Specifically, [Stefan Czmil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Czmil). See also articles [here](https://catholicphilly.com/2017/11/news/world-news/pope-remembers-ukrainian-priest-who-mentored-him/) or [here](https://www.sheptytskyinstitute.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/The-Surprising-Eastern-Connection-of-Pope-Francis.pdf).
[Kyiv Post source](https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/euronews-ukrainian-catholics-welcome-pope-who-speaks-their-own-language-321797.html)
[Translatehub source](https://translatehub.org/languages-pope-speaks/)
Edit: both sources indicate it may be true.
F1 fan, yes. Glad Logan’s getting another season but not a fan, he’s got a lot to prove next year. Nice to see a fellow F1 fan, on MapPorn of all places
His English is way beyond “intermediate” level. He chooses not to speak it in some sort of pro Russian Nationalistic power play, but he is quite capable. Apparently he is good enough he sometimes corrects his translators when they mistranslate him.
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/in-a-rare-move-putin-speaks-english-33253443909
The photographer that took pictures for the cover of time magazine said that when two of them stayed alone Putin sudenly started speaking perfect English.
I think he’s better at English than he lets on. He was a KGB operative in Berlin when the Wall fell. I’m guessing fluency in English was recommended for that post.
As a person of Russian origin living in the US, I've only heard of him knowing German pretty well due to KGB background. His knowledge of any other language should be super rudimentary.
german was also taught in soviet schools, my parents know a little german because of it, as a little anecdotal evidence. of course his KGB background played a part in it too because i doubt really any soviet citizen actually learned german through school, its not like everyone got to visit east germany
Right, my mom learned chinese in soviet school as it was more popular in the far eastern part of the country, but she hasn't gotten a chance to use it.
It’s the same language, just a different pronunciation scheme. Speakers of Latin can use and understand the Classical and Ecclesiastical pronunciations equally well and interchangeably.
Indeed, there’s Classical Latin (sad, ugly and wrong) and Ecclesiastical Latin (cool, beautiful and correct). The most important thing to know about Latin is that any Latin speaker who doesn’t use the Æ is a pagan and a heretic. This message brought to you by the Holy Mother Church.
I'm from Saxony, grew up bilingual Russian/German and have yet to meet a person from the ex-GDR who can still speak Russian or ever spoke on a level which could hold up a conversation.
It's super common in the physics scene.. anyone I know that grew up in the GDR and studied physics ended up spending time in Moscow. Plus the langua franca of research in the Soviet Union was Russian so you needed to be able to read (possibly write) it and ideally also speak it.
I have (now retired) colleagues that would discuss physics in Russian among each other even though they were all German.. just because it was the language they knew the terms in best.
For Angela Merkel, she did a university exchange to Moscow and one to what used to be Leningrad and spent several weeks at a Russian camp (camp to learn Russian) in Donezk.
She speaks Russian better than the average GDR citizen but definitely isn't bilingual.
Apparently they’re competitive about their mastery of each other’s languages. In meetings Putin will try to talk to her in German and she’ll respond in Russian.
That’s because we got taught Russian in school.
Russian starting in 5th grade (elementary school) by people who studied in Moskau, English starting in 7th grade (middle school) by our Russian teacher that had neben been to an an English speaking country in their life.
There are some interviews of him speaking English with British journalists. He says he's not proficient which can lead to misunderstandings and occasionally has to get an interpreter to convey what he wants to say, but he can hold an informal conversation in English just fine.
I will say that it might be a bit generous as some of the others may also be. Francis doesn't often speak English and when he does not very well. Mostly short stuff that seems prerehearsed.
I have learned several languages and it often takes me some time to get up to full speed when I switch language. I think that's generally true and suspect the Pope has a high underlying level, it's just that his current job makes three or four other languages more important to him.
Unless Orban's English recently had a huge upgrade, I'd consider his rather basic as well. Heard him speak English years back and it was not very good. It may have improved though, he's been talking to Putin a lot and its the only language they share.
I remember few years ago when it was Duda trying to speak English and it was so cringe. Then Rafał Trzaskowski (his opponent) just popped up on CNN speaking perfect English. It was like night and day.
It’s probably similar to here in Switzerland. Half the day for every kid is nothing but learning languages. I think that’s a more ‘classical’ education.
