Скачать или смотреть This US President Spoke Perfect Chinese

So, you’d think that knowing a foreign language would be a requirement for doing an international job, right? Not if you are a US president. Only 21 out of the 46 American presidents, or less than half, could speak a foreign language and that statistic is particularly unflattering for the most recent presidents. 

Donald Trump and current president Joe Biden speak no foreign languages. whereas Barack Obama speaks Indonesian, although he’s claimed he isn’t very fluent in the language.

George W Bush can speak Spanish, but he was quite shy about his abilities, so mostly avoided speaking in public. Bill Clinton is fluent in German, which he learned while studying at Georgetown University. 

But to encounter some truly polyglot presidents we have to turn back the clock a little bit. Thomas Jefferson, for example, claimed that he learned Spanish during his 19-day trip across the Atlantic with the help of a copy from Don Quixote. He is one of the most multilingual presidents ever and claimed to have spoken four languages. In fact, most 19th-century presidents spoke Latin and Greek, which were commonly studied in school at the time, and often French or German as well. The only US president known to have spoken an Asian language, apart from Barack Obama, is Herbert Hoover, who spoke Mandarin Chinese from a stint in China with his wife, which they would speak together when they wanted to not be understood.

Interestingly enough, there is only one president who spoke English as a second language – Martin Van Buren. Born in a town of Dutch settlers in New York State, President Martin Van Buren’s native language was Dutch, and he learned English at school.

But the most multilingual president of all was John Quincy Adams, who spoke Latin, Greek, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German and Russian, or a total of eight languages! Formidable Monsieur Adams!

#shorts

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