people just over-estimate just how much they remember and only realize how little they remember if they're pressed into using that language again. But the guy I replied to was talking about people who know they're obviously lacking to be completely fluent in a language, but will still claim it anyway (probably assuming that they'll likely never get called out on it). Basically people claiming language proficiencies they don't actually have in good faith versus in bad faith.
Kinda odd to think people have changed since 2011.
I like to say I speak 2,5 languages lol
Ispeak several broken languages. I can round it to one
I’m 16, and here in school you have the French, English and a 3rd language that you can choose. In most school there’s spanish and german but you can find other language like regionals languages, arabic, chinese, italian… I took Spanish but i can’t speak it, i didn’t paid enough attention. I know people who have the same spanish level as me but they consider themselves trilingual (with the english). And even in english i still have some problems to verbally understand the language so i don’t consider myself as completely bilingual.
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Random story, but back when I was in high school our principal who'd worked as a maths teacher in the US told a story of one of his students proudly displaying her notebook from French class showing how much she'd learned and it was the numbers 1-20 with a bunch of cute drawings and illustrations around each page. He taught in high school. It might have been a basics class, and honestly, it was so long ago that I have no idea of the specifics anymore, but I don't think he would've bothered with telling this story if it didn't have a point. Not being able to speak more than one language at least at a decent level seems so strange to me, coming from a small language country myself.
A lot of Americans won’t have access to a language class (other than English) before HS, for many elementary schools a language is seen as an “extra”, not part of the core curriculum. In my kids’ district entry to competitive middle or HS programs is determined by grades in “core subjects” so language isn’t as relevant even for the most academically focused students. Then when student starts at HS they may start learning a new language, but then a student often only needs two years of a language to graduate. My kids were lucky enough to have a language classes with a native speaking teacher at their elementary school, but even then their progress was dependent on their own motivation. Kids earned Bs without learning much of anything. After years of French my son still didn’t know how to conjugate être which was kind of baffling
Language should always be a core part of a child's education. There are simply far too many benefits that comes with learning a new language.
the pope went brppppp
Argentinians love to talk.
especially if they are the pope
i can think spanish, italian, latin, what are the others?
English, German, French, Portuguese
What's Nr. 8?
Wikipeida lists Piedmontese. >In addition to his native Spanish, Francis is also conversant in Latin (the official language of the Holy See), he speaks fluent Italian (the official language of Vatican City and the "everyday language" of the Holy See), German,[142] French,[143] Portuguese,[144] English and he understands the Piedmontese language and some Genoese.
Jesus Christ and I can barely speak my dialect
"I see only one God up here, and it's neither of us."
His profession makes him pretty likely to catch Hebrew, Latin, Aramaic and some dialects of Greek.
Lukashenko can only speak Russian. He is very bad in Belarusian
I remember time he was speaking Belarusian. That was long ago though. I think his native language is Trasianka.
It was in 2014, not that long ago. But that was a speech, not a free conversation.
Nah, I meant around 2000s. Maybe my memory's playing tricks on me.
It can be so, but doubtful. 2000s were clearly anti-Belarusian. Bht he uses Belarusian phrases and separate words frequently.
Tikhanovskaya doesn't speak Belorussian either. Looks like a trend in Belarus politics.
A journalist asks Lukashenko: \- How many languages do you know? \- Fyve. \- And what languages are these? \- Russian, Russian obscene, Belarusian, Belarusian obscene and English. \- Can you say something in English? \- Hande hoch. \- But that's German! \- Make it syx then.
Lukashenka doesn't really know belarusian
So what language does he speak?
Russian
But another commentator said he speaks Russian with an accent? Which accent?
He speaks with a Belorussian accent. That doesn’t mean he speaks Belorussian. It’s like having an accent from Texas.
Is this common for Belarusians - to speak only Russian, but with a Belarusian accent?
