Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Sacre bleu! He speaka da French, too…

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Mitt Romney speaks French (actually rather well, from what I can tell).

Wasn’t that a Republican knock against John Kerry in 2004? No wonder they don’t trust him.

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Comments

  1. It seems that having two languages is a liability for a Republican. Heck, having too strong a grasp of one language doesn’t help, either.

  2. I was surprised; he has good control of the French phonemes and speaks at natural pace. (You can trust my judgment on this-have lived in France and other French speaking countries for several years). Your point about Kerry is well taken, even though Romney’s French is far superior to Kerry’s.

  3. Lesson for March 21, 2012:

    Do you want to etch a sketch this evening?

    Voulez-vous graver a l’eau forte une maquette ce soir?’

    • that it reminds Paddy of the Free State Ambassador to the League of Nations who made all his speeches in execrable French “because I don’t know my own language and I am d*mned if I’m going to speak English.”

      Écran magique sounds like it might be idiomatic, though of course around here that could only mean the MacL@@han Tube.

      Happy days.

  5. When asked if he could speak French he said something to the effect of, “I can but I won’t.” I’ve never figured out why French is seen as inherently elite language. Why is it different from Spanish or other Romance languages? Ideally, IMO every American would be able to speak English and at least one other modern language. Our European counterparts know several and we look like idiots by comparison.

    • Many years back, I was part of a conversation in Amsterdam with someone who lived there (and spoke better English than some Americans). Another person said to him that he must think that Americans who only speak English are idiots. The Amsterdam native said not really – look at maps of the two places. It’s pretty clear why someone growing up in the Netherlands would need a good grasp of several languages just to deal with the people in the near vicinity. But not so much in the US.

      I’m a big advocate of language education, but I did get this guy’s point.

  6. Most Mormons seem to come back from their time with a good grasp of the local language. Not sure why,

    • We know about a lot of the world’s languages, it turns out, via the work of missionaries.

  7. I think (corret me on this) Kerry may have spent only one year as a Junior Abroad. This explains why he speaks it well: exposure and usage over a longer period of time. As to your point about Europeans, Christopher, there are many reasons why Europeans know the Romance languages, just as there are for Poles or Ukrainians who speak Slavic languages like Russian. And let’s not put ourselves on a guilt trip about languages; I am much more imressed by the majority of Africans who know and speak several languages, not of their own linguistic root and–I have met damn few Frenchmen or Germans who could really speak Russian. And the word for “dumb person” (one who can’t express himself orally) in Russian is the word for German person.:):)

  8. …but we will be more competitive both individually and collectively if we could speak more languages. Teaching a second language should begin in elementary school as kids have been shown to pick up language better than those who are older. For me it is part of the principle of being a citizen of a shrinking world, not to mention a diverse country like the United States.

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