9 mo. ago • 90%

Languages spoken by the leaders of Europe and North America

Map Enthusiasts @sopuli.xyz Languages spoken by the leaders of Europe and North America

32 comments

but how many of them can do c#?

43
- Most likely would be Zelenskyy, he supports modernizing government for the Internet Age.
  
  Honorable mention to Pope Francis, who trained as a chemist and has the least political background out of all of them. I bet he would know how to code if he wasn't born in 1936
  
  27
  
  My dad was born in 33 and was a computer engineer. Started out with assembly and was in high demand due to a lot of old legacy systems. Probably would have learned c# if he wasn't retired by the time it came out. Point is, we can't rule out that the pope knows how to code.
  
  14
  
  Supporting IT doesn't mean knowing how to code.
  
  6
- Let's start from Excel, then scratch. That would be awesome
  
  1
Who's the last American President that spoke multiple languages?

Edit:

Oh wow, Wikipedia to the rescue!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multilingual_presidents_of_the_United_States

Seems like Carter and F. D. Roosevelt are the last two that could have been considered to be truly comfortable in a second language.

31
- Great wiki. Thanks!
  
  "To practice, Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn read the Bible to each other every night."
  
  Legit sweet people :(
  
  8
English>French>German seems to be the tier list. Then there's Erdogan. Does everyone have go through their own translation service to call in, or does he have to provide a translator that everyone talks to? Situational?

17
- When meeting with each other, heads of state who speak different languages always have their own translators present
  
  While most of these leaders speak more than one language, many of them would not feel comfortable engaging in diplomacy or negotiations outside their native language
  
  31
  
  Yeah, e.g. Merkel and Putin. Both can speak German and Russian very well, but they still used translators for offical talks. Too much of a risk to use a phrase or word that means something in one language, but translated it can mean something else or have bad implications.
  
  On that level you don't want an accidental misunderstanding.
  
  Not even talking about insults, world leaders cpuld identify that, but imagine accidentally promising or indicating something you didn't want to.
  
  22
  
  Which makes sense, the other guy's translator could bullshit you and you wouldn't notice
  
  7
This was posted a lot of times, and it's not defined what "spoken" actually means. E.g. you can hear Orbán speaking English in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO9v8aKSj24

Those are definitely English words, and by Hungarian standards it's not that bad (Only 25% of Hungarians can speak English according to 2022 census). But is this the same level as other leaders? On other threads it was mentioned that Erdogan can speak some other language just not really well, so it's not counted here.

15
- He's just a poor boy from a poor family Spare him his life from this monstrosity 😂
  
  erdogan isn't well educated, he rode on the resentment poor classes, like his, bred towards the "republicans". The less educated he is, the more he attracted them. Not unlike Trump now.
  
  ps: When he started rising he wanted to undo the republic, unlike the nationalist he now became. The republic wasn't (maybe it still isn't) an agreed base there. He may be familiar with Arabic as a second language.
  
  edit: according to wikipedia he graduated from imam hatip school. Erdogan definitely is bilingual.
  
  2
- Konnichiwa, watashi no namae wa, Boris Johnson, London shi chou, desu.
  
  2
Leaving Belgium and Luxemburg out so that the rest is not embarrassed too much? I mean, those speak like 4 languages by default.

10
The pope speaks Vaticanian? Vaticanese? Vaticanglo?

8
- is "latin" the word you're searching for?
  
  22
  
  Yes, vaticanzo, that’s it
  
  Edit: surely this should be the flag for Latin.
  
  1
Having Sunak block out my country is irrationally aggravating.

That said our Taoiseach would probably tell you he speaks every language here and that he always had and thinks everyone should.

6
"Fluency" is a nebulous concept. In Europe, they utilize a letter coded system that indicates what skill level you're at, with an A1 being the lowest bb and C2 being high level of proficiency if not fluent. That being said, I'd be extremely interested in knowing just how fluent some of the speakers of 4+ languages truly are. You have to have some kind of daily immersion and application of the languages to retain the fluency, and I just don't see these world leaders having that kind of time. A lot of people believe themselves to be fluent in a 2nd or even 3rd language because they took a couple of courses in high school.

4
I'm pretty sure Biden doesn't speak The King's English, but maybe Trudeau does?

2
The more imperialist, the less languages? Or is it about conservatives being less diverse educated?

-1
- If everyone speaks your language, why learn another?
  
  1
  
  Everyone speaks Turkish?
  
  1

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