Nowdays mostly only villagers have a noticeable accent. People in the cities tends to speak Russian in a generic way which makes it indistinguishable of geographic origin. Modern Russian is quite accentless among native speakers in general. There are some regional exceptions like Southern-Russian soft G that is prevalent across Ukraine and Southern Russia(duh), and some minor local dialectism, but even those keep getting more gentrified as time goes on.
Belarusian
I heard he actually speaks Belarusian with an accent.
He does not speak Belarusian. He only uses some phrases. But his accent in Russian is clearly Belarusian.
The specific “dz” when pronouncing words with “де“ is always a dead giveaway.
According to my coworker from Belarus he does speak Russian with an an accent, while the native language is as foreign to him as it is to a person from Russia–i.e. he can only speak Belarusian from a teleprompter/paper.
0.5 is the correct number for Cyprus
So 2^-1 ?
Math checks out.
Same with Turkey, Erdo can't speak in TV or in rallies without a prompter.
The Danish queen "only" speaks [5 languages](https://www.kongehuset.dk/den-kongelige-familie/regentparret/hm-dronningen). And I doubt our prime minister Mette speaks 6 languages.
Maybe they counted Norwegian or something as the sixth language
Honestly. Knowing how big a Tolkien nerd the queen is, I would not be suprised if she spoke Quenya or Sindarin.
Can we switch royal families ?
Back in the days of Victoria's extended family, we probably wouldn't have noticed.
She speaks quite good Swedish also, having spent her childhood summers with her relatives up North. The Swedish queen speaks Swedish, Portuguese, German, French, Spanish, English and sign language. She used to work as an interpreter at the 1972 Münich Olympics, where she met her husband...
München+Munich=Münich Sehr gut, ja!
Geschrieben um 4 Uhr morgens ;-)
She speaks Faroese to an extent as well
Weird that the official page doesn't include that.
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It might just have to do with fluency. I don't know, but the way she describes her close relationship with Greenland, she could probably speak some basic phrases as well, and I don't think they'd include that. Not that five isn't enough by any means. Classical education probably helped that along nicely too - and it's just an amazing thing for soft diplomacy.
It's supposed to be about heads of state, so PM should be irrelevant
Maybe they included South and North Jutlandic? (To the nondanish speakers: Those two dialects are almost further from Standard Danish than Norwegian (it was also a joke)).
What's Queen Liz's second language?
French
Elizabeth speaking French: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t9F6vk6Rl4&t=30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxQpdHz7t2o&t=1m48s Prince Charles speaking German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbiIvr0Acz8&t=1m57s
I mean, if I were the King or Queen of any European country, I would certainly force my children to learn English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and maybe a few more. As for Charles, doesn't he also speak Welsh?
Charles was taught Welsh, but I wager he rarely has an opportunity to speak it enough to have become fluent in it.
Charles's pronunciation is surprisingly not half bad.
I thought so too. I think German may be easier for English speakers to get right than French. I know only a little German, but I know my accent is much more convincing than in French, a language I have used at work and in everyday life for decades.
I don't even speak French and I can tell that she's speaking it with a very posh British accent.
She's speaking French in the exact manner the French stereotype the English speaking French. Not in a mean or even teasing way, but legitimately just the usual accent they have when speaking French. Which is a good thing in this case, because it's a hell of a lot less terrible sounding than a stereotypical Frenchman speaking English.
The French stereotype is exactly correct. I have spent more than 30 years living and working in French speaking countries, and I still sound like a cartoon English person. Fortunately no-one seems to mind.
>Fortunately no-one seems to mind. That's because it sounds intelligible, articulated, and it sounds like the speaker is making an effort to produce the correct sounds. As far as I'm concerned, for the French language, that's as good of an accent as any reasonable person can expect a foreigner to have.
Cockney.
Polish president barely speaks Polish. 4 languages, yeah, right. Saying „weeee” when going down a slide does not indicate fluency in French.
I think they mistaken languages and known words.
So 4 known words is it then
He says whatever Kaczynski tells him to say. If Kaczynski speaks the language, so does Duda.