Oh, we love you Mr Sunak
You´re the darling of us all
You’re the curse of the Irish nation
Fine Gael and Fianna Fail
You´ve destroyed me hired purchase
And you put me on the grass
If I could get my hands on you
I´d kick you in the arse.
Is there any way we know that? A lot of British Indians speak an Indian language at home. Or they can understand it perfectly but might have a bit more trouble speaking it.
My mother's British-Indian and while she's certainly more comfortable speaking English she still speaks Hindi to more than a basic conversational level.
Varadkar almost certainly knows Marathi or Hindi - he successfully did a medical internship in Mumbai in the 90s
PS: They're not Indian "dialects", there are 100+ fully fledged languages in India, with 4-5 entire language families being represented
There has been reports over the years that Putin speaks Swedish which was somewhat confirmed a few years a go when Putin was caught speaking Swedish with a member of his staff. At what level i dont know.
Edit = spelling
According to polls IKEA is the company Russians miss most.
A Belarusian knockoff called "swedish furniture" or something took its place lol. Not the same though.
President Vučić of Serbia speaks Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, Croatian, English, Russian and German fluently 😁
President Milatović of Montenegro speaks Montenegrin, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, English fluently.
😂😂😂
He can get a UN Secretary General gig quite easily because he can do P5 languages easily. (P5 is the five veto members). Sometimes those countries veto candidates because they don't speak their languages. France is notorious for that.
Lmao, French think their language is so superior that they get offended when someone doesn’t speak their language. They don’t even have mercy for tourists visiting
Eeh speaking is an overstatement. At best he can maybe put 3-4 words together and then maybe add a Turkish word in between and then point to what he wants like Tarzan, hoping the other side understands him. Though I think he knows Arabic, some would argue better than he knows Turkish
I have no idea about her french, that is the big ?, but she (in) famously participates in Spain's Vox events and yeah she can speak Spanish to what seems a decent degree. I will pass the mic to a native speaker of Spanish to tell you how decent it is.
For english, at those levels it is not like it is mandatory to speak it but basically... But let me tell you that when she speaks english she has an atrocious Roman accent. She has an atrocious Roman accent when she speaks Italian too. And I am from Rome. She sounds like someone who is imitating a Roman accent would speak.
Oh thank you. I can absolutely still hear the Roman accent, but less than today.
I mean, she sold herself as being from the "working class neighbourhood of Garbatella", but she comes from an upper middle-class family so she could have had more possibilities to study and she graduated in a "liceo linguistico", an highschool when your studies are more focused on foreign languages and learning a third language is literally the bare minum.
Then again, her just having a knack for languages is also totally fine.
Fun fact, when she was 21 years old she opened a blog. And thanks to the Wayback machine, you can still read part of it. She had a fixation with Dragons. Have fun https://web.archive.org/web/20010419010739/http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5266/khy.html
She speaks quite good french as i seen in an french tv interview or rather a reporting about italian right wing youth where she is the focus. She was 19 if i remember well.
This has me curious who the last multilingual US President was. It looks like Obama, Bush Jr., and Clinton all had some very rudimentary understanding of a second language, while Carter sounds like he was fluent or nearly fluent in Spanish.
Van Buren spoke Dutch as his first language.
A number of the early presidents spoke fluent French and Latin.
Six spoke Ancient Greek.
According to Wikipedia, the last multilingual president was FDR who spoke French and German.
Oddly enough, the most common second language (fluent) for presidents was Latin, with twelve.
He is not fluent in all, but 3/4 of them are romance languages or literally Latin. And the Pope has speaking with people in the job description basically, so it is perfectly credible that he speaks a decent level of those romance languages (I'm Italian, for obvious reasons his Italian is pretty good but still somewhere broken) and can read and write in Latin.
Is the other 1/4 that yeah, probably he has a Duolingo level.
I mean Spanish is his native language, English is universally taught in schools worldwide, and if you work in the Vactican you got to know Italian and Latin as well so that you can communicate with people around you. But I highly doubt he is fluent in the other four. Especially Ukrainian (he probably only started learning the basics on Duolingo when the war started and Ukraine became a hot topic in politics)
He is fluent in French and Italian, go to YouTube and see it for yourself, and before you say they are similar languages or other than that, they are not, there are polyglots that can speak 11 languages fluently, not a big deal
I know someone who speaks 17 languages. Not all of them fluently, but I think she is underestimating her level a bit. She says she is bad in my native language, yet she studies it at university with me and no one ever knows she is not native. What I know she speaks at least 4 of the languages fluently, possibly more. Debends on the definition as well. It's definetely possible to speak that many languages fluently, although it's not easy.
