Today, 26th September, is the European Day of Languages. But you knew that, of course.
At the initiative of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, the European Day of Languages has been celebrated every year since 2001 on 26 September. Throughout Europe, 800 million Europeans represented in the Council of Europe’s 47 member states are encouraged to learn more languages, at any age, in and out of school. Being convinced that linguistic diversity is a tool for achieving greater intercultural understanding and a key element in the rich cultural heritage of our continent, the Council of Europe promotes plurilingualism in the whole of Europe.
Nick Clegg is rare in being a British polyglot politician, an internationalist of Russian and Dutch descent who is fluent in six languages. And here’s the video proof…
Nick speaking fluent Dutch (from 1:43):
(Also available on YouTube here.)
Nick speaking fluent Spanish:
(Also available on YouTube here.)
Nick speaking fluent German:
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9 Comments
Its so strange.
I understood so little of the interviews.
Think I understood a lot more of the Dutch interview – probably because I think I’ve heard him say the same things in English so many times.
6?
I know he also speaks French (though I’ve yet to hear him do so, which I’d be curious to since it’s my first language), but what else then? Does he speak Russian?
Yes today is the European Day of Languages 🙂 You may be interested to know that several British schools have introduced Esperanto in order to test its propaedeutic value. You can see details on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INCr1bV8kGk
The Council of Europe has also provided some phrases and expressions in Esperanto, which you can see here http://www.goethe.de/ins/se/prj/ets/mlg/gep/enindex.htm
Their new online course http://www.lernu.net has 125 000 hits per day and Esperanto Wikipedia enjoys 400 000 hits per day. That can’t be bad 🙂
Chris Bower’s bio says he only has 5 languages – English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish. His younger brother has 6 coz I think he can speak Japanese as well.
Wont be too popular at the Foreign Office, where schoolboy French and shouting loudly in English, is about the level of polyglotism desired by Sir Humphrey and his friends.
Doing interviews in other languages is most impressive, as is getting the guttural sounds in Dutch. (English in England doesn’t have guttural sounds, though English as spoken in Wales , Scotland and Ireland does have them.)
I think Keith Browning is being unfair to today’s civil service. My wife’s neice is a civil servant very fluent in French. Sir Humphrey should have long ago taken his pension.
Here he is speaking French (from 14:30 on): http://bit.ly/oMde3O
Ok, so it’s happened. We have seen how important language and its use is in diplomacy.
(The French loathe English people who make no attempt even to exchange courtesies in their language)
People who rely on English as their only means of communicating present an affront to multilingual company AND are maneouvred by their own feelings of inferiority into being more macho than they need to be.
What are the chances that Nick Clegg could have kept our position alive if he had been fronting recent talks instead of monoglot Cameron?.
I’m not sure if an 11 second video is proof that he is fluent in German!