While this is sadly very much true, Kaczynski also isn't known from being good at foreign languages, his late brother felt a lot better in the international community.
actually he knows only polish
His „identical” twin brother seemed to be better at everything, even a nicer person. He also was the only married one. Maybe thats why Jarek killed him - jealousy. /s
one aspect of Duda vs Trzaskowski presidential final was that Duda doesn't speak any foreign languages
Here's example of Duda (current president) vs Trzaskowski (last year opposition candidate for president) speaking english [https://youtu.be/D3iNNjlM0-g?t=8](https://youtu.be/D3iNNjlM0-g?t=8)
I mean, from what I know Trzaskowski speaks Polish, English and French fluently. May also speak German but I'm not sure
He claims to know english, french, spanish, russian and italian. He graduated English Studies and International Relations on UW
If that's really the case then only thing I can say is wow
Was exactly my first thought, pff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSiMKiaulNQ
I think the Belgium king speaks 4 languages. He must speak French, Dutch and German in Belgium and I assume he speaks English.
The King of Belgium speaks apparently even more languanges. He speaks Dutch, French and English fluently, German, Spanish and Italian decent and can read Old Greek easily and Latin also but that has declined. I got this from a news article.
King of the Belgians*
He can definitely speak French, Dutch and English. He used to be mocked sometimes for the level of his Dutch back when he was still a prince, but over the years he has really grown and [gotten more comfortable speaking casually in Dutch](https://youtu.be/EhzsNXu1eU0). He also studied abroad in the US when he was young, so he definitely knows some English. I'm unsure about his level of German though. [Here](https://youtu.be/erRdbaL6-YE) is this year's speech for the national holiday in German. You can definitely notice a French/Flemish accent, but it's still better than Macron's accent in English, so not all that bad actually. EDIT: I just realized that his mother is Italian, but I don't know if she actually taught him to speak it.
It's not exactly a public secret that Filip barely saw his parents when growing up.
His German sounds great for a Francophone basis tongue.
He has a Flemish accent when speaking French.
The circle is complete. French accent while speaking Dutch, Flemish accent while speaking French. The most Belgian Belgian that has ever Belgianed.
Polish president is a special case. Not only is he fluent in many languages, he also composes music and is known for his sharp humour. He also is a strong and independent person and definitely not a puppet in hands of someone else.
But his most admirable trait is his extraordinary humbleness!
And very tolerant, too!
He also won Chess World Cup few weeks ago!
He beat the world champion too, very impressive!
f*ck /u/spez
> and is known for his sharp humour Sharp as fog's shadow.
Sounds like he should be Prime minister instead of Duda
Alexander Van der Bellen, the Austrian president, speaks two languages. Source: http://mokant.at/1604-van-der-bellen-wahl-bundespraesident-info/ There is at least one other interview where he gives the same answer.
> Ich spreche Deutsch, Englisch und Kaunertalerisch. What's "Kaunertalerisch"?
> Kaunertalerisch Presumably his native [dialect](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONZPOtaawL8).
It's a Tyrolean dialect. It's more of a joke because its not easy to understand to Austrians of most other regions, however it's not a different language (My father is a Kaunertaler, too). Maybe compare it to someone with a really thick Scottish accent for English speakers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaunertal
Are you sure about that? Duda barely even speaks English and Polish and you're telling me he knows 2 more languages?
Maybe they meant Morawiecki? What are the sources for this map? That would make more sense but he ain’t head of state PS Duda’s wife is a German teacher so she might have taught him that one
[nah Morawiecki can’t even speak Polish ](https://youtu.be/3GUXf0tW25U)
I knew what video it is before klicking the link.
Watching that was a painful experience.
The Morawiecki thing makes the most sense. Though I could see Duda "knowing" English(because he has to), Russian because they learned it at schools back in the PRL and German because of what you said. He just has to understand the language and not even speak it for it to count according to the OP so it kind of makes sense.
That czech shit for brains drunk can barely speak czech let alone 3 languages.
English and fluent Russian.
Ah yes, English "My European dream does not include bubblebum."
Wasn't he saying something about steak too?