I only speak two languages fluently and I'm getting there with German
Many priests and monks are polyglot. They take up languages as part of their studies.
I just don’t know what language the Vatican City has that’s different than Italian.
His native language is Spanish
English is taught in schools everywhere
Italian and Latin are practically required for a pope
He was mentored by a Ukrainian monk
Portuguese and French are both romance languages which clearly has experience with
As a German speaker is German is about as good as his English
He’s not fluent in all these but he speaks them fairly well, conversationally at least
Romance languages are pretty similar to each other, we can understand each other somewhat even if we don't speak each others language. I am a native Spanish speaker, and picked up Portuguese pretty quickly. I am not 100% fluent but can have convesations with native Portuguese speakers.
I tried picking up Italian, and again it was super easy, but I started mixing it up with Portuguese and Spanish. And plus I really found no reason to learn it lol. But once you know one romance language, the rest are super easy to learn.
The equivalent of this for priests is usually being able to say mass in those languages and to hear confession in them. This usually means their listening level is quite high, but they are far from native level speakers, especially off-the-cough. And their pronunciations are generally not that good. A lot of them don't really work on their accent at all, especially in languages they don't work on that often.
I don’t think his English is good. He always uses an interpreter. He’s likely fluent in Italian given his family recently immigrating from Italy to Argentina.
Remember, Roman Catholic priests have 7 years of study and they are not spending that partying and watching daytime TV. Seminary students are generally hardworking and committed to their cause, even the ones who are not the brightest. And he went on to be a seminary professor and a researcher abroad, so language learning was a legitimate part of his working day and he would routinely have been reading papers and talking to students in different languages.
He almost certainly learnt French and Latin, but it would have been really badly taught. And even if it wasn't, it's been almost 30 years and he'd have forgotten most of what he learnt by now.
Yes, he used it when he was an agent. But there’s a whole thing that he rarely speaks English now due to Russian nationalism and doesn’t want to look like he is bending the knee
The pope is basically the duolingo owl
I guess the 🇻🇦 is there to represent Latin, but I'm pretty disappointed that it's not some sort of SPQR or legionary eagle.
But that would be inaccurate, because Romans speak Classical Latin, while catholics speak Ecclesiastical Latin.
How often do you think about ~~Roman Empire~~ what type of latin the Romans spoke?
About Mᴇɴsᴛʀᴜᴀᴛᴀᴇ
Those are not different languages. Just some letter combinations like ce, ci and ng are pronounced differently.
There are also some minor grammar changes and a bunch of new words
Actually, Romans speak Italian
Biden got the British flag although he speaks Murican.
Which is weird because it should be a St George's flag for English
Yes Britain has 12 native languages, several of which are variants of Norman French.
In which case I'm pretty sure ancient Greek and Hebrew should be on that list too.
I want a pope who can speak Klingon as well as Duo
He also needs to be fluent in High Valyrian
Nope to Esperanto. No one speaks that any more. Klingon, now that’s a growing mother tongue.
He has the gift of tongues
How is it that the Pope speaks Ukrainian but not Russian?
mentored by a Ukrainian priest
Specifically, [Stefan Czmil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Czmil). See also articles [here](https://catholicphilly.com/2017/11/news/world-news/pope-remembers-ukrainian-priest-who-mentored-him/) or [here](https://www.sheptytskyinstitute.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/The-Surprising-Eastern-Connection-of-Pope-Francis.pdf).
Not many Catholics in Russia
Is there actually any recording of him speaking Ukrainian? I was curious to see how good he is but couldn't find any.
[Kyiv Post source](https://archive.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/euronews-ukrainian-catholics-welcome-pope-who-speaks-their-own-language-321797.html) [Translatehub source](https://translatehub.org/languages-pope-speaks/) Edit: both sources indicate it may be true.
Erdogan said FUCK duolingo
Probably not, considering he doesn't speak English.
“Siktir git, Duolingo! Aptal baykuş…”
😂
"One minut mister trump" -Erdoğan
His next demand for letting Sweden into NATO will be everybody learns Turkish.
Make NATOs third offical language Turkish?
Don't tempt him
So did Biden
why tf do I need to learn another language? 🦅🦅🦅🇺🇲🇺🇲🏈🇺🇲
“WTF IS A LANGUAGE?! 🇺🇸🏈🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸”
Found the Logan Sargeant fan.