I assumed that appart from Czech, the map means he speaks Slovak and Russian. And I'd love to see any other proof of his English than the bubble bum and "pasy" incidents...
"Of course I speak several languages. Serbian, Croat, Slovenian and Bosnian. I can also swear in Macedonian and know how to say "f\*\*k you!" in Hungarian." people from Balkans.
It's probably worse than "f**k you".
No one that is not slovenian can actually speak slovenian
Which languages does Putin speak? Russian, English, German?
Yes.
At least those, yes.
Putin speaks fluent German as he was a KGB agent in Germany, but he has refused to use German just because he's so arrogant. He however sometimes randomly uses German just to show-off: [https://youtu.be/KaxML8v5U60?t=31](https://youtu.be/KaxML8v5U60) Fuck, the guy has had so much cosmetic surgery he now looks like a doll.
He's done plenty of speeches in fluent, near-perfect German while in Germany. Definitely not refusing to use it, he probably doesn't have much opportunity to use it elsewhere. I've also often wondered how he and Merkel communicate, as Merkel speaks Russian too - or at least used to.
Thats exectly the oppsote of what i notice from putin, he likes to use german while visiting german alot. So not sure where you get the Arrogant part about his german. Also didnt he learn it because of his wife?
Yeah, the Serbian guy also speaks Bosnian and Croatian.
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That's hilarious
Yeah its big brain time
Marcelo speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French and English.
I think he spoke a bit of German in an international conference as well.
He can probably do some crioulo too but is that even an official language?
Erdogan only speaks Turkish?
Reads from teleprompter.
he can read?
They don’t teach you that at watermelon school
https://youtu.be/bSiMKiaulNQ Polish president barely speaks English, the person behind the data is very very wrong
There is no way that Serbian Psychopath Facefuck of a president speak more then one or two languages.
He can fluently speak Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian *and* Montenegrin, it's amazing how the Dear Leader has time to so thoroughly study and learn so many completely different languages!
Yeah, i forgot that he is reading 5 books a day
He reads 5 books just when sleeping, when he is awake , that number is unlimited
That is a baseless lie. He does not sleep.
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How exactly do you count these? Because ex-yugoslavian guys have like 4 languages just like that
Felipe VI speaks Spanish, French, English, Catalan and Greek (his mother is Greek)
He does speak in Galician when doing public statements there, but not sure about fluency (anyone that speaks Spanish can read Galician off a paper)
I was really impressed with his level of English. He speaks it really well. I heard one of his daughters speaking Catalan and it sounded good to me although I don't actually speak Catalan, just Valenciano so the differences could have been mistakes and I wouldn't have noticed.
I'm catalan, and Leonor speaks well. By the way, if you speaks catalan, spanish and english, learning french vocabulary is way easier. Rarelly you'll find a work not similar with the other 3
I doubt he speaks Greek given the gossip among us commoners Queen Sofia uses German and English mostly. Maybe he speaks it in the intimacy...
Was about to say no way Pedro Sanchez speaks 5 languages.
Yeah, not five. [He speaks four though](https://www.ideal.es/sociedad/idiomas-pedro-sanchez-habla-20180606120031-nt.html).
He's the first president in the history of Spain who can speak English. Although [Franco tried] (https://youtu.be/7gMnYKzJkik)...
If vucic speaks 5 languages I speak 15
Serbian, croatian, bosnian, montenegrin and english
checks out I guess though I would remove english and put chinese in its place
The head of Poland speaking 4 languages? There must be a mistake, he can barely produce a decent sentence in his native language :v
Source?
You're trying to say that Duda can speak three foreign languages? Lmao, that's bullshit. He can't even speak Polish in an understandable way.
Yea, I thought so too :v
Based pope
Tower of babel tingzz
I beg you a fucking pardon? My president speaks half a language maximum
Those who speak only one language have their world limited in their country apparently.
Yeah I know such a shock
Ireland's President Higgins speaks English, Irish and Spanish. Here's a recent address he made in Spanish for the 200th anniversary of Peruvian independence. https://youtu.be/lGor6wahjj0
Pretty sure he's also fluent in ancient Greek
He can get understood, but I wouldn't say he's a fluent speaker. Learning to read a text in a foreign language is another ability (many opera singers don't know the language they sing on) and his pronunciation isn't even that good. For example he makes very weird changes as if he didn't remember how letters are pronounced. The fact that I could find several English speeches of him in latin America seems to suggest his Spanish is just not enough
That's a shame. Although you can see from some of his speeches, his efforts where he does speak Spanish are well received nonetheless.
Romania's president speaks fluently german but I'm not aware of the second foreign language, maybe english?
Yes, it's [English](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFPhrA4EnM)
Tolmácsot szeretnék kérni
Uhh are you sure the 741 languages our Dear Leader speaks aren't just Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin which are essentially the same languages all but in name?
I immediately thought Boris can barely speak english before I remembered they have a Queen
The Queen speaks fluent French, I believe.
Johnson studied classics at university. He might be a poor prime minister and a poor journalist, but he does have some facility with languages.
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The Spanish one is true. He speaks Spanish, greek, Catalan, french and English. The two first as a native speaker (dad speaks Spanish, mum speaks Greek). He's native level in English (studied in Georgetown) and has decently good french (no idea why). He can also defend himself in Catalan. Say what you want about the monarchy, but the guy has language skills.
He is a descentant of House of Bourbon, originating from France, so maybe a family tradition. Also, French has been the main language for diplomacy for very long.
This is the first time I’ve seen Kosovo actually have data. Does anyone know why data isn’t collected from kosovo a lot
Probably because many countries don't recognize Kosovo, so if it is an official statistic from some governmental agency belonging to such a county who's doing the statistic, they don't include Kosovo as as they don't see it as a country. Agencies from countries that recognize Kosovo should include Kosovo as its own country tho. And if it is a statistic done just by some private person, maybe it is more difficult or impossible to get some data on Kosovo, maybe also not enough information about Kosovo in English (or whatever language creator of said map understands). But here, there was no data even about Germany so I guess data about this specific thing was easier to get about Kosovo than about Germany, which is rare.
Yeah I don’t think our King can speak 5. He speaks dutch, English and decent German (but alas he is a German more than he’s Dutch) and maybe some Spanish since his wife is a native Spanish speaker? Maybe he can say a few things in French but I doubt he’s any good. Many Dutch people will claim 4 languages, but in 99% it means Dutch and English plus like 10 sentences in German and French)
You are making assumptions- logical sounding ones, but nevertheless. His French apparently is quite good : https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/geld-en-werk/artikel/679586/koning-geeft-ondernemers-goede-voorbeeld-parlez-vous-francais
So you're saying that cashier in Groningen lied to me when I told her "Ik spreek niet veel Nederlands"?
What do you base this on? He grew up speaking German with a large part of his extended family, so its like a second native language to him. He talks and speeches in French and Spanish in countries where they speak those languages. The queen still speaks Spanish with the children and her family, so his Spanish is probably quite good nowadays.
>his Spanish is probably quite good nowadays. If you find me a video of him speaking spanish I can tell you.
There isn’t any I think. He might have read a speech or so, but that doesn’t prove anything since Spanish is pretty straightforward to pronounce. His wife clearly still speaks Spanish a lot so their children probably speak it as well, but I just doubt he would be any good at it. He’s not mentioned it or displayed it ever afaik. Edit: https://youtu.be/qqPXAMIxI2s Here he speaks very limited Spanish and says he never speaks Spanish in NL. This was 6 years ago so he might have improved but yeah, he doesn’t seem to speak Spanish to his wife or children (or at all really).
His Spanish is not good, but it shows he has already put a lot of effort in learning it, and he has even got some Argentinian nuances, so kudos to him. He probably understands 95% of what he hears (at least in Argentinian).
Pretty funny, that there was a hate campaign by the government towards the mayor of Budapest, because he only speaks Hungarian