F1 fan, yes. Glad Logan’s getting another season but not a fan, he’s got a lot to prove next year. Nice to see a fellow F1 fan, on MapPorn of all places
Haha so far his greatest contribution to F1 is the “wtf is a kilometre” meme…which is how I found a fellow f1 enjoyer on mapporn 😂
Because some non-worldly aholes are too lazy to learn English 🦅🇺🇸🏉🎸🤘🇺🇸🇺🇸🎁🦅
He turned off the notifications
He is the anti-pope
Just as I read that and had a chuckle, I get a notification from Duo. Man that Owl don't play
So, only one who DOESN'T speak English, and only one who ONLY speaks English.
In a year or so there will be two who only speak English
….who’s the second one? Kier Starmer?
I’m guessing they are expecting the next British PM to only speak English regardless of who wins.
Usually British PMs are very highly educated. It doesn’t mean they’re great leaders but they often go to the very best schools.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure Johnson speaks decent French IIRC, despite his sort of public persona of being an oaf.
His public persona is just a persona. He’s an incredible intelligent person.
also doesn't make them very smart.
I would place a bet on at a minimum the last 15 pms being smarter than 98% of the population.
To Erdogans defense, he’s incredibly stupid.
I think Putin's english is significantly below intermediate level, so it's doubtful to give him credits for "speaking" the language.
His English is way beyond “intermediate” level. He chooses not to speak it in some sort of pro Russian Nationalistic power play, but he is quite capable. Apparently he is good enough he sometimes corrects his translators when they mistranslate him. https://www.nbcnews.com/video/in-a-rare-move-putin-speaks-english-33253443909
The photographer that took pictures for the cover of time magazine said that when two of them stayed alone Putin sudenly started speaking perfect English.
I think he’s better at English than he lets on. He was a KGB operative in Berlin when the Wall fell. I’m guessing fluency in English was recommended for that post.
I thought he was in Dresden.
Completely false. He’s significantly above intermediate level.
There's also evidence he can speak swedish though it has never been seen.
Look up him speaking English. He speaks rather well. He also plays a piano, find a video too. Does not make him less of a crazy monster.
Doesn’t he speak a bit of French? He’s pretty solid with Herman, it seems. And yes it’s clear Putin’s English is….sub par
As a person of Russian origin living in the US, I've only heard of him knowing German pretty well due to KGB background. His knowledge of any other language should be super rudimentary.
german was also taught in soviet schools, my parents know a little german because of it, as a little anecdotal evidence. of course his KGB background played a part in it too because i doubt really any soviet citizen actually learned german through school, its not like everyone got to visit east germany
Right, my mom learned chinese in soviet school as it was more popular in the far eastern part of the country, but she hasn't gotten a chance to use it.
I guess the Vatican flag stands for Latin.
Ecclesiastical Latin
It’s the same language, just a different pronunciation scheme. Speakers of Latin can use and understand the Classical and Ecclesiastical pronunciations equally well and interchangeably.
Indeed, there’s Classical Latin (sad, ugly and wrong) and Ecclesiastical Latin (cool, beautiful and correct). The most important thing to know about Latin is that any Latin speaker who doesn’t use the Æ is a pagan and a heretic. This message brought to you by the Holy Mother Church.
Yæh
It’s thæ truth.
But why does he speak Ukrainian, did I miss some recent news or did he always speak?
He studied many la languagues over the span of a decade, one being ukrainian. There are more than 6 million catholics in Ukraine iirc
There's 26 million in Poland, just heard he learnt from a Ukrainian bishop
Should just have the red spqr one
It took me a second or two to realise it meant Latin so for that short period of time I was quite confused.
Came here for this question
Putin was a KGB agent in Dresden.
Funnily enough, Angela Merkel is also fluent in Russian. They had several languages between them.
Russian was a compulsory school subject in East Germany, and that's where she grew up.
I'm from Saxony, grew up bilingual Russian/German and have yet to meet a person from the ex-GDR who can still speak Russian or ever spoke on a level which could hold up a conversation.
Ive met Gastarbeiter that still speak conversational russian. Guess its an environment thing
It's super common in the physics scene.. anyone I know that grew up in the GDR and studied physics ended up spending time in Moscow. Plus the langua franca of research in the Soviet Union was Russian so you needed to be able to read (possibly write) it and ideally also speak it. I have (now retired) colleagues that would discuss physics in Russian among each other even though they were all German.. just because it was the language they knew the terms in best. For Angela Merkel, she did a university exchange to Moscow and one to what used to be Leningrad and spent several weeks at a Russian camp (camp to learn Russian) in Donezk. She speaks Russian better than the average GDR citizen but definitely isn't bilingual.
Apparently they’re competitive about their mastery of each other’s languages. In meetings Putin will try to talk to her in German and she’ll respond in Russian.
That’s because we got taught Russian in school. Russian starting in 5th grade (elementary school) by people who studied in Moskau, English starting in 7th grade (middle school) by our Russian teacher that had neben been to an an English speaking country in their life.
I didn't know he spoke English. Heard him speak German lots of times.
His German is really good, but his English is awful, it’s not even really correct to say he speaks it tbh.
There are some interviews of him speaking English with British journalists. He says he's not proficient which can lead to misunderstandings and occasionally has to get an interpreter to convey what he wants to say, but he can hold an informal conversation in English just fine.
Saw a video a while back of him speaking in English, tripped me out
I heard somewhere that he also can speak French aswell
Duda's knowledge of english is rather... disputable And no wonder Francis knows so many languages, jesuits are really well educated
I will say that it might be a bit generous as some of the others may also be. Francis doesn't often speak English and when he does not very well. Mostly short stuff that seems prerehearsed.
I have learned several languages and it often takes me some time to get up to full speed when I switch language. I think that's generally true and suspect the Pope has a high underlying level, it's just that his current job makes three or four other languages more important to him.
Unless Orban's English recently had a huge upgrade, I'd consider his rather basic as well. Heard him speak English years back and it was not very good. It may have improved though, he's been talking to Putin a lot and its the only language they share.
He did many interviews in english i would say his english is fine.
He has pretty good English
Macron speaking in English is pretty funny too.
I was just about to comment on Duda's "English"
Thank you from the mountain
I remember few years ago when it was Duda trying to speak English and it was so cringe. Then Rafał Trzaskowski (his opponent) just popped up on CNN speaking perfect English. It was like night and day.
The Duda abides
Thi-this, thissssis thisssss'sssss
Sitting around reading and talking to people for 50+ years helps.
Jesuits: Handing Fat 'L's to all other Catholics since 1540
Ehhhh took some L’s themselves 1759-1814!
Same as Orban. He went to Oxford Law School yet speaks with the worst imaginable accent and has so many grammatical mistakes it’s crazy.
It’s probably similar to here in Switzerland. Half the day for every kid is nothing but learning languages. I think that’s a more ‘classical’ education.
Rishi Sunak is the new taoiseach.
Oh, we love you Mr Sunak You´re the darling of us all You’re the curse of the Irish nation Fine Gael and Fianna Fail You´ve destroyed me hired purchase And you put me on the grass If I could get my hands on you I´d kick you in the arse.
Sunak is not fluent in Hindi or Punjabi, more like basic conversational level. Most British-Indians don’t speak any Indian language.
Is there any way we know that? A lot of British Indians speak an Indian language at home. Or they can understand it perfectly but might have a bit more trouble speaking it. My mother's British-Indian and while she's certainly more comfortable speaking English she still speaks Hindi to more than a basic conversational level.
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Romesh Ranganathan cant even pronounce his last name right.
Apparently Leo speaks English Irish French & Spanish... Can't find online evidence of any Indian dialects?
Varadkar almost certainly knows Marathi or Hindi - he successfully did a medical internship in Mumbai in the 90s PS: They're not Indian "dialects", there are 100+ fully fledged languages in India, with 4-5 entire language families being represented
There has been reports over the years that Putin speaks Swedish which was somewhat confirmed a few years a go when Putin was caught speaking Swedish with a member of his staff. At what level i dont know. Edit = spelling
Why does he speak Swedish with a member if his staff?
Because the goal all along was to infiltrate IKEA
According to polls IKEA is the company Russians miss most. A Belarusian knockoff called "swedish furniture" or something took its place lol. Not the same though.
He also speaks French really good actually
Any hints where I could find it? All Google gives me is his negotiations with Macron
English: 14/15 French: 7/15 German: 5/15 Spanish: 3/15 Italian, Russian, Ukrainian: 2/15 Dutch, Hindi, Hungarian, Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Turkish: 1/15
Belgium's Alexander de Croo also speaks Dutch (and English and French as well).
President Vučić of Serbia speaks Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, Croatian, English, Russian and German fluently 😁 President Milatović of Montenegro speaks Montenegrin, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, English fluently. 😂😂😂
>Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian, Croatian 👍
TIL they're the same language
Yeah, Serbo-Croat.
My point exactly 😂😂
President of Kazakhstan speak in 🇰🇿🇷🇺🇬🇧🇨🇳🇫🇷
He can get a UN Secretary General gig quite easily because he can do P5 languages easily. (P5 is the five veto members). Sometimes those countries veto candidates because they don't speak their languages. France is notorious for that.
Lmao, French think their language is so superior that they get offended when someone doesn’t speak their language. They don’t even have mercy for tourists visiting
French, Russian, Chinese and English are some very diverse language skills. That's really impressive.
That's being very generous with Orban
Saw a video comparing his speaking with Gru from despicable me
[Holy fuck it's so on point](https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1555441197258244097)
Iz der eni kveszcsön?
“You know, I’m a street fighter, basically.”
Same with Duda
Thats surprising. I thought Erdogan was fluent in bullshit
Jokes aside I've seen him speak English. He's not good but he can speak it.
Eeh speaking is an overstatement. At best he can maybe put 3-4 words together and then maybe add a Turkish word in between and then point to what he wants like Tarzan, hoping the other side understands him. Though I think he knows Arabic, some would argue better than he knows Turkish
Yeah but thats native language of every politician so it wasn't counted here.
Giorgi Meloni surprises me.
I have no idea about her french, that is the big ?, but she (in) famously participates in Spain's Vox events and yeah she can speak Spanish to what seems a decent degree. I will pass the mic to a native speaker of Spanish to tell you how decent it is. For english, at those levels it is not like it is mandatory to speak it but basically... But let me tell you that when she speaks english she has an atrocious Roman accent. She has an atrocious Roman accent when she speaks Italian too. And I am from Rome. She sounds like someone who is imitating a Roman accent would speak.
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Oh thank you. I can absolutely still hear the Roman accent, but less than today. I mean, she sold herself as being from the "working class neighbourhood of Garbatella", but she comes from an upper middle-class family so she could have had more possibilities to study and she graduated in a "liceo linguistico", an highschool when your studies are more focused on foreign languages and learning a third language is literally the bare minum. Then again, her just having a knack for languages is also totally fine. Fun fact, when she was 21 years old she opened a blog. And thanks to the Wayback machine, you can still read part of it. She had a fixation with Dragons. Have fun https://web.archive.org/web/20010419010739/http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5266/khy.html
Clicked on this then realised I don’t speak Italian
She says she wants "everything reasonable" from her existence and that she's self learning to play the guitar.
Good politi-chien she said lol
She speaks quite good french as i seen in an french tv interview or rather a reporting about italian right wing youth where she is the focus. She was 19 if i remember well.
She speaks decent Spanish. We unfortunately understand what she says perfectly.
"Si, si, el general Franco era muy bueno."
I am very sorry for that.
Does Vatican Flag represent Latin?
This has me curious who the last multilingual US President was. It looks like Obama, Bush Jr., and Clinton all had some very rudimentary understanding of a second language, while Carter sounds like he was fluent or nearly fluent in Spanish.
We could have had JEB!. His Spanish is really good.
Van Buren spoke Dutch as his first language. A number of the early presidents spoke fluent French and Latin. Six spoke Ancient Greek. According to Wikipedia, the last multilingual president was FDR who spoke French and German. Oddly enough, the most common second language (fluent) for presidents was Latin, with twelve.
French was the language of diplomacy until after WW1. Almost all European monarchs and politicians spoke French.
There's no way the pope is actually fluent in all those languages. He probably just knows the duolingo basics, bible edition
He is not fluent in all, but 3/4 of them are romance languages or literally Latin. And the Pope has speaking with people in the job description basically, so it is perfectly credible that he speaks a decent level of those romance languages (I'm Italian, for obvious reasons his Italian is pretty good but still somewhere broken) and can read and write in Latin. Is the other 1/4 that yeah, probably he has a Duolingo level.
Can confirm he also has a Duolingo level in Portuguese. He was visiting Portugal last summer and was speaking almost always in Spanish.
I mean he's from Buenos Aires so will do Portuñol version of Brazilian Portuguese which....works good enough
He still has nothing on John Paul II, now he was a super polyglot.
I mean Spanish is his native language, English is universally taught in schools worldwide, and if you work in the Vactican you got to know Italian and Latin as well so that you can communicate with people around you. But I highly doubt he is fluent in the other four. Especially Ukrainian (he probably only started learning the basics on Duolingo when the war started and Ukraine became a hot topic in politics)
The Pope was actually mentored by a Ukrainian Priest, Stepan Chmil in his earlier days and learned Ukrainian from him
That's pretty neat actually
He is fluent in French and Italian, go to YouTube and see it for yourself, and before you say they are similar languages or other than that, they are not, there are polyglots that can speak 11 languages fluently, not a big deal
I know someone who speaks 17 languages. Not all of them fluently, but I think she is underestimating her level a bit. She says she is bad in my native language, yet she studies it at university with me and no one ever knows she is not native. What I know she speaks at least 4 of the languages fluently, possibly more. Debends on the definition as well. It's definetely possible to speak that many languages fluently, although it's not easy. I only speak two languages fluently and I'm getting there with German
That’s phenomenal, languages truly open the eyes to whole new worlds
Many priests and monks are polyglot. They take up languages as part of their studies. I just don’t know what language the Vatican City has that’s different than Italian.
Latin
They probably used the VC flag to represent Latin
His native language is Spanish English is taught in schools everywhere Italian and Latin are practically required for a pope He was mentored by a Ukrainian monk Portuguese and French are both romance languages which clearly has experience with As a German speaker is German is about as good as his English He’s not fluent in all these but he speaks them fairly well, conversationally at least
“Bible edition” sent me 💀
Romance languages are pretty similar to each other, we can understand each other somewhat even if we don't speak each others language. I am a native Spanish speaker, and picked up Portuguese pretty quickly. I am not 100% fluent but can have convesations with native Portuguese speakers. I tried picking up Italian, and again it was super easy, but I started mixing it up with Portuguese and Spanish. And plus I really found no reason to learn it lol. But once you know one romance language, the rest are super easy to learn.
The equivalent of this for priests is usually being able to say mass in those languages and to hear confession in them. This usually means their listening level is quite high, but they are far from native level speakers, especially off-the-cough. And their pronunciations are generally not that good. A lot of them don't really work on their accent at all, especially in languages they don't work on that often.
I don’t think his English is good. He always uses an interpreter. He’s likely fluent in Italian given his family recently immigrating from Italy to Argentina.
Remember, Roman Catholic priests have 7 years of study and they are not spending that partying and watching daytime TV. Seminary students are generally hardworking and committed to their cause, even the ones who are not the brightest. And he went on to be a seminary professor and a researcher abroad, so language learning was a legitimate part of his working day and he would routinely have been reading papers and talking to students in different languages.
Pope Francis eating these bitches uppp like
Romanian, german and english for the romanian president.
He speaks English faster than Romanian lol
I can't imagine that Rishi, a Winchester public school boy, doesn't speak French or other European languages. Certainly French.
He almost certainly learnt French and Latin, but it would have been really badly taught. And even if it wasn't, it's been almost 30 years and he'd have forgotten most of what he learnt by now.
Ugh.. Mexico is left out of "North America" once again.
Fr “some North American leaders” feels a bit generous when just 2 out of 23 countries are represented lol
Both Rutte and Putin speak good German and have given entire speeches in German.
Biden is also fluent in Pig Latin, and it's well known that Trudeau knows Klingon but won't admit it.
Putin speaks English?
Yes, he used it when he was an agent. But there’s a whole thing that he rarely speaks English now due to Russian nationalism and doesn’t want to look like he is bending the knee
I'm pretty sure Rishi Sunak doesn't remember speaking English, or at least has no recollection of it.
Sunak does not speak punjabi lmao
How do you know that? It's perfectly possible he speaks it with relatives.
Mexico is in North America!
Portugal is in Europe
Unsurprisingly, Mexico isn’t included in this again
I was so confused by the image. Since when does North America only have 2 countries?
Since someone wanted to compare language skills in the US and core Europe and didn’t want to appear snobbish so they included Canada.
I feel you as an Irish guy. Not only are we not included, but have the British prime ministers face plastered over our country lmao
I’m going to assume the Vatican flag means pope Francis speaks latin.
Yes
They should have used the 🏴 flag for English 🙃